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The FDA will meet on June 10 to discuss the possible licensure of the Pfizer COVID vaccine for children, despite the fact that COVID poses a statistically insignificant risk to children while the vaccines could cause injury and death.

In light of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s emails released Wednesday, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) calls for health agencies to immediately halt the administration of COVID-19 vaccines to minors, whether in clinical trials or under Emergency Use Authorization.

With a recovery rate of 99.997%, children are not at great risk of serious health consequences from COVID-19 infections — but they are at significant risk of adverse events from the vaccine.

On May 19, Pfizer released a 37-page “fact sheet” of clinical trial data on its COVID-19 vaccine tested on children 12 and older. The date showed four out of five children in the trials suffered from mild to severe adverse events.

Regardless of the severity of these adverse events, long-term effects on children’s health from this experimental vaccine are unknown.

Emails released Wednesday prove Fauci knew the virus and pandemic would fade away without a vaccine, that masks do not work and that those who have recovered from infection have substantial immunity.

Despite having this knowledge, Fauci insisted people, including children, wear masks and that those who had already had COVID be vaccinated.

CHD demands federal and state agencies err on the side of caution, especially when it comes to our future: the world’s children. Immediate suspension of decisions regarding COVID vaccines for children is crucial.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced a meeting on June 10 to discuss the possible licensure of the Pfizer vaccine for pediatric populations.

CHD Board Chair Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Children’s Health Defense have been advocating for years for improvements in the nation’s vaccine safety program which is in shambles.

In a March 15 letter to President Biden, Kennedy outlined the long list of problems in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS):

• Adverse events are rarely reported by the public or doctors.
• Clinical trial data is often biased, unavailable or nonexistent.
• Conflicts of interest between the FDA and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) vaccine advisory. committees and pharmaceutical companies are rampant.

According to a study funded by the U.S. Health and Human Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s, the VAERS system captures only 1% of vaccine adverse events.

Yet as of May 21, VAERS data showed 262,521 adverse events including 4,406 deaths following COVID-19 vaccines since Dec. 14, 2020. Vaccine injuries among 12- to 17-year-olds more than tripled in the last week of reporting.

In 1976, approximately 50 deaths shut down the Swine Flu campaign under President Gerald Ford. Despite the underreporting to VAERS, the U.S. now has nearly 100 times that number of deaths following COVID vaccination.

The 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act has stymied legal action as has the 2005 PREP Act, both of which give vaccine makers virtually zero liability for their products.

Instead, claimants — including children — must file claims for injuries which are rarely paid. Parents of children injured and killed by vaccines are aware of this system. Now people injured by COVID-19 vaccines, or whose loved ones die, also are finding out they’re on their own.

Kennedy’s new book, “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health”, can be pre-order now from Barnes & Noble and Amazon. It will be published on July 20.

While most media has been silent, CHD commends Tucker Carlson and other journalists who are covering Fauci’s emails. CHD is in the process of filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding access to the unredacted emails.

CHD urges people around the world to comment on its FDA petition asking that the Emergency Use Authorizations for COVID vaccines be revoked immediately.

The organization also asks people to add their names on a letter to Congress supporting the Prepare Act which would establish a National Commission on the COVID-19 pandemic to examine and report upon the facts and causes behind the worldwide crisis.

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The Vietnam War ended in 1975, but Vietnamese people today continue to suffer the effects of Agent Orange, the deadly dioxin-containing chemical weapon that the U.S. sprayed over 12 percent of South Vietnam from 1961-1971, poisoning both the people and the land.

Descendants of the approximately 2 to 4 million Vietnamese people, hundreds of thousands of U.S. Vietnam veterans, and Vietnamese-Americans who were exposed to the toxin continue to record disproportionate rates of congenital disabilities and higher rates of many diseases.

U.S. veterans receive some compensation from the U.S. government, but very little assistance has been given to the Vietnamese people, the intended victims of the defoliant Agent Orange.

Thus, on May 25, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) introduced H.R. 3518, the Victims of Agent Orange Relief Act of 2021, in the House of Representatives. The Vietnam Agent Orange Relief & Responsibility Campaign, for which I serve as co-coordinator, assisted Lee in drafting the bill.

“The United States has a moral responsibility to compensate the victims of the Agent Orange campaign,” Lee told Truthout. “In the same way we are focused on beginning to repair the damage of systemic racism in the form of reparations, and the war on drugs with restorative justice, it is also our responsibility to try and atone for this disgraceful campaign during the Vietnam War.”

Lee noted,

“The United States has contributed more than $125 million over the last 30 years in assistance through USAID for persons with significant disabilities, regardless of cause, in areas heavily sprayed with Agent Orange. This project is part of the U.S. government’s efforts to address legacies from U.S.-Vietnam War.”

The Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) recognizes 15 diseases and illnesses as associated with the spraying and use of Agent Orange by the U.S. Armed Forces during the Vietnam era. These maladies are AL amyloidosis, chronic B-cell leukemias, chloracne, diabetes mellitus type 2, Hodgkin’s disease, ischemic heart disease, multiple myeloma, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, acute and subacute peripheral neuropathy, porphyria cutanea tarda, prostate cancer, respiratory cancers and soft-tissue sarcomas.

Although the DVA provides some (albeit insufficient) compensation for 20 severe congenital disabilities in children of female U.S. veterans who served in Vietnam, the only congenital condition recognized for children of male U.S. veterans is spina bifida.

But no assistance has been provided to the children of Vietnamese or Vietnamese Americans associated with their exposure, or their parents’ or grandparents’ exposure, to Agent Orange.

Lee said H.R. 3518 “would expand benefits to children of veterans exposed to Agent Orange; expand research on Agent Orange and its effects on the health of exposed individuals; and provide medical, housing and poverty reduction assistance to Vietnamese individuals affected by exposure as well as their children,” adding, “It would also provide environmental remediation for areas in Vietnam exposed to Agent Orange and conduct a needs assessment on the Vietnamese American community.”

In addition, Lee observed, the bill would “provide grants that fund a broad health assessment for Vietnamese Americans who may have been exposed to Agent Orange as well as their children and descendants.” H.R. 3518 requires the establishment of “centers that provide ‘assessment, counseling, and treatment for conditions related to exposure to Agent Orange’ in areas with large Vietnamese-American populations,” Lee said.

In the current moment, advocates for Lee’s bill are urging those who support it to contact their congressional representatives and ask them to sign on to H.R. 3518 as a co-sponsor.

French Court Dismisses Agent Orange Lawsuit

Two weeks before the introduction of Lee’s bill, a French court dismissed a lawsuit that Tran To Nga, a French-Vietnamese victim of Agent Orange, filed in 2015 against 14 chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, that produced and sold Agent Orange. The court in Evry, France, ruled that it did not have jurisdiction to hear the case because the companies acted “on the orders” of the U.S. government which was involved in a “sovereign act.”

Working in Vietnam as a war correspondent in 1966, Tran and others with her were enveloped by the U.S. government’s spraying of the chemicals. “I saw a plane pass with a cloud behind it. And then my whole body was drenched in a sticky powder, and I started coughing and coughing. I didn’t know that this powder that had just covered me was a poison,” Tran says in the new documentary, The People vs. Agent Orange, directed by Alan Adelson and Kate Taverna and scheduled to air on PBS on June 28.

Tran’s first daughter weighed 6.6 pounds at the age of three months. Shortly after birth, her daughter’s skin began shedding. The baby could not bear to have any skin contact or simple demonstrations of affection, Tran testified in 2009 before the International People’s Tribunal of Conscience in Support of the Vietnamese Victims of Agent Orange. The child still weighed 6.6 pounds when she died at 17 months. Tran’s second daughter still suffers from alpha thalassemia, a genetic blood disease. Tran herself has type 2 diabetes, tuberculosis and cancer.

“For forty years, I carried within me this guilt of being a bad mother who did not know how to protect her children, or worse, who sowed misfortune to her offspring,” Tran told Truthout in an email. It wasn’t until 2008 when Tran visited Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange that she made the connection between her toxic exposure and the illnesses she and her daughters have endured.

Tran decided to sue the U.S. companies “because all the other victims no longer have the opportunity to do so. If I don’t,” she added, “the [Agent Orange] drama would be unknown for a long time to come and the crime of the greatest chemical war against humanity still goes unpunished. Above all, millions of dioxin victims would never have any assistance to be able to live with dignity during their already too miserable and painful lives.”

Tran’s lawyer, William Bourdon, who is appealing the judge’s ruling, said the court applied an obsolete definition of sovereign immunity that did not comply with international and French law. “I am disappointed, I am angry, but I am not sad,” Tran said at a news conference. “We are going to carry on because our cause is just. Truth is on our side.”

U.S. Chemical Companies Committed “Ecocide”

Tran’s lawsuit alleges that the U.S. chemical companies committed “ecocide” because Agent Orange destroyed the environment of Vietnam. The 2009 Paris tribunal, which heard testimony from 27 victims, witnesses and scientific experts, made a finding of “ecocide.” The seven judges from three continents, including me, concluded, “The damages caused to the land and forests, water supply, and communities and the ecosystems can be legitimately be called an ecocide, as the forests and jungles in large parts of southern Vietnam have been devastated and denuded, and may either never grow back or take 50 to 200 years to regenerate.”

Today, dozens of environmental hotspots continue to contaminate the soil, food, sediment, wildlife and livestock in Vietnam with dioxin. In 2017, the United States assisted in cleaning up the Agent Orange contamination at the largest hotspot at the Da Nang Airport. In addition, the United States has pledged $30 million a year for 10 years toward the cleanup of the hotspot at Bien Hoa, but the total cost may exceed $1 billion. And there are several other smaller hotspots throughout Vietnam that must also be cleaned up as they continue to expose the people there to dioxin and arsenic.

Lee told Truthout she is “proud that, at the request of the Vietnam government, the U.S. cleaned up Danang Airport and reduced the risk of dioxin exposure to the surrounding community. Now, we are working together on dioxin remediation at Bien Hoa Airbase, which is the largest remaining dioxin hotspot in Vietnam.” Lee noted, “USAID has agreed to provide an initial five-year, $183 million contribution to this project. The bill provides for additional cleanup in areas that were heavily sprayed, such as areas that served as military bases and sites of aircraft crashes, and I will continue to ensure that U.S. assistance is provided for the Bien Hoa Airbase clean up.”

But the Chemical Companies Get Off Scot-Free

In 1979, U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War sued the U.S. government and the chemical companies, including Dow and Monsanto, for compensation resulting from their exposure to Agent Orange. The case settled out of court in 1984 for $180 million which gave a few of the plaintiffs a few thousand dollars each. Later, U.S. veterans won a legislative victory for compensation and they receive several billion dollars per year in benefits.

Vietnamese victims filed a lawsuit in 2004 against the chemical companies that manufactured Agent Orange. In 2008, U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein, who had also presided over the U.S. veterans’ lawsuit, dismissed the case brought by the Vietnamese people, concluding that Agent Orange did not constitute a poison weapon prohibited by the Hague Convention of 1907. Weinstein had reportedly told the chemical companies when they settled the U.S. veterans’ suit that their liability was over and he apparently made good on his promise. His 2008 dismissal was affirmed by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. In the film The People vs. Agent Orange, Weinstein says that the veterans’ case “was not settled on any scientific basis. It was settled on a political basis … The moment it was settled, [the chemical companies’] stock went up.”

U.S. veterans who continue to suffer Agent Orange related diseases were exposed to, but were not the intended victims of, the deadly chemicals. Nonetheless, the U.S. government is paying for their compensation when private companies that manufactured the chemicals, which they knew to contain deadly dioxin, have not paid the price for allowing the United States to use those chemicals in the first place. Moreover, those companies profited from their sales of Agent Orange to the government.

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Copyright Truthout. Reprinted with permission.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild, and a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the advisory board of Veterans for Peace. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral, and Geopolitical Issues. 

She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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A must see movie for all Americans is ”Inherit the Wind” (1960, Stanley Kramer, Director). To those who never saw this film, it accurately portrays the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee. The trial of substitute high school teacher John Scopes was for breaking Tennessee’s Butler Act, which forbade the teaching of evolution in state funded schools.

The film had many levels to it in addition to the story line of questioning the legality of such a law. What really frightened this writer, and yes, frightened is the proper word to use, is how 96 years later America has not ( to use the apropos word) evolved at all!

In the film we are made to look at Dayton, Tennessee (renamed Hillsboro for the film) and its inhabitants. This was deep in the Bible Belt and most of the townspeople reflected it, excepting the very few who did not subscribe exactly to fundamentalist Christianity.

That minority was looked upon as heathens and godless outcasts. Satan was deemed to be alive and well in the hearts and minds, and yes, the very souls of anyone anywhere who refused to go along with this Old Time Religion. We could see and hear the townspeople marching and singing that song as they first welcomed Mathew Harrison Brady; and later when they burned school teacher Bertram Cates in effigy.

This fanaticism was furthermore reflected in the person of Mathew Harrison Brady (portraying William Jennings Bryan, and played brilliantly by Frederic March) as their ‘spiritual savior‘ and lead prosecutor in the trial.

He was transformed through the townspeople’s childlike adoration of him into almost a godlike and all knowing savior. Brady had come and he would damn the sinner and transgressor Cates  for all his blasphemous garbage about Darwin and evolution.

Brady’s adversary in this quest for God’s glory was Henry Drummond, Chicago activist attorney, self proclaimed agnostic and Brady’s long time friend and political supporter (played by Academy Award nominee Spencer Tracy). They did battle in the courtroom for more than just John Scopes or evolution itself. They were battling for what was really on trial in Dayton, Tennessee: The right of someone to think and reason for oneself! Keep in mind that the Inherit the Wind novel was written a mere seven years after that disgraceful era called McCarthyism, a time all of us should revisit and study.

Today’s Realities

Look how far we have actually fallen as a nation, as a culture for that matter. We had a president who used Muslim and Mexican bashing to help him recruit supporters. His VP was a far right wing evangelical fanatic, worse even than Trump when it comes to advocating pre-emptive war against the Muslims.

Millions of Americans either belong to or agree with this phony Tea Party adoration that mirrors the ‘America First‘ and fascist leaning movements of the 1930s. These people have learned ZERO from our disgraceful and illegal pre-emptive invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, or our destructive carpet bombing of Libya.

Just as the crazy Islamic fanatics think that God is theirs and theirs alone, so do the right wing Christians (and Zionists) think the same about the God they have decided to worship. Utter insanity!

Where does hypocrisy fit into all this? Well, we know that the far right wing, which is the Republican Party, is full of hypocrites. The Chicken hawks  are most evident, made up of A) All those men who supported and trumpeted the Vietnam War, yet refused to go and serve there and B) All those men, and yes now women too, who were of age to join up for Iraq War 1 and Iraq War 2 and chose to stay home, but were full of ” USA USA ” bluster. They spend their time , especially those in elected office, railing against what they call ‘entitlements‘ and keep voting to increase this obscene military spending (now over 50% of our taxes).

They have the nerve to complain about Obama Care as socialism, when it really was a complete sellout to private health insurers; yet they have their own top grade and free socialist health coverage that our taxes pay for… even after they leave office!

The other side of this hypocrisy is of course the center/right wing of the Two Party system, the Neo Con Democrats. This group likes to tell us how they ‘Feel your pain etc‘ and then go along with the Military Industrial Complex. 

Under their ‘savior’, Mr. Obama, military spending topped 56% of our taxes in 2011. The Democrats supported Obama’s 10X increase in drone missile attacks, his NATO led destruction of Libya and continuation of our over 1000 permanent military bases in over 100 countries! Just as the Bush/Cheney gang was responsible for tens of thousands of civilian deaths through bombing and missile attacks, Obama and the Democrats signed off, and continue to sign off on such horror. The Democrats agreed with Obama’s decision to continue the Bush/Cheney bailout of the crooked Wall Street crowd, which we taxpayers will be paying off for generations!

Watching Inherit The Wind should allow you to see how rigid and foolish many of our fellow citizens still are.

A few years ago Trump had a rally in Melbourne, Florida. The first plan in his agenda was for his wife to lead the mob in prayer. No, they did not sing ”Old Time Religion” but could easily have. Then, Mr. Trump had this ‘ramped up‘ supporter of his, another ‘Joe the Plumber’ type, Gene Huber, recite his love and adoration for his president, wearing (I kid you not) a black tee shirt (Hitler’s SS color of choice) with the words ‘President Donald Trump‘. Melbourne was transformed into Hillsboro, Tennessee for the afternoon.

Thus a warning to those of us who ‘know better‘: If we do not stand up and protest this fanaticism… “He that troubleth his own house will inherit the wind…”

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

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On June 1 the Irish Times disclosed that Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs recently recommended to the nation’s Commission on Defence that Ireland expand military integration with NATO and the European Union. In the first case with the military bloc’s Partnership for Peace program which the country joined in 1999.

At the moment Ireland is one of only six European Union members that are not also members of NATO. The others are Austria, Cyprus, Finland, Malta and Sweden. All of those but Cyprus are members of one or more NATO military partnerships: Austria, Finland, Malta and Sweden are members of the Partnership for Peace, and Finland and Sweden are also Enhanced Opportunities Partners; the latter two are de facto NATO members in most substantive ways. European nations not in the European Union are also in the Partnership for Peace: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, Serbia and Ukraine. NATO members not (or not yet) in the EU are Albania, Britain, Macedonia, North Macedonia, Norway and Turkey. Of the eleven nations that have joined both the EU and NATO since 1999, all joined NATO first.

According to the Irish daily, the foreign ministry asserted that more extensive cooperation with NATO “can ensure that the Defence Forces has the relevant capability and the necessary force protection elements to participate in increasingly demanding overseas missions.”

In also advocating the deployment of military attachés abroad “in regions where Ireland is seeking to expand its global footprint,” the ministry stated:

“The engagement of the Defence Forces with the EU, Nato, through Partnership for Peace and the OSCE will become increasingly important as regional organisations continue to take on more responsibilities.” Such subordination of Irish military forces to multinational organizations, including the thirty-nation, U.S.-dominated military bloc, will represent “a significant foreign policy development.” It will enhance “the capacities, expertise and international networks of the defence organisation” in furtherance of a rules-based international order (a quote).

As all of Europe is being recruited into the U.S.’s escalating confrontation with Russia, with the Pentagon, NATO and the EU working in unison on all fronts, nations like Ireland which had long prided themselves on their neutrality will not be allowed that status much longer. Neutral it was in World War II and at least formally during the Cold War, but no more.

As the Irish Times paraphrased it, Ireland’s “growing strategic engagement” with international (as the required verbal anodyne) peace and security operations will necessitate “ongoing support through progressive, forward-looking co-ordination between Foreign Affairs, the Department of Defence and the Defence Forces.”

As though appearing providentially (though in fact by less-than-divine design), the same publication three days later ran an editorial piece titled What price Irish neutrality in today’s world? The opening paragraph reads:

“The cyberattack on the Irish health service [blamed by the writer on Russia, needless to say] and the forced landing of a Ryanair flight in Belarus should prompt a fundamental reassessment about the relevance of neutrality to the challenges of today’s world. The role and under funding of the Defence Forces over many years has to be part of that assessment.”

The choice of Belarus as a precipitating cause for enticing Ireland into NATO’s deadly embrace is not fortuitous. Since last August, and especially since the aforementioned Ryanair incident, the West – U.S., European Union and NATO; always united, virtually inseparable – has devised a common strategy of fostering regime change in that nation, with possible-to-probable military intervention as the fifth act, and through striking Belarus aiming a major blow at Russia as well. It’s not a matter of Irish and other erstwhile neutral European nations needing to protect themselves from the menacing actions of Belarus (…); it’s one of NATO requiring that all of Europe be enrolled in the campaign against Belarus and Russia.

The editorial’s second paragraph is a masterstroke of speciousness and sophism in the service of militarism and intervention abroad:

“Irish neutrality, as commonly understood, is a long-outdated concept which suggests that this State not only doesn’t take part in military alliance but has no particular view on the course of international relations. It dates from the second World War when Ireland was neutral as between the fascist powers and the Allies.”

To expose the negative to light: neutrality is not properly understood; it is passé, retrograde and unenlightened in any case. That by not joining a military alliance that consists of thirty members and forty partners on six continents which has waged unprovoked war on three of those six is to just not care about the world. In fact for Ireland to maintain a posture of neutrality now in the face of Belarusian and Russian transgressions is the moral (and practical) equivalent of appeasing and accommodating Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. There appears no other way of interpreting the above comments.

After discussing NATO’s role in training Irish military personnel for “noble and humanitarian” missions abroad, the author reiterates the preceding moral-political indictment of neutrality in stating, “Leaving aside purely operational factors there is the deeper question of being clear which side this country is on and how it can best protect itself in the future.”

Are you with the democratic, tolerant, clear-seeing West or are you a compromised asset of dictatorial and fascistic regimes like those of Belarus and Russia? The way that (inevitably) implied query is posed in and by the West, there are only two responses permitted. And the vicious and voracious ambitions of Minsk and Moscow may well extend to the green fields and hills of Eire itself, is also used as a bugbear to frighten the Irish into submission.

The Irish Times columnist also engaged in this agile display of legerdemain: new EU nations in Central and Eastern Europe supported Ireland “during the protracted negotiations over Brexit,” and as they are to a one threatened by imminent invasion by Russia’s barbarian hordes (as is implied: “Those countries feel threatened by incessant Russian pressure on their borders and meddling in their internal affairs.”), then Ireland must prove its gratitude and loyalty by…going to war with Russia?

This is the manner, crude, but lacking counterinformation all too effective, in which nations are seduced by militarism and driven to war.

There is a history for NATO to build on, unfortunately. Ireland provided the bloc with troops for its post-conflict military operations in Bosnia and Kosovo; joined the Partnership for Peace program in 1999, which was employed to enlist the fourteen Eastern European countries that have joined NATO since 1999; and was later granted an Individual Partnership and Cooperation Programme. In addition:

• It participates in the Partnership for Peace Planning and Review Process
• It participates in the Interoperability Platform, which “brings Allies together with 24 selected partners that are active contributors to NATO’s operations”
• It provides support for NATO-led operations and missions
• It deployed troops to Afghanistan for NATO’s International Security Assistance force from 2002-2016 and its successor, Resolute Support Mission afterward

Should the West, with Ireland’s assistance to the extent it supplies it, succeed in deposing the government of Belarus and supplanting it with a pro-NATO client regime, there will not be a single wholly European nation not under NATO’s jackboot.

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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 is from http://nousnatobases.org

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The COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech appears to put young men at elevated risk of developing a heart muscle inflammation called myocarditis, researchers in Israel say. In a report submitted today to the Israeli Ministry of Health, they conclude that between one in 3000 and one in 6000 men ages 16 to 24 who received the vaccine developed the rare condition. But most cases were mild and resolved within a few weeks, which is typical for myocarditis. “I can’t imagine it’s going to be anything that would cause medical people to say we shouldn’t vaccinate kids,” says Douglas Diekema, a pediatrician and bioethicist at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

Israeli health officials first flagged the issue in April, when they reported more than 60 cases, mostly in young men who had received their second dose of vaccine a few days earlier. Around the same time, the U.S. Department of Defense began to track 14 such cases. In mid-May, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it, too, was reviewing myocarditis cases. Officials at the European Medicines Agency said on 28 May they had received 107 reports of myocarditis following the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, or about one in 175,000 doses administered. But relatively few people under age 30 have been vaccinated in Europe.

The Israeli panel’s findings come as Israel and many European countries are debating whether younger adolescents should be vaccinated against COVID-19. Israel has been vaccinating teenagers 16 and older since late​ January, and the Ministry of Health is scheduled to announce tomorrow whether vaccinations will be opened to children 12 and older. Other countries, including the United States and Canada, began vaccinating children 12 and older in mid-May.

“From a parent’s perspective, this really comes down to risk perception, assessment of the data,” says Diekema, who has studied risk-benefit trade-offs. Even if a link between myocarditis and the vaccine holds up, the condition is usually mild, requiring treatment only with anti-inflammatory drugs, whereas COVID-19 infection can also cause serious disease and long-term side effects, even in young people. As suspicion has percolated about a possible connection, “I don’t know many physicians who are changing their minds about vaccinating their kids,” Diekema says.

In Israel, which relied almost exclusively on the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in its early and fast vaccination drive, the Ministry of Health in January assembled a panel led by Dror Mevorach, head of internal medicine at the Hadassah University Medical Center, to investigate the issue. Mevorach tells Science he and his colleagues identified 110 myocarditis cases among 5 million people in Israel who had received two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in the month before their diagnosis. That translates to about one in 50,000 vaccine recipients, a number that isn’t concerning given the background rate of myocarditis in the general population, where it is typically triggered by viral or bacterial infections, including COVID-19.

But the rate of myocarditis following vaccination among young men was higher. Ninety percent of the cases picked up in Israel appeared in men, and although myocarditis is normally more common among young men, the rate among those vaccinated was somewhere between five and 25 times the background rate, the report says. (Two cases of fatal myocarditis have also been reported in Israel, but the panel says investigations of those deaths were inconclusive; one patient may have had a more generalized inflammatory syndrome, and the other diagnosis was “not verified,” the report says.)

The new analysis “is very suggestive of a causal nature,” between the vaccine and myocarditis, Mevorach says. “I am convinced there is a relationship.”

“It does suggest that this is, at least statistically, a real phenomenon,” says Peter Liu, a cardiologist and chief scientific officer of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute. Diekema says it’s important to investigate “even a hint of a signal,” but cautions that “while this report is suggestive … it requires validation in other populations by other investigators before we can be certain the link exists.” Other factors may be in play, Diekema says. Now that children are back to socializing and playing sports, his hospital’s emergency room is “seeing more viral diseases than we’ve seen in a year,” and as a result, “I would expect to see a little bump in myocarditis versus a year ago.” Ideally, scientists should compare cohorts of vaccinated and unvaccinated youngsters at the same time, Diekema says, and he’s heartened that such studies are now gearing up.

Myocarditis cases following the Moderna vaccine, which isn’t in use in Israel, are also being investigated in the United States. It’s not clear why the two vaccines, which both rely on messenger RNA (mRNA), might heighten the risk. One possibility is that the very high antibody levels that both generate in young people may also, in rare cases, lead to a sort of immune overreaction that inflames the heart. “There’s no question these [vaccines] are extremely immune-generating,” Liu says. Mevorach says he suspects the mRNA itself might be playing a role. The innate immune system recognizes RNA as part of the body’s defense against microbes—including RNA viruses like SARS-CoV-2, he notes. “I think that actually the mRNA is a kind of natural adjuvant,” which ramps up the immune response, he says.

Diekema says the medical community is now on alert for youngsters with chest pain and other symptoms soon after vaccination—allowing them to be quickly identified, treated, and reported to health departments. Mevorach agrees that awareness among vaccinees, their parents, and their doctors is important for prompt and effective treatment. He says he and his colleagues treated about 40 cases. Only a few needed corticosteroids, he said, and most have recovered fully.

One important question is whether delaying the second vaccine dose might reduce any potential risk. There may be an opportunity to find out: Several countries have stretched the interval between the two doses from the 3 weeks tested and recommended by Pfizer to 12 or even 16 weeks, because they want to give as many people as possible at least one shot. A drop in myocarditis cases among those whose second dose was delayed might show up in data in the months ahead. Lowering the dose in young people may also be worth considering, Liu says. Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines are now being tested at lower doses in children under 12, with results expected in the coming months.

Even if the link between the shots and myocarditis firms up, Liu says the vaccine’s benefit—being well-protected from COVID-19—outweighs the risks, even for young people, who are generally at lower risk of severe disease. But Mevorach says the trade-offs may be different in Israel, given its extremely low numbers of SARS-CoV-2 infections—just 15 new cases were diagnosed yesterday. He hopes the Ministry of Health will leave the decision on whether to vaccinate younger teens to their parents and doctors. “At the moment, we no longer have an emergency,” he says.

Update, 1 June 2021, 4.55 PM: Text has been added to this story about two reported fatal cases of myocarditis; the expert panel said investigations of those cases were inconclusive.

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Gretchen Vogel is a contributing correspondent for Science Magazine based in Berlin, Germany.

Jennifer Couzin-Frankel is a Staff Writer.

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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***

It is quite apparent to everyone that, at present, the socio-economic and political situation in the United States is far from stable and society increasingly polarized. In fact, even members of the current US military and political elite admit this in their public speeches. Hence, President Joe Biden and his team have been trying hard to unite the nation and guide it in a less divisive direction.

Since the relationship between the United States and Russia has taken a turn for the worse in recent years, it is quite clear to the author that, nowadays, the US administration has been seeking confrontation with the Russian Federation, be it over politics, trade or even the construction of Nord Stream 2 (which is of no concern to the US) for the European Union (EU). And President Joe Biden is seemingly trying to achieve this aim by using fairly aggressive and ideologically divisive rhetoric as a tool.

Based on a number of reports published by American and Western media outlets, aside from anti-Russia propaganda, the US government has begun its preparations for a possible invasion of Russia via the Baltic countries, the Black Sea, the Arctic Ocean and regions bordering the Russian Federation to the East.

According to a May 17 report in Business Insider,

the “US Special Operations Europe (SOCEUR) conducted its largest annual exercise in conjunction with a smaller one” with troops from several NATO member and partner countries. Both drills were staged “at the same time to simulate a full-blown conflict with Russia ranging from the Baltic states and Scandinavia south to Ukraine and the Black Sea region”. The realistic exercises were called Trojan Footprint 21 and Black Swan 21 and “took place in Romania and across Eastern Europe”.

The article also stated that Crimea “would be an ideal environment for Naval Special Warfare operations”. In fact, US SEAL teams are already capable of conducting “over-the-beach raids and ambushes, maritime and land special reconnaissance, and underwater special operations, such as placing sensors on the ocean or limpet mines on enemy vessels”.

The author of the article also opined that Russian radar installations and A2/AD (anti-access/ area denial) “batteries and command-and-control systems would be a logical target for SEAL platoons”. The two exercises essentially showed “how conventional and special-operations units would work together in a major conflict with Russia”.

According to Business Insider, the Russian military bolstered its presence in Crimea since its annexation, “making it a seemingly impenetrable fortress guarding Moscow’s southern flank both from land and air”, and making invading it quite a challenge.

At this point, it is worth reminding revenge-seekers in the United States that Crimea has been viewed as Russia’s stronghold for quite some time. In fact, a number of burial grounds for foreign fighters on the peninsula serve as a reminder of this land’s bloody history. And in the past, there were no openly gay servicemen unlike nowadays in the US and its allies’ armies.

A May 17 article in The National Interest reported that the United States had a plan to attack Kaliningrad, which was described as “a single symphony of violence to break down advanced defenses”. General Jeffrey L. Harrigian, Commander of US Air Forces in Europe, said that the city and its garrison “could be prime targets for” multi-domain operations. Sydney J. Freedberg Jr., the Deputy Editor for Breaking Defense, clarified that there would be simultaneous attacks on Kaliningrad from the air, land, sea and cyberspace, i.e. “a single symphony of violence to break down advanced defenses”. Hackers could first “disrupt communications networks while jamming planes confuse radars”. In the meantime, “bombers, ships and submarines could lob long-range cruise missiles” and ground forces “fire rockets”. Stealth fighters and bombers would then be able to “penetrate surviving defenses to drop GPS-guided” weapons.

Still, individuals behind the aforementioned plans appear to have forgotten about the possibility of a massive counter missile strike against the United States and its European allies, as well as the potential damage Russian hypersonic weapons could cause to those who beat the drums of war and anyone else dragged into the conflict… For it was in fact Russia’s Katyusha rocket systems that turned the tide of World War II.

Preparations for an armed invasion of Russia are no longer kept under wraps in the European Union.

During the May 6 meeting of EU’s Foreign Affairs Council involving EU Defense Ministers, a decision was made to grant the requests of Canada, Norway and the US to participate in the PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation, a part of European Union’s security and defense policy) project Military Mobility.

The three countries would be the first states to be invited to participate in the initiative. But the very project Military Mobility is not so much centered around defense, as this initiative coming to fruition would give the West an opportunity to relocate roughly 50,000 personnel to the Baltic states. One issue at present is the poor infrastructure in the EU, especially in Eastern Europe. Hence, in the nearest future, the plan is to upgrade it so that roads, bridges, railroads etc. are able to cope with large quantities of heavy military transport.

Germany’s Minister of Defense Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer welcomed the move to invite the three aforementioned nations to take part in project Military Mobility, and described it as “another big step in the transatlantic alliance and in the cooperation between the European Union and NATO”. Her support for the initiative could stem from the memory of successful military campaigns of the past, for instance, during the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). However, Kramp-Karrenbauer is apparently unaware of the failed attempts to conquer the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As part of the anti-Russia propaganda drive, some truly impressive photographs were published by Western media recently showing maritime drills, dubbed Exercise Ragnar Viking, that involved vessels of the British Royal Navy, US Navy, the French Navy and the Royal Norwegian Navy. The Drive reported that, according to the US Navy, the drills were intended to “showcase high-end NATO cohesion, solidarity, and credibility in the Norwegian, North, and Baltic Seas”. The article also said that specific elements of the exercise “included a demonstration of long-range strike capabilities from the North Atlantic into Lithuania, amphibious landings in Norway, plus anti-submarine warfare and surface action group operations in the North Atlantic”.

Unfortunately, the aforementioned examples are not the only ones indicative of a vengeful policy toward Russia adopted recently by the United States and its NATO allies, which is in direct contrast to statements made by President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressing willingness to have a more stable and predictable relationship with the Russian leadership.

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Valery Kulikov is a political expert, writing for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

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***

Propaganda is an organized attempt to get large numbers of people to think or do something — or not think or do something. It’s not like classical rhetoric, which is about persuasion through argument, but rather a means of sub-rational manipulation

For the past two decades, professor Mark Crispin Miller has taught a course on propaganda at New York University, in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development

In September 2020 after urging his students to look into the scientific rationale for the mask mandates, to assess the truthfulness of the propaganda drive promoting them, he was subject to an administrative “review” for that and other alleged crimes

Miller is suing 19 of his department colleagues for libel after they signed a letter to the school dean demanding that “review” of Miller’s conduct, falsely accusing him of “explicit” hate speech, mounting “attacks on students” “advocating for an unsafe learning environment” and discouraging his class from wearing masks

Miller’s case shows that the infringement of academic freedom is inimical to independent thinking and free inquiry. Without such freedom, higher education is more than likely to teach students only to believe what they are told by state and corporate powers, which means not educating them at all — a failure damaging to them and catastrophic for democracy

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Watch the video here.

In this interview, professor Mark Crispin Miller, Ph.D., provides us with a startling example of a crackdown on academic freedom, with dire implications for free speech in America today. Ironically, it was his teaching students how to question propaganda, and to resist it, that brought on the curtailment of his academic freedom, after over 20 years of teaching that important subject at New York University.

His experience at NYU in the fall of 2020 culminated in his suing 19 of his department colleagues for libel — a case that has become a major flashpoint in the larger struggle to defend free speech and academic freedom, not just in the United States, but throughout the West today. Miller explained how he had come to teach the study of the media, and propaganda in particular:

“I had learned, as an English major, how to read literary texts closely and carefully to discover their hidden depths … and I discovered to my delight that you could do that with great movies as well. The more closely you watch them, and the more times you watch them, the more you see in them.

I then began to notice that TV commercials were also extremely subtle. As propaganda messages, they were really very carefully done so that they would appeal to you on both a conscious and an unconscious level. So, I started writing about those, and then about political rhetoric.

I started writing more and more about the media, and I was favoring magazines for [a] public readership … I wanted to reach more than just an academic audience from the beginning. And I quickly felt the urgency of alerting people to what the media was doing

…

By the ’90s, it had become a crisis, as a handful of transnational corporations were controlling most of the content that everybody was absorbing, news and entertainment alike, and it was getting worse and worse. So, I started to become an activist for media reform. I wrote a great deal on this and lectured about it very widely.

This is through the ’90s — and you can see how successful I was. The Telecom[munications] bill of 1996, signed by Bill Clinton, set the seal on the creation of a media monolith, The Media Trust, which had already started in earnest under Reagan. Now, it was really getting serious.

Fast forward to 2001 … I shifted my interest from media concentration to the urgent need for voting reform, because it was becoming ever clearer that the outcome of our elections does not necessarily reflect the will of the electorate … As you can see, my interests were becoming more and more taboo.”

The Rise of State-Corrupted Corporate Media

Signs of trouble emerged in 2005, when Miller published the book “Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform.” Miller and his publisher had hoped the book would open the door to nationwide discussion of the need for radical reform of the election system, but to their surprise, the book was instantly “blacklisted” by the corporate media. No one would review it.

“I even hired my own publicist,” Miller says. “This is the woman who is the publicist for Paul Krugman and Bob Herbert. She came in full of piss and vinegar, [saying] ‘We’re going to really make this [book] famous.’ And she’d never encountered such resistance. She couldn’t get anywhere.”

Oddly, it was the LEFT press — for which he had often written — that now labeled Miller a “conspiracy theorist” — a stigma that’s stuck with him ever since. The slander drove him to investigate more deeply. “I asked myself, when did this become a thing?” he says. “When did ‘conspiracy theory’ come to spring from everybody’s lips?”

Miller went to the archives of The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time magazine, searching for the terms “conspiracy theory” and “conspiracy theorist.” Up until 1967, “conspiracy theory” was used only from time to time in various ways, while the term “conspiracy theorist” was never used.

From 1967 onward, however, “conspiracy theory” was used with increasing frequency. Why? Because, in early 1967, the CIA sent a memo — No. 1035-96 — to all its station chiefs worldwide, instructing them to use their media assets to attack the works of Mark Lane, Edward Jay Epstein and other investigators who were questioning the Warren Report for its ludicrous assertion that “lone gunman” Lee Harvey Oswald was solely responsible for the assassination of President Kennedy.

The memo advised the use of certain lines of attack — what we today call “talking points” — to help discredit those dissenting voices. One was that “If there was a conspiracy that big, somebody would have talked by now” — a dismissive claim that’s still in use today, especially concerning 9/11. Another tactic the agency advised was to associate the “conspiracy theories” with communist subversion, thereby casting wholly reasonable inquiry as a threat to the “free world.”

“This raises a profoundly important issue about democracy in general,” Miller says, “as to whether it’s possible when you have the media, the press, covertly manipulated by the state. And, it is part of this hidden history of America that … we all need to understand if we want to get a clear sense of what’s happening now.”

As Miller started advocating for media reform, he was hired by the late Neil Postman to teach at the NYU.

“He hired me in part because he wanted another public intellectual on the faculty … who was critical of the media. He shared my view that the whole purpose of media study should be to help inform people generally about the urgent need for a properly functioning democratic media system,” Miller says.

“I used to feel that media literacy should be taught in every high school and college. I still believe that, but I now realize that a key component of that curriculum has to be propaganda study. It’s crucial.”

Over the years, NYU’s media studies department ballooned and shifted direction, becoming more diffuse, more theoretically inclined and more fixated on the pieties of “social justice” — a phrase that Miller points out has been appropriated to mean something other than what it used to mean. Indeed, the “social justice” issue has a great deal to do with the censorship — the “canceling” — of professor Miller.

COVID Propaganda

While it acquaints his students with the history of modern propaganda — its birth in World War I, its use by the Bolsheviks and by the Nazis — Miller’s course on propaganda is primarily concerned with teaching students to perceive and analyze propaganda in real time, or to look back at very recent propaganda drives.

This is not an easy thing to do, he warns his students, since, while it’s easy to spot propaganda that you disagree with, it can be very difficult to recognize it as propaganda when it tells you something that you want to hear, and want to think is true.

“That’s the most effective propaganda,” Miller says. “It works best when you don’t see it for what it is. You think it’s news. You think it’s entertainment. You think it’s information. You think it’s expertise. So, you will agree with it. Someone else out there is spewing disinformation, but you’re getting the real thing.

So, it’s hard to study propaganda, because you must make an effort to pull back and be as impartial as possible. Read comprehensively, do all the research you can [on] all sides of that issue. See what the propaganda has blacked out. See what the propaganda has stigmatized as fake, as hoax, as junk science, and look at it objectively.

What’s hard is that you have to move out of your comfort zone. Sometimes you discover that a thing you’d fervently believed for years was false, or half true. I’ve had this experience myself many, many times.”

Miller made these points at the first “meeting” (via Zoom) of his propaganda course in September 2020, noting that such a thorough and impartial propaganda study can be difficult, not just because it makes you question your own views. Such a study can also pose a social challenge, as your discoveries may come as a shock to those around you — friends, roommates, family, even other of your teachers, who’ve never looked into the matter for themselves.

“The COVID crisis has been driven by a number of propaganda themes,” Miller says. However, the word “propaganda” does not automatically mean that the information is false or malign. Propaganda can be true and used for benevolent ends. Public service ads encouraging you not to smoke, for example, are a form of propaganda.

The problem with propaganda is that it’s inherently biased and one-sided, which can become outright dangerous if the other side is censored. This is particularly so when it comes to medicine and health, and the censoring of COVID-19 treatment information and the potential hazards of the COVID vaccines is a perfect example of this.

“Propaganda is an organized attempt to get large numbers of people to think or do something — or not think or do something. That’s really all it is. That’s an informal definition but it’s a good one,” Miller says.

“It’s not like classical rhetoric, which is about persuasion through argument. [Propaganda] is a kind of sub-rational manipulation. It’s been with us for a long time, but the rise of the digital world, our absorption into the digital universe, has radically intensified this kind of effort and made it successful beyond the wildest dreams of [Nazi minister of propaganda] Dr. [Joseph] Goebbels or [profession public relations pioneer] Edward Bernays.

This incredible technological sophistication enables them, first of all, to move people at the deepest level. It also enables them to suppress dissidents with remarkable efficiency, spotting the word ‘vaccine’ in a post and then blocking it.

At the same time, it gives them an astonishing advantage when it comes to surveillance of every single one of us … It is going to require a tremendous amount of skill and sophistication on our part, to organize under that watchful eye.”

Academic Censorship

One topic Miller suggested studying in that first meeting of his propaganda course last fall, was the mask mandates. Miller made it clear that he was NOT telling the students not to wear masks, but that this would be a purely intellectual exercise.

Such study (which was not an assignment, but only a suggestion) would consist of reading through the scientific literature on masking: specifically, all the randomized, controlled studies of masking and the use of respirators in hospital settings — studies finding that those face coverings do NOT prevent transmission of respiratory viruses; and, as well, the several recent studies finding otherwise.

He also offered tips on how non-scientists can assess new scientific studies: by looking at reviews by other scientists, and by noting the university where a given study was conducted, and to see if it has any financial ties to Big Pharma and/or the Gates Foundation, as such a partnership may have influenced the researchers there.

The following week, a student who missed that introductory talk (she had joined the class late) was present when the subject of masks came up again, and she was so enraged by Miller’s emphasis on the importance of those prior studies (whose consensus had been echoed by the CDC until early April 2020, and by the WHO until early June 2020), that she took to Twitter, accusing him of endangering the students’ health, and of posting on his website (News from Underground) material “from far-right and conspiracy sites” — and demanding that NYU fire him.

“I was kind of floored by this,” Miller says. “This has never happened to me before. It was unpleasant, but it was her First Amendment right to express herself on Twitter, so that per se was not such a big deal. However, what happened immediately after that is not acceptable.”

The department chair, without consulting with Miller, responded to the student’s tweet with his thanks, adding: “We as a department have made this a priority, and discussing next steps.” The next day, Carlo Ciotoli, the doctor who advises the NYU on its stringent COVID rules, and Jack Knott, the dean of Steinhardt, emailed Miller’s students, without putting him on copy, hinting that he’d given them “dangerous misinformation.”

They also provided them with “authoritative public health guidance” — i.e., links to studies recommended by the CDC, finding that masks are effective against transmission of COVID-19. Thus, they told the students to believe those newer studies that Miller had already recommended, whereas he encouraged them to make up their own minds.

Shortly after that, the department chair asked Miller to cancel next semester’s propaganda course, “for the good of the department,” on the pretext that Miller’s film course would attract more students, so that he should teach TWO sections of that course. (Both courses admit 24 students.) Miller agreed, as the chair has that prerogative, but he did so under protest; and, he couldn’t let the matter go.

“I mean, I’m teaching a propaganda course, and look what happened,” Miller says. “So, with the help of some friends, including Mickey Huff, who runs Project Censored, I wrote a petition¹ that people can find at Change.org. The only ‘ask’ in that petition is that NYU respect my academic freedom and set a good example for other schools.

But I did it in the name of all those professors, doctors, scientists, activists, journalists and whistleblowers who have been gagged or persecuted for their dissidence, not just over this last year, when it’s reached a kind of crisis point, but really for decades. It’s been going on for far too long, initially on the fringes, but now it’s happening all over the place.”

‘Slanderous Lunacy’

A month after the student attacked Miller on Twitter, he received an email from the dean, informing him that he was ordering a review of Miller’s conduct at the request of 25 of his department colleagues, whose letter to him was attached.

“I thought I’d seen everything,” Miller says. “[The letter] starts by saying, ‘We believe in academic freedom.’ The email from the dean and doctor also started saying ‘We believe in academic freedom,’ so I’ve learned that when somebody comes up and says, ‘I believe in academic freedom,’ you need to brace yourself because there’s a big buck coming. And that’s what happened with this letter from my colleagues.

‘We believe in academic freedom, BUT, as the faculty handbook points out, if a colleague’s behavior is sufficiently heinous, it can obviate his or her academic freedom. And we believe that’s the case with Professor Miller,’ it read.

Now, I think what the faculty handbook is referring to is if a professor tries to rape a student or uses lynch mob language against minority students or something like that. They put me in that category. Why? First of all, they said I discouraged students from wearing masks, and even intimidated those who were wearing masks, which is false to the point of insanity.

It was a Zoom class. I’ve never heard of a student wearing a mask on Zoom, although maybe that will be mandatory at some point. But my mask heresy was the least of it. They went on to charge me with ‘explicit hate speech,’ launching ‘attacks on students and others in our community,’ assailing my students with ‘non-evidence-based’ arguments or theories, ‘advocating for an unsafe learning environment,’ [and] ‘micro-aggressions and aggressions.’

I read this with increasing wonderment. If they had decided to craft a description of a professor completely antithetical to the way I teach, they couldn’t have done a better job. This was slanderous lunacy. They basically picked up where that student left off.”

Libel Suit Underway

In a Zoom “meeting,” Knott informed Miller that he had ordered the review at the behest of NYU’s lawyers, who told him that he must — a revelation that Miller finds significant, there being, in fact, no legal grounds for that review.

Soon afterward, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a nonprofit dedicated to protecting academic freedom, sent Andrew Hamilton, NYU’s president, a detailed letter going through the case law, demonstrating clearly that the dean’s review is illegitimate, and that the president should intervene, and quash. He did not reply.

Knott told Miller that the “review” would end with the semester — i.e., by mid-December 2020. Yet, seven months after it was ordered, Miller still has not heard anything about that putative “review” — which may have been put on hold, or quietly called off, because of what Miller did about his colleagues’ letter.

“After I talked to the dean, I went through the letter they wrote with a fine-tooth comb and crafted a cordial point-by-point rebuttal. I asked for a retraction and an apology, and they ignored it. A week later, I sent it again. I said, ‘Please, by November 20th I’d like you to retract this and apologize.’ Nothing.

So, I decided I had no choice. I certainly wasn’t going to let this go. It was outrageous, and represents, inside the academy, the kind of persecution and suppression that we see going on worldwide, throughout so-called democracies. So, I decided I had to sue them for libel.”

Support Free Speech Rights and Academic Freedom

At the time of this interview, Miller was waiting for the judge to rule on the defendants’ motion to dismiss the case. All of the documents relating to this case can be found on Miller’s website, MarkCrispinMiller.com.² If you want to make a donation to help fund Miller’s legal case, you can do so on his GoFundMe page.³

“I’m trying to raise $100,000,” he says, “because I expect this to be a protracted and costly fight with depositions. The money goes directly into an escrow account that my lawyer manages, so I’m not profiting off this personally. Nor am I only doing it on my own behalf, as with the petition.

They have hurt me greatly. Not only professionally, within the institution and beyond, because word of this has traveled, but also physically, because the stress of that ordeal has really slowed my recovery from Lyme disease, which I’ve been battling for 10 years.

I became so ill from this that I ended up in the ER at NYU, in January. So, I am on medical leave this semester. I’ve just been working on my health and telling my story, so that I can prevail in the court of public opinion. But it isn’t just about me, my health, my career. It really is about all of us.

It’s about you, it’s about Bobby Kennedy, Sucharit Bhakdi and John Ioannidis. It’s about the Frontline Doctors and the signers of the Great Barrington Declaration. It’s about what appears to be a majority of expert opinion on some level, while the medical establishment, like the academy and the media, is utterly corrupt.

There are a lot of people of conscience, doctors who observe their Hippocratic oath, professors who believe in trying to teach the truth, journalists who have no place to publish because they’re actually trying to report the other side of a narrative that is increasingly preposterous and lethal. It’s for all of us because, as many have observed, once free speech goes, and with it, academic freedom, that’s the whole ballgame. That’s the end.

If we can’t even talk about what’s happening, if we end up being accused of conspiracy theory — which is now openly equated with domestic terrorism — if we’re accused of hate speech (which is out of the social justice playbook), and if we’re accused of dangerous misinformation about the virus, which has been happening all year, if we encounter any of those three responses to our attempts to tell the truth, then we are vilified and marginalized.

And my colleagues managed to hit me with all three in that letter. They accuse me of conspiracy theory, they accuse me of hate speech and they accuse me of doing the students harm by discouraging them from wearing masks.

All false. All I did was urge my class to read through all the literature on masks and make up their own minds as an example of the kind of thing they should do with all these narratives.”

Beyond infringing on freedom of speech, Miller’s case shows how censorship ultimately ends up chilling independent thinking and curbing your freedom of inquiry — the freedom to ask questions and ponder an issue or problem from multiple angles.

And, without the ability to think freely and express one’s thoughts, life itself becomes more or less meaningless as well as dangerous, while higher education becomes nothing more than training for compliance, as students are each trained to “do what you’re told,” as Dr. Anthony Fauci put it so gleefully November 12, 2020.

Big Lies Are Protected by Public Incredulity

To learn more about Miller’s case, visit markcrispinmiller.com. Miller also publishes a daily newsletter of banned news that you can sign up for. In closing, Miller notes:

“I believe that what’s happening now is the culmination of a quiet history of eugenics in the West that starts at the beginning of the 20th century — a movement that was forced underground by the Holocaust, because that was a big embarrassment, and [that] reemerged in the early ’50s as a movement for population control.

People don’t want to understand this. They want to see Bill Gates as a benign figure, as a kind of Father Teresa bringing happiness and health … They don’t want to know that his father was an intimate of the Rockefellers and sat on the Board of Planned Parenthood, not because he was a feminist, but because he really did believe … that abortion is one tool for getting rid of the unfit.

There is a eugenic discourse now being floated on the op-ed page in The New York Times where Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel writes that we shouldn’t expect to live past 75.

He treats it kind of half-jokingly, but if you then look at the toll that this crisis has taken on the elderly — in particular what’s happened in the nursing homes in California, New York, Michigan, Washington and North Carolina, as well as in Canada, Britain and Sweden.

They housed COVID patients in nursing homes. This has the look of what Dr. Vernon Coleman has called eldercide, but nobody wants to think that’s what’s going on. Marshall McLuhan said, ‘Little lies don’t need to be protected. But the big lies are protected by public incredulity.’ That is to say, ‘Come on, you’re crazy, they wouldn’t do that.’

It’s easier to call people ‘conspiracy theorists’ than it is to face the likelihood, or even the remote possibility, that what we’re saying is true. There are many ‘conspiracy theories’ that over the decades have turned out to be completely true. So, we have to make sure people know it through every means available. And now it’s quite urgent.”

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Notes

¹ Change.org, Academic Freedom Petition

² MarkCrispinMiller.com MCM’s Libel Lawsuit

³ Gofundme.com Help Mark Crispin Miller Sue for Libel

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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***

This essay is inspired by Dr Mercola’s announcement last week that [May] (reading between the lines) his life and his family’s have been threatened if he doesn’t remove from his web site a peer-reviewed study demonstrating the benefits of vitamin D and zinc in prevention of the worst COVID outcomes. In the present Orwellian era, where propaganda and deception are ubiquitous, one of the signposts of truth that I have learned to respect is that the most important truths are the most heavily censored.

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This is not what I enjoy writing about, but as I find dark thoughts creeping into my consciousness, perhaps it is better to put them on paper with supporting logic and invite my readers to help me clarify the reasoning and, perhaps, to point a way out of the darkness.

Already in January, 2020, two ideas about COVID were emerging. One is that there were people and institutions who seemed to have anticipated the event, and were planning for it for a long time. Gates, Fauci, the World Economic Forum, and Johns Hopkins School of Medicine were among the prescient. (I credit the (now deleted) videos of Spiro Skouras.) Second was the genetic evidence suggesting that COVID had a laboratory origin. Funders of the scientific establishment have lost their bid to ridicule this idea, and it has now leaked into the mainstream, where it is fused with the classical yellow peril propaganda: “China did it!”. I have cited evidence that America is likely equally culpable.

The confluence of these two themes suggests the dark logic that I take for my topic today: Those who knew in advance, not only that there would be a pandemic but that it would be a Coronavirus, were actually responsible for engineering this pandemic.

Immediately, I think: How could people capable of such sociopathic enormities be occupying the most powerful circles of the world’s elite? And what would be their motivation? I don’t have answers to these questions, and I will leave speculation to others. But there’s one attractive answer that I find less compelling: that it’s a money-maker for the large and criminal pharmaceutical industry. The new mRNA vaccines are already the most profitable drugs in history, but I think that shutdown of world economies, assassinations of world leaders, deep corruption of science, and full-spectrum control of the mainstream narrative imply a larger power base than can plausibly be commanded by the pharma industry.

Instead, I’ll try to follow the scientific and medical implications of the hypothesis that COVID is a bioweapon.

The Spike Protein

The spike protein is the part of the virus structure that interfaces with the host cell. SARS 1 and SARS 2 viruses both have spike proteins that bind to a human cell receptor called ACE-2, common in lung cells but also present in other parts of the body. Binding to the cell’s ACE-2 receptor is like the wolf knocking at the door of Little Red Riding Hood’s grandmother. “Hello, grandmama. I’m your granddaughter. Please let me in.” The virus is a wolf wearing a red cape and hood, pretends to be an ACE-2 enzyme molecule seeking entrance to the cell.

In order to enter the cell, the virus must break off from the spike protein and leave it at the doorstep, so to speak. This is an important and difficult step, as it turns out. Unique to the SARS-CoV-2 virus is a trick for making the separation. Just at the edge of the protein is a furin cleavage site. Furin is an enzyme that snips protein molecules, and it is common in our bodies, with legitimate metabolic uses. A furin cleavage site is a string of 4 particular amino acids that calls to furin, “hey — come over here. I’m a protein that needs snipping.”

The most compelling evidence for a laboratory origin of COVID is that coronaviruses don’t have furin cleavage sites, and until last year, this trick has never evolved naturally.

How we think about natural disease

The classical understanding of a viral or bacterial disease is this: A parasite is an organism that uses the host’s resources for its own reproduction. It is evolved to reproduce efficiently. If it has co-evolved with the host, it may be evolved to spare the host’s health, or even to promote it, because this is the optimal long-term strategy for any predator or parasite. But newly-emerged parasites can do well for awhile even if they disable or kill their hosts, and this is the kind of disease that is most damaging to us. The damage is done because the (young) virus’s strategy is to reproduce rapidly and disperse itself into the environment where it can find new hosts. The virus has no interest in harming the host, and was not evolved to this end, but this is a side-effect of commandeering the body’s resources for its own reproduction.

How engineered diseases can be different

A bioweapon virus is designed to cause a certain kind of harm.

• What kind of harm? It depends on the projected use for the weapon.
• Doesn’t the virus have to reproduce? Probably, for most weapon applications; but a bioweapon is not necessarily designed for rapid reproduction. A bioweapon can be designed as a “sleeper” to remain dormant for months or years, or to cause incremental disability over a long period.

If COVID had evolved naturally, we would expect that its spike protein would be adapted to mate well with the human ACE-2 receptor. There’s no reason to suspect it being otherwise biologically active. But if COVID is engineered, it may be that the spike protein itself has been designed to make us sick.

One reason this is significant is that the vaccines have all been designed around the spike protein, assuming that the spike protein were metabolically neutral. If the virus had been naturally evolved, this is a reasonable assumption. But if it came from a laboratory (whether it leaked or was deliberately released) the spike protein might be actually be the agent of damage. There are several reasons to suspect that this is the case.

The Spike Protein as an Active Pathogen

Back in February, 2020, this article noted that the spike protein was not perfectly optimized to bind to human ACE-2 and put this forward as an proof that “SARS-CoV-2 is not a purposefully manipulated virus.” But if someone were designing the virus to cause harm, the spike protein would be a convenient locus for the damage vector, so the spike might have been designed with twin purposes in mind, binding and toxicity. The spike protein appears in many copies around the “crown” of the coronavirus. Since each copy has a furin cleavage site at its base, many spike proteins will break off into the bloodstream. We now have several reports and hypotheses concerning the spike protein as an active agent of damage. The spike protein is suspected of causing blood clots, of inducing long-lasting neurological damage, and of causing infertility. Many anecdotes describe injuries to un-vaccinated people who have been in close proximity to vaccinated, prompting speculation about “shedding” the spike protein.

“Individuals with COVID-19 experience a vast number of neurological symptoms, such as headaches, ataxia, impaired consciousness, hallucinations, stroke and cerebral hemorrhage. But autopsy studies have yet to find clear evidence of destructive viral invasion into patients’ brains, pushing researchers to consider alternative explanations of how SARS-CoV-2 causes neurological symptoms….

If not viral infection, what else could be causing injury to distant organs associated with COVID-19? The most likely culprit that has been identified is the COVID-19 spike protein released from the outer shell of the virus into circulation. Research cited below* has documented that the viral spike protein is able to initiate a cascade of events that triggers damage to distant organs in COVID-19 patients.

Worryingly, several studies have found that the spike proteins alone have the capacity to cause widespread injury throughout the body, without any evidence of virus.

What makes this finding so disturbing is that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines manufactured by Moderna and Pfizer and currently being administered throughout the U.S. program our cells to manufacture this same coronavirus spike protein as a way to trigger our bodies to produce antibodies to the virus.” [Global Research article, Feb 2021]

Note: the Astra-Zeneca and J&J vaccines are also based on the spike protein, and cause the spike protein to be created in the vaccinated person.

“Research cited below” refers to this study in Nature which reports that the spike protein, injected into mice, crosses into the brain, where it causes neurological damage.

Bigger news came just this week from a study in which researchers from California’s Salk Institute collaborated with Chinese virologists. They have found that the bare spike protein without the virus (injected in mice) can cause damaged arteries of the kind that lead to heart disease and strokes in humans. The original paper was published in Circulation Research, and the Salk Institute issued a news report describing the research.

One of the most credible dangers of the spike protein involves fertility. None of the vaccines were tested in pregnant women, and yet many government and other authorities are recommending it as safe for pregnant women. VAERS has reported 174 miscarriages to date after COVID vaccination. VAERS is notoriously underreported. I find the anecdotes less concerning than the fact that no one is taking this seriously, and research is being actively discouraged in the best-respected science journals.

There is a credible mechanism, in that the spike protein is partially homologous to syncytin. Syncytin, in fact, was originally a retroviral protein, inserted into the mammalian genome many aeons ago, and evolved over the ages to play an essential role in reproduction, binding the placenta to the fetus. An immune response that attacks syncytin might be expected to be impose a danger of spontaneous abortion. In any ordinary times, this would be a subject that medical researchers would jump on, with animal tests and field surveys to assess the danger. But these are no ordinary times, and the risk is being dismissed on theoretical grounds without investigation. This is especially suspicious in the context of history: a Gates Foundation vaccination program in 1995 was allegedly promoted to young women, causing infertility. (Yes, I know there are many fact-checkers eager to “debunk” this story, but I don’t find them convincing, and some of these fact-checkers are compromised by Gates funding.)

Even doing what the spike protein is supposed to do — tying up ACE2 — can be a problem for our lungs and arteries, which are routinely protected by ACE2.

The most dangerous possibility, suspected but not verified, is that the spike protein causes a prion cascade. Prions are paradoxical pathogens, in that they are misfolded proteins that cause misfolded proteins. Their evolutionary etiology is utterly mysterious, so much so that it took Stanley Prusiner a decade after describing the biology of prions before the scientific community would take prion biochemistry seriously. But prions make potent bioweapons, which laboratories can design outside of natural evolutionary dynamics. The possibility of prion-like structures in the spike protein was noted very early in the pandemic based on a computational study. This recent review combines theoretical, laboratory, and observational evidence to make a case for caution. Once again, I find it disturbing that this possibility is being dismissed on theoretical grounds rather than investigated in the lab and the field.

Where did the idea come from that all vaccines are automatically safe? Why do so many journalists dismiss the suggestion that vaccines should be placebo-tested individually, like all other drugs? Why has it become routine to ridicule and denigrate scientists who ask questions about vaccine safety as politically-motivated luddites, or “anti-vaxxers”? How did we get to a situation where the “precautionary principle” means pressuring young people who are at almost no risk for serious COVID to accept a vaccine which has not been fully tested or approved? I don’t have answers, but I do know who benefits from this culture.

Putting together all the evidence

• Knowledge beforehand
• Suppression of treatments and cures
• Toxicity of the spike protein which, if it had been made by nature, should have been benign
• Inclusion of the spike protein
• Heavy promotion of scantily-tested vaccines and
• Censorship of scientists and doctors who question the vaccines’ safety

… putting together all this evidence, it is difficult to escape the inference that powerful people and organizations have engineered this pandemic with deadly intent.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Josh Mitteldorf.

Pfizer “Largest Health Care Fraud” 2009

Déjà Vu: Flash Forward to 2020-2021

How on earth could you trust a Big Pharma vaccine conglomerate which pleaded guilty to criminal charges by the US Department of Justice including “fraudulent marketing” and “felony violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act”?

The 2020-2021 mRNA vaccine violations far surpass the health care fraud committed by Pfizer Inc in 2009.

“Fraudulent marketing” is an understatement: The mRNA vaccine announced by Pfizer – BioNTech is based on an experimental gene editing mRNA technology which has a bearing on the human genome. 

The standard animal lab tests using mice or ferrets were not conducted.  Pfizer “went straight to human “guinea pigs.”

M. Ch,   Global Research Editor, May 15, 2021

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VIDEO. US Department of Justice (DOJ) Statement

$2.3 Billion  Medical Fraud settlement with Pfizer

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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The Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) is a database managed by the CDC that collects reports of health problems experienced after taking a vaccine.

It aims to identify potential side effects that premarket safety testing may have missed. According to the CDC, VAERS is supposed to be “the nation’s frontline system for monitoring vaccine safety.” This is especially critical for the COVID-19 shots, since they were the first to go on the market without the long-term safety testing required for FDA approval. See Part 1 of this series.

You would hope that if a new vaccine wound up getting more death reports in five months than all the others combined over the entire previous 28 years, that might warrant some attention.

Think again.

An army of journalists and self-proclaimed fact-checkers stand ready to besiege anyone who dares to report on this astonishing data. Not only is there nothing to see, suggesting otherwise makes you a conspiracy theorist or a far-right extremist, according to our betters in the fake news media.

But empty vilification hasn’t been the only scurrilous technique employed by the powers-that-be.

Real Number of Deaths Unknown

When Tucker Carlson drew attention to the reports piling up in VAERS, the Washington Post, Forbes, and most other disparagers failed to mention his explicit reference to a group of Harvard researchers who conclusively demonstrated that the VAERS detection rate is abysmal. Again, see Part 1 of this series.

Carlson’s conclusion that nobody actually knows the true number of people who’ve died after Covid vaccination was flippantly assailed by the odious propagandists at Media Matters. They made an irrelevant rebuttal which involved a blatant lie:

But, that data does exist. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention oversees VAERS, it also runs the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD). [Media Matters]

But of course the data exists somewhere. Carlson’s point was that no one has collected and analyzed it to determine the true number of post-COVID-vaccine deaths.

Moreover, it doesn’t exist at VSD, which contains information from only nine healthcare facilities scattered across the US — not the entire country. And its purpose is to “conduct studies based on questions or concerns already raised by the medical literature and reports to VAERS,” not to be a frontline detection system in its own right.

So, someone would have to actively sift through the VSD data to know the number of post-vaccination deaths experienced at just those nine facilities. And there’s zero indication anyone has done even that.

Not only does nobody know the real number of Americans who’ve died after taking a Covid vaccine, no one in charge seems to even care.

The media outlets providing our vaccine overlords cover have also kept despicably silent about how few reports were coming in prior to the COVID-19 vaccines. The media excoriated people for mentioning a “mere” 4,000 death reports in five months, without mentioning that before the Covid vaccines came along, VAERS had only exceeded 200 death reports in an entire year once in its three-decade history.

Again, the VAERS tally shows 1,000 more deaths than the number of people who perished on 9/11.

But the point is that, from beginning to end, Carlson made it clear his main point wasn’t even about VAERS.

His subject was the bullying and censorship that’s getting heaped on “anyone who dares to question vaccines,” and he spent more time chronicling disturbing cases than he did on VAERS.

Nothing could have proven Carlson’s point better than the dishonest responses twisting both his words and the facts.

As Carlson noted, the data piling up in VAERS doesn’t necessarily tell us anything about the Covid vaccines. Maybe, the relentless publicity has massively increased the likelihood that potential side effects will get reported.

But without looking into the matter, it’s just as likely that reporting has been suppressed by the vilification of anyone who so much as raises the possibility that getting jabbed is anything less than perfectly harmless.

Who knows? The fact is we won’t until someone looks.

Whatever the case may be, the volume of death reports flooding VAERS is extraordinary. The effort to destroy anyone saying otherwise makes a full investigation much less likely and could portend something very dark indeed.

We’ve barely plumbed the depths of the VAERS cover-up.

Preposterous lies

The narrative gatekeepers are also hiding a significant source of undercounting that’s likely occurring precisely because of the unprecedented volume of reports coming in.

Moreover, they’ve frequently done so by saying something both false and preposterous.

Jack Brewster of Forbes, for example, both revealed and justified the utter contempt he has for his readers’ intelligence with this risible nonsense:

 VAERS is designed to allow anyone to report an event, meaning the data is unverified… [Forbes]

But, in case you’re as dopey as the people who read Forbes evidently are, the fact that anyone can submit a report obviously doesn’t mean that they’re being entered into the database without any verification.

The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake showed a little less disdain for his audience by at least taking the trouble to provide a bogus source for his claim that the “data in the VAERS system is unverified.” He linked to another attempt to squash discussion from his fellow charlatans at PolitiFact which, though it does indeed assert that VAERS reports “are not verified before they’re entered into the database,” gives no indication where they’re getting the idea from.

The regime’s vast army of internet trolls would be having a field day if PolitiFact’s unverified claim were true. The CDC’s “frontline system for monitoring vaccine safety” — apart from massively undercounting potential side effects due to a lack of awareness of VAERS among medical personnel (See part 1) — would also be stuffed with reports of people dying of unrelated causes.

You know, like the COVID-19 fatality count.

Reporter asks Orange Co Fla health official if the two COVID deaths listed as in their 20s had any underlying conditions. Reply:

“The first one didn’t have any. He died in a motorcycle accident.”https://t.co/IFUOz4WpbC

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) July 17, 2020

We’ve known from the beginning that the virus’s official death toll deliberately conflates dying with Covid and dying from Covid. In fact, a number of factors guarantee an unknown but enormous number of bogus entries in the official death toll. The media is suggesting without evidence that the same holds for the post-Covid vaccine fatality reports flooding VAERS, thus proving the old adage that “there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”

An AP effort to nip any public discussion in the bud contained this flagrantly deceptive remark by Dr. Sean O’Leary, “vice-chair of the committee on infectious diseases for the American Academy of Pediatrics and professor of pediatrics at the University of Colorado”:

For example, if you get a vaccine and then you get struck by lightning, you can report that to VAERS. [AP]

Indeed, you can. But Dr. O’Leary’s implied suggestion that not only are such reports routinely entered, but that the reports of post-COVID-jab fatalities include so many they can safely be ignored, is such a low-down piece of deception that he ought to be stripped of his medical license.

The regime media use this damning claim not to discredit the CDC, whose word they nonetheless insist we take as gospel, but to malign and bully those who assume that a publicly accessible database isn’t going to be full of garbage data.

If the CDC really isn’t lifting a finger to weed out pranksters and saboteurs, then they’ve got to be deliberately fomenting the supposed irrational “anti-vaccine” sentiment we’re supposed to think is so dangerous.

But, on at least this occasion, the agency appears to be innocent of anything sleazy since they explicitly advise anyone submitting a report that:

You will be contacted by VAERS if follow-up information (i.e., medical records or other medical documentation) is needed. [Dept. of Health and Human Services]

That sentence would clearly seem to indicate that there’s some kind of verification.

But it’s also the 11th response on a page listing 17 questions, each of which has to be clicked to view its answer. And the question itself doesn’t mention verification.

Moreover, after spending a couple hours trying to find out about verification, that one not-easy-to-find nor terribly informative sentence is the only thing that turned up.

So it appears that those in charge at the CDC must be so irredeemably corrupt as to actually want a reporting system in place that barely counts a fraction of potential vaccine side effects. It also looks like they’re not too keen on anyone knowing what happens to VAERS reports between submission and publication. Nor does the CDC appear to provide any information on the related question of lag time, leading most people to assume that what they’re seeing at any given time represents all there currently is.

But you know what they say about assuming.

How many additional reports haven’t been logged in?

There are a lot of reasons to think that side effects are at least so far wildly underreported.

For example, there are as many reports of life-threatening illnesses as there are deaths.

In fact, the COVID-19 vaccines have caused an unprecedented number of reports of any kind.

And, as Alex Berenson noted, it’s likely that any system that’s suddenly showing more reports in a single week than it used to record in an entire year is being overwhelmed enough to have a sizeable backlog.

VAERS (the federal vaccine side effects database) has updated for the week.

Holy moly.

It’s now at 118,000+ #covid vaccine reports. That’s up 32,000 in a week – a 35% rise. Before Covid, VAERS got that many reports in a year.

Just how bad is the backlog? https://t.co/ZILH3FPm1u

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 30, 2021

Berenson also reported on one woman who submitted a VAERS report in January but only received a request for more information in late April. In the interim, a jaw-dropping quarter million reports were added, suggesting that the backlog might be enormous.

A clue to how bad the VAERS backlog has gotten: This person submitted a report in late January, a quarter-million reports ago. She received an automated reply asking for more information TODAY. pic.twitter.com/YFPbZAZel2

— Alex Berenson (@AlexBerenson) April 30, 2021

But there are also other reasons to think that the CDC must be in possession of an extraordinarily large volume of reports that they’re not telling us about.

Here’s a screenshot from May 12 of the number of COVID-vaccine reports recorded in VAERS, sorted by month of vaccination.

Here’s the same data request on May 28.

As you can see, over 16 days in May, the reports continued to climb for people vaccinated in every month since December. Here’s that May-increase for each vaccination month.

As of May 28, 88% of adverse symptoms reported after Covid vaccination occurred within 15 days and 91% within 30. So, unless a lot of people are waiting several months to file a report, the CDC must have a significant backlog of reports that are getting entered months after they were received.

But also notice that on May 12, the most adverse events were reported for people who’d been vaccinated in January. Adverse event reports then steadily declined for those jabbed in February through April.

And though the May 28 data also shows the most reports for January vaccinations, the reports that were added make the decline less significant and interrupt it, creating second peak for those vaccinated in March.

That makes perfect sense if there’s a backlog getting retroactively filled in since, as you can see below, the total number of doses administered peaked in April and the number of first doses in March.

Absent a backlog, that would mean adverse events were dropping off considerably even as the number of people getting jabbed kept increasing.

Again, not impossible. But a substantial backlog perfectly explains both the early peak in adverse event reports relative to doses administered in the May 12 VAERS data, and why that peak became less pronounced when more adverse events were entered into the system, making the May 28 data better align with the dosage charts.

The upshot of all of this is that, though the CDC is allowing everyone to think that the VAERS data is up-to-date without actually saying so, there’s a lot of interconnecting evidence that a lot more reports must have come in than those we’re currently being allowed to see.

All of this would be bad enough by itself. But when placed in the larger context of the other deliberate deceptions about COVID-19, it becomes orders of magnitude worse.

When you step back to look at the whole picture, the obfuscation and contempt for evidence surrounding VAERS fits into the same pattern of deliberate deception that has been the norm since Covid first emerged a year and a half ago.

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Michael Thau is a columnist at RedState. He has a PhD in philosophy from Princeton and has been writing extensively on COVID-19 since this nightmare began.

Featured image is from Revolver

“When doctors treat patients early who are over age 50 with medical problems, with a sequence multi-drug approach, the available drugs, 4 to 6 drugs that are available to them now that monoclonal antibodies are better, there’s an 85% reduction in hospitalizations and death! 85%!” – Peter McCollough M.D. appearing before the Senate Committee on Health and Human Services in April. [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

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After more than a year, the COVID pandemic has caused significant damage to societies around the globe. [2]

Whether or not you consider the virus be considered real, the world has seen a crushing blow to our liberties, our economies and even our way of life due to the lockdown and restrictions initiated in March of last year. Witness the shops, bars, and restaurants going bankrupt. Witness the museums, operas, concert halls and symphonies denied audiences. And free speech has been challenged as infestations of  media disinformation, online censorship, social engineering and the fear campaign bombards us from all angles in favour of the cherished narrative of V the Virus. [3]

Now almost halfway into 2021, with the vaccine against our collective pet-peeve at our disposal now for 6 months, we are still hearing word of people continuing to die of COVID. [4]

People who got their shot are wondering why the lockdowns continue and for how long. Perhaps the sooner those nasty vaccine hesitant individuals get the shot, perhaps the sooner we vaccinate our children, the horror will all be over and we can return to our pre-plaque lives once again.

So this is the point we come to now. Getting our kids vaccinated, even against the wishes of their parents. And forcing – I mean, persuading our corona colleague friends among the unvaccinated to screw their courage to the sticking place and take the shot as one of our most patriotic duties!

One notable character thrown into the mix that allegedly confuses the public with ‘disinformation’ and ‘conspiracy theories’ are the number of dissident thinkers questioning the rules of medicine and science that disrupt the army of COVID colonels to the rescue. And one set of non-conformists in particular.

We call them doctors.

While the media (present company excluded) has avoided all conversations with these men and women speaking out of turn, they are forming groups and their message still makes it into the minds of people in the U.S., Canada and around the world.

This week on the Global Research News Hour we will have nothing but guests who are doctors weighing in on what the facts tell them about the errors in the official COVID narrative, and what that says about those attacking their position.

In our first half hour, we will have a conversation with Stephen Malthouse MD, a Canadian family physician active with a group of doctors openly questioning measures taken in response to COVID-19. He addresses reasons why Canadians should not bring the risks associated with the vaccine to children as well as the concerns coming from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia and other medical health authorities about punishing those medical practitioners looking to publicly counter official COVID 19 doctrine.

In our second half hour we speak to Peter McCullough MD, leading figure in the U.S., on the dangers the wrongful, he says, treatment of drug therapies for early COVID 19 relief, the dangers of the COVID vaccine and the wrongful measures imposed on the population by health authorities in the U.S.

We also hear clips from the experts among the Pro-COVID vaccine crowd including Anand Kumar MD and Allison McGeer MD.

Stephen Malthouse MD is a Canadian physician who has been in family medical practice for more than 40 years and a member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia since 1978. He is currently involved with the Declaration of Canadian Physicians for Science and Truth, challenging the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario and other medical outlets for what they consider an unethical statement to the country’s physicians.

Anand Kumar, MD is both a doctor and a professor of Medicine, Medical Microbiology, and the department of Pharmacology and Therapeutics. He has trained in internal medicine, critical care medicine and infectious diseases. He also co-signed an open letter to the Premier of Manitoba asking for a lock-down in the interests of limiting the exploding cases of Covid-19 hitting the urgent care centres hard.

Allison McGeer MD is a specialist in internal medicine and is a Canadian infectious disease specialist in the Sinai Health System, She has led investigations into the severe acute respiratory syndrome outbreak in Toronto and worked alongside Donald Low. During the COVID-19 pandemic, McGeer has studied how SARS-CoV-2 survives in the air.

Peter McCullough, MD is an internist, cardiologist and editor of two major journals and is one of the most published doctors in the domain of heart and kidney in the world.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 319)

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Transcript – Interview with Peter McCullough, June 1, 2021

Global Research: I first asked Dr. McCullough to explain the rise and fall of hydroxychloroquine and similar treatments rather than vaccines.

Peter McCullough: Well, we’ve learned a lot over the last year, and with respect to medical therapy, the first comment I make is that we’ve really learned that the viral infection is very treatable, and it can be treated with many different drug programs. The principles are that a single drug doesn’t work. That drugs need to be given in combination, and no single drug is effective.

You mentioned hydroxychloroquine. We’ve learned that actually you can treat this illness without using any hydroxychloroquine. We’ve interviewed and worked with doctors all over the world. But in general, the Cadillac program would be like what President Trump received. Where he receives a monoclonal antibody infusion up front. And so did Rudy Giuliani. And then the other drugs are sequenced in. We can sequence in hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin plus erythromycin or doxycycline. We can use inhaled steroids now, which are very effective. Pulmicort budesonide, oral corticosteroids, prednisone is perfectly fine. There’s an anti-inflammatory medicine called colchicine very effective.

And then on the back end, we use full-dose aspirin 325 mg, and then we use forms of blood thinners like heparin, low-molecular-weight heparin or oral anticoagulants. In total it’s about 4 to 6 drugs, it’s really only in high-risk patients who need it, aged over 50 with medical problems, and the medications work in synergy with one another. A mild case, maybe only needs five days of treatment, the average person our age, about 10 days, and then some patients, seniors in nursing homes, those individuals over age 80, my experience is it takes about 30 days to treatment. But I’ve successfully managed many patients even up to age 90 years old. I’ve gotten them through the illness, they don’t need to be hospitalized or go on the ventilator. This is really good news for Americans in that this overall approach results in about an 85% reduction in hospitalization and death.

But the interesting thing is what you mentioned, is some of these drugs become so politicized. I did a seminar with Dr Chetty in South Africa, and he said that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin become so politicized he gave up on them. And he just treats the back end of the illness. So he uses a combination of inhaled steroids, oral cortical steroids, uses Singulair or Montelukast and then aspirin and heparin on the back end.

And he’s able to prevent nearly all the hospitalizations in thousands of patients. So what patients in America need to know is they need early treatment. Get a hold of their doctor or quickly get to the telemedicine services. Don’t waste time. We don’t…the only way someone gets admitted to the hospital nowadays is they get no treatment. They sit at home for two weeks, they get progressively sicker, and they end up in the hospital. Doesn’t have to happen.

GR: Someone with COVID goes through three phases: viral replication, inflammation, and abnormal blood clotting. I had the doctor go through the stages.

PM: You picked up on an important development, is that we understand the illness has three dimensions.

First, the very first stage is viral replication. So that’s where drugs that impair the virus, like the monoclonal antibodies, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin…if we could we’d give Remdesivir in the first day. That’s where the drug really works.

But after the first few days of viral replication, what happens is the dangerous Spike Protein on the outside of the virus, that’s the spicules structure that you see on the ball, that triggers blood vessel damage and inflammation. You’re at very high levels, this virus has a cytokine signature we’ve never seen before. Very high levels of interleukin 6, it just knocks your socks when we see it. And that level of association is associated with high fever, patients don’t feel good, muscle aches, sometimes GI disturbances, the microbiome gets disturbed.

And then, what is triggered is abnormal blood clotting. We’ve never seen a virus that causes blood clotting like this one does. And the blood clotting is unusual because it’s the Spike Protein impales red blood cells and actually causes red blood cells to stick together. It’s called haemagglutination, and it injures the platelets with a drop in platelet count and cause blood clotting at the same time

So we have a situation where we have viral replication, cytokine storm or inflammation, and abnormal blood coagulation. That’s the reason why a single drug doesn’t work. So I knew that right away. When people declared hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, or ivermectin doesn’t work, we’ve heard that for every drug. Remdesivir doesn’t work. Convalescent plasma doesn’t work. Well of course, no single drug works because there’s three complicated elements in the infection. And so, what doctors quickly learned, the leading doctors learned, is that we look for a signal of benefit in these drugs, acceptable safety, put them into multi-drug regimens, and that’s how we save patients.

GR: Doctors who recommend this kind of treatment face punishment by the major health departments. Dr. McCullough provides me with some background.

PM: You know, it’s amazing you bring that up, Michael. Millionaire Steve Kirsch has put out a challenge, and it’s a two-million-dollar challenge. He’s done this in the last month. And he says, I challenge anybody to show that the National Institutes of Health or the CDC has done anything right with respect to its treatment recommendations. He challenged that. Not a single person in the world has come forward claiming that the CDC or NIH was right about anything on treatment. That is a stunning revelation, that the entire world understands, that our regulatory bodies have been completely wrong.

So when they state, when they gave, the National Institute of Health put out its first set of guidelines in the fall, it says don’t treat the patient. That is completely wrong. Let the patient get progressively sick. Completely wrong. Let the patient get forced into the hospital. Completely wrong. Once they get into the hospital, still don’t treat them, wait until they require oxygen. Completely wrong. By the time they require oxygen, there are actually micro blood clots in the lungs. So that they recommended that stage to give Remdesivir. Completely wrong.

Remdesivir is actually for a viral replication two weeks earlier. So it is a colossal blunder. Our public health agencies right now, their houses are on fire. We have an absolute disaster at the public health regulatory level, at all stations right now. And America right now is bypassing them.

America is going right to practising doctors, my phone is ringing off the hook, I’ve basically told them, listen, the doctor’s judgment supersedes what our Regulatory Agencies right now. If your doctors tell you, you know, giving the best advice on COVID, we’ve got to go with it. So when a doctor prescribes a medicine for a patient with COVID, that decision reigns supreme. And so this idea that there can be a backlash, or there can be penalties or what have you to doctors, listen we take care of patients with all these different problems across the board all day long.

Am I suddenly going to get penalized if I prescribe a cholesterol medicine? Or if I prescribed a blood thinner for a person with atrial fibrillation? So I certainly can prescribe these medicines for patients with COVID.

GR: Do any of your colleagues listen anyway? People who, well I hear it, but I don’t want to get punished?

PM: Well, you know, people have labelled me as being courageous. Well, I have to tell you, it’s not courage. It’s moral and ethical and fiduciary integrity. And I find it absolutely that anyone would threaten me with actions as I’m trying to take care of a patient using my best judgment with FDA-approved drugs that are prescribed appropriately off-label supported with the best evidence we’ve had. In fact, I published the most widely cited papers on how to do this in the world, and so, this idea is absolutely untenable. All of those who have sought to threaten doctors and intentionally hurt patients… one by one, justice will be served.

– intermission-

GR: In case you just joined us, our guest is Dr. Peter McCullough. He is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas. Also a major voice attacking the established agencies involved in fighting COVID.

I next put a question to him about the COVID vaccines.

In a clear-cut manner, based on concrete evidence, can you explain why this vaccine is not safe and effective even though Pfizer and Moderna provided evidence demonstrating 90% efficiency, and that while it’s not fool proof, the risks due to COVID vaccine outweigh the risks to dying of COVID?

PM: I think everyone should understand that we’re all participating in medical history. And so, what we know now is not the same as what we know last year or even six months ago. So we have an evolving knowledge. This is what we know.

It became known in May that the dangerous part of the virus is called the Spike Protein, the spicule on the surface. It’s now known that the Spike Protein was the target of gain-of-function research. It was research done in a Chinese lab partially funded by the United States National Institutes of Health.

This gain-of-function research made the Spike Protein, instead of it being naturally cleaved by an enzyme, a human enzyme called a furin, the gain-of-function research made the Spike Protein impenetrable. It made it super strong. And because now, this virus which was easily handled before by the human body, now the Spike Protein is super strong and it can’t be broken down, it goes right into cells so it’s far more contagious, and when the Spike Protein goes in cells, it’s almost like a shard of glass. It goes through the blood vessels ripping the blood vessels, causing blood clots, causing organ injuries. It’s all about the Spike Protein.

Well, the discovery was that the Spike Protein itself could be utilized to stimulate the body to make antibodies. So the great gamble of the vaccine development program was to trick the body, the human body, our bodies, into making this dangerous Spike Protein, this dangerous gain-of-function research Spike Protein. And that’s what the vaccines are doing. So the messenger RNA vaccines which our Pfizer, Moderna, the adenoviral vaccines which are J&J and AstraZeneca, they all work to cause the human body to produce the Spike Protein.

Now, when the vaccines came out of the clinical trials, our understanding was, and what was in the FDA regulatory binders, is that the vaccination stayed in the arm, it locally stayed in the arm, it didn’t circulate around in the body, that the messenger RNA or the adenoviral genetic material stayed in the muscle in the arm, and the Spike Protein was produced locally. That’s what our understanding was and we formed our reaction to it.

The clinical trials were done in very low-risk people and instead of the standard 24 months of safety, it was truncated to two months, and they recruited very well populations of individuals. In fact, J&J, their clinical trials program recruited 60% of people who had no medical problems, and that’s actually hard to find in research. And they found that whether the patient received placebo or the vaccine, the rate of getting COVID was less than 1%.

So it’s important for Americans and people in the world to understand that the vaccines were developed even in the heat of the pandemic back in the fall, with a chance of coming in contact in less than 1%. And we believe this is true today, that people who get the vaccine they have less than a 1% chance of ever coming in contact with COVID.

So we know that the vaccines as applied today will have no impact on the epidemic curves. They can’t because they have less than a 1% public health impact. The only thing that influences the curves is actually treating the virus and reducing hospitalization and death. Vaccines will never solve the problem because it’s a less than a 1% public health impact.

Well having said that they still looked okay coming out of the gate, and as an internist and cardiologist as a medical doctor, researcher, I see patients everyday, like all other doctors, I recommended the COVID-19 vaccine. In my practice today, 70% of my patients have received the COVID-19 vaccine. I am very pro-vaccine, and I’ve received all the standard vaccines myself.

But what happened over time, Michael, is we started to see cases of patients dying after the vaccine. Seeing patients hospitalized after the vaccine, and in large numbers. And as we sit here today, we’ve had over 4,400 patients die after the COVID-19 vaccine. 40% of them die on Days 1 2 and 3–

GR: Did you say 44,000?

PM: I’m sorry, 4400 patients die after the COVID-19 vaccine. On days 1, 2, and 3, thanks for correcting me, 4400, and we’ve had 14,000 hospitalizations. In Europe, there’s been over 10,000 patients die over the COVID-19 vaccine.

Now people have asked, well how does it stack up compared to other vaccines? Well, I can tell you, that the typical number for all the vaccines, all 70 vaccines in the United States applied to many hundreds of millions of dose administrations, the numbers of deaths or hospitalizations or severe reactions that would ever be reported on a scoreboard would be less than 200 a year.

So the COVID-19 vaccine program in five months has exceeded all the safety parameters and all the safety events of all vaccines administered to all patients in medical history. So people have already claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine program is the most dangerous vaccine program ever carried out in US history.

GR: Yeah. And when it does come up that this is violating protocols, they say well what it’s an emergency use or something like that, that allows it to go ahead?

PM: There’s several aspects of this that are working, I think, against safety. So the first thing is this is an investigational program. So when people take the vaccine, they are required to sign consent that says this is an investigation. That means it’s research, so there should be an unbiased separate clinical event adjudication committee, they should be a data safety monitoring board, there should be an investigational review board or ethics board.

When we do research, there’s always oversight committees that are separate from the sponsors or stakeholders, and here the stakeholders are Pfizer, Moderna, J & J, and AstraZeneca. We know that the World Health Organization, Gavi, Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, and the NIH are all stakeholders. In fact, the National Institutes of Health holds patent positions on the Moderna patent.

So they’re all stakeholders. So we can’t have those people reviewing the deaths and the hospitalizations. America has to have separate panels reviewing these.

Astonishingly, as we sit here today, there are no review panels. There’s no safety checks. There is no safety mechanisms on this program. And because the vaccines are not fully FDA approved, the manufacturers don’t have to present important safety information to patients.

Normally when you get prescribed the drug and you pick it up, a folded sheet of paper that outlines all the safety information, so the patients can be thoroughly informed on safety. Normally when something is advertised on TV, they’ll get the benefits of the drug or agent but they’ll also tell you what the side effects are. Here, because it’s emergency use optimization, there’s no fair balance requirements in place, so the stakeholders are promoting vaccination wildly on TV but they’re not fairly presenting Americans with safety. The only view of safety is to go to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System VAERS And then see the data as they accumulate.

And that’s the reason why these numbers are so shocking. I think they really snuck up on doctors. Doctors have largely been in a trance recommending patients get the vaccines, and when I talk to my colleagues and say, do you realize there’s some 4400 deaths that have occurred? 14000 hospitalizations? It’s really a shock. They’re like where are you getting this information from?

I said these are the events reported to the CDC. I have reported some of these events myself, Michael, it takes about half an hour to do a report. I have to go through many screens, I have to put my doctor’s information, my license, they’re only capturing one of two of the Pfizer Moderna shots, so they have to back-calculate, we have to have the vaccine card and the lot number to do it, they are not keeping track if someone’s already had COVID and they don’t need the vaccine, they’re already immune, they’re not keeping track of that, and so what we know, and there’s serious warnings that say that it’s punishable by imprisonment or federal fines if we falsify the reports. I can tell you all those over 4,400 deaths and over 14,000 hospitalizations, they’ve really occurred, I think they’ve really occurred, and they may be the tip of the iceberg.

GR: There’s also the long-term risks like Bells Palsy or transverse myelitis, other factors, it takes a year or so to reveal. And I don’t think there’s been any significant testing. Do you expect that death could be an even higher priority a year or two from now than it is today?

PM: Well, each week we see more deaths coming in, so we have some states now that are getting to zero COVID deaths per day, in Texas, we’ve had a few of those, so we know on those days there is more vaccine deaths than there are COVID deaths.

I hope Americans understand this. There’s a tremendous price that’s being paid with American lives for this COVID vaccine. The long-term effects, there have been, I think over a thousand cases of Bells Palsy or paralysed of the face on one side reported in the safety database, we know the Spike Protein goes to the brain, the dangerous Spike Protein. It can damage astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, cells inside the brain, and there may be there certainly reports of headaches, blood clots forming in the brain, in fact, the FDA paused the program for blood clots in the brain of women.

In 18 countries in Europe, AstraZeneca was removed from the market for a period of time because of blood clots. Yet the vaccine program goes on and so one of the great concerns is that the vaccine program is offered as being elective by the CDC, it’s simply an elective investigational program, you don’t have to do it.

What’s happened is now it’s been weaponized from a sociological perspective of people feel forced to take this vaccine which they know has serious side effects, they know there are fatalities occurring and hospitalizations occurring during, and so the tension in America is rising every day. I’ve never felt such a tense time where in a sense there’s this vaccine but it’s been weaponized against the people.

GR: Wow. Maybe one more question. I know that there have been very high-profile people like Zelenko and Risch and Didier Raoult. They’ve all been attacked, and I’m wondering with, you’re being very outspoken, and you have the unmitigated gall to be credible, I mean, what kind of threats have you encountered through all of this?

PM: Well I can tell you I’m an internist and cardiologist, I stepped out of my usual role to face the crisis because I did not see infectious disease doctors, allergists, immunologists, pulmonologists, I didn’t see others addressing the millions of Americans who are developing COVID-19 at home. Everyone was focussing in the inpatient realm where we still have ICU mortality rates at 28 days of 38%. The in-hospital outcomes are not good. The opportunity was to treat patients as outpatients, and now there’s such an overwhelming positive response from Americans, we have four national telemedicine services, 15 regional telemedicine services, 250 treating doctors. We have treating doctors in every state.

America has basically just bypassed the Ivory Tower large medical centres, and they’re getting treatment. We had two Senate testimonies on this in the fall, huge breakthrough to America, the treating doctors, in a sense have become American heroes, and as our agency staffers get on TV, and basically bumble on about masks and vaccines, what America… They don’t care about masks and vaccines. They want to know how to get treatment to avoid hospitalization and death.

So what I told to my detractors is that any of my detractors who’ve attempted to personally go after me from an academic or professional perspective, I have over 600 publications in the National Library of Medicine. I have over 40 papers in a year on COVID-19. I have chaired or participated in 24 data safety monitoring boards for the FDA and for the pharmaceutical and device companies, and I’ve also seen and examined and treated patients with COVID-19. To my knowledge, in a single person, in a single person, I am the most experienced and qualified person in the world to opine on COVID-19, and if anybody wants to challenge me on that, bring it on!

GR: Dr. McCullough, it’s been a pleasure and an honour speaking to you today. Thank you so much for your dedicated work and for sharing your analysis with my listeners.

PM: Thank you

GR: I first asked Dr. McCullough to explain the rise and fall of hydroxychloroquine and similar treatments rather than vaccines.

PM: Well, we’ve learned a lot over the last year, and with respect to medical therapy, the first comment I make is that we’ve really learned that the viral infection is very treatable, and it can be treated with many different drug programs. The principles are that a single drug doesn’t work. That drugs need to be given in combination, and no single drug is effective.

You mentioned hydroxychloroquine. We’ve learned that actually you can treat this illness without using any hydroxychloroquine. We’ve interviewed and worked with doctors all over the world. But in general, the Cadillac program would be like what President Trump received. Where he receives a monoclonal antibody infusion up front. And so did Rudy Giuliani. And then the other drugs are sequenced in. We can sequence in hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin plus erythromycin or doxycycline. We can use inhaled steroids now, which are very effective. Pulmicort budesonide, oral corticosteroids, prednisone is perfectly fine. There’s an anti-inflammatory medicine called colchicine very effective.

And then on the back end, we use full-dose aspirin 325 mg, and then we use forms of blood thinners like heparin, low-molecular-weight heparin or oral anticoagulants. In total it’s about 4 to 6 drugs, it’s really only in high-risk patients who need it, aged over 50 with medical problems, and the medications work in synergy with one another. A mild case, maybe only needs five days of treatment, the average person our age, about 10 days, and then some patients, seniors in nursing homes, those individuals over age 80, my experience is it takes about 30 days to treatment. But I’ve successfully managed many patients even up to age 90 years old. I’ve gotten them through the illness, they don’t need to be hospitalized or go on the ventilator. This is really good news for Americans in that this overall approach results in about an 85% reduction in hospitalization and death.

But the interesting thing is what you mentioned, is some of these drugs become so politicized. I did a seminar with Dr Chetty in South Africa, and he said that hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin become so politicized he gave up on them. And he just treats the back end of the illness. So he uses a combination of inhaled steroids, oral cortical steroids, uses Singulair or Montelukast and then aspirin and heparin on the back end.

And he’s able to prevent nearly all the hospitalizations in thousands of patients. So what patients in America need to know is they need early treatment. Get a hold of their doctor or quickly get to the telemedicine services. Don’t waste time. We don’t…the only way someone gets admitted to the hospital nowadays is they get no treatment. They sit at home for two weeks, they get progressively sicker, and they end up in the hospital. Doesn’t have to happen.

GR: Someone with COVID goes through three phases: viral replication, inflammation, and abnormal blood clotting. I had the doctor go through the stages.

PM: You picked up on an important development, is that we understand the illness has three dimensions.

First, the very first stage is viral replication. So that’s where drugs that impair the virus, like the monoclonal antibodies, hydroxychloroquine, ivermectin…if we could we’d give Remdesivir in the first day. That’s where the drug really works.

But after the first few days of viral replication, what happens is the dangerous Spike Protein on the outside of the virus, that’s the spicules structure that you see on the ball, that triggers blood vessel damage and inflammation. You’re at very high levels, this virus has a cytokine signature we’ve never seen before. Very high levels of interleukin 6, it just knocks your socks when we see it. And that level of association is associated with high fever, patients don’t feel good, muscle aches, sometimes GI disturbances, the microbiome gets disturbed.

And then, what is triggered is abnormal blood clotting. We’ve never seen a virus that causes blood clotting like this one does. And the blood clotting is unusual because it’s the Spike Protein impales red blood cells and actually causes red blood cells to stick together. It’s called haemagglutination, and it injures the platelets with a drop in platelet count and cause blood clotting at the same time

So we have a situation where we have viral replication, cytokine storm or inflammation, and abnormal blood coagulation. That’s the reason why a single drug doesn’t work. So I knew that right away. When people declared hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work, or ivermectin doesn’t work, we’ve heard that for every drug. Remdesivir doesn’t work. Convalescent plasma doesn’t work. Well of course, no single drug works because there’s three complicated elements in the infection. And so, what doctors quickly learned, the leading doctors learned, is that we look for a signal of benefit in these drugs, acceptable safety, put them into multi-drug regimens, and that’s how we save patients.

GR: Doctors who recommend this kind of treatment face punishment by the major health departments. Dr. McCullough provides me with some background.

PM: You know, it’s amazing you bring that up, Michael. Millionaire Steve Kirsch has put out a challenge, and it’s a two-million-dollar challenge. He’s done this in the last month. And he says, I challenge anybody to show that the National Institutes of Health or the CDC has done anything right with respect to its treatment recommendations. He challenged that. Not a single person in the world has come forward claiming that the CDC or NIH was right about anything on treatment. That is a stunning revelation, that the entire world understands, that our regulatory bodies have been completely wrong.

So when they state, when they gave, the National Institute of Health put out its first set of guidelines in the fall, it says don’t treat the patient. That is completely wrong. Let the patient get progressively sick. Completely wrong. Let the patient get forced into the hospital. Completely wrong. Once they get into the hospital, still don’t treat them, wait until they require oxygen. Completely wrong. By the time they require oxygen, there are actually micro blood clots in the lungs. So that they recommended that stage to give Remdesivir. Completely wrong.

Remdesivir is actually for a viral replication two weeks earlier. So it is a colossal blunder. Our public health agencies right now, their houses are on fire. We have an absolute disaster at the public health regulatory level, at all stations right now. And America right now is bypassing them.

America is going right to practising doctors, my phone is ringing off the hook, I’ve basically told them, listen, the doctor’s judgment supersedes what our Regulatory Agencies right now. If your doctors tell you, you know, giving the best advice on COVID, we’ve got to go with it. So when a doctor prescribes a medicine for a patient with COVID, that decision reigns supreme. And so this idea that there can be a backlash, or there can be penalties or what have you to doctors, listen we take care of patients with all these different problems across the board all day long.

Am I suddenly going to get penalized if I prescribe a cholesterol medicine? Or if I prescribed a blood thinner for a person with atrial fibrillation? So I certainly can prescribe these medicines for patients with COVID.

GR: Do any of your colleagues listen anyway? People who, well I hear it, but I don’t want to get punished?

PM: Well, you know, people have labelled me as being courageous. Well, I have to tell you, it’s not courage. It’s moral and ethical and fiduciary integrity. And I find it absolutely that anyone would threaten me with actions as I’m trying to take care of a patient using my best judgment with FDA-approved drugs that are prescribed appropriately off-label supported with the best evidence we’ve had. In fact, I published the most widely cited papers on how to do this in the world, and so, this idea is absolutely untenable. All of those who have sought to threaten doctors and intentionally hurt patients… one by one, justice will be served.

– intermission-

GR: In case you just joined us, our guest is Dr. Peter McCullough. He is an internist, cardiologist, epidemiologist, and Professor of Medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine in Dallas. Also a major voice attacking the established agencies involved in fighting COVID.

I next put a question to him about the COVID vaccines.

In a clear-cut manner, based on concrete evidence, can you explain why this vaccine is not safe and effective even though Pfizer and Moderna provided evidence demonstrating 90% efficiency, and that while it’s not fool proof, the risks due to COVID vaccine outweigh the risks to dying of COVID?

PM: I think everyone should understand that we’re all participating in medical history. And so, what we know now is not the same as what we know last year or even six months ago. So we have an evolving knowledge. This is what we know.

It became known in May that the dangerous part of the virus is called the Spike Protein, the spicule on the surface. It’s now known that the Spike Protein was the target of gain-of-function research. It was research done in a Chinese lab partially funded by the United States National Institutes of Health.

This gain-of-function research made the Spike Protein, instead of it being naturally cleaved by an enzyme, a human enzyme called a furin, the gain-of-function research made the Spike Protein impenetrable. It made it super strong. And because now, this virus which was easily handled before by the human body, now the Spike Protein is super strong and it can’t be broken down, it goes right into cells so it’s far more contagious, and when the Spike Protein goes in cells, it’s almost like a shard of glass. It goes through the blood vessels ripping the blood vessels, causing blood clots, causing organ injuries. It’s all about the Spike Protein.

Well, the discovery was that the Spike Protein itself could be utilized to stimulate the body to make antibodies. So the great gamble of the vaccine development program was to trick the body, the human body, our bodies, into making this dangerous Spike Protein, this dangerous gain-of-function research Spike Protein. And that’s what the vaccines are doing. So the messenger RNA vaccines which our Pfizer, Moderna, the adenoviral vaccines which are J&J and AstraZeneca, they all work to cause the human body to produce the Spike Protein.

Now, when the vaccines came out of the clinical trials, our understanding was, and what was in the FDA regulatory binders, is that the vaccination stayed in the arm, it locally stayed in the arm, it didn’t circulate around in the body, that the messenger RNA or the adenoviral genetic material stayed in the muscle in the arm, and the Spike Protein was produced locally. That’s what our understanding was and we formed our reaction to it.

The clinical trials were done in very low-risk people and instead of the standard 24 months of safety, it was truncated to two months, and they recruited very well populations of individuals. In fact, J&J, their clinical trials program recruited 60% of people who had no medical problems, and that’s actually hard to find in research. And they found that whether the patient received placebo or the vaccine, the rate of getting COVID was less than 1%.

So it’s important for Americans and people in the world to understand that the vaccines were developed even in the heat of the pandemic back in the fall, with a chance of coming in contact in less than 1%. And we believe this is true today, that people who get the vaccine they have less than a 1% chance of ever coming in contact with COVID.

So we know that the vaccines as applied today will have no impact on the epidemic curves. They can’t because they have less than a 1% public health impact. The only thing that influences the curves is actually treating the virus and reducing hospitalization and death. Vaccines will never solve the problem because it’s a less than a 1% public health impact.

Well having said that they still looked okay coming out of the gate, and as an internist and cardiologist as a medical doctor, researcher, I see patients everyday, like all other doctors, I recommended the COVID-19 vaccine. In my practice today, 70% of my patients have received the COVID-19 vaccine. I am very pro-vaccine, and I’ve received all the standard vaccines myself.

But what happened over time, Michael, is we started to see cases of patients dying after the vaccine. Seeing patients hospitalized after the vaccine, and in large numbers. And as we sit here today, we’ve had over 4,400 patients die after the COVID-19 vaccine. 40% of them die on Days 1 2 and 3–

GR: Did you say 44,000?

PM: I’m sorry, 4400 patients die after the COVID-19 vaccine. On days 1, 2, and 3, thanks for correcting me, 4400, and we’ve had 14,000 hospitalizations. In Europe, there’s been over 10,000 patients die over the COVID-19 vaccine.

Now people have asked, well how does it stack up compared to other vaccines? Well, I can tell you, that the typical number for all the vaccines, all 70 vaccines in the United States applied to many hundreds of millions of dose administrations, the numbers of deaths or hospitalizations or severe reactions that would ever be reported on a scoreboard would be less than 200 a year.

So the COVID-19 vaccine program in five months has exceeded all the safety parameters and all the safety events of all vaccines administered to all patients in medical history. So people have already claimed that the COVID-19 vaccine program is the most dangerous vaccine program ever carried out in US history.

GR: Yeah. And when it does come up that this is violating protocols, they say well what it’s an emergency use or something like that, that allows it to go ahead?

PM: There’s several aspects of this that are working, I think, against safety. So the first thing is this is an investigational program. So when people take the vaccine, they are required to sign consent that says this is an investigation. That means it’s research, so there should be an unbiased separate clinical event adjudication committee, they should be a data safety monitoring board, there should be an investigational review board or ethics board.

When we do research, there’s always oversight committees that are separate from the sponsors or stakeholders, and here the stakeholders are Pfizer, Moderna, J & J, and AstraZeneca. We know that the World Health Organization, Gavi, Gates Foundation, the Centers for Disease Control, the FDA, and the NIH are all stakeholders. In fact, the National Institutes of Health holds patent positions on the Moderna patent.

So they’re all stakeholders. So we can’t have those people reviewing the deaths and the hospitalizations. America has to have separate panels reviewing these.

Astonishingly, as we sit here today, there are no review panels. There’s no safety checks. There is no safety mechanisms on this program. And because the vaccines are not fully FDA approved, the manufacturers don’t have to present important safety information to patients.

Normally when you get prescribed the drug and you pick it up, a folded sheet of paper that outlines all the safety information, so the patients can be thoroughly informed on safety. Normally when something is advertised on TV, they’ll get the benefits of the drug or agent but they’ll also tell you what the side effects are. Here, because it’s emergency use optimization, there’s no fair balance requirements in place, so the stakeholders are promoting vaccination wildly on TV but they’re not fairly presenting Americans with safety. The only view of safety is to go to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System VAERS And then see the data as they accumulate.

And that’s the reason why these numbers are so shocking. I think they really snuck up on doctors. Doctors have largely been in a trance recommending patients get the vaccines, and when I talk to my colleagues and say, do you realize there’s some 4400 deaths that have occurred? 14000 hospitalizations? It’s really a shock. They’re like where are you getting this information from?

I said these are the events reported to the CDC. I have reported some of these events myself, Michael, it takes about half an hour to do a report. I have to go through many screens, I have to put my doctor’s information, my license, they’re only capturing one of two of the Pfizer Moderna shots, so they have to back-calculate, we have to have the vaccine card and the lot number to do it, they are not keeping track if someone’s already had COVID and they don’t need the vaccine, they’re already immune, they’re not keeping track of that, and so what we know, and there’s serious warnings that say that it’s punishable by imprisonment or federal fines if we falsify the reports. I can tell you all those over 4,400 deaths and over 14,000 hospitalizations, they’ve really occurred, I think they’ve really occurred, and they may be the tip of the iceberg.

GR: There’s also the long-term risks like Bells Palsy or transverse myelitis, other factors, it takes a year or so to reveal. And I don’t think there’s been any significant testing. Do you expect that death could be an even higher priority a year or two from now than it is today?

PM: Well, each week we see more deaths coming in, so we have some states now that are getting to zero COVID deaths per day, in Texas, we’ve had a few of those, so we know on those days there is more vaccine deaths than there are COVID deaths.

I hope Americans understand this. There’s a tremendous price that’s being paid with American lives for this COVID vaccine. The long-term effects, there have been, I think over a thousand cases of Bells Palsy or paralysed of the face on one side reported in the safety database, we know the Spike Protein goes to the brain, the dangerous Spike Protein. It can damage astrocytes, oligodendrocytes, cells inside the brain, and there may be there certainly reports of headaches, blood clots forming in the brain, in fact, the FDA paused the program for blood clots in the brain of women.

In 18 countries in Europe, AstraZeneca was removed from the market for a period of time because of blood clots. Yet the vaccine program goes on and so one of the great concerns is that the vaccine program is offered as being elective by the CDC, it’s simply an elective investigational program, you don’t have to do it.

What’s happened is now it’s been weaponized from a sociological perspective of people feel forced to take this vaccine which they know has serious side effects, they know there are fatalities occurring and hospitalizations occurring during, and so the tension in America is rising every day. I’ve never felt such a tense time where in a sense there’s this vaccine but it’s been weaponized against the people.

GR: Wow. Maybe one more question. I know that there have been very high-profile people like Zelenko and Risch and Didier Raoult. They’ve all been attacked, and I’m wondering with, you’re being very outspoken, and you have the unmitigated gall to be credible, I mean, what kind of threats have you encountered through all of this?

PM: Well I can tell you I’m an internist and cardiologist, I stepped out of my usual role to face the crisis because I did not see infectious disease doctors, allergists, immunologists, pulmonologists, I didn’t see others addressing the millions of Americans who are developing COVID-19 at home. Everyone was focussing in the inpatient realm where we still have ICU mortality rates at 28 days of 38%. The in-hospital outcomes are not good. The opportunity was to treat patients as outpatients, and now there’s such an overwhelming positive response from Americans, we have four national telemedicine services, 15 regional telemedicine services, 250 treating doctors. We have treating doctors in every state.

America has basically just bypassed the Ivory Tower large medical centres, and they’re getting treatment. We had two Senate testimonies on this in the fall, huge breakthrough to America, the treating doctors, in a sense have become American heroes, and as our agency staffers get on TV, and basically bumble on about masks and vaccines, what America… They don’t care about masks and vaccines. They want to know how to get treatment to avoid hospitalization and death.

So what I told to my detractors is that any of my detractors who’ve attempted to personally go after me from an academic or professional perspective, I have over 600 publications in the National Library of Medicine. I have over 40 papers in a year on COVID-19. I have chaired or participated in 24 data safety monitoring boards for the FDA and for the pharmaceutical and device companies, and I’ve also seen and examined and treated patients with COVID-19. To my knowledge, in a single person, in a single person, I am the most experienced and qualified person in the world to opine on COVID-19, and if anybody wants to challenge me on that, bring it on!

GR: Dr. McCullough, it’s been a pleasure and an honour speaking to you today. Thank you so much for your dedicated work and for sharing your analysis with my listeners.

PM: Thank you

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

Other stations airing the show:

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Notes:

1. www.globalresearch.ca/video-dr-peter-mccullough-warp-speed-went-full-tilt-vaccine-development-silencing-any-information-treatment/5743078
2. Ceyla Pazarbasioglu and M. Ayhan Kose (July 10, 2020)’Unprecedented damage by COVID-19 requires an unprecedented policy response’, Brookings blog; www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2020/07/10/unprecedented-damage-by-covid-19-requires-an-unprecedented-policy-response/
3. www.globalresearch.ca/the-2020-worldwide-corona-crisis-destroying-civil-society-engineered-economic-depression-global-coup-detat-and-the-great-reset/5730652
4. covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#new-hospital-admissions

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***

The CDC released a misleading and inaccurate statistic about the rate of outdoor COVID-19 transmission, placing it at a “hugely exaggerated” 10%

A study from Ireland analyzed 232,164 cases of COVID-19; only 262 resulted from outdoor transmission — a transmission rate of just 0.1%

In a Chinese study, researchers analyzed 318 outbreaks with three or more cases, comprising 1,245 confirmed cases; all of them occurred indoors

Separate research revealed that even if 10% of the population is infected, it would take an average of 31.5 days of continuous outdoor exposure for a person to inhale enough virus to get infected — and even then the dose would only cause infection in 63% of those exposed

Even though transmission risk is extremely low outdoors, the CDC still advises unvaccinated people, including children and those with natural COVID-19 immunity from prior infection, to continue to wear masks outdoors in many cases

*

Only about 52% of the U.S. public says they have trust in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to a recent Robert Wood Johnson Foundation/Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health poll.¹

After the year we’ve just had, I’m surprised it’s that many. The latest CDC blunder came when it released a misleading and inaccurate statistic about the rate of outdoor COVID-19 transmission, placing it at a “hugely exaggerated” 10%.²

The error was egregious enough that it prompted The New York Times to release what it described as “a special edition of the newsletter on a misleading CDC statistic,” featuring a number of epidemiologists who say the CDC’s reports on outdoor transmission risk for COVID-19 vastly overestimate the risk.³

Initially, the CDC stated that unvaccinated people should wear masks in most outdoor settings and vaccinated people should continue to wear them at “large public venues.”

The CDC updated their guidelines May 13, 2021, to state that vaccinated individuals no longer need to wear a mask outdoors and in most spaces indoors,⁴ but implies that unvaccinated people, including children and those with natural COVID-19 immunity from previous infection, must continue to do so in many cases, even outdoors.

Vaccinated or not, and with a mask or without, however, the rate of outdoor transmission of COVID-19 is typically extremely low — and it’s time the CDC’s guidance acknowledged this.

Outdoor COVID Transmission Makes Up Less Than 1% of Cases

In a White House press briefing held April 27, 2021, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, CDC director, stated, “There’s increasing data that suggests that most of transmission is happening indoors rather than outdoors; less than 10 percent of documented transmission, in many studies, have occurred outdoors.”⁵ But as noted by David Leonhardt in his article for The New York Times:⁶

“Saying that less than 10 percent of Covid transmission occurs outdoors is akin to saying that sharks attack fewer than 20,000 swimmers a year. (The actual worldwide number is around 150.) It’s both true and deceiving. This isn’t just a gotcha math issue. It is an example of how the C.D.C. is struggling to communicate effectively, and leaving many people confused about what’s truly risky.”

Going outdoors mask-free is not an example of a risky activity, regardless of vaccination status, because the transmission rate in most outdoor settings is extremely low — far lower than the 10% rate the CDC reported.

Nonetheless, the CDC still recommends that children at summer camps wear masks virtually “at all times” except when eating, drinking or swimming, as should all camp operators and staff, even if they’re vaccinated⁷ — and despite research showing masks are ineffective.

There’s also the growing realization that nanoplastics and other pollutants, such as lead, antimony and copper, in disposable face masks are poised to be an environmental health crisis and likely pose a health risk to those who inhale them for long periods of time, such as children being forced to wear them during school and summer camp.⁸

What’s more, Dr. Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews, told The New York Times that the CDC’s 10% benchmark is “a huge exaggeration.” “In truth, the share of transmission that has occurred outdoors seems to be below 1 percent and may be below 0.1 percent, multiple epidemiologists told me,” Leonhardt said.⁹

Dr. Monica Gandhi, an infectious diseases and HIV doctor at UCSF, tweeted several examples of studies showing the low rate of outdoor COVID transmission.^10,11

Research Supports Negligible Rates of Outdoor Transmission

One study cited by Gandhi took place in China, with researchers analyzing 318 outbreaks with three or more cases, comprising 1,245 confirmed cases.¹² All of them occurred indoors. Even when the criteria were widened to include 7,324 cases, only one outdoor “outbreak” could be found, and it only involved two people:

“Our study does not rule out outdoor transmission of the virus. However, among our 7324 identified cases in China with sufficient descriptions, only one outdoor outbreak involving two cases occurred in a village in Shangqiu, Henan. A 27-year-old man had a conversation outdoors with an individual who had returned from Wuhan on January 25 and had symptom onset on February 1. This outbreak involved only two cases.”

Another extensive review from the Canterbury Christ Church University’s Centre for Sport, Physical Education & Activity Research stated, “There are very few examples of outdoor transmission of COVID-19 in everyday life, suggesting a very low risk.”¹³ They added:

“The science of transmission of COVID-19 concludes the risk of COVID-19 infection is low outdoors … if normal conventions of personal space and natural social distancing are not breached.”

Leonhardt also cited cases in Singapore¹⁴ that were classified as outdoor transmission, but it turned out that very broad definitions were used to define “outdoors.”

For some studies, an indoor case referred only to transmissions that occurred in mass accommodation, such as nursing homes, and residential facilities, while all other settings were deemed to be outdoors, which included “workplace, health care, education, social events, travel, catering, leisure and shopping.”¹⁵ “I understand why the researchers preferred a broad definition,” Leonhardt wrote:¹⁶

“They wanted to avoid missing instances of outdoor transmission and mistakenly suggesting that the outdoors was safer than it really was. But the approach had a big downside. It meant that the researchers counted many instances of indoors transmission as outdoors. And yet even with this approach, they found a minuscule share of total transmission to have occurred outdoors.”

Perhaps most revealing of all is a study Gandhi shared from Ireland, which analyzed 232,164 cases of COVID-19. Only 262 resulted from outdoor transmission, which is just 0.1% of the total.¹⁷ The Irish Times also spoke with Mike Weed, a professor at the University of Canterbury, who evaluated 27,000 COVID-19 cases, finding that those associated with outdoor transmission were “so small to be insignificant.”¹⁸

‘Outdoor Masks Should Not Have Been Mandated at All’

Cevik, the University of St. Andrews virologist, told The New York Times in April 2021, “I think it’s a bit too much to ask people to put the mask on when they go out for a walk or jogging or cycling … I think outdoor masks should not have been mandated at all. It’s not where the infection and transmission occurs.”¹⁹

In February 2021, a group of Italian researchers used mathematical models to calculate the concentration of SARS-CoV-2 in outdoor air along with the risk of outdoor airborne transmission.²⁰They found very low average outdoor concentrations of SARS-CoV-2 in public areas (<1 RNA copy/m3) “excluding crowded zones, even in the worst-case scenario and assuming a number of infects up to 25% of population.”

Further, even if 10% of the population is infected, they found it would take an average of 31.5 days of continuous outdoor exposure for a person to inhale enough virus to get infected — and even then the dose would only cause infection in 63% of those exposed.^21,22

Despite the science showing the miniscule risk of catching COVID-19 outdoors, the CDC only recently stated that vaccinated individuals could shed their masks in outdoor settings — raising questions about their faith in the vaccines’ effectiveness — and is still advising everyone else to wear them in many cases. But as Leonhardt stated about the CDC’s initial guidelines:²³

“These recommendations would be more grounded in science if anywhere close to 10 percent of Covid transmission were occurring outdoors. But it is not. There is not a single documented Covid infection anywhere in the world from casual outdoor interactions, such as walking past someone on a street or eating at a nearby table.”

Where’s the Guidance for Those With Natural COVID Immunity?

In their latest guidance, the CDC makes it clear that their expectation is for everyone to get vaccinated. “If you are fully vaccinated, find new guidelines for fully vaccinated people,” they advise, linking to their recent update, and “If you are not vaccinated, find a vaccine,” linking to ways to find a COVID-19 vaccine near you.²⁴

A sizeable percentage of the population, however, has made it clear that they have no intention of getting vaccinated with an experimental gene therapy. Everyone has their own reasons for this decision, including an unknown risk of side effects and death, but for some, their reasoning is that they’ve already had COVID-19 and therefore have natural immunity.

If you’ve had COVID-19, you have some level of immunity against the virus. It’s unknown how long it lasts, just as it’s unknown how long protection from the vaccine lasts.

Even the CDC admits that it’s rare to get sick again if you’ve already had COVID-19, yet they say those who have recovered from COVID-19 should still get vaccinated.²⁵ If they don’t, they should still mask up in virtually every setting, according to CDC’s logic, even though they have immunity that’s likely superior to that provided by the vaccine.

Robust natural immunity has been demonstrated for at least eight months after infection in more than 95% of people who have recovered from COVID-19.^26,27 A Nature study also demonstrated robust natural immunity in people who recovered from SARS and SARS-CoV-2.²⁸

What’s more, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, a cardiac surgeon and patient advocate, has repeatedly warned the FDA that prescreening for SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins may reduce the risk of injuries and deaths following vaccination, as the vaccine may trigger an adverse immune response in those who have already been infected with the virus.²⁹

Without such screening, he wrote in one letter to the FDA, “this indiscriminate vaccination is a clear and present danger to a subset of the already infected.”³⁰

Unfortunately, the CDC’s guidance gives the impression of only two options if you want to get back to “normal” pre-COVID life: Get vaccinated … or get vaccinated. In so doing, they’ve — literally overnight — pushed us into a world in which only the “impure” unvaccinated individuals must be masked, creating a new form of segregation and second-class citizens.

*

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Notes

¹ Robert Wood Johnson Foundation May 13, 2021

^{2, 3, 6, 9, 11, 14, 16, 23} The New York Times May 11, 2021

⁴ U.S. CDC May 13, 2021

⁵ The White House April 27, 2021

⁷ U.S. CDC April 24, 2021

⁸ Scienmag May 4, 2021

¹⁰ Twitter, Monica Gandhi MD, MPH May 5, 2021

¹² International Journal of Indoor Environment and Health October 31, 2020

¹³ Canterbury Christ Church University, spear, Evidence of Outdoor Transmission of COVID-19

¹⁵ Journal of Infection and Public Health 14 (2021) 461-467

^17, 18 Irish Times April 5, 2021

^19, 22 The New York Times April 22, 2021

^20, 21 Environ Res. 2021 Feb; 193: 110603

²⁴ CDC, COVID-19, Guidance for Unvaccinated People

²⁵ U.S. CDC, COVID-19 Vaccination FAQs April 30, 2021

²⁶ Science. 2021 Feb 5;371(6529):eabf4063. doi: 10.1126/science.abf4063. Epub 2021 Jan 6

²⁷ The Defender April 5, 2021

²⁸ Nature July 15, 2020

²⁹ Medium February 15, 2021

³⁰ The Defender March 24, 2021

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***

The American media with a straight face reports that Biden intends to confront Putin at their meeting with “the human rights issue.”  One can only marval at the audacity of this intention.  The US government is the leading abuser of human rights.  Think Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the overthrown Latin American democratic governments, and Washington’s protection of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. 

On an individual basis think Julian Assange who Washington has managed to keep imprisoned for a decade without charges presented in court and conviction.  Even Stalin gave his victims performa due process.

Washington gets away with accusing others of its own crimes because the Western presstitutes cover up for Washington and only the Chinese point out Washington’s hypocrisy.

What human rights issue is Biden planning to lay on Putin?  Most likely it is Navalny’s imprisonment that Navalny himself brought about.  He had been released on condition that he keep his parole agreement, which he refused to do.  His Washington masters wanted him in prison where Washington could turn him into a propaganda weapon against Putin.  Ask yourself, would you rather be in Assange’s shoes or Navalny’s?

Or perhaps the issue will be Putin’s support of Assad who Washington and its whore media continue to call a dictator despite having won reelection in a free democratic vote with a 95% majority.  In contrast Biden stole his “election.” Assad and Russia’s support of him are in the way of Israel and Washington’s plans for the Middle East.  Thus Assad’s demonization.

One wonders what Putin is going to do when presented with Biden’s human rights accusation. Is Putin going to sit there politely and take the abuse or is he going to point out that unlike Navalny who was convicted of violating the law, Washington has kept Assange imprisoned for a decade without even giving him a show trial? 

Will Putin follow up with mentioning the millions of people murdered and dispossessed by Washington’s war crimes against Muslim countries?  Why hasn’t there been a resolution introduced in the UN by Russia to condemn the US for its unambigious war crimes?

At some point Putin will have to stand up for himself and his country or lose credibility with the Russian people and his friends abroad.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

Emails show Mark Zuckerberg reaching out to the doctor to provide social-media messaging and financial assistance, including ‘authoritative information from reliable sources,’ and the ‘very exciting’ redacted offer.

Recently published emails revealed that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg collaborated directly with Dr. Anthony Fauci, offering “resources” for COVID-19 vaccine development and a redacted offer Fauci described as “very exciting.”

The emails, released earlier this week, were obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by media organizations.

In one message from February 2020, Zuckerberg wrote to Dr. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and then to the top White House COVID-19 adviser, offering help to facilitate development of coronavirus vaccines.

“I was glad to hear your statement that the covid-19 vaccine will be ready for human trials in six weeks. Are there any resources our foundation can help provide to potentially accelerate this or at least make sure it stays on track?” the Facebook CEO asked.

“If we start in April (~6-7 weeks from now) with a phase 1 trial of 45 subjects, it will take another 3-4 months to determine safety and some immunogenicity,” Fauci responded. “We may need help with resources for the phase 2 trial if we do not get our requested budget supplement. If this goes off track, I will contact you. Many thanks for the offer.”

Not the usual catchall b(5) deliberative process here.. but a less common b(4) "trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person [that is] privileged or confidential" on Zuck's offer to Fauci.

Was this the offer to censor wrongthink??? pic.twitter.com/UyoC1WSES8

— Phil Kerpen (@kerpen) June 2, 2021

On March 15, Zuckerberg again wrote to Fauci, this time with a proposal to highlight a video with Fauci on Facebook’s centralized COVID-19 “hub.” He noted another unknown offer as well that federal officials appear to have been even more interested in.

“I wanted to send a note of thanks for your leadership and everything you’re doing to make our country’s response to this outbreak as effective as possible. I also wanted to share a few ideas of ways we could help you get your message out,” Zuckerberg said.

“This isn’t public yet, but we’re building a Coronavirus Information Hub that we’re going to put at the top of Facebook for everyone (200+ million Americans, 2.5 billion people worldwide) with two goals: (1) make sure people can get authoritative information from reliable sources and (2) encourage people to practice social distance and give people ideas for doing this using internet tools,” he told Fauci. “As a central part of this hub, I think it would be useful to include a video from you,” Zuckerberg added.

“Your idea and proposal sound terrific. I would be happy to do a video for your hub. We need to reach as many people as possible and convince them to take mitigation strategies seriously or things will get much, much worse,” Fauci wrote back, despite having downplayed effectiveness of mitigation methods in other emails.

Zuckerberg also made another offer to Fauci, though it remains redacted as a FOIA b(4) exemption, that pertains to “trade secrets” or other confidential “commercial or financial information.”

Fauci called it “very exciting.” An NIAID official likewise described the redacted proposal as “an even bigger deal” than the video.

“The sooner we get that offer up the food-chain the better. I gave Bill Hall a heads-up about this opportunity and he is standing by to discuss this with HHS and WH comms, but I didn’t want him to do anything without being aware of the offer,” the official, Courtney Billet, told Fauci.

“Is it OK if I hand this aspect off to Bill to determine who the best point of contact would be so the Administration can take advantage of this offer, soonest?” she asked. Within days of Billet’s email, reports emerged that Facebook was working with the White House to provide the federal government with location data of social media users.

Facebook admittedly has been in close communication with the U.S. government throughout the COVID-19 crisis, consulting the Biden White House on alleged coronavirus misinformation, for example.

Besides offering resources for COVID-19 vaccines, Zuckerberg notably poured around $400 million of private money into election processes across the country last year ahead of the 2020 election. Many of the details of the unprecedented funding remain unclear, though experts who obtained documents from entities sponsored by Zuckerberg have estimated it gave Democrat-leaning counties massive spending advantages in battleground states.

Wisconsin lawmakers announced last week that they will be expanding an investigation into Zuckerberg’s funding after revelations that employees of a group backed by the tech founder may have violated election law and had access to ballots.

*

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***

In very early 2020 there was a lot of chatter about where the virus, later named SARS-CoV-2, actually came from.  In an excellent, detailed article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, former NY Times science writer Nicholas Wade describes how two short pieces published in The Lancet and Nature Medicine in Feb-March 2020 determined how this chatter would be channeled.

These two extraordinarily influential pieces, each simply titled as a “Correspondence,” were parroted by the mainstream media for a year. Each was plainly intended to shut down any discussion of a possible lab origin.

I happened to read both Correspondences in March 2020 and it was immediately apparent to me that each was designed as a propaganda tool. Neither had anything to do with science.  In fact, the Andersen Correspondence butchered the science. Each had an unusual concatenation of authors.

I was so intrigued by these articles that I kept searching the net to understand them, and discovered that Francis Collins, the NIH Director, had blogged on March 26 about the Nature Medicine Correspondence, suggesting it should put an end to conspiracy theories about lab origin.

I further found the letter from the 3 heads of the US National Academy of Science, Engineering and Medicine, which had been referred to by the Lancet Correspondence authors.  But it had not yet been published when the Lancet correspondence was written, suggesting again some hidden connection (or mutual effort) involving the author(s) of the National Academies letter and the Lancet Correspondence author(s).

I wondered why 5 otherwise credible scientists would sign their names to the Nature Medicine Correspondence, when the arguments made in the paper were nonsensical.  I concluded that they had been put up to it by a ‘hidden hand,’ and when I was interviewed for the film that became Plandemic 2: Indoctornation I said so.  (The film has been banned and shadowbanned, as have many of my writings, so it is impossible to find using google or a standard search engine.  Here it is on Bitchute, using the Ecosia search engine.)

Months ago, in another email drop obtained by US Right to Know, we learned that Peter Daszac, CEO of the nonprofit EcoHealth Alliance, was the primary but hidden author of the Lancet Correspondence. He was also the primary beneficiary, since his organization had been used as the pass through to send money from the NIAID to the Wuhan coronavirus lab. (Some might consider this method of giving out grants as a fancy way of money laundering.) Daszac, like Fauci, earned over $400,000/year. He was also a member of the WHO Covid origins investigative team, and had been selected as the head of the Lancet Covid origins investigative team.  But the Lancet-sponsored investigation looks like it is now dead in the water. The WHO and the Lancet thus seem to be co-conspirators, choosing the fox (Daszac) to guard the henhouse (the natural origin theory of Covid).

Today, I was sent a link to a specific one of Fauci’s emails, and the mystery of why 5 well known scientists coauthored drivel, which the venerable Nature Medicine journal published, and which was then used as the foundation supporting the claim of Covid’s natural origin, was solved. Here’s the email.

The first author of the Nature Medicine paper thanks 3 incredibly important people for their “advice and leadership” regarding the paper. All 3 are MD researchers, and they dole out more money for medical research than anyone else in the world, perhaps excepting Bill Gates.  Fauci runs the NIAID; Collins is the NIH Director (nominally Fauci’s boss) and Sir Jeremy Farrar is the director of the Wellcome Trust.  Jeremy also signed the Lancet letter.

And he is the Chair of the World Health Organization R&D Blueprint Scientific Advisory Group, which put him in the driver’s seat of the WHO’s Solidarity trial, in which 1000 unwitting subjects were overdosed with hydroxychloroquine in order to sink the use of the drug for Covid. Jeremy had worked in Vietnam, where there was lots of malaria, and he had also been involved with SARS-1 there. He additionally was central in setting up the UK Recovery trial, where 1600 subjects were overdosed with hydroxychloroquine. I think he had some idea of the proper dose of the chloroquine drugs from his experience in Vietnam.  But even if he didn’t, Farrar, Fauci and Collins would have learned about such overdoses after Brazil told the world about how they mistakenly overdosed patients in a trial of chloroquine for Covid, published in the JAMA in mid April 2020.  Thirty-nine percent of the subjects in Brazil who were given high doses of chloroquine died, average age 50.

Yet the Solidarity and Recovery hydroxychloroquine trials continued into June, stopping only after their extreme doses were exposed.

Fauci made sure to control the treatment guidelines for Covid that came out of the NIAID, advising against both chloroquine drugs and ivermectin. Fauci’s NIAID also cancelled the first large-scale trial of hydroxychlorquine treatment in early disease, after only 20 of the expected 2,000 subjects were enrolled.

What does all this mean?

1.  There was a conspiracy between the five authors of the Nature Medicine paper and the heads of the NIH, NIAID and Wellcome Trust to cover up the lab origin of Covid.

2.  There was a conspiracy involving Peter Daszac, Tony Fauci and others to push the natural origin theory.

(See other emails in the recent drop.)

3.  There was a conspiracy involving Daszac to write the Lancet letter and hide its provenance, to push the natural origin theory and paint any other ideas as conspiracy theory. Collin’s blog post is another piece of this story.

4.  Farrar was intimately involved in both large HCQ overdose trials (in which about 500 subjects total died).

5.  Farrar, Fauci and Collins withheld research funds that could have supported quality trials of the use of chloroquines and ivermectin and other repurposed drugs that might have turned around the pandemic.

6.  Are the 4 individuals named here intimately involved in the creation of the pandemic, as well as the prolongation and improper treatments used during the pandemic?

Below are my two early posts on this subject from March and April 2020, and a snippet from the Lancet Correspondence, with a list of signatories.

I don’t want to take credit improperly.  Dan Sirotkin noticed the Nature Medicine article before I did, and wrote lucidly about it.  I did not see his writing until much later.

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***

In this crisply written, well-researched book, Lesley Blume, a journalist and biographer, tells the fascinating story of the background to John Hersey’s pathbreaking article “Hiroshima,” and of its extraordinary impact upon the world.

In 1945, although only 30 years of age, Hersey was a very prominent war correspondent for Time magazine – a key part of publisher Henry Luce’s magazine empire – and living in the fast lane. That year, he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel, A Bell for Adano, which had already been adapted into a movie and a Broadway play. Born the son of missionaries in China, Hersey had been educated at upper class, elite institutions, including the Hotchkiss School, Yale, and Cambridge. During the war, Hersey’s wife, Frances Ann, a former lover of young Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, arranged for the three of them to get together over dinner. Kennedy impressed Hersey with the story of how he saved his surviving crew members after a Japanese destroyer rammed his boat, PT-109. This led to a dramatic article by Hersey on the subject – one rejected by the Luce publications but published by the New Yorker. The article launched Kennedy on his political career and, as it turned out, provided Hersey with the bridge to a new employer – the one that sent him on his historic mission to Japan.

Blume reveals that, at the time of the U.S. atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Hersey felt a sense of despair – not for the bombing’s victims, but for the future of the world. He was even more disturbed by the atomic bombing of Nagasaki only three days later, which he considered a “totally criminal” action that led to tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths.

Most Americans at the time did not share Hersey’s misgivings about the atomic bombings. A Gallup poll taken on August 8, 1945 found that 85 percent of American respondents expressed their support for “using the new atomic bomb on Japanese cities.”

Blume shows very well how this approval of the atomic bombing was enhanced by US government officials and the very compliant mass communications media. Working together, they celebrated the power of the new American weapon that, supposedly, had brought the war to an end, producing articles lauding the bombing mission and pictures of destroyed buildings. What was omitted was the human devastation, the horror of what the atomic bombing had done physically and psychologically to an almost entirely civilian population – the flesh roasted off bodies, the eyeballs melting, the terrible desperation of mothers digging with their hands through the charred rubble for their dying children.

The strange new radiation sickness produced by the bombing was either denied or explained away as of no consequence. “Japanese reports of death from radioactive effects of atomic bombing are pure propaganda,” General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, told the New York Times. Later, when, it was no longer possible to deny the existence of radiation sickness, Groves told a Congressional committee that it was actually “a very pleasant way to die.”

When it came to handling the communications media, US government officials had some powerful tools at their disposal. In Japan, General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of the US occupation regime, saw to it that strict US military censorship was imposed on the Japanese press and other forms of publication, which were banned from discussing the atomic bombing. As for foreign newspaper correspondents (including Americans), they needed permission from the occupation authorities to enter Japan, to travel within Japan, to remain in Japan, and even to obtain food in Japan. American journalists were taken on carefully controlled junkets to Hiroshima, after which they were told to downplay any unpleasant details of what they had seen there.

In September 1945, US newspaper and magazine editors received a letter from the US War Department, on behalf of President Harry Truman, asking them to restrict information in their publications about the atomic bomb. If they planned to do any publishing in this area of concern, they were to submit the articles to the War Department for review.

Among the recipients of this warning were Harold Ross, the founder and editor of the New Yorker, and William Shawn, the deputy editor of that publication. The New Yorker, originally founded as a humor magazine, was designed by Ross to cater to urban sophisticates and covered the world of nightclubs and chorus girls. But, with the advent of the Second World War, Ross decided to scrap the hijinks flavor of the magazine and begin to publish some serious journalism.

As a result, Hersey began to gravitate into the New Yorker’s orbit. Hersey was frustrated with his job at Time magazine, which either rarely printed his articles or rewrote them atrociously. At one point, he angrily told publisher Henry Luce that there was as much truthful reporting in Time magazine as in Pravda. In July 1945, Hersey finally quit his job with Time. Then, late that fall, he sat down with William Shawn of the New Yorker to discuss some ideas he had for articles, one of them about Hiroshima.

Hersey had concluded that the mass media had missed the real story of the Hiroshima bombing. And the result was that the American people were becoming accustomed to the idea of a nuclear future, with the atomic bomb as an acceptable weapon of war. Appalled by what he had seen in the Second World War – from the firebombing of cities to the Nazi concentration camps – Hersey was horrified by what he called “the depravity of man,” which, he felt, rested upon the dehumanization of others. Against this backdrop, Hersey and Shawn concluded that he should try to enter Japan and report on what had really happened there.

Getting into Japan would not be easy. The US Occupation authorities exercised near-total control over who could enter the stricken nation, keeping close tabs on all journalists who applied to do so, including records on their whereabouts, their political views, and their attitudes toward the occupation. Nearly every day, General MacArthur received briefings about the current press corps, with summaries of their articles. Furthermore, once admitted, journalists needed permission to travel anywhere within the country, and were allotted only limited time for these forays.

Even so, Hersey had a number of things going for him. During the war, he was a very patriotic reporter. He had written glowing profiles about rank-and-file US soldiers, as well as a book (Men on Bataan) that provided a flattering portrait of General MacArthur. This fact certainly served Hersey well, for the general was a consummate egotist. Apparently as a consequence, Hersey received authorization to visit Japan.

En route there in the spring of 1946, Hersey spent some time in China, where, on board a US warship, he came down with the flu. While convalescing, he read Thornton Wilder’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Bridge of San Luis Rey, which tracked the different lives of five people in Peru who were killed when a bridge upon which they stood collapsed. Hersey and Shawn had already decided that he should tell the story of the Hiroshima bombing from the victims’ point of view. But Hersey now realized that Wilder’s book had given him a particularly poignant, engrossing way of telling a complicated story. Practically everyone could identify with a group of regular people going about their daily routines as catastrophe suddenly struck them.

Hersey arrived in Tokyo on May 24, 1946, and two days later, received permission to travel to Hiroshima, with his time in that city limited to 14 days.

Entering Hiroshima, Hersey was stunned by the damage he saw. In Blume’s words, there were “miles of jagged misery and three-dimensional evidence that humans – after centuries of contriving increasingly efficient ways to exterminate masses of other humans – had finally invented the means with which to decimate their entire civilization.” Now there existed what one reporter called “teeming jungles of dwelling places . . . in a welter of ashes and rubble.” As residents attempted to clear the ground to build new homes, they uncovered masses of bodies and severed limbs. A cleanup campaign in one district of the city alone at about that time unearthed a thousand corpses. Meanwhile, the city’s surviving population was starving, with constant new deaths from burns, other dreadful wounds, and radiation poisoning.

Given the time limitations of his permit, Hersey had to work fast. And he did, interviewing dozens of survivors, although he eventually narrowed down his cast of characters to six of them.

Departing from Hiroshima’s nightmare of destruction, Hersey returned to the United States to prepare the story that was to run in the New Yorker to commemorate the atomic bombing. He decided that the article would have to read like a novel. “Journalism allows its readers to witness history,” he later remarked. “Fiction gives readers the opportunity to live it.” His goal was “to have the reader enter into the characters, become the characters, and suffer with them.”

When Hersey produced a sprawling 30,000 word draft, the New Yorker’s editors at first planned to publish it in serialized form. But Shawn decided that running it this way wouldn’t do, for the story would lose its pace and impact. Rather than have Hersey reduce the article to a short report, Shawn had a daring idea. Why not run the entire article in one issue of the magazine, with everything else – the “Talk of the Town” pieces, the fiction, the other articles and profiles, and the urbane cartoons – banished from the issue?

Ross, Shawn, and Hersey now sequestered themselves in a small room at the New Yorker’s headquarters, furiously editing Hersey’s massive article. Ross and Shawn decided to keep the explosive forthcoming issue a top secret from the magazine’s staff. Indeed, the staff were kept busy working on a “dummy” issue that they thought would be going to press. Contributors to that issue were baffled when they didn’t receive proofs for their articles and accompanying artwork. Nor were the New Yorker’s advertisers told what was about to happen. As Blume remarks: “The makers of Chesterfield cigarettes, Perma-Lift brassieres, Lux toilet soap, and Old Overholt rye whiskey would just have to find out along with everyone else in the world that their ads would be run alongside Hersey’s grisly story of nuclear apocalypse.”

However, things don’t always proceed as smoothly as planned. On August 1, 1946, President Truman signed into law the Atomic Energy Act, which established a “restricted” standard for “all data concerning the manufacture or utilization of atomic weapons.” Anyone who disseminated that data “with any reason to believe that such data” could be used to harm the United States could face substantial fines and imprisonment. Furthermore, if it could be proved that the individual was attempting to “injure the United States,” he or she could “be punished by death or imprisonment for life.”

In these new circumstances, what should Ross, Shawn, and Hersey do? They could kill the story, water it down, or run it and risk severe legal action against them. After agonizing over their options, they decided to submit Hersey’s article to the War Department – and, specifically, to General Groves – for clearance.

Why did they take that approach? Blume speculates that the New Yorker team thought that Groves might insist upon removing any technical information from the article while leaving the account of the sufferings of the Japanese intact. After all, Groves believed that the Japanese deserved what had happened to them, and could not imagine that other Americans might disagree. Furthermore, the article, by underscoring the effectiveness of the atomic bombing of Japan, bolstered his case that the war had come to an end because of his weapon. Finally, Groves was keenly committed to maintaining US nuclear supremacy in the world, and he believed that an article that led Americans to fear nuclear attacks by other nations would foster support for a US nuclear buildup.

The gamble paid off. Although Groves did demand changes, these were minor and did not affect the accounts by the survivors.

On August 29, 1946, copies of the “Hiroshima” edition of the New Yorker arrived on newsstands and in mailboxes across the United States, and it quickly created an enormous sensation, particularly in the mass media. Editors from more than thirty states applied to excerpt portions of the article, and newspapers from across the nation ran front-page banner stories and urgent editorials about its revelations. Correspondence from every region of the United States poured into the New Yorker’s office. A large number of readers expressed pity for the victims of the bombing. But an even greater number expressed deep fear about what the advent of nuclear war meant for the survival of the human race.

Of course, not all readers approved of Hersey’s report on the atomic bombing. Some reacted by canceling their subscriptions to the New Yorker. Others assailed the article as antipatriotic, Communist propaganda, designed to undermine the United States. Still others dismissed it as pro-Japanese propaganda or, as one reader remarked, written “in very bad taste.”

Some newspapers denounced it. The New York Daily News derided it as a stunt and “propaganda aimed at persuading us to stop making atom bombs . . . and to give our technical bomb secrets away . . . to Russia.” Not surprisingly, Henry Luce was infuriated that his former star journalist had achieved such an enormous success writing for a rival publication, and had Hersey’s portrait removed from Time Inc.’s gallery of honor.

Despite the criticism, “Hiroshima” continued to attract enormous attention in the mass media. The ABC Radio Network did a reading of the lengthy article over four nights, with no acting, no music, no special effects, and no commercials. “This chronicle of suffering and destruction,” it announced, was being “broadcast as a warning that what happened to the people of Hiroshima could next happen anywhere.” After the broadcasts, the network’s telephone switchboards were swamped by callers, and the program was judged to have received the highest rating of any public interest broadcast that had ever occurred. The BBC also broadcast an adaptation of “Hiroshima,” while some 500 US radio stations reported on the article in the days following its release.

In the United States, the Alfred Knopf publishing house came out with the article in book form, which was quickly promoted by the Book-of-the-Month Club as “destined to be the most widely read book of our generation.” Ultimately, Hiroshima sold millions of copies in nations around the world. By the late fall of 1946, the rather modest and retiring Hersey, who had gone into hiding after the article’s publication to avoid interviews, was rated as one of the “Ten Outstanding Celebrities of 1946,” along with General Dwight Eisenhower and singer Bing Crosby.

For US government officials, reasonably content with past public support for the atomic bombing and a nuclear-armed future, Hersey’s success in reaching the public with his disturbing account of nuclear war confronted them with a genuine challenge. For the most part, US officials recognized that they had what Blume calls “a serious post-`Hiroshima’ image problem.”

Behind the scenes, James B. Conant, the top scientist in the Manhattan Project, joined President Truman in badgering Henry Stimson, the former US Secretary of War, to produce a defense of the atomic bombing. Provided with an advance copy of the article, to be published in Harper’s, Conant told Stimson that it was just what was needed, for they could not have allowed “the propaganda against the use of the atomic bomb . . . to go unchecked.”

Although the New Yorker’s editors sought to arrange for publication of the book version of “Hiroshima” in the Soviet Union, this proved impossible. Instead, Soviet authorities banned the book in their nation. Pravda fiercely assailed Hersey, claiming that “Hiroshima” was nothing more than an American scare tactic, a fiction that “relishes the torments of six people after the explosion of the atomic bomb.” Another Soviet publication called Hersey an American spy who embodied his country’s militarism and had helped to inflict upon the world a “propaganda of aggression, strongly reminiscent of similar manifestations in Nazi Germany.”

Ironically, the Soviet attack upon Hersey didn’t make him any more acceptable to the US government. In 1950, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover assigned FBI field agents to research, monitor, and interview Hersey, on whom the Bureau had already opened a file. During the FBI interview with Hersey, agents questioned him closely about his trip to Hiroshima.

Not surprisingly, US occupation authorities did their best to ban the appearance of “Hiroshima” in Japan. Hersey’s six protagonists had to wait months before they could finally read the article, which was smuggled to them. In fact, some of Hersey’s characters were not aware that they had been included in the story or that the article had even been written until they received the contraband copies. MacArthur managed to block publication of the book in Japan for years until, after intervention by the Authors’ League of America, he finally relented. It appeared in April 1949, and immediately became a bestseller.

Hersey, still a young man at the time, lived on for decades thereafter, writing numerous books, mostly works of fiction, and teaching at Yale. He continued to be deeply concerned about the fate of a nuclear-armed world – proud of his part in stirring up resistance to nuclear war and, thereby, helping to prevent it.

The conclusion drawn by Blume in this book is much like Hersey’s. As she writes, “Graphically showing what nuclear warfare does to humans, ‘Hiroshima’ has played a major role in preventing nuclear war since the end of World War II.”

A secondary theme in the book is the role of a free press. Blume observes that “Hersey and his New Yorker editors created `Hiroshima’ in the belief that journalists must hold accountable those in power. They saw a free press as essential to the survival of democracy.” She does, too.

Overall, Blume’s book would provide the basis for a very inspiring movie, for at its core is something many Americans admire: action taken by a few people who triumph against all odds.

But the actual history is somewhat more complicated. Even before the publication of “Hiroshima,” a significant number of people were deeply disturbed by the atomic bombing of Japan. For some, especially pacifists, the bombing was a moral atrocity. An even larger group feared that the advent of nuclear weapons portended the destruction of the world. Traditional pacifist organizations, newly-formed atomic scientist groups, and a rapidly-growing world government movement launched a dramatic antinuclear campaign in the late 1940s around the slogan, “One World or None.” Curiously, this uprising against nuclear weapons is almost entirely absent from Blume’s book.

Even so, Blume has written a very illuminating, interesting, and important work – one that reminds us that daring, committed individuals can help to create a better world.

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Lawrence S. Wittner (lawrenceswittner.com) is Professor of History emeritus at SUNY/Albany. His latest book is Confronting the Bomb (Stanford University Press).

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On 15 April 2021 about 15 women seized a local state administration building in Kyrgyzstan to demand a debt relief and a stop to housing repossessions. Barricading themselves inside the building, the women in black mournful headscarves, threatened to pour gasoline over their bodies and set themselves alight if the country’s Prime Minister did not arrive to negotiate with them. Gas cylinders were placed along the office windows and gasoline on floors set the scene for a large explosion. Struggling to breathe in the room full of toxic fumes, the women announced: ‘We’re sick of financial slavery! Eradicate the usury!’ These were at the end of their tether after years of struggling against financial oppression.

‘My Gotovy szhech sebya!’ translated ‘We are ready to set ourselves alight.’ (Source:  Kaktus Media)

In 2019, Kyrgyzstan had the fifth highest real lending interest rate in the world. Many rural women have been protesting against debt, housing repossessions and exorbitant interest rates for the past 13 years. In 2016, their anti-debt struggles culminated in protests in front of the US Embassy in Bishkek, where they blamed the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) for creating and funding exploitative microcredit companies in the country. In neighbouring Kazakhstan, urban residents of Nur-Sultan and Almaty held numerous anti-debt protests in front of the central bank, blaming it for predatory lending arising from Western credit flows.

Photo by an anti-debt movement member. Protests outside the US embassy in Kyrgyzstan held on 26 May 2016

The Covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the debt oppression in the region by causing job losses. In Kyrgyzstan, thousands of migrants returned home, causing unprecedented decrease in remittances. The Kyrgyzstani state could not offer income support to its work force, of which 75% is self-employed. The pandemic pushed an additional 700,000 people into poverty, worsening the existing situation where 38% of the population is classified as poor. In oil rich Kazakhstan, 42% of the population lost income, and applied for income support of 42,500 tenge (US$99). The government made a one-off payment in full in the first month, and a partial payment in the second month. In order to provide some relief, the central banks in the region recommended loan payments to be deferred up to three months. But commercial banks and microfinance institutions (MFIs) continued to charge interest on outstanding loans and commission fees for changing loan terms. Despite rising default rates, they refused to write off debt or suspend the accrual of interest, deepening indebtedness.

How did the debt problem begin?

When the Central Asian countries gained their independence in 1991, much of the population did not have personal or commercial debt. The Soviet economic system prohibited lending at interest, viewing it as speculative gains. In the Soviet economy, ‘non-labour’ (or unearned) income was condemned and strictly regulated. But after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Central Asian countries experienced a severe shortage of capital, and they borrowed from US and other Western financial institutions at high interest rates. The near monopoly on credit coerced Central Asian citizens, especially low-income groups, into high risk and exploitative credit relations.

Starting in the mid-1990s, international donors and investors developed the microcredit industry in Kyrgyzstan by funding four MFIs. The International Finance Corporation and other international donors mandated these MFIs to become fully commercialized to achieve high returns on equity. The average interest rate was 44%. By 2010, these MFIs served 77% of the microcredit borrowers, and controlled 52% of the microcredit portfolio. By 2016, three of them became fully-fledged banks, and continued to have a significant portfolio of microlending.

In Kazakhstan, the oil boom in early 2000s fueled a rapid expansion of credit in the banking sector. By 2007, Kazakhstani banks amassed external debt of US$46 billion, or 44% of gross domestic product (GDP). About 70% of loans were linked to the real estate sector that skyrocketed house prices. Housing costs in Nur-Sultan and Almaty became more unaffordable than in exclusive cities such as San Francisco and Vancouver. Today, over 80% of Kazakhstanis are in debt with mortgage and consumer loans.

In both countries, the governments deregulated the financial system by allowing banks and MFIs to determine themselves their own size of loans, interest rates, penalties and commission fees, and to operate with very minimum capital and licensing requirements. Bolstered by the neoliberal legal framework, some lenders charged interest rates as high as 180%. Penalties sometimes doubled the principal loan, and some lenders had up to 25 different commission fees. In addition, financial regulations in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan minimized legal protections for borrowers. Individual bankruptcy laws were blocked by the financial industry. In cases of default, the courts viewed credit as lenders’ property and assets, and justified its return on the basis of the rule of law and the sanctity of the contract.

Indebting women

In Central Asia, women constitute a large share of debtors. Like in many parts of the Global South, international donors and investors targeted vulnerable women for microcredit lending. This reflected a global neoliberal strategy for debt-based growth, which recasted marginalized groups as a high-yielding investment opportunity. High interest loans were sold as an effective way to combat poverty, empower women, and stimulate entrepreneurial activity. Yet when pressed to explain the obvious tension between the social framing and for-profit lending, one of the managers at the International Finance Corporation in Bishkek defensively responded, ‘We are not a charity but an investment bank! So of course, we need to make a profit.’ Perversely, by indebting poor women, international investors gained both a handsome profit and a public image of do-gooders.

For many women loans were not a matter of choice, but a necessity as a result of cuts to state expenditure on social and economic programs. The cumulative impact of market ‘reforms’ in the region facilitated poor women’s dependence on high interest credit. First, the privatization of state enterprises significantly reduced pay and job opportunities for women. If in 1988 the Soviet Union had the highest female labour force participation rate of any industrialized society (with 90% of working-age women engaged in full-time work or study), by 2017 Kyrgyzstan’s female participation rate fell to 48 %. For instance, in 1995, fewer than 10,000 people worked in Kyrgyzstan’s light industry sector, which used to employ over 100,000 mostly female workforce during the Soviet period. Moreover, the privatization of agriculture and rural land made women asset poor. Most assets, including 80% of land and 61% of real estate were transferred to a small minority of owners, mostly men. Many women, who were previously employed as factory and agricultural workers, and as teachers and healthcare specialists, were forced into petty trading through Western sponsored microcredit schemes. The commodification of labor and poor income fueled the expansion of debt.

Second, many women borrowed money to pay for services, such as health care and education, which were previously available for free. Key social services saw significant cuts in state spending, which not only reduced public sector pay but privatized and commodified basic necessities, enabling affluent groups to access better quality services while low-income groups were deprived of them. In Kyrgyzstan, the commodified provision of reproductive care led to the highest maternal mortality rate in the post-Soviet space, with 90% of death found to be preventable. A 2021 survey of online microcredit borrowers in Kazakhstan showed that 29% of respondents took out loans to pay for emergency expenses, 21% to make ends meet, and 16% to pay off debt on bank loans. The rest used the loans to pay for medical treatment, utilities, educational fees. Only a small minority of loans was linked to buying consumer goods.

Third, the withdrawal of state provision of free housing, and the adoption of mortgage-based housing schemes resulted in fewer new affordable housing units, and an inflation of real estate prices. High cost of mortgages has failed to meet most people’s social needs and has been a key driver of economic disparity. Currently over 6 million out of 8.4 million economically active population in Kazakhstan cannot afford to buy a house. Many households took out US dollar-denominated mortgage loans at 15-20% interest rates as their only means of obtaining housing.

In Central Asia credit/debt rather than social rights has enabled people to access basic goods. Responsibilities for well-being have shifted from the welfare state to individuals through private lenders. Debt has become foundational, a way of life. Women, in particular, have been forced into debt to cope with the increasing costs of a commodified society and as a way of staying afloat or getting ahead in life.

Debt, dispossession and death

Almost three decades of debt expansion has produced immense misery and violence in the lives of many ordinary people in the region. After the 2008 financial crisis, over 70,000 Kazakhstanis defaulted on their mortgage loans and 62,889 new apartment owners were left stranded with their housing complexes partly built. In Kyrgyzstan, over 30% of all borrowers were over-indebted. A director of a microfinance association in Kyrgyzstan admitted that the majority of borrowers paid back ‘at the cost of sacrificing their food security, education and health, which obviously caused them immense misery.’ There has been a very little take-up of small and medium-sized enterprises by women in Kyrgyzstan.

Faced with an increase in non-payments, the financial sector pursued an aggressive strategy of foreclosures by undertaking extra-judicial seizure of borrowers’ properties. Until recently, a delay in payment of over a 60-day period allowed lenders to seize the collateral without a court order. In Kyrgyzstan, many borrowers lost their homes over microcredit loans of around US$ 1,000 or so. Unlike in other countries, MFIs in Central Asia secured their small loans with collaterals. Many borrowers did not anticipate being made homeless over small loans.

The rise in evictions caused many borrowers to commit suicides because of overwhelming shame and loss of control. In Kyrgyzstan, during 2011-2012 there were 17 suicides of women, who were facing repossessions. In Kazakhstan, it was common to read news headlines of debt-related tragedies. In 2011, Marat Nurkenov, aged 39, jumped off from a 9-storey building in Pavlodar, when law enforcement agents were evicting his parents from the apartment. The same year Kezhegul Alinkulova, a mother of five children, set herself alight during a forced eviction in Almaty. In 2014, 27 indebted military personnel had taken their own lives. In 2015, Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Defense started a registry of heavily indebted personnel as a suicide prevention strategy in the army, officially acknowledging that debt-related suicides had become a major problem.

The death of a borrower does not dissolve their debt. Existing banking and microfinance laws make family members responsible for loans that are secured against property registered under their names. In such cases, banks and MFIs collect the remaining balance on the debt from surviving family members. In Kyrgyzstan, a borrower recounted how collectors would show up at funerals, pulling aside the crying family members, and saying, ‘Make sure to give us the money that people have brought for the funeral.’ It is a custom for visitors to donate money to the family of the dead person to help pay for expenses. The dead collectors’ lack of sympathy for the grieving family members, and the blatant disrespect for social customs shocked and infuriated many. Local activists tried to incriminate banks and MFIs for driving borrowers to their death but found it difficult to prove. Financial institutions were not held responsible even when death notes were left behind.

Debt, gendered violence and fraud

The daily lives of the indebted are filled with intense feelings of shame, fear and anxiety because shame and other aggressive debt collection methods are employed to maximize the rate of repayment. In Central Asia, it is common for debt collectors to publicly humiliate borrowers and threaten them with legal action or bodily harm. One of the female borrowers, who worked as a schoolteacher, described how debt collectors came to her school and shamed her in front of her students and the school director. The intense level of public humiliation and intimidation was a novel experience for many borrowers. They recounted feelings of tremor, heart palpitations and panic attacks every time someone knocked on their doors or the phone rang.

Local debt recovery tactics employed gendered violence. The financial industry often exploited cultural norms to shame and dis-honour women. In Kyrgyzstan, some lenders and debt collectors involved regional governors and the courts of male elders (aksakals) to shame women for missing loan repayments. In some cases, the damage to women’s social reputation and honour led to them being condemned by family members and being social marginalized. The mechanism of shaming proved to be very effective, explaining the paradox of a high repayment rate by vulnerable women.

To ensure repayments, MFIs promoted group-based loans on female borrowers. Group loans intensified social scrutiny in comparison to individual market transactions between lenders and borrowers. When members of the family or social network turned into quasi-debt collectors, it personalized debt and discipline, exacerbating the feeling of shame. Group loans produced tensions and conflicts within close-knit communities when someone defaulted. In one case, a group of women borrowers were greatly distressed by ‘the pain they inflicted on each other’ when one of them had to use her meager pension to meet the liability for the group debt.

Since 2006, in Kazakhstan, illegal private debt collection agencies have grown. Although there are only 193 officially registered private debt collection agencies, at least a thousand operate illegally in the country. In 2019, Kazakhstani banks sold problem loans worth 611.6 billion tenge to collection agencies. These agencies commit gendered violence on the basis of enforcing the law and defending the sanctity of contracts.

For instance, the Kazakhstani social media have many video and voice recordings that expose agencies’ abuse and physical assaults. In 2019, one video attracted a lot of attention and criticisms. It showed a young male collector from an unregistered agency Almaty Collection Group, intimidating a young female debtor to repay the loan, and calling her ‘dirt-eating trash’ and ‘a mistake to be born.’ When the young woman filed a legal complaint against the debt collector with the help of a law company, he and two other assailants attacked a senior law partner, breaking his nose and ribs. In 2019, the Kazakhstani courts reviewed 353 complaints against debt collectors. The maximum punishment for debt collectors, who are guilty of violating rules and regulations that govern their practices, is 180 hours of correctional labor. The judiciary has largely sanctioned gendered violence in defense of the interests of lenders. The private debt collectors can act with impunity, using threats and physical force to extract debt.

Recently, private debt collection firms were able to open in parallel private law enforcement agencies to increase their coercive powers. This development was preceded by contracting out law enforcement services to private enforcement agencies. Private debt collection firms gained more powers by doubling up as private law enforcement agencies. Now debt collectors can access state and commercial databases on debtors, and can use extensive legal powers, such as seizure of property, sale at auction, access to bank accounts, and imposition of travel restrictions. Agencies’ access to records on debtors has been responsible for the development of sophisticated fraudulent tactics to ‘recover’ debt. For instance, in a recent case, a debtor, a mother of five children, was on a waiting list for state subsidized rental housing. One day, she received a telephone call informing that her application had been approved, but the paperwork was on hold because of her outstanding loan. She was urged to borrow money to pay off the bank loan in order to complete the process. After paying off the debt, she learnt that she was scammed by the debt collectors.

Doom or hope?

The debt oppression in Central Asia echoes debt problems in other parts of the world. But the difference is that Central Asian financial industry has employed extreme coercive tactics to make money with little regard to human dignity and well-being. Women have been the biggest victims of the financial cartel. The shaming tactics and intimidation by male debt collectors is a form of gendered violence sanctioned by state and judicial authorities in support of the financial industry.

We do not know the extent of social dispossession caused by the debt peonage. The economic inequality in the region is among the highest in the world. Debt has transferred income from the poor to the rich. Michael Hudson aptly calls interest a regressive form of income distribution. Between 1995-2012, microcredit was responsible for transferring up to US$125 billion from poor communities in the Global South to financial centers in the Global North. This regressive distribution of global wealth was partly achieved at the expense of poor rural women.

The women in Central Asia have tried to resist ‘financial slavery.’ But their anti-debt protests did not achieve meaningful changes to predatory lending practices in Central Asia. The political regimes have suppressed protests. The indebted women are often demonized and stigmatized by the media as unscrupulous and irresponsible borrowers, who lack financial literacy and discipline.

There is a huge power imbalance between lenders and borrowers. The indebted women alone cannot take on the global power of financial institutions. People’s passivity and resignation over the regulation of finance reflect the degree to which the neoliberal moral order came to be accepted as just and natural. To overcome the economic and moral stranglehold of finance over society, progressive supranational institutions and global anti-debt movements are required to regulate financial capital in service of people’s well-being rather than lenders’ economic interests.

For further reading and a detailed account of the anti-debt mobilizations, see her forthcoming book, Rentier Capitalism and Its Discontents (Palgrave Macmillan).

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Dr Elmira Satybaldieva is a Senior Research Fellow at Conflict Analysis Research Centre, University of Kent. Her main area of research interest is politics in the post-Soviet space, with a particular focus on grassroots activism and international development in Central Asia. She is currently researching Chinese, Russian and western investment strategies in Central Asia and their varied implications for the region. She has been researching the region for over 15 years, and published widely on social movements, development and political economy in the region.

Rentier Capitalism and its Discontents

Power, Morality and Resistance in Central Asia

Authors: Sanghera, Balihar & Satybaldieva, Elmira

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-76303-9

Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-76302-2

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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Photos circulating on social media show Colombian government forces using Israeli weapons against protestors and Israeli-made Sand Cat armored vehicles patrolling the streets of Colombian cities. Alan Macleod investigates the growing ties between the unlikely allies.

For exactly one month now, a nationwide strike has crippled Colombia and has been met with deadly repression by the far-right government of Ivan Duque. As trade unions have shut down major cities, halting mass transit and bringing economic gridlock to the country, government forces have responded with violence. According to government figures, at least 44 people have been killed in protests that began on April 28. A further 500 people have been “disappeared,” more than 100 shot with live fire, and at least 28 have been wounded in the eye by police, the notorious ESMAD riot squad, or by paramilitary organizations linked to the state.

The crackdown on dissent is being abetted by the Israeli government, which itself is dealing with widespread economic, military and social revolt from its captive Palestinian population. Outside of the United States, Israel is the Colombian military and paramilitaries’ chief weapons supplier, and the Colombian police and army have been putting their Israeli training and weapons to use against their own domestic revolt.

The state has essentially declared war on the citizenry, turning streets and neighborhoods into battlefields in an attempt to push through President Duque’s highly controversial neoliberal policies that would eliminate public healthcare, privatize pensions, reduce the minimum wage and levy a 19% tax on staple foods, moves which critics deem an all-out attack on Colombia’s working-class majority. The president is showing no sign of backing down, despite his approval rating slumping to 18%— an all-time low for Colombian heads of state.

Military connections

Pictures circulating on social media show government forces using Israeli weapons against protestors, while Israeli-made Sand Cat armored vehicles are on the streets of Colombia’s major cities. The standard issue rifles for all branches of the military and the police are Israeli; the Army uses the IMI Galil, Special Forces use the IWI Tavor, while the Air Force, Navy, and police favor the IWI Ace.

Embedded below is an image of Colombian police using the Israeli-made Tavor TAR-21 assault rifle on the streets.

😐😔 pic.twitter.com/7081wtWEL7

— Max Power A.C.A.B 🇨🇴💚🇧🇷👍🏽🇫🇷 (@DonPornHoli0) May 4, 2021

Duque has sent the army into many of Colombia’s largest cities to deal with the national strike, a decision condemned by human rights groups. These forces have been trained in “counterterrorism and combat techniques” by Israeli Defense Force (IDF) attachés to share their expertise in crushing domestic resistance. Thus, any Palestinians who dropped into Colombia right now might feel an eerie sense of familiarity with what is going on.

“Private Israeli military contractors are heavily involved with the Colombian military in terms of military training, the conduct of counter-insurgency operations, intelligence gathering, targeted assassinations, cross-border military interventions into states like Venezuela, alongside hybrid warfare in general, and more. As the second most important military partner after the U.S.A., Israel can be characterized as a key supporter of Colombia’s proven record of state terrorism,” Oliver Dodd told MintPress by phone from Bogota. Dodd is a Ph.D. researcher at the University of Nottingham covering the Colombian Civil War.

In September 2020, as right wing paramilitaries carried out numerous massacres in Colombia, the Israeli military gave a several-day training to special forces of the Colombian military. They even made these hideous patches to commemorate their alliance. https://t.co/m8TqIoLBmP pic.twitter.com/oXaoAEoj2Q

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) May 27, 2021

Israeli drones have also been spotted in the skies over Colombia, as the government uses them for surveillance and military intelligence. AMnetpro SAS, a company started by two Israeli businessmen, also provides facial recognition and other security technology to Colombian forces.

Perhaps most worryingly, Israel has also directly trained far-right paramilitary groups responsible for much of the worst terror inside the country over the past half-century. Carlos Castaño, commander of the AUC, perhaps the most notorious and remorseless of them all, traveled to Israel to study and was trained by infamous Israeli mercenary and former IDF Lieutenant Colonel Yair Klein, who claims that he was invited to Colombia to train the national police. Dodd explained the attraction of using Israeli knowhow for the Colombian government:

IDF veterans are also heavily involved in Colombia’s conflict. The Colombian state relies on these Israeli mercenaries — called ‘private military contractors’ by apologists — a lot in the sense that they are recruited to import their vast counter-insurgency expertise developed in the fight against Palestinians. The fact that these mercenaries are not technically members of Colombia’s Armed Forces and do not wear the official uniforms of the military, allows them to lend the state plausible deniability for crimes of aggression against the revolutionary movement and other progressive forces.”

So normalized have Israeli mercenaries become in Colombian society that, while president Juan Manuel Santos appeared in an advertisement for Israeli mercenary firm Global CST. “They are people with a lot of experience. They have been helping us to work better,” he states.

Political ties

Palestine also has connections to Latin America, and the Palestinian community there has done well for itself. In recent times, a number of Palestinians have risen to high office across the region, including Carlos Roberto Flores, President of Honduras from 1998 to 2002, Antonio Saca, President of El Salvador from 2004 to 2009 and Yehude Simon, Prime Minister of Peru from 2008 to 2009.

As the continent moved leftwards in the 2000s, almost the entire region began to recognize Palestine as an independent state. For years, Colombia was the sole South American holdout, only doing so in 2018.

Yet, at the same time, President Duque was making it clear where he stood. Last year he spoke at AIPAC, America’s most powerful pro-Israel lobby group, where he announced that Colombia would open an “innovation office” in occupied Jerusalem, one step away from defying international law by moving the Colombian embassy there. He has also denounced a supposed Hezbollah presence in neighboring Venezuela, designating the Lebanese group and Israeli military foe a terrorist organization — a move likely more to do with garnering friends than genuine security fears.

Throughout this latest bombardment of Gaza, an action which has left around 250 in the strip dead, nearly 2,000 wounded and tens of thousands displaced, the Colombian government has stood side-by-side with its ally, condemning the firing of rockets into Israel. “Colombia expresses its deep concern over the terrorist acts and attacks against Israel and expresses its solidarity with the victims of these actions,” it wrote. There was no rebuke of the far more deadly Israeli missiles hitting Gaza.

A cycle of dependency

The burgeoning political alliance has brought with it deepening economic ties. In 2013, the two nations signed a free trade agreement.

“This is a historic moment in the relationship between the State of Israel and the Republic of Colombia,” announced Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “These decisions create a platform of cooperation between us that will bring our partnership, our friendship, our brotherhood…to new political and economic levels.”

For the most part, trade between the two states consists of Israeli weaponry and know-how going to Colombia in exchange for the South American nation’s mineral reserves. In 2011, military-grade arms comprised 49.6% of all Israeli exports to Colombia. Coal makes up around 89% of what goes back the other way. The rest is primarily agricultural produce (coffee, fruit, sugar, etc.).

Colombia’s mineral wealth is only exploitable after a decades-long push by the military and associated paramilitaries to clear black and indigenous people off their valuable land, making way for transnational agribusiness and energy corporations to set up shop. Israeli weaponry and technical advice have been crucial in achieving this. As a result, Israel is able to reap some of the benefits, keeping the lights on at home thanks to cheap Colombian coal in a deal that benefits them and big business but hurts the people and contributes to ethnic cleansing on both sides of the world.

“Key outposts of U.S. power”

Colombia and Israel are the U.S.’ most favored allies in their respective regions. Israel receives billions of dollars in military aid yearly, weapons which it often tests on civilian Palestinian populations and can thereafter be sold at arms fairs worldwide as “battle tested.”

Likewise, Colombia receives enormous sums of free American weapons (over $461 million worth in 2021) mainly under the guise of the discredited War on Drugs. Plan Colombia — the militarization of the drug war in Latin America — is most associated with the Bush administration. However, the brains of the operation was actually Joe Biden. “I’m the guy who put together Plan Colombia…straighten[ing] that government out for a long while,” he bragged last year. While in office, Biden plans to expand his policy from Colombia to Central America.

Neither Israel nor Colombia’s most recent repression has drawn censure from the Biden administration, with the president immediately announcing that “Israel has a right to defend itself,” as it was pummelling civilian targets in Gaza. Likewise, there has been no official word from Washington on the Colombian government’s deadly crackdown on protesters. Indeed, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with his Colombian counterpart Diego Molano earlier this week, where he “expressed his commitment to strengthening our defense relationship” in his own words.

“Israel and Colombia are key outposts of U.S. empire and as such are permitted to terrorize civilian populations in the name of fighting terror,” said Belén Fernández, a journalist who covers Middle East-Latin America relations closely. “The two states are firmly bound to the U.S. and each other in what amounts to a military-economic ménage à trois predicated on the perpetuation of insecurity, forced displacement, and right-wing tyranny,” she added.

MintPress also spoke with Manuel Rozental, a physician and longtime activist living in Cauca, where the recent repression has been most extreme. Rozental saw a number of parallels between Israel and Colombia.

“At the moment there is an uprising in Colombia from people fed up with a regime that only exploits and resorts to violence and force. The same is happening in Gaza,” he said.

In both cases, the U.S. either says nothing or it presents both sides as part of a process of polarization to cover up the fact there is one illegitimate regime suppressing and oppressing people. None of this violence in Colombia would be taking place if not for the support of the U.S. and its corporate interests. And such is the case as well in Israel.”

Colombia’s role in the system is distinctly similar to that of Israel’s, being the United States’ chief lieutenant in the region, attacking Venezuela, Bolivia, or any of its other progressive neighbors. It is also the chief location for American military bases in the area. For Rozental, the parallels between Colombia and the Israel-Palestine situation are “obvious”:

Israel spearheads U.S. interests in the Middle East in exchange for massive funding for the government for support for an increasingly fascist regime under the control of Benjamin Netanyahu as a strongman, like [former] President Uribe is in Colombia. This model generates enormous amounts of money for the U.S. military industry and transformed Israel into both a military superpower and a producer and exporter of security of war throughout the Middle East and the world.”

Protestors in both countries are being hit with tear gas that comes from the same Pennsylvania-based arms maker supplying both regimes. Both nations are also willing to do the dirty work that the United States would rather not get caught doing. Israel, for instance, became the main supplier of weapons to the Chilean fascist dictatorship under General Pinochet after public pressure forced the U.S. government to suspend military aid. It also supplied an estimated 95% of all arms to the pro-U.S. Argentinian military junta while it was in power (1976-1983).

Meanwhile, increased scrutiny of American training of tens of thousands of Latin American police and military officers in the tactics of repression has made the U.S. less keen to continue the practice, especially as many of the graduates of the infamous School of the Americas in Fort Benning, GA, have now been found guilty of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. Evan King, Colombia Program Director for the Witness for Peace Solidarity Collective in Bogota, told MintPress:

Colombia is the Israel of South America because they have started to export these tactics throughout the region. The U.S. loves this, the offshoring of indoctrinating military forces abroad. They don’t have to do it because the Colombians now do it. So you see Colombian forces training Honduran, Salvadoran or Mexican police. Most recently, you saw Colombian special forces going to Haiti to train Haitian security forces, who are now also gunning down protestors in the streets.”

Settler colonial states

The phrase “the Israel of Latin America” was originally an epithet against Colombia by former Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, highlighting how Colombia is a tool of American imperialism. However, former Colombian President Santos appropriated it as a compliment, declaring his people honorary Israelites, noting their similarities.

The two states are indeed far more similar than many realize. They are both highly militarized governments conducting seemingly endless wars against their indigenous populations, all the while using the rhetoric of pursuing a “peace process” which never seems to bring peace.

Likewise, both governments smear their opponents as “terrorists.” In Colombia, it is trade unions, leftist guerilla groups and indigenous and social leaders; in Israel, it is doctors, journalists and the Palestinian population more generally. Thus, essentially anyone standing in their way can be designated a terrorist and therefore, becomes a legitimate target.

Protesters block the entry of an Israeli Sand Cat, the same variety sold to Colombia, to a UK arms fair. Mark Kerrison | Alamy

“The kind of peace that the Israeli government would like is one where they could do whatever they wanted with the land and never give it back. And there is a similar approach to the conflict that continues here [in Colombia]. The government is in favor of the peace process, but mainly as a tool to open the country up to foreign investment,” King said, adding:

That’s where I think Colombia and Israel are very similar; counterinsurgency is no longer a tactic or a strategy to deal with a threat, but it is a way of governing and a reason for the state. The state is no longer to provide social services or guarantee people’s rights, but to protect against an internal enemy at all times and at all costs.”

The Colombian government under Duque’s mentor Alvaro Uribe oversaw a longstanding series of extrajudicial murders and massacres that resulted in as many as 10,000 deaths. Dubbed the “False Positives Scandal,” government forces would murder anyone they wished, later claiming their victims were members of narcoterrorist organizations. This allowed the government to eliminate opposition to it and intimidate other would-be foes into silence. This is why it was particularly notable when, last year, Prime Minister Netanyahu applauded Duque, stating: “Ivan, your leadership in the fight against terrorism sets an example for the rest of Latin America.” One week after the current protests were launched, Colombian Defense Minister Diego Molano stated that the country “faces the terrorist threat of criminal organizations.”

Both governments are also carrying out what amounts to settler colonial projects. In Colombia, it is a decidedly white elite attempting to clear the land of indigenous and Afro-Colombian farmers to make way for multinational corporations, while in Israel, it is the construction of a Jewish supremacist state on top of an already existing Palestinian one. Almost unknown in the West is the scale of the violence in Colombia; the United Nations estimates that there are currently 7.4 million displaced Colombians, a figure larger than even the highest estimates of Palestinian refugees.

“The treatment of indigenous and Afro-Colombians by the central government is as second-class citizens. They don’t really give them rights. It is not a formal thing, but if you go to black majority cities like port city Buenaventura, the difference is stark,” King said. “The way people are living there is, I assume, closer to the conditions in Gaza than in the rest of Colombia. There is no formal apartheid regime but it is clear that the whole point is for them to leave the land and create such extreme economic and humanitarian hardship that they will just depopulate the land themselves, without the need of force.”

Israel across Latin America

Throughout Latin America, Israel is a partisan issue. While leftist movements the continent over have offered their support to the Palestinians, seeing their struggle against imperialism as intertwined with theirs, the right have taken up Israel as their cause.

In 2010, President Chavez offered his full support towards Palestinian independence. “From the bottom of my soul, damn you, state of Israel! Terrorists and assassins! Long live the Palestinian people” he said. Four years later, in the wake of another Israeli attack on Gaza, Bolivian President Evo Morales formally declared Israel a “terrorist state.”

Almost as soon as Morales was overthrown in a U.S.-backed coup in 2019, the new, far-right government re-established ties with the Middle Eastern state and immediately invited IDF officials to the country to help deal with the nationwide protests against the coup. “We’ve invited them to help us. They’re used to dealing with terrorists. They know how to handle them,” new Interior Minister Arturo Murillo said of his guests. Foreign Minister Israel Katz expressed his satisfaction that a new “friendly government” had taken charge in Bolivia. In Venezuela, one of the first things Juan Guaidó did after he announced himself president of the country was to reveal he is working on renormalizing relations with Israel.

In Brazil, far-right president Jair Bolsonaro seems almost obsessed with Israel, so much so that he is rarely to be seen at a rally without multiple Israeli flags nearby. The 66-year-old former army officer also opened a trade office in Jerusalem and hinted that the embassy would soon follow. Other right-wing states such as Honduras have promised to do the same. Bolsonaro’s children also allowed themselves to be photographed wearing IDF and Mossad shirts. Netanyahu expressed his appreciation, stating that his government had “no better friends than the people and government of Brazil.”

Jair Bolsonaro’s sons pictured wearing shirts glorifying the Israeli military. Photo | Twitter

The reason for the preoccupation with Israel across much of the region comes from the rise and power of the conservative Evangelical church. As journalist and ordained minister Chris Hedges explained to MintPress last week, many right-wing Christian prophecies about the end times include the Jews returning to the Holy Land and the destruction of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. Only then will the righteous ascend to heaven and the damned (including the Jews and other non-believers) be cast into hell. Bolsonaro and other new right leaders draw their most loyal support from these groups.

Israel is also helping to prop up Chile’s beleaguered president Sebastian Piñera amid nationwide protests and widespread contempt, like it did with Pinochet 40 years ago. As Fernández noted, Israel has sold weapons and anti-riot gear to Chile, as well as training their army and police force, know-how that no doubt came in useful while dealing with a national revolt.

A better future?

While violence in Colombia and Palestine has captured headlines, there is some hope on the horizon for those suffering in both countries. Polls show that Duque’s government looks weakened as a political force and that former leftist guerilla Gustavo Petro is leagues ahead of his competitors for next year’s presidential election.

Petro lost in 2018, amid threats on his life, widespread vote buying, and rigging, and a generalized threat from far-right paramilitaries promising to kill anyone who dared vote for him. However, Duque’s disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and his all-out push for economic shock therapy has alienated much of his base. If Petro can stay alive until next year — not an easy task for progressive Colombian politicians — victory could be his.

On Palestine too, the mood appears to be shifting. Where once only unquestioning support for Israel was the norm, senior politicians, cable news presenters and columnists have unequivocally denounced Israeli aggression, with many echoing human rights organizations in labeling it an apartheid state. The Black Lives Matter movement has offered its support to Palestine, with many elected officials openly linking the violence against Palestinians with the violence against people of color in the United States.

“I rise today in solidarity with the Palestinian people,” began Rep. Cori Bush’s (D-MO) speech in Congress earlier this month, a statement unthinkable just a few years ago. “The equipment that they used to brutalize us [at Ferguson] is the same equipment that we send to the Israeli military and police to terrorize Palestinians,” she added.

“The ethnic cleansing continues now,”said Michigan Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib at a protest outside the State Department. “What they are doing to the Palestinian people is what they continue to do to our black brothers and sisters here; …it is all interconnected.”

With their myriad of links, we should also see the violence against Colombians and Palestinians as interconnected. Perhaps their liberation will be, too.

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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.

Featured image is by Antonio Cabrera

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

Visit and follow us on Instagram at @crg_globalresearch.

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The well-reputed online magazine Nature.com published on May 24, 2021, a research-report finding that people who had a corona infection have also developed antibodies and will most likely be immune against the disease for the rest of their lives. See this. Let’s hope it will not be “fact-checked” out.

Censuring the truth. What a pity! What can now be called “Covid Deep State” – the same “superior and super-rich elite” buys practically all the mainstream media – television, radio and print – in basically all the 193 UN member countries. Looks like there is no escape. That’s what they would like. That’s why the entire world had to be locked down for the virus at once on or around the 15^th of March 2020.

It is an epidemiological impossibility that the entire world at once is affected by a virus, let alone by what WHO then dared to call a “pandemic”. However, the truth always seeps through, sooner or later. Just think of Leonard Cohen’s extraordinary anthem “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”. The truth will always sooner or later penetrate the darkness.

Right now, it looks like the time is coming when the huge heavy vessel that carries this somber elite’s lies and deceits straight ahead, ignoring all objections and arguments, and as if there was no obstacle to hold it back – as money buys everything – this vessel is slowly but gradually and it seems unstoppably turning. People are awaking around the globe.

Independent scientists, virologists, medical doctors with integrity and the warmth of true humanity have abandoned the matrix and taken the Red Pill. This is in reference to the 1999 movie, “The Matrix” – where taking the red pill means the willingness to learn a potentially unsettling or life-changing truth, or remaining in contented dark ignorance with the blue pill. Amazingly, the movie has not yet been banned and “fact-checked” off the screens and internet.

And so, the study referred to by Nature.com of acquired immunity – probably for life – makes vaccination not only redundant, but outright dangerous. The text is also available in German, see here. The study has revealed that after 11 months of infection antibodies are still present.

Dr, Mike Yeadon, former Vice President Pfizer and Chief of Science at Pfizer, a top virologist, has studied SARS cases in 2019 from the SARS outbreak in China of 2002 / 2003. He found still antibodies in all of his examined former SARS-infected people. He concludes that SARS, alias covid antibodies are therefore, effective for at least 17 years and following his experience he assumes for life. See here.

This actually means that all those who have had the covid infection have developed various degrees of antibodies which make vaccination not only unnecessary, but dangerous, as the vaccine, especially the mRNA-type “emergency gene therapy” – never approved by CDC / DFA as a vaccine – could affect and destroy a person’s naturally acquired immune system, not only against covid, but against a wide range of diseases. Therefore, coercing people with natural antibodies into taking the jab is a crime. So-called mRNA “scientists” know exactly what they are doing.

Dr. Mike Yeadon goes a step further, claiming that the mRNA-jab contains a spike protein, called syncytin-1, vital for the formation of human placenta in women. If the “vaccine” – or rather the CDC-called emergency gene therapy – works, Yeadon says, “we form an immune response against the spike protein, then we are also training the female body to attack syncytin-1 which could lead to infertility of women of an unspecified duration.” In other words, likely for the rest of their child-bearing life.

On 1 December 2020, Dr. Yeadon and German Dr. Wolfgang Wodarg wrote to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), urging them to carry out vaccine trials, including for their effect on women’s infertility. They never received an answer.

In an article published by Global Research on 22 April, here, Nathaniel Linderman referred to a study by Dr. Bart Classen, claiming that mRNA Pfizer jabs – allow me to repeat: Not vaccines but emergency gene-therapies – caused different kinds of neurodegenerative diseases, including the risk of Prion disease, see this.

Dr. Bart Classen’s research indicates that the Pfizer untested mRNA vaccine, creates new proteins that can actually integrate into the human genome, as reported by the National Library of Medicine. In other words, degenerative brain conditions may appear at any time in your life after receiving the vaccine.

The Pfizer vaccine is, however, not the only type of untested inoculation that causes neurodegenerative defects, many of them deadly and most of them unreversible or only partially curable. There are Moderna, J&J, AstraZeneca and more.

Founder Robert Kennedy Jr. of Children’s Health Defense – The Defender – reports on 2 June 2021 about a 38-year-old woman, who nearly died after a J&J covid-vaccine. She suffered various organ failures. The woman was healthy until she received the J&J untested covid “vaccine”. Within a week, she started experiencing headaches, abdominal pain and nausea and was eventually diagnosed with severe blood clots that caused most of her vital organs to fail. Only intense medical treatment, 33 days of hospitalization, of which 22 days of intensive care, saved her life – and left her with a medical bill of over a US$ 1 million – for which nobody admits responsibility. See this.

God only knows how many unreported cases there are – some very likely even worse and many deaths. And more injuries and death may be expected by vaccinated people as time goes on – see Dr. Yeadon’s suspicion that we may be set up for mass depopulation.

The young lady, who received the untested J&J covid “vaccine”, is now in occupational and physical therapy. She has to learn basic motor skills, including writing and using a fork, and she had to relearn how to walk. However, she will never again be the same as before the disastrous jab.

And there is as of yet no relief for her one-million-dollar medical bills.

Since the government shields vaccine makers from law suits under the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 which effectively granted vaccine manufacturers freedom from civil tort liability. Instead, several years later, the US government established the Countermeasures Injury Compensation Program (CICO), which turns down most of the applicants, i.e., fewer than one in ten injured people receive compensation. And this is in the US. In other countries such compensation does not exist, unless the government assumes the risks – which is not (yet) formalized in most countries, if in any.

For example, in Europe, no EU country has declared assuming the covid-vaxx injury compensation risk. When not too long ago a journalist asked the Swiss Health Minister, what about compensation for vaccination injuries? – He was taken aback by the question and stuttered something to the effect, “We haven’t thought of it yet, but there are unlikely going to be injuries.”

In the meantime, by the end of May 2021, the EU recorded more than 12,000 deaths related to covid vaccines and more than 100,000 serious injuries – and these figures may be vastly underreported. Yet, no official compensation scheme has been established. And governments who follow the Covid Deep State orders on fulfilling quotas of vaccinated people, are quiet and ignore the topic.

No wonder, the “Covid Cabal”, those ultra-rich who claim to call the shots on covid and its eugenist agenda are getting nervous. With such messages of immediate vaxx-injuries and predictions of mass depopulation within the next 3 to 4 years, people may wake up – and start resisting. See this by Dr. Joseph Mercola and Dr. Mike Yeadon, this and this.

In the heat of the vaxx-haste and people becoming increasingly alert, representatives of the Deep Dark Covid State, the instigators of the crime of recent human history, have to take recourse to threats. The Editor in Chief of the reputed Natur.com online research paper claimed having recently received two anonymous calls from people who pretended to work for the US government – is it true? – saying that they are themselves not taking the vaccination, but there was a quota that on average 70% of the world population had to be vaccinated by 2022.

See this testimonial video (28 May 2021) from Natural News: the Vaccine Deep State issues a DIRECT THREAT to Natural News – “you follow our orders or else…”.

Something to think about – but always with the premise – they will not win. Our human spirit and will power to resist is much stronger than their Luciferian plan.  We must wake up in solidarity – and we will, that’s why they are so desperate to “vaccinate” as many people as possible – 70% of the world population is their target – as fast as possible, before we wake up. Once you are vaccinated its too late to change. The effects maybe irreversible.

But we are already awake – right?

As of 2 June 2021, according to WHO, a worldwide total of 1 581 509 628 have been vaccinated. See this. Out of an estimated 7.8 billion (2020), that’s about 20%. There is a long way to go to 70%, notwithstanding the hundreds of millions, if not in the billions, who outright refuse the jab. And if 70% is really their target, then coercion might have just begun.

But not to worry.

People are just about to wake up, as they start realizing that there is a much more sinister agenda behind the forced and coerced vaccination – and especially as their injury and death rates increasingly surface and are becoming known. Our human mind and collective will-power is much stronger than their diabolical darkness – no matter the money they put behind their sinister objective.

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

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

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Pentagon to Use War Games to Smuggle Weapons to Ukrainian Army, Extremist Formations for War in Donbass: Russian Defense Ministry

By Rick Rozoff, June 03, 2021

Today’s TASS cites Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, warning that the U.S. and NATO will exploit this year’s Sea Breeze military exercise in Ukraine to smuggle advanced weaponry and munitions to the nation’s armed forces and fascistic paramilitaries and mercenaries of the infamous Azov Battalion and similar units. The arms will be used for the ongoing war in the Donbass region.

The Etymological Animal Must Slip Out of the Cage of Habit to Grasp Truth

By Edward Curtin, June 03, 2021

Words slip out of our mouths to surprise us.  Thoughts slip into our minds to shock us.  Dreams slip into our nights to sometimes slip into our waking thoughts to startle us.  And, as the wonderful singer/songwriter Paul Simon, sings, we are always “slip sliding away,” a reminder that can be a spur to courage and freedom or an inducement to fear and shut-upness.

Israel’s New Mossad Chief Threatens More Assassinations and Attacks Inside Iran

By Dave DeCamp, June 03, 2021

On Tuesday, the new head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency suggested more Israeli covert attacks and assassinations inside Iran should be expected even as the US and other world powers are negotiating a revival of the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

The War of Corporations on Our Children

By Emanuel Pastreich, June 03, 2021

The older generation takes a strange pleasure in reiterating comments about the absence of responsibility, the lack of focus and the indulgence of young people, using these arguments as a means of excusing the bleak future that their children and grandchildren face. Those arguments are rarely original, but rather they are force-fed to baby boomers by the media as a means of relieving them of all responsibility and of distracting them from the true causes of the tragic shifts that they observe obliquely.

The Campaign against Ivermectin: WHO’s Chief Scientist Served with Legal Notice for Disinformation and Suppression of Evidence

By Colin Todhunter, June 03, 2021

On 25 May 2021, the Indian Bar Association (IBA) served a 51-page legal notice on Dr Soumya Swaminathan, the Chief Scientist at the World Health Organisation (WHO), for “her act of spreading disinformation and misguiding the people of India, in order to fulfil her agenda.”

57 Top Scientists and Doctors Release Shocking Study on COVID Vaccines and Demand Immediate Stop to All Vaccinations

By Dr. Roxana Bruno, Dr. Peter McCullough, and et al., June 03, 2021

There are two certainties regarding the global distribution of Covid-19 vaccines. The first is that governments and the vast majority of the mainstream media are pushing with all their might to get these experimental drugs into as many people as possible. The second is that those who are willing to face the scorn that comes with asking serious questions about vaccines are critical players in our ongoing effort to spread the truth.

US Government Safety and Health Authority (OSHA) Suspends Requirement that Employers Report Vaccine-Related Injuries

By Matthew Vadum, June 03, 2021

In order to encourage American workers to get vaccinated, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has suspended the legal requirement for employers to report work-related injuries resulting from vaccinations aimed at combating the CCP virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.

‘Self-Spreading’ Vaccines Pose Multiple Risks to Society — Including the End of Informed Consent

By Children’s Health Defense, June 03, 2021

Proponents argue self-disseminating vaccines could mean they no longer have to run complex mass vaccination programs. Critics say the vaccines pose many health risks and would also spell the end of informed consent. In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security co-sponsored the “pandemic exercise,” Event 201.

Video: Nasrallah Pronounced Dead by MSM Amid Deepest Crisis in Lebanese History

By South Front, June 03, 2021

Lebanon is in crisis, both political and economic, and this promises to deteriorate further. According to the World Bank, the country’s economic collapse is likely to rank among the world’s worst financial crises since the mid-19th century. The complete meltdown of Lebanon’s economy during the past 18 months is widely blamed on corruption and mismanagement by the country’s hereditary political elite.

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I don’t often restate my twitter posts here on the blog, but today’s development by Biden is so historic a betrayal and reversal to satisfy corporate friends and Republicans it deserves a repost. It’s a ‘double reversal’ and so typical a Democrat party betrayal.

Today Biden announced he was CUTTING corporate taxes to 15%. Trump had cut corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%. Biden ran for office pledging to raise that back to 28%. He then reneged and said it would be only 25%. He then agreed with European Union finance ministers to cut taxes on US multinationals to only 15%. Now he announces he’ll CUT US corporate taxes to 15%–instead of raising to even 25%. This comes after talks with Republicans.

Not to outdo himself, Biden next CUTS his proposed infrastructure bill further as well. Starting out at $2.25T, he last week reduced that to $1.7T. Now, however, he offers to CUT that to $1T!

In the past two weeks it was apparent that Biden and Republicans were engaging in a ‘smoke and mirrors’ negotiations on the so called American Jobs Act, aka Infrastructure bill: Biden had agreed to break out negotiations on a separate track on $400B in the bill that was actually a subsidy to US auto and tech corporations, to pay for their R&D on electric car investments. It included as well $50B subsidy to US auto corps for semiconductor chip production.

Auto companies had cut production (i.e. gone on strike) claiming a chip shortage and began laying off workers. All this just as Congress was taking up proposals on chip subsidy of $50B. Once it appeared the $50B would pass, however, somehow auto companies–despite their claimed chip shortage–now miraculously boosted production once again. The alleged chip shortage was clearly a lobbying pressure ploy by the companies. They’ll now get the $50B chip subsidy, plus another $173B in the infrastructure bill to subsidize their electric car development and charging stations build out. The rest of the $400B corp subsidy in the Infrastructure bill will benefit tech corps’ R&D and manufacturers.

The $400B subsidy has nothing to do with infrastructure. But will now fast track in passage while the rest of the human investments in the infrastructure bill of $2.25T, then $1.7T, and now $1T will lag.

Biden’s cut of his infrastructure proposals to $1T brings it in line with Republican counter proposals of roughly $928B. However, McConnell & Co. $928B includes moving $350B in spending allocated in the already passed Covid Relief Act (aka American Rescue Plan) in March. It also includes $308B also already allocated to be spent in transportation funding.

So the Republican bill is just agreeing to spend what has already been spent!

It’s almost certain Biden will include the $308B already allocated for transport spending in his reduced $1T infrastructure offer. That’s West Virginia blue dog Democrat Senator, Manchin’s, proposal. So Biden’s only proposing $700B–a long way from his original $2.25T.

Biden’s dual move to CUT corp taxes even more than Trump had and to cut his proposed infrastructure spending by more than $1.5T, represent unilateral moves by him without any real concessions by the Republicans. It all looks like a well orchestrated ‘deal’ from the beginning, overlaid with a public appearance that there are ‘negotiations’ under way

One is reminded of last summer, when Shumer-Pelosi reduced their proposed spending by $1T on their ‘Heroes Act’, which McConnell and Republicans simply refused to counter. Democrats have a history of capitulation, poor negotiating strategy and ability, and a general capitulation to Republicans on fiscal policy.

Further back, one is also reminded of Obama’s policy. In 2009 his fiscal stimulus was a mere $787B (of which $300B were tax cuts for businesses). He then CUT social program spending in August 2011 by twice that amount, $1.5T.

Biden’s lastest moves are deja vu Democrat party perfidy. Biden reveals he–like Trump, Obama, Bush and Clinton before him–is intent on continuing the Neoliberal fiscal policy of cut, cut, cut corporate and investor taxes + promise social program spending, cut that back, and then take even more back in subsequent austerity proposals once the immediate crisis has passed.

In the interim, Neoliberalism means the Fed giving trillions of dollars in free money to banks, investors and corporations. In one year the Fed has pumped $4T of virtually free money into these folks, matching in one year the amount Obama gave them in four years, 2009-13!

By these recent moves Biden and Democrats are on board, in other words, with the decades long policy of continual further corporate tax cutting, temporary fiscal program spending during a crisis, followed by eventual austerity take-backs.

Biden’s just announced CUTS to corporate taxes and proposals for infrastructure spending are clearly Republican-McConnell demands. Biden and Dems once again clearly capitulate. Then again, maybe the capitulation was all planned out months ago!

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Jack Rasmus.

Dr. Jack Rasmus is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Newsmax.com

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Washington is about to control the data of all financial transactions in the world. With the objective of combating financial crimes, the American government is about to pass a law that greatly expands the inspection power of financial regulatory agencies, which will have the freedom to use new technologies that allow them to supervise operations outside American territory. In practice, this could create a scenario of global data enforcement, in which all individuals and organizations would be subject to US agencies.

In early 2021, the US Congress overturned the presidential veto on a last year’s bill that called for new measures to combat money laundering. This law provides new technologies and financial resources to FinCen (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network), an agency under the US Department of the Treasury, which regulates and monitors suspicious financial transactions globally. The project has corporate transparency at its core, which requires all companies to reveal their owners and beneficiaries in the new FinCEN registry, creating a comprehensive data control system.

If this project is put into practice, events such as massive data leaks, as happened last year, could become more and more common. In 2020, FinCen unveiled more than 2,000 money laundering financial transaction documents across multiple countries. In all, illegal transactions amounted to 2 trillion dollars. While the benefit of uncovering illicit schemes is positive, the invasive US policy to monitor transactions in other countries can be a major problem and a real attack on the sovereignty of countries where there are supposedly happening illegal transactions. Last year, FinCen managed to reveal illegal transactions in more than 3,000 financial organizations in the UK, as well as banks in the UAE and Germany, among others. The practice of violating jurisdictions to incriminate bank users and impose new sanctions can be truly dangerous and cause great legal uncertainty in countries monitored by Washington. Still, with these new measures, the American agency will receive much more resources and it is speculated that it will acquire practically unlimited power, “invading” any country to “regulate” financial transactions.

However, it should be noted that currently the focus of American policy to combat money laundering is the control of the cryptocurrency market. The reasons for this are obvious. Cryptocurrencies are an extremely difficult financial mechanism to control and allow virtually any transaction to be carried out by anyone anywhere in the world, from simple individual applications to massive funding of terrorist organizations. Gaining control over the electronic currency market is a challenge for any sovereign national state today, but this obviously does not justify measures that violate the jurisdiction of other states. The cryptocurrency market is currently valued at 1.5 trillion dollars, which motivates Washington to try to impose a strict framework for these assets, considering that the absence of adequate supervision over the circulation of electronic currencies allows the creation of new and more complex forms of money laundering, increasing financial crimes and threatening the financial well-being of businesses and individuals. Recently, the first US government interdepartmental meeting on cryptocurrencies took place. Officials from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation discussed joint strategies regarding cryptocurrencies, elevating the topic to a national security issue under strict control of the US state.

Late last year, FinCen tried to impose strict measures on cryptocurrencies, proposing to force cryptocurrency traders and digital wallets to collect personal information from users. Given the impact that such a measure could have on various financial sectors, Biden interrupted the procedures for implementing the proposal in his first days in power, but the topic remained extremely strong and forced the White House to resume the discussion. Now, the matter is being addressed from the perspective of combating financial crimes and money laundering, which will likely motivate the Biden government to authorize the measures previously proposed.

In short, the US is developing a strategy to combat financial crimes that consists of granting FinCen unlimited powers and a large number of resources for investments in new technologies, which will allow the agency to comprehensively oversee financial transactions carried out across the planet, without any respect for the sovereignty and jurisdiction of States. In addition, FinCen’s new focus will be the control of transactions in cryptocurrencies, which raises even more concerns about how the method of investigation and inspection will take place, considering that the virtual and dynamic flow of these assets will certainly demand even more invasive measures on the part of the American agency for data collection.

Although there is great concern regarding the sovereignty of countries that will be harmed by US inspections, the new measures to combat financial crimes will certainly have a profound impact on the global economy itself. In order to identify some criminal transactions, US authorities will collect data from millions of people and companies, breaking privacy principles and harming lawful businesses. As far as financial crime is concerned, the result will be the development of more complex and confidential forms of money laundering and illegal transactions, while lawful operations will be the most affected.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

In order to encourage American workers to get vaccinated, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has suspended the legal requirement for employers to report work-related injuries resulting from vaccinations aimed at combating the CCP virus, which causes the disease COVID-19.

OSHA enforces the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

The statute covers “most private sector employers and their workers, in addition to some public sector employers and workers in the 50 states and certain territories and jurisdictions under federal authority. Those jurisdictions include the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Wake Island, Johnston Island, and the Outer Continental Shelf Lands.”

This suspension of the law by OSHA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), doesn’t change the liability faced by employers under workers’ compensation laws or under civil personal injury laws, according to the nonprofit group Liberty Counsel.

Earlier in May, the OSHA website stated that employers could be held liable if they required employees to receive COVID-19-related injections as a condition of employment and said employees then experienced adverse reactions.

According to Liberty Counsel, a “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) section of OSHA’s website stated: “If you require your employees to be vaccinated as a condition of employment (i.e., for work-related reasons), then any adverse reaction to the COVID-19 vaccine is work-related. The adverse reaction is recordable if it is a new case under 29 CFR 1904.6 and meets one or more of the general recording criteria in 29 CFR 1904.7.”

But visitors to the same website’s FAQ section now see a different message, which reads:

“DOL and OSHA, as well as other federal agencies, are working diligently to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations. OSHA does not wish to have any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination, and also does not wish to disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts. As a result, OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination through May 2022. We will reevaluate the agency’s position at that time to determine the best course of action moving forward.”

Liberty Counsel apparently inferred from the changed guidance that the White House influenced the decision to drop enforcement of the reporting requirement from a year.

“No doubt receiving pressure from the Biden administration, OSHA suspended the enforcement requirement to record adverse injuries or death from COVID shots until May 2022 in order to push the COVID shots. This politically motivated change by OSHA is unprecedented,” the group stated in a release.

Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver criticized the decision to change the OSHA guidance.

“Employers that require employees to take a COVID shot may be held liable for adverse injuries and death. The fact that OSHA will not enforce recording requirements does not alter the legal liability of employers who require, coerce, or incentivize employees to take COVID shots,” he said in a statement.

“OSHA’s suspension of the recording requirement so as not to discourage experimental COVID shots reveals that the Biden administration could care less about the collateral damage being caused by the COVID shots. The people can see this biased agenda. They are not stupid.”

OSHA confirmed in a statement to The Epoch Times why it suspended the reporting requirement.

“OSHA reconsidered its policy in recognition of federal agencies’ ongoing work to encourage COVID-19 vaccinations,” a Department of Labor spokesperson said.

“The agency does not want to give any appearance of discouraging workers from receiving COVID-19 vaccination or disincentivize employers’ vaccination efforts.”

None of the available COVID-19 shots are approved or licensed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Liberty Counsel noted. They have instead been classified as an emergency use authorization (EUA), which means their use can’t be required.

The FDA acknowledges on its website that it “must ensure that recipients of the vaccine under an EUA are informed, to the extent practicable given the applicable circumstances … that they have the option to accept or refuse the vaccine, and of any available alternatives to the product.”

EUA authority under section 564 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, permits the FDA to take steps to protect public health against “chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear (CBRN) threats including infectious diseases, by facilitating the availability and use of medical countermeasures needed during public health emergencies.”

When the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declares that an EUA is needed, as it did on March 27, 2020, regarding the ongoing pandemic, the FDA may authorize otherwise unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used “in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases or conditions caused by CBRN threat agents when certain criteria are met, including there are no adequate, approved, and available alternatives.”

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Joe Biden’s extensive interest in Ukraine during his tenure as Obama’s vice president meant that US attention towards the country would instantly be elevated once the new administration came into power. The Burisma scandal which implicated Hunter Biden and which became a problem for Joe Biden on the campaign trail, combined with Biden’s own apparent frailty and avoidance of extensive public engagements, have meant that Biden himself is in fact yet to have a telephone conversation with Zelensky.

However, whether he deliberately chose to outsource Ukraine policy to his trusted advisors or they are taking initiative in order to fill the vacuum of power left by their boss’ incapacity, US Ukraine policy has taken a number of new twists and turns in the less than two months of the Biden Administration.

The Biden Administration’s actions so far indicate a certain degree of impatience with the goings-on in Kiev which is behaving in an all too independent fashion on many issues. Kiev’s decision to nationalize Motor Sich, an aircraft engine manufacturer whose purchase was sought by Chinese investors thus robbing Ukraine of a significant influx of badly needed hard currency, took place after Washington had expressed displeasure at Chinese companies’ foothold in Ukraine which moreover brings with it access to Soviet-era technologies attractive to China’s aerospace industries.

This action was taken in spite of the considerable risk of Chinese retaliation, which indeed occurred in the form of China’s Foreign Ministry informing its Ukrainian counterpart that it would no longer respect their wishes concerning economic activities in the Crimea, something that Chinese firms have thus far shied away from. The US Embassy in Kiev’s instant endorsement of Zelensky’s shutdown of three opposition TV stations and the placement of sanctions, in violation of Ukraine’s own laws, on one of Ukraine’s opposition leaders Medvedchuk on the grounds that these were involved in spreading so-called “Russian disinformation” suggests that Washington was at the very least aware of the move and may even have prompted it. US sanctioning of Igor Kolomoysky on the basis of his corrupting Ukraine’s politics indicates that Zelensky had not gone far enough in fulfilling Washington’s wishes. In doing this Washington demonstrated it is willing to publicly humiliate Zelensky should he fail to display appropriate deference to their wishes. The question at this point becomes, in which direction will Washington push Zelensky? How far, what means will Washington use to get its way, and to what extent will Zelensky resist?

The greatest service that Ukraine could render Biden’s administration is to launch an all-out assault on Novorossia. A pitched battle between Ukrainian and DPR/LPR forces would instantly create the appropriate headlines and provide the necessary additional pretexts to condemn Russia and introduce more economic sanctions. It would then deliver the outcome that no amount of phony poisonings of Navalny could, namely the suspension or even shut-down of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which has become such a thorn in the side of the Anglo-Saxon powers.

A major military campaign involving several brigades supported by airpower and the now-operational Bayraktar TB-2 drones in an effort to replicate Azerbaijan’s success against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh would place Moscow before the unenviable choice of abandoning the Donbass to its fate or committing its regular military forces to battle in Novorossia’s defense.

Whether Ukraine’s political leadership is willing to undertake such a desperate measure, in a country whose president suffers from a 20% approval rating and which has seen extensive protests against the recent sharp increase in utility costs, is another question. On the one hand, Ukrainian troop movements near the Donbass have generated considerable attention, and exchanges of fire between Ukrainian and Novorossian forces appear to have continued at an elevated pace over the past several weeks. At the same time, no extraordinary measures such as the recall of reservists or closure of borders in order to prevent military-age males from leaving the country have been observed. While Ukraine’s Rada is considering laws making draft evasion more harshly punishable, these laws will not have an immediate impact, and appear to be a reaction to the failure to build up a professional army of volunteers or even to give the draftees a positive reason to serve. It has even been pointed out that the Ukrainian troop movements have been so ostentatious and lacking in even elementary efforts to preserve concealment and surprise that they represent a “war of nerves”, an exercise in brinksmanship, and possibly an effort to simulate action for the benefit of Washington, rather than genuine preparations for an offensive. A train carrying a reinforced tank company that had been spotted slowly passing three different railroad crossings in eastern Ukraine over the course of several days looks much like an operation staged for the benefit of ubiquitous smart phone cameras.

Therefore the likelihood of the Ukrainian military opting for a large-scale offensive remains low due to the fear of heavy and pointless losses which might cause Ukraine’s military morale to collapse, with unpredictable consequences. Small-scale raids to capture select positions, shelling of Novorossia’s towns and cities, even a staged atrocity, remain more plausible and attractive from the political point of view. Ukraine’s most dangerous military capability is represented by Bayraktar drones, cruise missiles like the Neptun, and short-range ballistic missiles currently in service and being developed, because their use would not entail the danger of major Ukrainian personnel losses. Moreover, Novorossia’s forces would be hard pressed to retaliate in kind against such strikes and Russian efforts to do so would be highly provocative internationally and would carry the risk of causing Ukrainian civilian casualties. Fortunately for Novorossia, the drone park remains fairly small and the drones themselves are vulnerable to Novorossia’s air defenses, while the cruise and ballistic missiles are still years from large-scale operational deployment. The sort of missile bombardment that would represent a genuine threat to Novorossia’s unrecognized republics is still years away. By the time such a serious threat could materialize, Novorossia’s forces would likely have their own means of retaliation in the form of barrage munitions, also referred to as “suicide drones” that could be produced on the spot in Donetsk and Lugansk. However, Ukraine’s current capabilities are sufficient to launch provocations, including the bombardment of civilian targets as was the case in Mariupol in 2014.

That Ukraine’s military is unwilling to risk another misadventure against Novorossia is evident enough, as is Zelensky’s reluctance to go down in history as the president who destroyed Ukraine. These considerations are unlikely to be salient for decisionmakers in Washington, who need Ukraine to advance US interests and are rather less concerned about the US advancing Ukraine’s interests. But the lengths to which Washington is willing to go to pressure Zelensky are still unclear, though the possibility of outright blackmail raised its head when a prominent Maidan propagandist Dmitry Gordon announced that on March 15, the “Ides of March” immortalized by the assassination of Julius Caesar, Ukraine would face a trial of historic proportions once a certain bombshell news story was revealed. While March 15 came and went with no bombshells or even duds, Gordon did reveal that the event consisted of a Bellingcat “investigation” into the SBU plot to lure Wagner PMC contractors into Ukraine in order to have them put on trial. The “bombshell” aspect of the Bellingcat effort is that the plot failed because of a highly placed source in Zelensky’s own presidential cabinet, who leaked it to Russian intelligence services. Considering Bellingcat’s reputation as a firm which does info-warfare “hits” on designated targets and Gordon’s hyping of the potential impact of the film once it becomes public, one has to consider the possibility that Bellingcat is part of a campaign to blackmail or even oust Zelensky from office should he fail to satisfy Washington’s demands.

As noted previously, Zelensky has taken a dim view of Washington’s meddling in Ukraine’s affairs, though it remains to be seen whether he is able to stand up to even his own national security officials who ostensibly are subordinate to him but in reality take orders from Washington. Lacking the independent power base that allowed Poroshenko to resist Washington’s initiatives for “reforming” Ukraine’s economy, Zelensky may yet prove the ideal president from Washington’s perspective, if not Ukraine’s.

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Italian physician Dr. Andrea Stramezzi defied his government by continuing to use hydroxychloroquine on his patients even after it was banned based on the World Health Organization’s recommendation which was based on a fraudulent study published in the Lancet medical journal.

Stramezzi gives a detailed explanation of covid as a disease, it’s progression, and how to treat it while naming the culprits responsible, he says, for killing millions by ignoring and suppressing proper treatment of covid (which he says could have been brought under complete control by now), while promoting dangerous, unnecessary vaccines instead.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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The Biden Administration has proposed what it calls a $2.3 trillion “infrastructure” legislation which it calls the “American Jobs Plan.” Far from addressing the huge deficit in America’s highway, bridges, railway, electric grid, water supply and such economically vital infrastructure that would address critical problems in the functioning of the economy, the Biden planners have cynically taken a politically popular word, “infrastructure,” and packed hundreds of billions of dollars into economically wasteful, destructive initiatives having more to do with the Green Agenda than rebuilding a healthy economy. If passed, it will have negative consequences for the world’s once-leading economy with serious geopolitical implications.

In March Biden signed another huge extra-budget bill, the $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan.” That one was allegedly to aim at dealing with the impact of COVID. The bill dealt in fact with almost everything but COVID. The act is a grab bag of partisan pet projects. Among other things the act provided $12 billion for foreign aid; $15 billion for health care for illegal immigrants; $112 billion for welfare benefits and a generous $350 billion for Democrat-run states. Less than 10% was directed at COVID relief measures. In politics how you frame or package a bill is more important than the true content. Critics claim these huge spending bills are aimed at buying a future Democratic voter base with government handouts.

‘Everything is Infrastructure’

No surprise then that now the Biden team has rushed another multi-trillion bill to Congress. The $2.3 trillion American Jobs Plan is a bill where way less than half of the measures have to do with conventional infrastructure investment in roads, rails, electric grids, water supplies, ports or airports—all the areas essential to the efficient functioning of the economy. A total of $750 billion or only 32% of the total actually goes for infrastructure such as highway or bridge repairs. Yet even that total includes only $115 billion of real infrastructure for highways, bridges, and surface streets. But the $750 transportation infrastructure section proposes $174 billion for more government subsidies for Green Agenda electric vehicles in what might be called a “make Elon Musk richer” subsidy. The White House fact sheet says that this will help make the US more competitive with China’s electric cars. But the best selling E-car in China today is Musk’s Tesla. That $174 billion is far more than the total $115 billion earmarked for real highway, bridge and transportation infrastructure spending. Yet the White House promotes the bill by referring to the need to address America’s crumbling highways and bridges as though this was what the bill is focused on.

The Biden bill defines pretty much everything as “infrastructure.” His American Jobs Plan calls among other items for spending on what it terms “care infrastructure.” They define this as $25 billion to upgrade child care facilities and $400 billion expenditure on care for the elderly and disabled, spending which might be justifiable, but not as “infrastructure.”

Buried in the text of the bill’s $100 billion to go to electric grid modernization and another $27 billion for something called a “clean energy and sustainability accelerator,” is a proposal that would extend generous tax credits to promote solar and wind energy alternatives to reach “zero carbon” electricity by 2035, a ruinous idea. It has been estimated that to make US electricity 100% carbon free, it would require a staggering 25% to 50% of all land in the United States. Today’s coal, gas and nuclear grid requires 0.5 percent of land in the United States. Clearly Biden’s Green jobs plan is hiding a far more sinister agenda.

What the Administration also hides is the fact that it would be a huge boon to China which has a global near-monopoly on production of solar panels, and Denmark or Germany which make most windmill turbines today. Those do not create American jobs as Biden Climate Czar John Kerry once claimed. Ironically, the Biden Administration sees Germany as the model, the place where the Merkel green energy program has created the highest electric costs in all Europe.

Then the Biden bill proposes $10 billion to create something called a “Civilian Climate Corps,” something that deliberately sounds like Roosevelt’s Depression era Civilian Conservation Corps, but with Green New Deal politically correct “woke”update. The White House says that it will “put a new, diverse generation of Americans to work conserving our public lands and waters, bolstering community resilience (?), and advancing environmental justice (whatever that means-w.e.) through a new Civilian Climate Corps.” No doubt in Biden-Harris America that has something to do with race and gender, but not with infrastructure.

Another $20 Billion should go “to Advance Racial Equity and Environmental Justice.” Apparently that means destroying existing highway infrastructure in cities where it is claimed to divide neighborhoods racially. Further an impressive $213 Billion will go to build or retrofit 2 Million Houses and Buildings. Then it adds another $40 billion for public housing, arguing this will “disproportionately benefit women, people of color, and people with disabilities.” For anyone familiar with America’s inner-city public housing ghettoes, this is hardly positive for the people who should live in the places.

In one of the most curious “infrastructure” proposals, Biden would spend $100 billion for New Public Schools and Making School Lunches “Greener.” This comes just after the COVID bill in March gave an unprecedented $128 billion for public schools. The American system gives control over education to local municipal governments and not the Federal government, leading some to suggest the agenda of the Biden crew is imposing a stealth Federal government takeover of public school education. What the Biden people mean by “green lunches” includes “reducing or eliminating the use of paper plates and other disposable materials.” Presumably that includes eliminating plastic knives and forks, leaving the children perhaps to eat with their fingers?

And, for good “infrastructure” measure, more billions will go to “Eliminate ‘Racial and Gender Inequities’ in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) research and development.” How that helps America’s crumbling basic infrastructure is not made clear.

All this $2.3 billion grab bag of mainly Green Agenda projects will be financed by the largest tax increases since the 1990’s as well as a wider Federal deficit.

The Real Infrastructure Deficit

The entire Green New Deal and UN Agenda 2030 is a fraudulent cover to deliberately deindustrialize not only the United States, but also Europe and the entire industrialized world. No economy in history outside of damages of war or depression has deliberately gone from a more energy efficient infrastructure to a lower one. Notably China, while pledging agreement, also says it will comply with Net Zero Carbon, but only ten years after the US and EU, by 2060. Right now they are adding new coal plants at a rapid pace.

The real infrastructure deficit in the US economy is in hundreds of thousands of miles of national Interstate highways. As well, a deteriorating electric grid is made more vulnerable by forced purchase of high-cost unreliable solar or wind energy.

In March the American Society of Civil Engineers released its analysis of US infrastructure, before the Biden $2.3 billion proposal. The report evaluates the state of bridges, roadways, public transit, ports, airports, inland waterways, water supplies. It does so every four years. They estimate that a total of at least $6 trillion is needed to repair or fix America’s deteriorated infrastructure. This is basic infrastructure, not Green Agenda. The report notes that infrastructure that brings clean water to major cities, as well as thousands of miles of wastewater pipelines, sewer systems built decades ago, are badly in need of renewal. The report adds that the drinking water infrastructure system, some 2.2 million miles of underground pipes, is ageing and badly in need of renewal. Local water utilities are replacing some 1% to 5% a year, far too little, due to lack of funding.

The ASCE report notes that of the 617,000 bridges across the United States, “42% are at least 50 years old, and 46,154, or 7.5% of the nation’s bridges, are considered structurally deficient, meaning they are in “poor” condition.” Alone the backlog of urgently needed bridge repair would require $125 billion. And they estimate that over 40% of the nation’s roads and highways are in poor or mediocre condition.

This is just a partial indication of the huge deficit in real economic infrastructure needed to maintain and improve the economic performance of the US economy. The fact that the Green Agenda of the pro-global warming Biden Administration is misusing popular calls for maintaining this basic necessary infrastructure in favor of inefficient and destructive Green and other schemes will mean that the economic foundation of the United States will weaken at an accelerated pace. Some influential circles such as BlackRock apparently want this. Biden’s two senior economic advisers are from BlackRock. Brian Deese, head of green or sustainable investment (ESG) at BlackRock, is director of the National Economic Council, and Adewale “Wally” Adeyemo, former chief of staff to BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink, is Deputy Treasury Secretary under former Fed head Janet Yellen. BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm with more than $9 trillion under management, is a lead player in the Davos World Economic Forum Great Reset agenda and clearly, in the Biden “infrastructure” agenda.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. 

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

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

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***

Proponents argue self-disseminating vaccines could mean they no longer have to run complex mass vaccination programs. Critics say the vaccines pose many health risks and would also spell the end of informed consent.

In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security co-sponsored the “pandemic exercise,” Event 201.

A little more than a year later, when the Event 201 scenario morphed from “hypothetical” to concrete, it became clear that sponsors of the event intended to see the majority of the world vaccinated against COVID-19.

Accomplishing this goal is a “monumental challenge,” however. In the U.S., more than one-third (38% to 45%) of adults continue to decline the unlicensed, Emergency Use Authorization injections, despite a marketing blitz that has included both carrots (ranging from the chance to win cash payments to a free order of fries) and sticks (such as nasty calls to “get personal” and “shun” the unvaccinated).

U.S. gov funded vaccine research to the tune of $9 billion+, spent $22 billion to support vaccine distribution, shelled out another $10 billion to expand access + $3 billion to spend on ad campaign to combat vaccine hesitancy. #TheDefenderhttps://t.co/TxqaIHWiS0

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) May 25, 2021

Although some of the uninjected tell pollsters they plan to eventually get the vaccine, a solid minority remains committed to never doing so. The same pattern appears to hold true globally: Roughly one-third of adults worldwide said they will not take a COVID shot.

While social and behavioral science researchers apply “soft science” techniques in an attempt to maneuver vaccine confidence into more acquiescent territory, bench scientists have a different option potentially waiting in the wings — genetically engineered vaccines that “move through populations in the same way as communicable diseases,” spreading on their own “from host to host.”

Not mainstream (yet)

In theory, self-spreading vaccines (also referred to as self-disseminating or autonomous) can be designed to be either transferable (“restricted to a single round of transmission”) or transmissible (“capable of indefinite transmission).”

Vaccine scientists concede transmissible vaccines “are still not mainstream, but the revolution in genome engineering poises them to become so.”

The makers of self-disseminating vaccines use recombinant vector technology to build genetic material from a target pathogen onto the “chassis” of a viral vector deemed “benign,” “innocuous” or “avirulent.” This is similar to the viral vector approach used to produce the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca COVID vaccines.

For Johns Hopkins, the appeal of vaccines that are intentionally engineered to be self-disseminating seems obvious. The university’s Center for Health Security made its case explicit in a 2018 report, “Technologies to Address Global Catastrophic Biological Risks.” The report stated, “These vaccines could dramatically increase vaccine coverage in human …  populations without requiring each individual to be inoculated.”

Further spelling out the utilitarian implications of self-disseminating vaccines, the report’s authors stated, “only a small number of vaccinated individuals would be required to confer protection to a larger susceptible population, thus eliminating the need for mass vaccination operations.”

From a programmatic standpoint, this strategy would have the advantage of being “cheaper than vaccinating everyone by hand.” Perhaps even more significantly, however, it would override one of the “thorny ethical questions” that mass vaccination programs routinely wrestle with: informed consent.

As the university’s Center for Health Security briefly acknowledged in its report, self-disseminating vaccines would essentially make it impossible for “those to whom the vaccine subsequently spreads” to provide informed consent at all.

Blame the animals

Writing in 2020 in Nature Ecology & Evolution, researchers observed that viral zoonoses (diseases theorized to jump from animals to humans) have become an entrenched part of the “global mindset” and a central element of the pandemic-obsessed global health zeitgeist.

Despite SARS-CoV-2’s unproven zoonotic origins (cast into doubt by figures such as Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), the past year’s coronavirus hype has helped reinforce the popular perception that wildlife populations represent a menacing cauldron of latent viral threats — requiring only the right set of circumstances to spring into humanity-endangering action.

Parlaying the COVID moment into a convenient scientific opportunity, researchers suggest that the purported “failure to contain the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic” furnishes a rationale for accelerating the rollout of self-disseminating vaccines. As some journalists have phrased the question du jour, “Wouldn’t it be great if wild animals could be inoculated against the various diseases they host so that those microbes never get a chance to spread to humans?”

Transmissible-vaccine research also has ascended the list of funding priorities for government agencies like the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and, reportedly, donors such as the Gates Foundation.

At least officially, the primary focus of self-spreading vaccine research has thus far been on wildlife populations. Although the practice of direct wildlife vaccination (for example, against rabies) has been around since the 1960s, it is the longstanding efforts to develop sterilizing vaccines in wildlife (euphemistically called “immunocontraception”), as well as recent advances in genetic engineering, that “have provided a foundation for transmissible-vaccine research.”

Researchers explain how the targeting of wildlife reservoirs is intended to work:

“The idea, essentially, is to vaccinate a small proportion of a [wildlife] population through direct inoculation. These so-called founders will then passively spread the vaccine to other animals they encounter either by touch, sex, nursing, or breathing the same air. Gradually, these interactions could build up population-level immunity.”

When put to the test by Spanish researchers in a limited field trial in rabbits, about 50% of the unvaccinated rabbits developed antibodies after being housed with vaccinated rabbits who had received a transmissible vaccine either via injection or orally. When the researchers assessed second-generation transmission (that is, development of antibodies in another batch of rabbits moved in with the first batch of unvaccinated rabbits), the transmission rate was much lower (two of 24 rabbits).

What could possibly go wrong?

As the Johns Hopkins report made clear in 2018, there is no technical reason why the self-spreading approach could not be applied to humans. The authors admitted to “several big challenges,” however, including the fact that autonomous vaccines (as mentioned above) would render informed consent a moot point and would make it impossible to screen individuals for contraindications such as allergies.

According to Johns Hopkins and others, another major challenge is the “not insignificant risk of the vaccine virus reverting to wild-type virulence,” creating an opportunity for the vaccines to propagate disease rather than prevent it.

In fact, the world is already familiar with this phenomenon in the form of oral polio vaccines. Though not “intentionally designed that way,” oral polio vaccines are considered “a little bit transmissible” and are acknowledged to cause polio.

Hopkins’ researchers pointedly characterized the reversion challenge as “both a medical risk and a public perception risk.” Another Catch-22 articulated in the university’s report is that while reversion risks could perhaps be lessened by engineering the vaccines to be more “weakly transmissible,” this could defeat the purpose of getting vaccines to “go” on their own.

On the other hand, the two scientists who are most strongly promoting transmissible vaccines argue that “even … where reversion is frequent, [their] performance will often substantially exceed that of conventional, directly administered vaccines.”

These same authors have also developed models suggesting that starting the transmissible ball rolling with direct vaccination of newborns could be particularly impactful.

In September 2020, two researchers writing in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists agreed that self-spreading vaccines may have significant downsides and could “entail serious risks,” particularly given that scientists lose control of their creation once released. They noted, “While it may turn out to be technically feasible to fight emerging infectious diseases … with self-spreading viruses, and while the benefits may be significant, how does one weigh those benefits against what may be even greater risks?” They outlined several additional questions:

• Who makes the decisions about the “where and when” of the vaccines’ release?
• What happens when there are “unexpected outcomes” and “unintended consequences” such as mutation, species-jumping or border-crossing? About unintended consequences, the two authors added, “There always are.”
• What about bioweapons and “dual use” risks — that is, using the technology to “deliberately cause harm” rather than prevent disease? Advances in pharmacogenomics, drug development and personalized medicine, the two noted, could enable “ultra-targeted biological warfare.”

On the latter point, the Bulletin authors drew readers’ attention to immunocontraception efforts in animals as well as an infamous example of “weaponized biology” against humans in apartheid-era South Africa, called Project Coast, which sought — reportedly unsuccessfully — to develop an “infertility ‘vaccine’ to be used on black women without their knowledge.”

Other scientists have made an even more direct case against transmissible vaccines, arguing the risks of autonomously spreading vaccines do, in fact, “far outweigh potential benefits.” Risks, in their view, include “the unpredictability of mutations of the virus, the inability to safely test at a large scale and the grave potential threat to biosecurity.”

Vaccine science: many unknowns

When measles, rather than COVID, was dominating the headlines a couple years ago, the unvaccinated were heavily scapegoated for apparent outbreaks. This non-evidence-based finger-pointing (used to usher in draconian new vaccine mandates), ignored the well-documented “phenomenon of measles infection spread by MMR (live measles-mumps-rubella vaccine), which has been known about for decades” and has resulted in “detectable measles infection in the vast majority of those who receive it.”

The experimental Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines use new messenger RNA (mRNA) technology rather than the traditional live-virus technology featured in vaccines like the MMR, and thus, we are told, they cannot produce the same type of “shedding.”

However, many unvaccinated individuals are reporting unusual symptoms or illness after spending time in proximity to COVID-vaccinated individuals. Pointing to Pfizer’s protocol acknowledging the possibility of exposure via inhalation or skin contact with vaccinated individuals, concerned health professionals have raised the question of whether some novel form of shedding is occurring.

Some of the people raising these questions have pointed to the September 2020 article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, subtitled, “What could possibly go wrong?” By May 2021, the Bulletin’s editors, apparently uncomfortable with the attention the September article had attracted, were trying to distance themselves by stating the Bulletin’s content was being misused to further conspiracy theories about “highly effective and safe COVID-19 vaccines.”

Whether the COVID injections are “self-spreading” in any sense of the word is a question that cannot currently be answered. However, there is at least one plausible molecular mechanism that could explain the observed vaccinated-to-unvaccinated “shedding” effects.

GreenMedInfo’s Sayer Ji explains that “horizontal information transfer within biological systems [is] mediated by extracellular vesicles, which include a virus-like phenomenon known as microvesicle shedding and/or exosome-mediated transfer of nucleic acids.” Citing a 2017 peer-reviewed study on the “biology and biogenesis of shed microvesicles,” Ji states:

“[I]t is possible that [mRNA vaccines] do, in fact, contribute to microvesicle shedding, which represents an even greater, more persistent threat than live-cell vaccine shedding when it comes to the persistent biological impact the vaccinated can have on the unvaccinated.”

What is even more certain is that scientists themselves do not have all the answers. Some may wish to believe in the possibility of simply genetically engineering a vaccine “in ways that thwart its ability to evolve into something nasty.” But others note “the inevitability of evolutionary change resulting from [transmissible vaccines’] ability to self-replicate and generate extended chains of transmission.”

Techno-thriller author Michael Crichton predicted in 2002 that with the advent of nanotechnology and other technological innovations, the pace of evolutionary change was likely to be “extremely rapid.” Crichton cautioned, “human beings have a poor record of addressing the hazards of new technologies as they arrive.”

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Russia’s sovereign wealth fund will ditch its holdings in dollars from its $185 Billion Reserve Fund, dramatically increase its holdings of Chinese yuan and invest in gold for the first ever time, Russia’s Finance Ministry said Thursday.

Finance Minister Anton Siluanov told the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) that Russia’s $186-billion national welfare fund (NWF) would completely divest its $41 billion worth of holdings in dollars within a month.

“Today we have about 35% of NWF investments in dollars,” Siluanov said. “We’ve decided to get out of dollar assets completely, replacing investments in dollars with an increase in euros and gold.”

The share of euros in the fund will be increased to 40%, the Chinese yuan will account for 30% and another 20% will be stored in gold.

The move will affect the liquid part of the NWF, which currently stands at around $120 billion. Despite the vast sums involved, the shift is unlikely to affect markets, since the NWF represents just a slice of Russia’s overall $600 billion worth of international reserves. The transaction will not involve the actual sale of dollars, as it will be carried out through internal transfers and an accounting shift within the Central Bank, Bloomberg reported.

First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Belousov, one of the country’s most influential economic policymakers, said Thursday the decision would not affect the ruble’s exchange rate. The Russian currency was flat against the U.S. dollar at 73.2 on Tuesday afternoon in Moscow trading.

Russia’s Central Bank has also been reducing the share of U.S. dollars within its overall reserves over recent years, a policy which is set to continue, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, as Russia seeks to reduce its dependence on the greenback under the specter of possible new sanctions.

Renaissance Capital’s Sofya Donets said the move was largely technical, and dubbed the decision “a political declaration, rather than a necessary step.”

“Although sanction risks are present, I assume that risks for the Central Bank’s reserves kept in U.S. dollars are basically non-existent,” she told The Moscow Times.

The U.S. levelling sanctions against Russia’s Central Bank would “be in conflict with the current international monetary settings — like a third world war.”

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Cuba, the first Latin America country to develop its own COVID-19 vaccines, presently is short of syringes for immunizing its population against the virus. It’s not feasible for Cuba to make its own syringes. The U.S. blockade prevents Cuba from importing them from abroad.

The lack of syringes is a global problem. The New York Times estimates an overall need of between “eight billion and 10 billion syringes for Covid-19 vaccinations alone.” Manufacturing capabilities are increasing, but that’s of no use to Cuba.

According to Global Health Partners, “Cuba needs roughly 30 million syringes for their mass Covid vaccination campaign and they’re short 20 million.” Solidarity organizations are seeking donated funds to buy syringes and ship them to Cuba. (Readers may donate by contacting Global Health Partners or visiting here.)

The shortage of syringes poses great hardship for the Cuban people. That’s not new. Calling for economic blockade in 1960, State Department official Lester Mallory was confident that making Cubans suffer would push them toward overthrowing their government.

The U.S. blockade causes shortages of basic materials. Buses lack fuel and spare parts; bus routes have been dropped. Food supplies are precarious. Cuban laboratories and production facilities have developed five kinds of COVID-19 vaccines despite short supplies of reagents and laboratory materials.

Cuba can’t buy ventilators needed for critically ill COVID-19 patients. Two Swiss manufacturers stopped selling ventilators to Cuba after a U.S. company purchased them. But Cuban technicians devised their own ventilator model which is in production now.

The impact of the blockade is by no means haphazard. Institutionalized processes aimed at asserting U.S. domination involve laws, administrative decrees, regulations, officials’ interpretations of regulations, and caution on the part of third-country traders and financiers.

Authority for the ban on U.S. sales of goods to Cuba stems from legislation accumulating over many years. Then the Cuba Democracy Act of 1992 ensnared foreign companies into the blockade system. That law authorized the Treasury Department to license the foreign subsidiaries of U.S. corporations to export goods to Cuba. It actually created an opening for almost all applications for licensure to be denied.

Since then, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), enforcer of the blockade, has found leeway to regulate the foreign corporations themselves. Foreign corporations contemplating sales to Cuba contend with U.S. sanctions if they have branches in the United States, partner with U.S. corporations, or handle U.S. dollars.

Most of the world’s syringes are manufactured by three U.S. companies and five companies elsewhere. Each of the latter has ties with a U.S. entity and is prohibited from exporting syringes to Cuba.

For example, Germany’s B. Braun Melsungen Corporation partners with Concordance Healthcare Solutions, “one of the largest independent, healthcare distributors in the U.S.” Tokyo-based Terumo Corporation has a headquarters in New Jersey. Osaka-based Nipro Corporation recently “announce[d] the creation of a Vascular Division in the U.S.” “Healthcare heavyweight Cardinal Health” is headquartered in both Ireland and the United States.

Hindustan Syringes and Medical Devices, in India, came under OFAC purview in January 2021 by virtue of associating with Envigo Global Products as its “digital marketing partner.” Envigo is headquartered in Indianapolis.

Officers of foreign companies presumably seek legal advice. One lawyers’ group maintains that, “OFAC has long held that if a non-U.S. company engages in business transactions in U.S. dollars, the foreign party is availing itself of the U.S. financial system and hence becomes subject to the U.S. sanctions laws.”

Another indicates sanctions are likely if “the foreign party has a requisite level of contacts with the U.S., such as engaging [with] U.S. products, software or technology.” The National Law Review recommends that, “Foreign companies…need to be aware of board members, directors, or employees who hold U.S. citizenship or U.S. green cards.”

President Barack Obama eased many blockade regulations and re-established U.S. diplomatic relations with Cuba. He never pushed to end the blockade. The Biden Administration has choosen not to prioritize improved relations with Cuba. Biden recently upheld the Trump Administration’s reassignment of Cuba to the U.S. list of terrorist-sponsoring nations.

The Helms-Burton Law of 1996 required, for the first time, that Congress determine the fate of the blockade. Except for legislation in 2000 allowing U.S. food products to be exported to Cuba, Congress has protected that policy.

In February Oregon Senator Ron Wyden introduced his “United States-Cuba Trade Act of 2021,” which would end the blockade. The bill has four co-sponsors. Senators Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Jerry Moran of Kansas, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who reintroduced the “Freedom to Export to Cuba Act” on May 20^th. That bill would facilitate U.S. exports to Cuba, especially agricultural products; allow some Cuban goods to enter the United States; and would retain sanctions imposed because of alleged human rights violations.

In March 2021, 80 congresspersons sent a letter to President Biden urging him to use executive action to reverse restrictions imposed by President Trump.

The U.S. economic blockade of Cuba is calculated, systematic, all-encompassing, and savage. Opponents offer varying pleas. For some, the blockade is cruel and illegal. Others call for defending Cuba, because it’s a model both of human solidarity and of how to provide health care and education. Many insist on respect for Cuba’s sovereignty.

These arguments are disconnected, one from the other. Blockade critics appear to lack a central focus on root causes. Having such would be essential, it seems, for fashioning a cohesive strategy. Were that in place, new possibilities might exist for recruitment and unity. Anti-racism struggle in the United States displays similar dynamics, and maybe offers lessons.

Reacting to various symptoms of oppression, defenders of racial equality have gone from pillar to post opposing police killings, an unjust criminal justice system, and Black people’s high poverty and death rates. Now, increasingly, analysts link manifestations of racial oppression with durable systems of repression involving capitalism. Writing about a notorious slave-trading firm, historian Joshua Rothman captures that association in the title of his new book, The Ledger and the Chain.

Similarly, if the campaign against the blockade paid more attention to the long history of U.S. ambition to dominate Cuba, it might gain strength by going to the heart of the matter. The premise would be that the European powers and the United States have long sought to draw Cuba and other dependent Latin American territories into their capitalist orbit.

The syringe story reflects U.S schemes in the 19^th century to absorb Cuba, U.S. control of Cuba after Spain’s departure in 1902, and U.S. determination after 1959 to restore hegemony lost to the Revolution.

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Investing in nuclear technology is presented by philanthropist billionaire Bill Gates as a means to combatting global warming and CO2 emissions. What nonsense.

The Bill Gates project is generously funded by the US Department of Energy.

Let us be under no illusion, the so-called civilian use of nuclear technology does not contribute to “clean energy”.  Moreover the development of “advanced” reactors (for civilian uses) is related (indirectly) to the Biden administration’s  nuclear weapons program.

Bill Gates is investing in so-called advanced nuclear reactors. His company TerraPower LLC’s most recent project is in Wyoming:

TerraPower, founded by Gates about 15 years ago, and power company PacifiCorp, owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, said the exact site of the Natrium reactor demonstration plant is expected to be announced by the end of the year. Small advanced reactors, which run on different fuels than traditional reactors, are regarded by some as a critical carbon-free technology than can supplement intermittent power sources like wind and solar as states strive to cut emissions that cause climate change.

“This is our fastest and clearest course to becoming carbon negative,” Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon said. “Nuclear power is clearly a part of my all-of-the-above strategy for energy” in Wyoming, the country’s top coal-producing state.

The project features a 345 megawatt sodium-cooled fast reactor with molten salt-based energy storage that could boost the system’s power output to 500 MW during peak power demand. TerraPower said last year that the plants would cost about $1 billion.

Late last year the U.S. Department of Energy awarded TerraPower $80 million in initial funding to demonstrate Natrium technology, and the department has committed additional funding in coming years subject to congressional appropriations. (Business Today)

Gates calls these “advanced nuclear reactors”. They are tagged as “Carbon free technology”.

Scientific evidence confirms that the Bill Gates advanced reactors are more dangerous than conventional nuclear reactors. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists

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Thanks to a rapidly changing political context the new UN Human Rights Council commission announced on May 27th may be different from those in the past — this one may actually help hold Israel accountable.

The May 27th vote of the UN Human Rights Council to establish an ongoing commission of inquiry to report on rights violations in Israel, the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza Strip is very similar to the many commissions that have come before. Established with a majority vote in favor of Resolution A/HRC/S-30/L.1, this commission reaffirms state responsibilities to protect human rights and international humanitarian law as the bases for peace.

The UN and other international coalitions have launched dozens of previous similar commissions. Many have been prompted by an uptick in spectacular violence in the Gaza Strip. This latest commission comes in response to eleven days of  Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip, which began on May 10, killed at least 253 Palestinians, including 66 children, and wounded more than 1,900 people, with 13 people killed in Israel. Among other recent UN investigations was one in 2014 and another in 2009, known as the Goldstone Mission, which investigated the 2008–

Unique to this most recent commission, however, is the context in which it has emerged, marked by a resurgence of international legal and activist efforts to challenge Israel’s systematic abuse and dispossession of Palestinians across the occupied Palestinian territories, Israel, and the diaspora—including efforts among Jews. Although a UN commission on its own can do little to change Israel’s actions, within today’s shifting social and political dynamics, it can play a role in coalescing attention and mobilizing meaningful action to stop and reverse Israel’s settler-colonial project.

In specifying that this investigation should collect evidence of violations “to maximize the possibility of its admissibility in legal proceedings,” the text of this latest UN resolution points to one important new contextual factor. Namely, that the International Criminal Court (ICC) decided on February 5, 2021 that it has jurisdiction over the occupied Palestinian territory, allowing the Prosecutor to investigate war crimes and crimes against humanity that have taken place in the occupied Palestinian territory.

In opening last week’s special session in Geneva, Michelle Bachelet, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, referred to Israel’s attacks on Gaza this month as possibly constituting war crimes. Attention to possible war crimes also was central in the Goldstone Mission findings and the report of that commission focused on ending impunity. Although, as I note in my book, A History of False Hope: Investigative Commissions in Palestine, this marked a turning point in the international legal language used to analyze the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it did not lead to actions to end Israel’s impunity. Residents of the Gaza Strip continue to suffer life under restrictions and siege imposed since the 1990s and intensified in 2007, maintaining this sliver of land as an open air prison for the 1.8 million Palestinians who live there. If this latest commissions of inquiry does “identify, where possible, those responsible, with a view to ensuring that perpetrators of violations are held accountable,” the ICC may be able to make use of that evidence.

The groundswell of analysis identifying Israel as an apartheid state is a second crucial distinguishing element of the world into which this commission is being born. Issued in April 2021, the report by the international human rights NGO, Human Rights Watch (HRW), condemned Israel for committing the crimes of apartheid and persecution. It is just the latest in a string of similar reports. In 2017, ESCWA, a UN body, issued a report on Israel’s apartheid practices against Palestinians. Many Palestinian organizations have been part of this chorus, too. In 2019, eight Palestinian, regional, and international organizations, including Al-Haq, BADIL, and Addameer submitted a report to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, detailing Israel’s practices that constitute the crime of apartheid under international law. Like that of Human Rights Watch, the report in January 2021 by Israeli NGO B’Tselem suggests that international recognition of Israel as an apartheid state is going mainstream. Given that the new permanent Commission of Inquiry aims to investigate “all underlying root causes of recurrent tensions, instability and protraction of conflict” including “discrimination and repression based on national, ethnic, racial or religious identity,” we may be seeing more authoritative evidence of Israel’s crimes of apartheid leading to pressure on states to stop it.

Like what happened in response to South Africa’s apartheid regime, an international boycott movement has galvanized academics, activists, and artists in speaking out for freedom, justice and equality for Palestinians. BDS, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, is a third distinctive feature of today’s context. BDS promotes public education about Palestinians’ conditions while pressuring Israeli institutions to end their complicity with state oppression of Palestinians, and demanding that Israeli government comply with international law.

Beyond BDS, new solidarity actions have been notable, especially in response to the violence in May, including the International Dockworkers Council-IDC support of the Palestinian General Strike, actions by Israeli and Palestinian workers refusing enmity, and protest marches around the globe. More persistent dynamics suggesting an upsurge of diverse support for Palestinians include a revival of Black internationalism, Black Lives Matter, and other Black progressive groups re-energizing Black-Palestinian solidarity, statements supporting Palestinian rights by influential Jewish figures, and young liberal Jews’ alienation from Zionism and sympathy with Palestinian causes.

What is not new is Israel’s ongoing refusal to engage with international legal processes such as the commission of inquiry and the ICC— and US efforts to shield Israel from scrutiny. The US often justifies its rejection of international legal investigation of Israel with the claim that it would threaten progress in resolving the conflict. There has been no progress on this front for a very long time. If people of conscience take up the opportunity afforded by the latest UN effort to grow public awareness of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, this might be that rarest of commissions that helps dislodge Israel-Palestine from the quagmire in which it has been stuck for so long.

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Featured image: THE HUMAN RIGHTS AND ALLIANCE OF CIVILIZATIONS ROOM IN THE UNITED NATIONS OFFICE IN GENEVA, SWITZERLAND WHERE THE HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL FREQUENTLY MEETS. (PHOTO: UN PHOTO/JEAN-MARC FERRÉ)

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***

Today’s TASS cites Major General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, warning that the U.S. and NATO will exploit this year’s Sea Breeze military exercise in Ukraine to smuggle advanced weaponry and munitions to the nation’s armed forces and fascistic paramilitaries and mercenaries of the infamous Azov Battalion and similar units. The arms will be used for the ongoing war in the Donbass region.

In Konashenkov’s words:

“Advanced armaments, munitions and materiel are planned to be delivered precisely to that region for Ukrainian troops under the guise of holding the drills.

“Eventually, as was the case in previous years, all this weaponry will be delivered to the Ukrainian troops and nationalist formations stationed close to the areas in the Donetsk and Lugansk regions uncontrolled by Kiev.”

This year’s version of the annual U.S.-NATO Sea Breeze exercise in the Black Sea region will run from June 28 to July 10 and include 4,000 troops, forty combat ships and other vessels, thirty military aircraft and over 100 armored vehicles from 29 NATO member and partner states.

Before the U.S.-orchestrated overthrow of Ukraine’s legally-elected, internationally-recognized government in 2014 in a violent uprising supported by NATO and the European Union, Sea Breeze war games were largely conducted from Crimea.

The Russian Defense Ministry spokesman was also quoted stating:

“The Defense Ministry of the Russian Federation will closely follow the preparations for and the course of the Ukrainian-American exercise Sea Breeze with the involvement of NATO countries and will, if necessary, react appropriately to the developing situation in the interests of ensuring Russia’s military security.”

It’s evident the Russia defense establishment and military see this year’s U.S.-led exercise posing a more direct threat than its predecessors have; and not only to the Donetsk and Lugansk republics but perhaps to Crimea and Belarus as well.

The Russian Defense Ministry described the land, sea and air components of the drills as including, in the first two cases, the training of partners according to NATO combat standards, the deployment of troops and equipment to “combat employment areas” and “organizing and conducting an offensive in the maritime area in interaction with a seaborne assault force.”

The maritime drills will include “forming and ensuring the cohesion of a multinational naval task force, organizing the navy’s interaction with the ground forces and aircraft, planning and conducting joint operations, employing an amphibious assault force in joint operations with land troops.”

The only states bordering the Black Sea not NATO members or advanced partners (Enhanced Opportunities Partners) are Russia and Abkhazia, the latter identified by the U.S. and NATO as an occupied territory.

The TASS account described the air component of the upcoming exercise as using combat aircraft in support of naval and ground forces, conducting reconnaissance operations and “delivering strikes against sea and ground targets….”

The warfighting scenario entails U.S., NATO and partner states – notably Ukraine – “stabilizing a crisis” incited by the actions of “some armed formations outlawed in Ukraine and enjoying the all-out support of a neighboring state,” the Defense Ministry spokesman added.

That is a dress rehearsal for an invasion of the Donbass region, pure and simple; though as noted above regarding Belarus and Abkhazia an assault on the Donbass may not be all that’s planned.

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***

The Biden administration issued a proposed rule today allowing oil companies operating in the Beaufort Sea and Western Arctic to harass polar bears and Pacific walruses when drilling or searching for oil for the next five years.

“It’s maddening to see the Biden administration allowing oil companies to continue their noisy, harmful onslaught on polar bears. Oil in this sensitive habitat should stay in the ground,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “President Biden promised bold action to address the climate crisis, yet his administration is proposing to allow business-as-usual oil drilling in the Arctic. Polar bears and walruses could pay a terrible price.”

The Southern Beaufort Sea population is the most imperiled polar bear population in the world. With only about 900 bears remaining, scientists have determined that the survival of every individual bear is vital to the survival and recovery of the population.

The heavy equipment used in seismic exploration and drilling activities can crush polar bears in their dens or scare polar bears out of their dens too early, leaving cubs to die of exposure or abandonment by their mothers. The noise generated by routine operations can disturb essential polar bear behavior and increase their energy output.

Walruses are also incredibly sensitive to human disturbance. Without summer sea ice for resting, walrus mothers and calves have been forced to come ashore, where they are vulnerable to being trampled to death in stampedes when startled by noise.

In addition to seismic exploration, the rule covers construction and operation of roads, pipelines, runways, and other support facilities. It also covers well drilling, drill rig transport, truck and helicopter traffic, and other activities.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act generally prohibits killing, harming or harassing a marine mammal. The statute allows the federal government to authorize certain industrial activities to harm and harass marine mammals, provided such activities will take only a “small number” of animals and have no more than a “negligible impact” on the population.

The proposed rule covers existing and planned activities across a wide swath of Alaska’s Arctic, including 7.9 million acres in the Beaufort Sea, and onshore activities from Point Barrow to the western boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. It includes the Willow development project that the Center and allies have challenged in court, and which the Biden administration this week submitted a brief defending.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service will be accepting public comment on the proposed rule for 30 days.

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Featured image: Arctic polar bear with cubs. (Credit: USFWS)

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***

On Tuesday, the new head of Israel’s Mossad spy agency suggested more Israeli covert attacks and assassinations inside Iran should be expected even as the US and other world powers are negotiating a revival of the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

“The Iranian program will continue feeling Mossad’s might. We are well acquainted with the nuclear program and its various components, we know personally the factors that operate in it and also the forces that drive them,” David Barnea said at his swearing-in ceremony, as quoted by Israel’s Ynet.

Barnea said the JCPOA negotiations show that Israel might have to act alone against Iran.

“The agreement with world powers that is taking shape only reinforces the sense of isolation in which we find ourselves on this issue,” he said. “I say it clearly — no, we do not intend to act according to the majority opinion since this majority will not bear the consequences for the erroneous assessment of this threat.”

Israel has a long history of covert attacks inside Iran. Most recently, Israel sabotaged Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, causing an explosion. The attack took place in April when the US and Iran began indirect negotiations in Vienna to restore the JCPOA. Last November, Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was gunned down in an apparent Israeli plot as tensions between the US and Iran were simmering in the final weeks of the Trump administration.

Yossi Cohen, Israel’s outgoing Mossad chief, also spoke on Tuesday and boasted about Israeli actions against Iran that took place under his watch.

“We penetrated into the heart of hearts of the enemy Iran,” he said. “We acted to constantly gather intelligence and uncover its secrets, and undermined its self-confidence and haughtiness.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu chimed in at the ceremony and said he was willing to attack Iran’s nuclear program even if it risked “friction” with the US.

“If we have to choose, I hope it doesn’t happen, between friction with our great friend the United States and eliminating the existential threat — eliminating the existential threat,” he said.

The Israeli officials all claim Iran is moving quickly to develop a nuclear bomb. But if that were truly their concern, Israel would favor a revival of the JCPOA since it strictly limits Tehran’s nuclear program.

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***

The older generation takes a strange pleasure in reiterating comments about the absence of responsibility, the lack of focus and the indulgence of young people, using these arguments as a means of excusing the bleak future that their children and grandchildren face. Those arguments are rarely original, but rather they are force-fed to baby boomers by the media as a means of relieving them of all responsibility and of distracting them from the true causes of the tragic shifts that they observe obliquely.

It is assumed that for reasons unknown, somehow, young people are less capable, less attentive, less motivated and less concerned with planning for their careers and their futures. This argument makes the previous generation feel somehow more worthy and superior and that is precisely the hook that is lodged in the sweet treat.

Nowhere in the discussion about the challenges youth face is any mention made of how corporations have targeted them and exploited them, from cradle on, or of how the fundamental structure of government has shifted since the end of the Cold War so that it no longer plays the role of defending or of protecting the citizen, the child, against the vultures and jackals of the corporate world, but rather serves as a marionette with a smiling face through which arguments to justify the dictatorship of finance are promulgated and made to seem scientific, authoritative, and even ethical to the public.

To be sure, the breakdown of a sense of community, of the concepts of personal responsibility and of ethical commitment among youth is a sad reality. It is accompanied by isolation, loneliness, and uncertainty about the future that undermines all aspects of life.

But the problems that our children face are not brought on by themselves, but rather the result of a brutal assault on their childhood by corporations that seek to dominate their values and their thinking from the cradle on so that they are unable to think for themselves, unable to create their own communities, or their own lives, and dependent on content, and on relations, supplied by those corporations, and the investment banks that lurk behind them.

When our children should be playing outside, catching frogs in the woods, building forts out of tree branches, or helping their parents to plant lettuce and carrots—and thereby understand the relationship between humans, water, soil and nature, they are encouraged, compelled, to get all information from the television or internet which is dominated by these multinational corporations, organizations that see our children not as future citizens, or as the building blocks for a constitutional democracy, but as consumers to be mined and manipulated so as to increase profits.

When our children should gain wisdom and insight from their own experiences, from their interactions with friends and teachers, and should learn first from their parents and grandparents, uncles, aunts and neighbors, they are forced to watch television, to surf the internet and to play various video games from an increasingly young age. Their parents are told that exposure to technology will make their children competitive and modern—it is a sickening lie.

The purpose of getting children connected with images presented by television, movies and the internet from an early age is addict them to a consumption economy, to reduce their ability to think for themselves, and to encourage superficial thinking dominated by excitement and quick action that destroys their capacity to understand complex issues, and their ability to concentrate.

The bombarding of our children with commercial images that suggest how they should behave, and what is of value, is a direct assault on the Constitution because it intentionally undermines the capacity of the individual to be a citizen. That is to say that the advertising and public relations employed in the commercial media and entertainment is illegal.

Also, the assault on our children through the commercial media cannot be detached from pornography. Even in the most innocent cartoons, corporations insidiously insert messages suggesting that we should evaluate others in terms of how they please us, that humans are commodities and that we must market ourselves, and our sexuality, in order to be successful.

This subtle attack on the core values in children feeds into real pornography, starting with boys. Corporations plant sick images of violence and humiliation of women in the minds of young boys in an attempt to addict them to a false, violent and perverse sexuality which can only be purchased, and that is incompatible with love for women.

If boys have their sexuality torn away from love, and attached to competition and narcissism, girls will be the clear victims. Whether they end up with boys who can no longer express affection, or are compelled to behave like the women in pornographic movies so that they can get attention, girls are sacrificed to profit in this debased culture.

This whole process of degrading and destroying our children must stop now.

We must understand that the commercial advertising with which our children are bombarded is not primarily aimed at selling products. The primary agenda of what had degenerated into brainwashing and propaganda is to inculcate in them a passive, dependent, reactive and flippant attitude that will render them incapable of thinking for themselves, of searching for solutions on their own. They are indoctrinated to turn to the media, controlled by corporations, for solutions to every aspect of their personal lives.

It is a scientific fact that the use of social media and internet surfing remaps the connections between brain cells, training the individual to favor short-term stimulation, constant changes, and exciting and stimulating scenes.

As a result of such behavior modification, the capacity of the individual to read and comprehend long and complex texts, to understand multidimensional problems in the economy and society, and to engage others in meaningful dialog is destroyed. A few years soaking in the narcissistic consumer culture forced on youth produces people incapable of anything other than working to feed themselves and releasing accumulated stress by indulging in self-centered video games, pornography, food consumption, or action films.

For those marinated in this consumption culture, what does not appear on TV, or on the internet, seems unreal, insubstantial. By contrast, the falsehoods propagated through commercial media are assumed to be real, more substantial than the reality that surrounds them.

When this political crisis, this social disaster, is brought up in polite conversation, the knee-jerk response is that we must make our messages brief and dumb them down so that youth will listen. No one in the room suggests that we need to create a culture so as to protect our youth from this war, to allow them to focus, to concentrate, to read and digest books, to enjoy art and music, and to create it themselves.

Children assaulted by the commercial media from infancy have no chance to preserve their own liberty. They are not permitted to develop their own metaphysical compass. No moral or scientific forces exist for them other than what can be seen, and especially can be seen in the commercial media.

Many are left incapable of evaluating the impact of forces that are not explicitly visible. They do not even realize that the smartphone that they hold in their hand does not belong to them at all, but is constantly updated and changed so as to manipulate them by multinational corporations pursuing agendas about which they understand little.

The commercial media, advertisers and entertainment moguls have intentionally created a culture of forgetfulness. We are trained by the media to forget what happened yesterday, to lack any historical perspective on politics, culture, society and technology. But if we cannot remember our past, other than the slick images fed to us by the media, then we cannot establish our own interpretations, and democracy becomes impossible.

So also, we forget what happens to the plastic that we dispose of. We forget what the implications for the world of foreign wars are. We forget what will happen to future generations if we continue to destroy the ecosystem in the pursuit of a narcissistic consumption culture.

The commercial media also wants to crush our imaginations, our creativity.

Of course commercials suggest that somehow using your Iphone will make you more creative, more innovative. A closer look reveals that what is called “innovative” and “imaginative” is the manipulation of images and symbols supplied by the multinational corporation. There is no freedom and no autonomy to be found anywhere in that world.

Imagination means also the ability to imagine things that are not visible. That is a skill that the corporations wish to crush. They do not want us to be able to imagine the hidden powers that shape our world for profit. They do not want children to have the imagination to see how the cynical players on Wall Street and Madison Avenue set out to destroy their minds, how the brutal road ahead is decided for them by invisible powers.

The Constitution defends freedom of speech for the citizen. It does not grant corporations the right to brainwash and destroy the minds of citizens from childhood, rendering them incapable of making their own decisions.

As long as this criminal operation is tolerated, we will have no democracy and no government. This criminal operation must end now and the kings of advertising and public relations must face jail terms for their criminal actions against our youth, their use of technology and marketing to enable the “rape of the mind.”

Corporations, banks and the advertising and public relations firms that they fund are destroying our minds, and our ability to perceive reality. Because they attack stealthily the means by which we perceive, we are unaware of the tremendous damage that they do. Just as the brain does not feel pain, so also our schemata for perception of the world are blind to how they are undermined by false narratives and stimulation aimed at behavior modification.

Nothing less than a revolution can end this war on our children, this extermination campaign against our future.

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

I Shall Fear No Evil

Why we need a truly independent candidate for president

Author: Emanuel Pastreich

Paperback ISBN: 9781649994509

Pages: 162

Click here to order.

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***

Lebanon is in crisis, both political and economic, and this promises to deteriorate further.

According to the World Bank, the country’s economic collapse is likely to rank among the world’s worst financial crises since the mid-19th century.

The complete meltdown of Lebanon’s economy during the past 18 months is widely blamed on corruption and mismanagement by the country’s hereditary political elite.

Israel as a “good neighbor” uses every chance it is given to attempt and deepen the crisis.

On June 1^st, reports began flooding the media of Hezbollah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah’s death.

The group is a staple of stability with its many helpful, albeit populist efforts. Of course, it is also one of Israel’s mortal enemies.

Nasrallah allegedly succumbed to COVID-19 complications, or was in a coma. These reports flooded the MSM, and especially Israeli outlets for longer than a day when they were debunked.

Lebanese Al Joumhouria newspaper reported that rumors of Nasrallah’s demise were hugely exaggerated. He simply has pneumonia and seasonal allergies.

Prior to the reports of his death, Hezbollah deputy secretary-general Naim Qassem said the secretary-general needed several days of rest and supervision, but instead wished to appear for his May 25^th address, because missing it would cause people to worry.

The situation in Lebanon would have likely turned much worse if Hezbollah’s leader had passed. It would make it easier for Tel Aviv and its allies to pressure the country into submission.

During the 11-day hostilities in the Gaza Strip when Israel Defense Forces carried out an asymmetrical bombardment of Palestinian armed groups and civilians alike, several rockets were launched from Lebanese territory.

As such, the US deemed Hezbollah a threat to stability in Lebanon, mostly because it doesn’t support Tel Aviv’s policy.

The US has provided support for more than 15 years to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), but the increasing influence of the terrorist-designated Hezbollah in Lebanese politics has strained the partnership.

The financial and political crisis in Lebanon has seen the value of the local currency plunge, wiping out people’s savings and salaries.

The crash has placed increasing pressure on members of the LAF. As such the chance to exert even more pressure and attempt to undermine Hezbollah’s influence shouldn’t be missed.

Starting from May 31^st, political calls and meetings intensified in Lebanon in what was described as possibly “the last attempt” to salvage the process of forming a new government. There appears to be little progress, as a massive blackout looms in the country.

And help is only coming with extremely strict and heavy demands tied to it.

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***

Life is full of slips.

Words slip out of our mouths to surprise us.  Thoughts slip into our minds to shock us.  Dreams slip into our nights to sometimes slip into our waking thoughts to startle us.  And, as the wonderful singer/songwriter Paul Simon, sings, we are always “slip sliding away,” a reminder that can be a spur to courage and freedom or an inducement to fear and shut-upness.

Slips are double-edged.

It is obvious that since September 11, 2001, and more so since the corona virus lockdowns and the World Economic Forum’s push for a Fourth Industrial Revolution that will lead to the marriage of artificial intelligence, cyborgs, digital technology, and biology, that the USA and other countries have been slipping into a new form of fascist control.  Or at least it should be obvious, especially since this push has been accompanied by massive censorship by technology companies of dissenting voices and government crackdowns on what they term “domestic terrorists.”  Dissent has become unpatriotic and worse – treasonous.

Unless people wake up and rebel in greater numbers, the gates of this electronic iron cage will quietly be shut.

In the name of teleological efficiency and reason, as Max Weber noted more than a century ago in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, capitalist elites, operating from within the shadows of bureaucratic castles such as The World Economic Forum (WEF), the World Health Organization WHO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), The World Bank (WBG), The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Google, Facebook, the National Security Agency (NSA), the CIA, etc., – run by people whose faces are always well hidden – have been using digital technology to exert increasing control over the thoughts and actions of people worldwide.  They have been doing this not only by diktats but by manufacturing social habits – customary usages – through which they exert their social power over populations.  This linguistic and ideational propaganda is continually slipped into the daily “news” by their mainstream media partners in crime. They become social habits that occupy people’s minds and lead to certain forms of behavior.  Ideas have consequences but also histories because humans are etymological animals – that is, their ideas, beliefs, and behaviors have histories.  It is not just words that have etymologies.

When Weber said “a polar night of icy darkness” was coming in the future, he was referring to what is happening today.  Fascism usually comes on slowly as history has shown.  It slips in when people are asleep.

John Berger, commenting on the ghostly life of our received ideas whose etymology is so often lost on us, aptly said:

Our totalitarianism begins with our teleology.

And the teleology in use today is digital technology controlled by wealthy elites and governments for social control.  For years they have been creating certain dispositions in the general public, as Jacques Ellul has said, “by working spells upon them and exercising a kind of fascination” that makes the public receptive to the digital life.  This is accomplished slowly in increments, as permanent dispositions are established by slipping in regular reminders of how wonderful the new technology is and how its magical possibilities will make life so free and easy. Efficient. Happiness machines.  A close study of the past twenty-five years would no doubt reveal the specifics of this campaign.  In The Technological Society, Ellul writes:

… the use of certain propaganda techniques is not meant to entail immediate and definite adhesion to a given formula, but rather to bring about a long-range vacuity of the individual.  The individual, his soul massaged, emptied of his natural tendencies, and thoroughly assimilated to the group, is ready for anything.  Propaganda’s chief requirement is not so much to be rational, well-grounded, and powerful as it is to produce individuals especially open to suggestion who can easily be set into motion.

Once this softening up has made people “available,” the stage is set to get them to act impulsively.  Ellul again:

It operates by simple pressure and is often contradictory (since contradictory mass movements are sometimes necessary).  Of course, this dissociation can be effective only after the propaganda technique has been fused with the popular mores and has become indispensable to the population. This stage may be reached quickly, as, for example, in Germany in 1942, after only ten years of psychic manipulation.

The end result, he argues, is the establishment of an abstract universe, in which reality is completely recreated in people’s minds.  This fake reality is truer than reality as the news is faked and people are formed rather than informed.

In today’s computer driven world, one thing that people have been told for decades is to be vigilant that their computers do not become infected with viruses.  This meme was slipped regularly into popular consciousness.  To avoid infection, everyone was advised to make sure to have virus protection by downloading protection or using that provided by their operating systems, despite all the back doors built in which most have been unaware of.

Now that other incredible “machine” – the human body – can get virus “protection” by getting what the vaccine maker Moderna says is its messenger RNA (mRNA) non-vaccine “vaccine” that functions “like an operating system on a computer.”  First people must be softened up and made available and then “set in motion” to accept the solution to the fearful problem built in from the start by the same people creating the problem.  A slippery slope indeed.

But slipping is also good, especially when repetition and conventional thought rules people’s lives as it does today in a digital screen life world where algorithms often prevent creative breakthroughs, and the checking of hourly weather reports from cells is a commonplace fix to ease the anxiety of being trapped in a seemingly uncontrollable nightmare.  It seems you now do need computer generated weather reports to know which way the wind blows.

In our culture of the copy, new thoughts are difficult and so the problems that plague society persist and get rehashed ad infinitum.  I think most people realize at some level of feeling if not articulation that they are caught in a repetitive cycle of social stasis that is akin to addiction, one that has been imposed on them by elite forces they sense but don’t fully comprehend since they have bought into this circular trap that they love and hate simultaneously.  The cell phone is its symbol and the world-wide lockdowns its reality.  Even right now as the authorities grant a tactical reprieve from their cruel lockdowns if you obey and get experimentally shot with a non-vaccine vaccine, there is an anxious sense that another shoe will drop when we least expect it.  And it will.  But don’t say this out loud.

So repetition and constant change, seemingly opposites, suffuse society these days. The sagacious John Steppling captures this brilliantly in a recent article:

So ubiquitous are the metaphors and myths of AI, post humanism, transhumanism, et al. that they infuse daily discourse and pass barely noticed. And there is a quality of incoherence in a lot of this post humanist discourse, a kind of default setting for obfuscation….The techno and cyber vocabulary now meets the language of World Banking. Bourgeois economics provides the structural underpinning for enormous amounts of political rhetoric, and increasingly of cultural expression….This new incoherence is both intentional, and unintentional. The so called ‘Great Reset’ is operationally effective, and it is happening before our eyes, and yet it is also a testament to just how far basic logic has been eroded….Advanced social atomization and a radical absence of social change. Today, I might argue, at least in the U.S. (and likely much of Europe) there is a profound sense of repetitiveness to daily life. No matter one’s occupation, and quite possibly no matter one’s class. Certainly the repetitiveness of the high-net-worth one percent is of a different quality than that of an Uber driver. And yet, the experience of life is an experience of repetition.

A kind of flaccid grimness accompanies this sensibility.  Humor is absent, and the only kind of laughter allowed is the mocking kind that hides a nihilistic spirit of resignation – a sense of inevitability that mocks the spirit of rebellion.  Everything is solipsistic and even jokes are taken as revelations of one’s personal life.

The other day I was going grocery shopping.  My wife had written on the list: “heavy cream or whipping cream.”  Not knowing if there were a difference, I asked her which she preferred.  “I prefer whipping,” she said.

I replied, “But I don’t have a whip nor do they sell them at the supermarket.”

We both laughed, although I found it funnier than she.  She slipped, and I found humor in that.  Because it was an innocent slip of the tongue with no significance and she had done the slipping, there was also a slippage between our senses of humor.

But when I told this to a few people, they hesitated to laugh as if I might be revealing some sado-masochistic personal reality, and they didn’t know whether to laugh or not.

It’s harder to laugh at yourself because we get uptight and are afraid to say the “wrong” things.  Many people come to the end of their lives hearing the tolling for their tongues that never spoke freely because of the pale cast of thought that has infected them.  Not their own thoughts, but thoughts that have been placed into their minds by their controllers in the mass media.

Freud famously wrote about slips of the tongue and tried to pin them down.  In this he was a bit similar to a lepidopterist who pins butterflies.  We are left with the eponymous Freudian slips that sometimes do and sometimes don’t signify some revelation that the speaker does not consciously intend to utter.

It seems to me that in order to understand anything about ourselves and our present historical condition – which no doubt seems very confusing to many people as propagandists and liars spew out disinformation daily – we need to develop a way to cut through the enervating miasma of fear that grips so many.  A fear created by elites to cower regular people into submission, as another doctor named Anthony Fauci has said: “Now is the time to just do what you are told.”

But obviously words do matter, but what they matter is open to interpretation and sometimes debate.  To be told to shut up and do what you’re told, to censor differences of opinion, to impose authoritarian restrictions on free speech as is happening now, speech that can involve slips of the tongue, is a slippery slope in an allegedly democratic society.  Jim Garrison of JFK fame said that we live in a doll’s house of propaganda where the population is treated as children and fantasies have replaced reality. He was right.

So how can we break out of this deeply imbedded impasse?

This is the hard part, for digital addiction has penetrated deep into our lives.

I believe we need to disrupt our routines, break free from our habits, in order to clearly see what is happening today.

We need to slip away for a while. Leave our cells.  Let their doors clang shut behind. Abandon television.  Close the computer.  Step out without any mask, not just the paper kind but the ones used to hide from others.  Disburden our minds of its old rubbish. Become another as you go walking away.  Find a park or some natural enclave where the hum and buzz quiets down and you can breathe.  Recall that in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four the only place Winston Smith can escape the prying eyes and spies of Big Brother, the only place he can grasp the truth, was not in analyzing Doublethink or Crimestop, but “in a natural clearing, a tiny grass knoll surrounded by tall saplings that shut it in completely” and bluebells bloomed and a thrush sang madly.  Here he meets his lover and they affirm their humanity and feel free and alive for a brief respite.  Here in the green wood, the green chaos, new thoughts have a chance to grow.  It is an old story and old remedy, transitory of course, but as vital as breathing.  In his profound meditation on this phenomenon, The Tree, John Fowles, another Englishman, writes:

It is not necessarily too little knowledge that causes ignorance; possessing too much, or wanting to gain too much, can produce the same thing.

I am not proposing that such a retreat is a permanent answer to the propaganda that engulfs us.  But without it we are lost.  Without it, we cannot break free from received opinions and the constant mental noise the digital media have substituted for thought.  Without it, we cannot distinguish our own thoughts from those slyly suggested to us to make us “available.”  Without it, we will always feel ourselves lost, “shipwrecked upon things,” in the words of the Spanish philosopher Ortega Y Gasset.  If we are to take a stand against the endless lies and a world-wide war waged against regular people by the world’s elites, we must first take “a stand within the self, ensimismamiento,” by slipping away into contemplation.  Only then, once we have clarified what we really believe and don’t believe, can we take meaningful action.

There’s an old saying about falling or slipping between the cracks.  It’s meant to be a bad thing and to refer to a place where no one is taking care of you. The saying doesn’t make sense. For if you end up between the cracks, you are on the same ground where habits hold you in learned helplessness.  Better to slip into the cracks where, as Leonard Cohen sings, “the light gets in.”

It may feel like you are slipping away, but you may be exploring your roots.

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

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

He is the author of the new book: https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/

Featured image is from Creative Commons

CIA (Dis)Information Operations Come Home to the US

By Peter Van Buren, June 02, 2021

Reporters joke the easiest job in Washington is CIA spokesman. You need only listen carefully to questions and say “No comment’ before heading to Happy Hour. The joke, however, is on us. The reporters pretend to see only one side of the CIA, the passive hiding of information about itself.

From 1980s Neoliberalism to the Post Covid “New Normal”

By Colin Todhunter, June 02, 2021

Sold under the pretence of a quest for optimising well-being and ‘happiness’, capitalism thrives on the exploitation of peoples and the environment. What really matters is the strive to maintain viable profit margins. The prevailing economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption and needs a certain level of annual GDP growth for large firms to make sufficient profit.

NoVaxx Rebellion; Resist, Refuse, Reject

By Mike Whitney, June 02, 2021

It’s very hard to look back on the events of the last 15 months and not suspect that there is more to this Covid story than meets the eye; that while the infection does, in fact, kill mostly older people with multiple underlying conditions, that, perhaps, the virus has been used to promote a political agenda of which we know very little.

Dr. Fauci and the Origins of the Pandemic: The Biggest Flip-Flop Ever — Who’s Going to Jail?

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, June 02, 2021

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a staunch defender of the natural-origin theory for SARS-CoV-2 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in May 2020, CNN used Fauci’s statements on the issue as proof that then-President Donald Trump was spouting a ridiculous conspiracy theory.

COVID “Vaccines”: A Faltering Framework

By Dr. Sadaf Gilani, June 02, 2021

From the “absolute risk reduction” you can calculate the “Number Needed to Vaccinate” which signifies approximately how many people must be injected to hypothetically benefit just one person. It is a metric every person needs to understand before taking the Covid injection.

Johns Hopkins Prof: ‘One of the Biggest Failures of Our Current Medical Leadership Is Ignoring Natural Immunity’

By David McLoone, June 02, 2021

A Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor blasted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for ignoring crucial data on natural immunity from COVID-19, saying that “probably half the country has natural immunity from prior infection. This is the most slow, reactionary, political CDC in American history.”

Emerging Evidence Demonstrating the Efficacy of Ivermectin in the Prophylaxis and Treatment of COVID-19

By Dr. Pierre Kory, Dr. Gianfranco Umberto Meduri, and et al., June 02, 2021

Meta-analyses based on 18 randomized controlled treatment trials of ivermectin in COVID-19 have found large, statistically significant reductions in mortality, time to clinical recovery, and time to viral clearance. Furthermore, results from numerous controlled prophylaxis trials report significantly reduced risks of contracting COVID-19 with the regular use of ivermectin.

Make Way for the Snitch State: The All-Seeing Fourth Branch of Government

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, June 02, 2021

Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts.

Bulgaria: U.S. Paratroopers Stormed Civilian Business in NATO Military Exercise

By Rick Rozoff, June 02, 2021

U.S. Army Europe and Africa announced today that during the Swift Response 21 airborne military exercise last month along what is now called NATO’s Eastern Flank – from the Baltic to the Black Sea – troops with the 173rd Airborne Brigade ran a training exercise to practice seizing a decommissioned air base in Bulgaria that went terribly awry.

Africa Day 2021: The Need for a Continental Response to the Global Crisis

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 02, 2021

Africa Day for this year was called under the theme “Arts, Culture and Heritage: Levers for Building the Africa We Want.” The resurrection and enhancement of the African Personality is essential in the efforts to realize a better standard of living based upon the interests of the majority of workers, farmers, women and youth within the AU region.

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.

***

Reporters joke the easiest job in Washington is CIA spokesman. You need only listen carefully to questions and say “No comment’ before heading to Happy Hour. The joke, however, is on us. The reporters pretend to see only one side of the CIA, the passive hiding of information about itself. They meanwhile choose to profit from the other side of the equation, active information operations designed to influence events in America. It is 2021 and the CIA is running an op against the American people.

Leon Panetta, the Director CIA from 2009 to 2011 explained bluntly his CIA did influence foreign media outlets ahead of elections in order to “change attitudes within the country.” The method, Panetta said, was to “acquire media within a country or within a region that could very well be used for being able to deliver a specific message or work to influence those that may own elements of the media to be able to cooperate, work with you in delivering that message.”

The CIA has been running such information ops to influence foreign elections since the end of WWII. Richard Bissell, who ran the agency’s operations during the Cold War, wrote of “exercising control over a newspaper or broadcasting station, or of securing the desired outcome in an election.” A report on the CIA in Chile boasts the Agency portrayed its favored candidate in one election as a “wise, sincere and high-minded statesman” while painting his leftist opponent as a “calculating schemer.” At one point in the 1980s foreign media insertions ran 80 a day.

The goal is to control information as a tool of influence. Sometimes the control is very direct, simply paying a reporter to run a story, or, as was done in Iraq, simply operating the media outlet yourself (known as the Orwellian Indigenous Media Project.) The problem is such direct action is easily exposed, destroying credibility.

A more effective strategy is to become a source for legitimate media such that your (dis)information inherits their credibility. The most effective is an operation so complex one CIA plant is the initial information source while a second CIA plant acts seemingly independently as a confirming source. At that point you can push information to the mainstream media, who can then “independently” confirm it, sometimes unknowingly, through your secondary agents. You can basically write tomorrow’s headlines.

Other techniques include exclusive true information mixed with disinformation to establish credibility, using official sources like Embassy spokesmen to appear to inadvertently confirm sub details, and covert funding of research and side gigs to promote academics and experts who discredit counter-narratives. The academics may never know where their money comes from, adding to their credibility.

From the end of WWII to the Church Committee in 1976, this was all just a conspiracy theory. Of course the US would not use the CIA to influence elections, especially in fellow democracies. Except it did. By its nature reporting on intelligence always requires one to work with limited information. Always give time a chance to explain.

Through Operation Mockingbird the CIA ran over 400 American journalists as direct assets. Almost none have ever discussed their work publically. CIA documents show journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

The New York Times alone willingly provided cover for about ten CIA officers over decades and kept quiet about it.

Such long term relationships are a powerful tool, so feeding a true big story to a young reporter to get him promoted is part of the game. Don’t forget the anonymous source who drove the Watergate story was an FBI official who through his actions made the careers of  cub reporters Woodward and Bernstein. Bernstein went on to champion the Russiagate story. Woodward became a Washington hagiographer. Ken Dilanian, formerly with the Los Angeles Times, the Associated Press, and now working for NBC, maintains a “collaborative relationship” with the CIA.

That’s the tradecraft and the history. The problem for America is once again the tools of war abroad have come home. The intelligence community is currently operating against the American people using established media.

Some of it can’t be more obvious. The CIA always planted stories in foreign media for American outlets to pick up. The Agency works directly with Hollywood to control movies about itself. Turn on any of the advocacy media outlets and you see panels of former CIA officials. Journalist Matt Taibbi even created a list (and since ex-‘s need agency clearance to speak, all are of the officially approved class.) None is more egregious than John Brennan, former Director CIA, who for years touted Russiagate when he knew from information gathered while he was still in office it was all a lie.  The uber-lie that Trump was dirty with Russia was leaked to the press most likely by Brennan in January 2017 as the kick off event to the info op still running today.

Brennan’s role is more than speculation. John Durham, the US attorney leading the ongoing “how it happened” Russiagate investigation into the intelligence community, has requested Brennan’s emails and call logs from CIA. Durham is also examining whether Brennan changed his story between his public comments (not under oath, say anything) and his May 2017 testimony to Congress (under oath, watch out for perjury) about the dossier. Reporter Aaron Mate is less delicate, laying out the evidence Brennan was “a central architect and promoter of the conspiracy theory from its inception.” Even blunter is Senator Rand Paul, who directly accuses Brennan of trying “to bring down a sitting president.”

It was all based on nothing but disinformation and the American press swallowed every bit of it, turning the op into a three year tantrum falsely convincing a vast number of citizens their nation was run by a Russian asset. Robert Mueller, whose investigation was supposed to propel all this nothing into impeachment hearings, ended up exercising one of the last bits of political courage Americans will ever see in walking right to the edge of essentially a coup and refusing to step off into the abyss.

The CIA is a learning institution, and recovered well from Russiagate. Details can be investigated. That’s where the old story fell apart. The dossier wasn’t true. But the a-ha discovery was since you’ll never formally prosecute anyone, why bother with evidence. Just throw out accusations and let the media fill it all in for you. The new paradigm included let the nature of the source — the brave lads of the intelligence agencies — legitimize the accusations this time, not facts. Go overt and use the new, unexpected prestige of the CIA as progressive heros to substantiate things.

So in December 2017 CNN reported Donald Trump, Jr. had advance access to the WikiLeaks archive. Within an hour, NBC’s Ken Dilanian and CBS both claimed independent confirmation. It was a complete lie, based on fabricated documents. How do you confirm a lie? Ask another liar.

In February 2020, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) briefed the House Intelligence Committee the Russians were election meddling again to favor Trump. A few weeks earlier, the ODNI briefed Bernie Sanders the Russians were also meddling in the Democratic primaries in his favor. Both briefings were leaked, the former to the New York Times to smear Trump for replacing his DNI, the latter to the Washington Postahead of the Nevada caucuses to damage Sanders.

In June 2020 The New York Times stated CIA officials concluded the Russians “secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing coalition forces in Afghanistan — including targeting American troops.”  The story ran near another claiming Trump had spoken disrespectfully about fallen soldiers. Neither story was true. But they broke around the same time Trump announced his plan to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, aimed at discouraging pro-military voters.

Earlier this month The Washington Post, citing anonymous sources, claimed the FBI gave a defensive briefing to Rudy Giuliani in 2019, before he traveled to Ukraine. Giuliani supposedly ignored the warning. The story was “independently confirmed” by both NBC and The New York Times. It was totally false.

The American system always envisioned an adversarial role for the media. One of the earliest challenges to freedom of the press was the Colonial-era Peter Zenger case, which established the right of the press to criticize politicians free from libel charges. At times when things really mattered and even as other journalists hid under their beds, men like Edward R. Murrow worked their craft to preserve democracy. Same for Walter Cronkite finally reaching his opposition to the Vietnam War, and the New York Times reporters weighing imprisonment to publish the Pentagon Papers.

In each of those instances the handful of reporters who risked everything to tell the truth were held up as heroes. Seeing the Times fighting for its life, the Washington Post co-published the Pentagon Papers to force the government to make its case not just against a rival newspaper, but the 1A itself.

Not today. Journalism is today devoted to eliminating practitioners unwilling to play the game. Few have been targeted more than Glenn Greenwald (with Matt Taibbi as runner up.) Greenwald exploded into a journalistic superhero for his reporting on Edward Snowden’s NSA archive, founding The Intercept to serve as a platform for that work (Greenwald’s downfall parallels Julian Assange, who went from liberal hero for exposing the foundational lies of the Iraq War to zero when his Wikileaks was demonized for supposedly helping Donald Trump.)

Greenwald’s criticism of the media for accepting Deep State lies as truth, particularly concerning Russiagate, turned him into a villain for progressives. MSNBC banned him, and other media outlets ran stories critical of him. Then something very, very odd happened to make it appear The Intercept outed one of its own whistleblower sources. Evidence suggests the source was a patsy, set up by the intel community, and exposed via Matt Cole, one of The Intercept journalists on this story.

Cole was also involved in the outing of source CIA officer John Kiriakou in connection with torture claims. Either way new whistleblowers will think twice before turning to The Intercept. Greenwald recently quit the site after it refused to publish his article on Hunter Biden’s ties to China unless he deleted portions critical of Joe Biden.

Greenwald seems to have figured out the intel community’s game, writing

“the most significant Trump-era alliance is between corporate outlets and security state agencies, whose evidence-free claims they unquestioningly disseminate… Every journalist, even the most honest and careful, will get things wrong sometimes, and trustworthy journalists issue prompt corrections when they do. That behavior should be trust-building. But when media outlets continue to use the same reckless and deceitful tactics — such as claiming to have ‘independently confirmed‘ one another’s false stories when they have merely served as stenographers for the same anonymous security state agents while ‘confirming’ nothing — that strongly suggests a complete indifference to the truth and, even more so, a willingness to serve as disinformation agents.”

Democracy has no meaning if people simply vote uninformed, as they are propagandized. It will be sport for future historians to mark the thing that most pushed America into decline. Seeing decades of success abroad in using info ops, the CIA and others turned those weapons inward. So seeing her Deep State meddle in presidential politics, simultaneously destroying (albeit mostly with their cooperation) the adversarial media, while crushing faith in both our leaders and in the process of electing them, will certainly be a top qualifier.

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Important article first published in June 2020

The Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC) was launched [in June 2020] by legislators of eight parliaments. In the meantime, it includes politicians of twelve parliaments – eleven national [1] and the EU parliament. States, which recently have shown a particularly aggressive attitude toward China, are also involved: the USA, Australia and Japan. US Senators Marco Rubio (Republican) and Bob Menendez (Democrat), who, since some time, have distinguished themselves as anti-China hardliners, are playing a leading role in IPAC. Two politicians from the German Green Party, Margarete Bause, as member of the German Bundestag and Reinhard Bütikofer, as member of the EU parliament are among the Alliance’s Co-Chairs. Likewise, Michael Brand, Spokesperson for Human Rights in the CDU/CSU Bundestag group is also involved.

Typical Western Double Standards (I)

IPAC explicitly aims at promoting a “coherent response” to China’s rise.[2] The new alliance – comprising transatlantic states and close allies, Japan and Australia – is demanding that China abide by standards that western powers have repeatedly violated: The People’s Republic of China must be held to the “standards of the international legal order.”

There is no mention of the wars against Yugoslavia (1999), Iraq (2003) or Libya (2011), which western powers have waged in various constellations in violation of international law. IPAC founding member Bütikofer, for example, supported the war against Yugoslavia in 1999 as the political administrator of the then coalition governing Green Party. IPAC also declared that China be held to the standards of the rules-based order of the WTO. The Trump administration’s practices violating those rules are not mentioned. Beijing should also not be permitted to compromise the sovereignty of recipient countries for example through credits. IPAC does not mention the practice of the western dominated International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposing draconian austerity programs against the will of credit recipients.

“At Last a Sanctions Mechanism”

It is particularly becoming apparent that the IPAC seeks to have Europe enforce the US sanctions policy. US Senators Rubio and Menendez are the main forces behind the introduction of the relevant US laws, which, using the excuse of seeking to take action against Beijing’s measures in Hong Kong and in Xinjiang, open the door to punitive actions against the People’s Republic of China. US President Donald Trump should soon be signing the Xinjiang bill into law [June 2020]. The bill pertaining to Hong Kong has already been in effect since last November. Bütikofer recently spoke in favor of “at last installing a concerted pan-EU global sanctions mechanism,” to eventually “be able to “impose sanctions for human rights violations on Chinese officials.”[3] IPAC has chosen this means of having influence through parliaments, where the US government has yet to be successful in forcing other governments through direct pressure to adopt its sanctions policy. One example is Great Britain, where, since some time, particularly pro-USA Tory backbenchers are adamantly insisting that their government’s decision to a limited Huawei participation in setting up the British 5G network be revised. IPAC now permits such practices to be expanded.

The ex-Colonial Governor and the Greens

In Germany, the Greens constitute the backbone of this policy. This could be observed recently, when the last British colonial governor of Hong Kong, the former EU External Relations Commissioner, Chris Patten, launched an appeal – based on China’s new security law for Hong Kong – calling for joint action to be taken by the western countries and their allies against the People’s Republic of China. This appeal also sought to mobilize the largest possible number of parliamentarians to adopt an aggressive confrontational policy toward Beijing – circumventing their national governments. It has already garnered the signatures of 853 politicians from Europe, North America, Australia, and Japan, most being legislators of national parliaments and the EU Parliament.

The former colonial governor’s appeal has received particularly strong support from the German Greens, whose names are listed alongside right-wing hardliners such as Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz.[4] The Green politician Bütikofer plays a leading role also in IPAC. In the wings of the Munich Security Conference (MSC), the head of the EU Parliament’s China delegation made a plea for forming a transatlantic China caucus, with the objective of bringing US Congressional representatives in close contact with members of the EU Parliament.[5] IPAC now gets various additional national parliaments onboard.

Typical Western Double Standards (II)

The, at first sight, astonishing, cooperation German Greens have with hardliners from the right-wing of the US Republicans, has a long tradition in the fight against China. For many years, German Greens, like US Republicans, have been supporting Tibetan circles linked to the Dalai Lama, who occasionally have resorted to violence in their opposition to Beijing – even demanding that Tibet secede from the People’s Republic of China.[6] Protesting Beijing’s measures in Xinjiang, US Republicans and German Greens are standing shoulder to shoulder – another example of typical western double standards: Whereas China’s fight against the Uighur jihad in Xinjiang (german-foreign-policy.com reported [7]) is being sharply attacked, massive crimes committed since September 11, 2001, during the West’s “War on Terror” – abduction and torture of terrorist suspects – are passed over in silence. Germany’s SPD/Greens coalition government at the time had been involved.[8] Bütikofer was then the political administrator of the Green Party.

Advisory Board Member with CIA Career

The composition of IPAC’s Advisory Board corresponds to its above-mentioned agenda. Among its members are activists from Hong Kong, including a British surgeon with experience in war and violent conflict zones,[9] as well as the Vice President of the Munich-based World Uighur Congress (WUC, german-foreign-policy.com reported [10]). IPAC Advisory Board member Robert L. Suettinger, on the other hand, was a long-time employee in the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence.[11]

“Security Strategies”

IPAC’s declared objectives do not ultimately indicate its long-term orientation. “Democracies,” the organization declares, must develop complementary “security strategies” to address “challenges” presented by the PRC.[12] This falls in line with considerations being made in transatlantic circles, to position NATO against China – also explicitly militarily. german-foreign-policy.com will soon report.

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Notes

[1] The national parliaments of Australia, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Canada, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Czech Republic and the USA.

[2] About. ipac.global.

[3] Christoph B. Schiltz: Augenblick der Wahrheit für die EU. welt.de 26.05.2020. See also Die Meister der doppelten Standards.

[4] See also Auf breiter Front gegen Beijing.

[5] China eint Amerikaner und Europäer. tagesspiegel.de 15.02.2020. See also Streit um die Chinapolitik.

[6] See also The Olympic Torch Relay Campaign and Operations against China.

[7] See also Setting the Sights on East Turkestan (I).

[8] See also 17 Years “War on Terror”.

[9] Team: Dr Darren Mann. ipac.global.

[10] See also Setting the Sights on East Turkestan (II) and The Chinese Opposition’s Foreign Hub.

[11] Team: Robert L. Suettinger. ipac.global.

[12] About. ipac.global.

Featured image is from German-foreign-policy.com

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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***

Sold under the pretence of a quest for optimising well-being and ‘happiness’, capitalism thrives on the exploitation of peoples and the environment. What really matters is the strive to maintain viable profit margins. The prevailing economic system demands ever-increasing levels of extraction, production and consumption and needs a certain level of annual GDP growth for large firms to make sufficient profit.

But at some point, markets become saturated, demand rates fall and overproduction and overaccumulation of capital becomes a problem. In response, we have seen credit markets expand and personal debt increase to maintain consumer demand as workers’ wages have been squeezed, financial and real estate speculation rise (new investment markets), stock buy backs and massive bail outs and subsidies (public money to maintain the viability of private capital) and an expansion of militarism (a major driving force for many sectors of the economy).

We have also witnessed systems of production abroad being displaced for global corporations to then capture and expand markets in foreign countries.

The old normal

Much of what is outlined above is inherent to capitalism. But the 1980s was a crucial period that helped set the framework for where we find ourselves today.

Remember when the cult of the individual was centre stage? It formed part of the Reagan-Thatcher rhetoric of the ‘new normal’ of 1980s neoliberalism.

In the UK, the running down of welfare provision was justified by government-media rhetoric about ‘individual responsibility’, reducing the role of the state and the need to ‘stand on your own two feet’. The selling off of public assets to profiteering corporations was sold to the masses on the basis of market efficiency and ‘freedom of choice’.

The state provision of welfare, education, health services and the role of the public sector was relentlessly undermined by neoliberal dogma and the creed that the market (global corporations) constituted the best method for supplying human needs.

Thatcher’s stated mission was to unleash the entrepreneurial spirit by rolling back the ‘nanny state’. She wasted little time in crushing the power of the trade unions and privatising key state assets.

Despite her rhetoric, she did not actually reduce the role of the state. She used its machinery differently, on behalf of business. Neither did she unleash the ‘spirit of entrepreneurialism’. Economic growth rates under her were similar as in the 1970s, but a concentration of ownership occurred and levels of inequality rocketed.

Margaret Thatcher was well trained in perception management, manipulating certain strands of latent populist sentiment and prejudice. Her free market, anti-big-government platitudes were passed off to a section of the public that was all too eager to embrace them as a proxy for remedying all that was wrong with Britain. For many, what were once regarded as the extreme social and economic policies of the right became entrenched as the common sense of the age.

Thatcher’s policies destroyed a fifth of Britain’s industrial base in just two years alone. The service sector, finance and banking were heralded as the new drivers of the economy, as much of Britain’s manufacturing sector was out-sourced to cheap labour economies.

Under Thatcher, employees’ share of national income was slashed from 65% to 53%. Long gone are many of the relatively well-paid manufacturing jobs that helped build and sustain the economy. In their place, the country has witnessed the imposition of a low taxation regime and low-paid and insecure ‘service sector’ jobs (no-contract work, macjobs, call centre jobs – many of which soon went abroad) as well as a real estate bubble, credit card debt and student debt, which helped to keep the economy afloat.

However, ultimately, what Thatcher did was – despite her rhetoric of helping small-scale businesses and wrapping herself in the national flag – facilitate the globalisation process by opening the British economy to international capital flows and allowing free rein for global finance and transnational corporations.

Referring back to the beginning of this article, it is clear whose happiness and well-being counts most and whose does not matter at all as detailed by David Rothkopf in his 2008 book ‘Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making‘. Members of the superclass belong to the megacorporation-interlocked, policy-building elites of the world and come from the highest echelons of finance, industry, the military, government and other shadow elites. These are the people whose interests Margaret Thatcher was serving.

These people set the agendas at the Trilateral Commission, Bilderberg, G-7, G-20, NATO, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization.

And let us not forget the various key think tanks and policy making arenas like the Council on Foreign Relations, the Brookings Institute and Chatham House as well as the World Economic Forum (WEF), where sections of the global elite forge policies and strategies and pass them to their political handmaidens.

Driven by the vision of its influential executive chairman Klaus Schwab, the WEF is a major driving force for the dystopian ‘great reset’, a tectonic shift that intends to change how we live, work and interact with each other.

The new normal

The great reset envisages a transformation of capitalism, resulting in permanent restrictions on fundamental liberties and mass surveillance as livelihoods and entire sectors are sacrificed to boost the monopoly and hegemony of pharmaceutical corporations, high-tech/big data giants, Amazon, Google, major global chains, the digital payments sector, biotech concerns, etc.

Under the cover of COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, the great reset is being rolled out under the guise of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which smaller enterprises are to be driven to bankruptcy or bought up by monopolies. Economies are being ‘restructured’ and many jobs and roles will be carried out by AI-driven technology.

The WEF says the public will ‘rent’ everything they require: stripping the right of ownership under the guise of a ‘green economy’ underpinned by the rhetoric of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’.

At the same time new (‘green product’) markets are being created and, on the back of COVID, fresh opportunities for profit extraction are opening up abroad. For instance, World Bank Group President David Malpass has stated that poorer countries will be ‘helped’ to get back on their feet after the various lockdowns that have been implemented in response to the Covid-19 crisis. This ‘help’ will be on condition that neoliberal reforms and the undermining of public services are implemented and become further embedded.

Just a month into the COVID crisis, the IMF and World Bank were already facing a deluge of aid requests from developing countries. Scores of countries were asking for bailouts and loans. Ideal cover for rebooting the global economy via a debt crisis and the subsequent privatisation of national assets and the further ‘structural adjustment’ of economies.

Many people waste no time in referring to this as  some kind of ‘Marxist’ or ‘communist’ takeover of the planet because a tiny elite will be dictating policies. This has nothing to do with Marxism. An authoritarian capitalist elite – supported by their political technocrats – aims to secure even greater control of the global economy. It will no longer be a (loosely labelled) ‘capitalism’ based on ‘free’ markets and competition (not that those concepts ever really withstood proper scrutiny). Economies will be monopolised by global players, not least e-commerce platforms run by the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Facebook and Google and their multi-billionaire owners.

Essential (for capitalism) new markets will also be created through the ‘financialisation’ and ownership of all aspects of nature, which is to be colonised, commodified and traded under the fraudulent notion of protecting the environment.

The so-called ‘green economy’ will fit in with the notion of ‘sustainable consumption’ and ‘climate emergency’. A bunch of billionaires and their platforms will control every aspect of the value chain. Of course, they themselves will not reduce their own consumption or get rid of their personal jets, expensive vehicles, numerous exclusive homes or ditch their resource gobbling lifestyles. Reduced consumption is meant only for the masses.

They will not only control and own data about consumption but also control and own data on production, logistics, who needs what, when they need it, who should produce it, who should move it and when it should be moved. Independent enterprises will disappear or become incorporated into the platforms acting as subservient cogs. Elected representatives will be mere technocratic overseers of these platforms and the artificial intelligence tools that plan and determine all of the above.

The lockdowns and restrictions we have seen since March 2020 have helped boost the bottom line of global chains and the e-commerce giants and have cemented their dominance. Many small and medium-size independent enterprises have been pushed towards bankruptcy. At the same time, fundamental rights have been eradicated under COVID19 government measures.

Politicians in countries throughout the world have been using the rhetoric of the WEF’s great reset, talking of the need to ‘build back better’ for the ‘new normal’. They are all on point. Hardly a coincidence. Essential to this ‘new normal’ is the compulsion to remove individual liberties and personal freedoms given that, in the ‘green new normal’, unfettered consumption will no longer be an option for the bulk of the population.

It has long been the case that a significant part of the working class has been deemed ‘surplus to requirements’ – three decades ago, such people were sacrificed on the altar of neo-liberalism. They lost their jobs due to automation and offshoring. They have had to rely on meagre state welfare and run-down public services.

But what we are now seeing is the possibility of hundreds of millions around the world being robbed of their livelihoods. Forget about the benign sounding ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ and its promised techno-utopia. What we are witnessing right now seems to be a major restructuring of capitalist economies.

With AI and advanced automation of production, distribution and service provision (3D printing/manufacturing, drone technology, driverless vehicles, lab grown food, farmerless farms, robotics, etc), a mass labour force – and therefore mass education, mass welfare, mass healthcare provision and entire systems that were in place to reproduce labour for capitalist economic activity – will no longer be required. As economic activity is restructured, labour’s relationship to capital is being transformed.

In a reorganised system that no longer needs to sell the virtues of excessive individualism (consumerism), the levels of political and civil rights and freedoms we have been used to will not be tolerated.

Neoliberalism might have reached its logical conclusion (for now). Making trade unions toothless, beating down wages to create unimaginable levels of inequality and (via the dismantling of Bretton Woods) affording private capital so much freedom to secure profit and political clout under the guise of ‘globalisation’ would inevitably lead to one outcome.

A concentration of wealth, power, ownership and control at the top with large sections of the population on state-controlled universal basic income and everyone subjected to the discipline of an emerging biosecurity surveillance state designed to curtail liberties ranging from freedom of movement and assembly to political protest and free speech.

Perception management is of course vital for pushing through all of this. Rhetoric about ‘liberty’ and ‘individual responsibility’ worked a treat in the 1980s to help bring about a massive heist of wealth. This time, it is a public health scare and ‘collective responsibility’ as part of a strategy to help move towards near-monopolistic control over economies by a handful of global players.  

And the perception of freedom is also being managed. Once vaccinated many will begin to feel free. Freer than under lockdown. But not really free at all.

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Michael Whitney, renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

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

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It has been 58 years since the formation of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) the forerunner to today’s African Union (AU) which was inaugurated in 2002.

Since 1963, Africa has undergone tremendous social change and political re-awakenings where in 2021 there are 55 member-states within the AU with only one, the Western Sahara, lacking national independence.

Africa Day for this year was called under the theme “Arts, Culture and Heritage: Levers for Building the Africa We Want.” The resurrection and enhancement of the African Personality is essential in the efforts to realize a better standard of living based upon the interests of the majority of workers, farmers, women and youth within the AU region.

Yet the AU region is by no means free of the clutches of imperialism. The current COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerabilities of the 1.3 billion people on a continent which remains dependent upon former colonial and present neo-colonial powers that drain the economic resources found in such abundance.

Similar to the situations in the Caribbean, Central America, South America and large areas of the Asia-Pacific geo-political regions, the AU member-states along with Saharawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the provisional government of the Western Sahara which is recognized also by the United Nations, continues to struggle for genuine liberation and sovereignty. The Western Sahara was conceded to the Kingdom of Morocco in 1975 after the departure of colonial Spain.

In an article written about the stance of the SADR and its politico-military wing, the Polisario Front, in relationship to Africa liberation, it says:

“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) affirmed today that the ‘declaration of the leaders of independent African countries at the beginning of the sixties of the last century on the constitution of a continental organization has the objective of promoting and supporting the peoples of the continent who fight against colonialism and Apartheid ‘. In a statement made public on the occasion of the celebration of Africa Day, the Saharawi MF highlighted that ‘today we celebrate, like the other African peoples, the day on which Africa commemorates the 58th Anniversary of the founding of the Organization for African Unity, on May 25, 1963. The founding of this continental organization represented a strong reason that contributed to accelerating the independence processes in African countries and highlighted its unique character that framed its objectives and priorities in the fight for human rights, self-determination and independence’”.

Morocco and Spain are now involved in a diplomatic dispute due to the medical treatment of Polisario Front leader and President of the SADR, Brahim Ghali, for Covid-19 in a Spanish hospital. Morocco has expressed its opposition through official diplomatic channels with Spain.

In response to the anger of Rabat, the government has allowed the outmigration of thousands of people seeking entry into the Spanish controlled territories off the coast of Morocco. Most of the migrants, who come from Africa and West Asia, have been returned to Morocco soon after arriving in Spanish controlled territory.

The problem of migration is not exclusively centered in Morocco. Other North African states such as Libya and Tunisia have the same difficulties of being largely forced to detain migrants fleeing from the horrendous conditions which have their origins in imperialist militarism.

Large scale migration has been utilized by right-wing politicians in Europe to form parties which call for a total ban on those in need of asylum. This same atmosphere prevails as well in the U.S. when the political landscape became even more polarized with the advent of the previous administration of President Donald Trump and the failure of the current presidency of Joe Biden to take bold initiatives aimed at lessening racial oppression.

Imperialism and Militarism in 21st Century Africa

The U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) was operationalized in February 2008 with its headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. During 2007 and 2008, no African government was willing to accept offers by the then President George W. Bush to host the primary base of AFRICOM.

However, with the advent of Bush’s successor, President Barack Obama, AFRICOM was strengthened and enhanced. There is currently an operational base of AFRICOM in the strategically located Horn of Africa state of Djibouti which houses over 3,000 Pentagon troops.

An investigative report done by the South African-based Mail & Guardian in 2020 stated that:

“Although U.S. commandos operate on the African continent with the agreement of host governments, ordinary Africans are rarely told about the full extent of U.S. activities — nor offered a say in how and why Americans operate in their countries. Even basic information, like the sweep and scope of deployments by elite U.S. troops and clandestine combat by American commandos on the continent, is mostly unreported across Africa…. In 2019, U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 22 African countries: Algeria, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Chad, Côte D’Ivoire, Djibouti, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Somalia, Tanzania and Tunisia.

This accounts for a significant proportion of U.S. Special Operations forces’ global activity: more than 14% of US commandos deployed overseas in 2019 were sent to Africa, the largest percentage of any region in the world except for the greater Middle East.”

Despite the interventions of AFRICOM for more than a decade, the security situation in many African states is far worse than in 2008. In Nigeria, an insurgency which began in 2009 in the northeast of Africa’s most populous state on the continent, has not been defeated. The current President Muhammadu Buhari, a former military general with ties to the U.S. Pentagon, has asked for the construction of an AFRICOM base in Nigeria.

Although Buhari declared while running for the presidency in 2015 that he would eliminate the threat of Boko Haram within six months, there are today other criminal groupings which have emerged causing instability through theft, murder, kidnappings for ransom and recruitment. During April, Buhari said he had requested from the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in a virtual meeting that:

“I asked the U.S. to consider re-locating the AFRICOM HQ from Germany to Africa — near the Theatre of Operation; against the backdrop of growing security challenges in West & Central Africa, Gulf of Guinea, Lake Chad region & the Sahel,” Buhari said in a Twitter post after the meeting.” (See this)

Such a controversial request by a former military general now heading a government with, in excess, of 200 million residents, illustrates the degree to which neo-colonialism has penetrated the African continent. Nigeria due to police misconduct faced a national rebellion late last year where scores were killed and billions in property damages occurred. There was sharp criticism levelled against Buhari inside of Nigeria while many military experts in the U.S. believe that the relocation of AFRICOM headquarters to West Africa would be highly unlikely. Nonetheless, the desperation of U.S. imperialism in its competition with China and other rivals, cannot be ignored in its efforts to remain dominant militarily in Africa and internationally.

African Unification and Socialism Provides the Only Real Alternative to Neo-Colonialism

The present role of the national military structures in Africa has proved incapable of guaranteeing the material interests of the majority of working people, farmers, youth and women. These mass elements within African societies must be empowered before genuine development can be realized.

Development and regional security are inextricably linked. In Chad, Mali, Libya and other states, the military forces have been trained by the Pentagon, France, Great Britain and other NATO countries. Until there is a categorical break with these imperialist governments and their military institutions, genuine independence and sovereignty will remain elusive.

A continental-wide military high command is called for within the charter of the AU. However, the mandate for taking responsibility for the internal security of Africa is in essence a political question. This necessity will be achieved by a revolutionary movement that is region-wide and committed to the abolition of capitalism and imperialism along with the construction of socialism.

Dr. Kwame Nkrumah, the founder of the Convention People’s Party (CPP) and the architect of the modern state in Africa, spoke and wrote extensively against foreign economic and military intervention on the continent. One analyst of African affairs and the role of AFRICOM said of the Nkrumah legacy:

“Nkrumah addresses foreign military intervention directly and warns that ‘military aid … marks the last stage of neo-colonialism and its effect is self-destructive.’ Moreover, he argued that African unity would not be possible until the ‘defeat of neo-colonialism,’ and argued for an African High Command. While Nkrumah envisioned the African High Command to be led by Africans and directly oppose foreign meddling, at its core AFRICOM is American-devised and managed, leading us to believe that Nkrumah would in fact be vehemently opposed to the establishment of an AFRICOM headquarters in Accra, or anywhere on the continent.” (See this)

These ideas are just as relevant if not more so in the 21st century as when Nkrumah articulated them during the period from the conclusion of World War II up until the time of his death in 1972. The AU member-states are at a critical juncture and the decisions made in the current period will determine the outcome of the struggle for the control of Africa, its people and resources.

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has defended the natural-origin theory for SARS-CoV-2 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic

In his biggest about-face to date, Fauci is now saying he’s “not convinced” the virus had a natural origin after all, and that we must continue to investigate “what went on in China until we find out, to the best of our ability, what happened”

Considering Fauci’s opinion has been used by mainstream media and fact checkers to censor any and all other experts, this very public 180 is no doubt causing embarrassment among mainstream reporters

Fauci is now also denying ever having funded gain-of-function research, even though there’s irrefutable evidence that he did. It seems he’s trying to redefine “gain-of-function,” such that none of the research he paid for will fall under that definition

National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins is backing Fauci’s denials in what appears to be a preemptive attempt to distance the NIAID/NIH from future blame, should the lab leak theory be determined to have caused the COVID-19 pandemic

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), has been a staunch defender of the natural-origin theory for SARS-CoV-2 since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Back in May 2020, CNN used Fauci’s statements on the issue as proof that then-President Donald Trump was spouting a ridiculous conspiracy theory:¹

“For weeks now, President Donald Trump has been making the case that the coronavirus originated not in nature but in a lab in Wuhan, China,” CNN wrote.²

“Enter Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease and perhaps the single most prominent doctor in the world at the moment. In an interview with National Geographic … Fauci was definitive about the origins of the virus …

‘If you look at the evolution of the virus in bats and what’s out there now, [the scientific evidence] is very, very strongly leaning toward this could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated … Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species,’ [Fauci said].

Now, before we play the game of ‘he said, he said’ remember this: Only one of these two people is a world-renowned infectious disease expert. And it’s not Donald Trump.”

Oh, the difference a year can make. Mainstream media is finally forced to face the fact that Fauci and a number of other so-called “experts” they’ve paraded before their viewers and readers have been no more reliable than your average armchair scientist.

Fauci Pulls Biggest 180 Yet

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci has been front and center, spouting recommendations, over time changing his mind again and again.

A virtuoso of contradiction, he’s flip-flopped on the usefulness and need for masks multiple times, from “Americans shouldn’t be wearing masks because they don’t work,” to masks definitely work and should be worn by everyone, to you should wear not just one but two, for safe measure.

He’s gone from promising a mask-free existence once the vaccine rolls out, to insisting mask-wearing is still necessary after vaccination because vaccine-resistant variants might pop up, to proposing we might need to wear masks every flu season in perpetuity.

His biggest flip-flop to date, however, has to be his stance on the origin of SARS-CoV-2. As reported by Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti in a May 24, 2021 “Rising with Krystal & Saagar” episode (see video above), Fauci is now claiming he’s “not convinced” the virus had a natural origin after all, and that we must continue to investigate “what went on in China until we find out, to the best of our ability, what happened.”

Considering Fauci’s opinion has been used by mainstream media pundits and fact checkers to censor any and all other experts — including people with far more impressive credentials than Fauci, who at the end of the day is an administrator, a paper-pusher, not a working scientist — this very public 180-degree turn is no doubt causing embarrassment among many mainstream reporters.

Krystal and Saagar both look uncomfortable having to explain how the media, en masse, ended up being so wrong for so long.

Mainstream Media Scramble to Justify Their Errors

According to Krystal and Saagar, new information indicating workers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) fell ill with COVID-like symptoms in November 2019 now make the lab leak theory the most plausible.

What’s so ironic about that statement is that this isn’t new information that would definitively tip the scale. It’s just that now, all of a sudden, it’s not being dismissed off-hand. The weight of the evidence has, for over a year now, strongly leaned in the direction of SARS-CoV-2 being a lab creation that somehow escaped.

Now, mainstream media are scrambling to save face, and it’s rather hilarious to watch them trying to justify their previous refusal to do what journalists and reporters are expected to do: Report the facts without interjecting their own personal opinions and biases.

Of course, you’d be hard-pressed to find an unbiased news outlet these days — it’s all tightly and centrally controlled, as detailed in “Reuters and BBC Caught Taking Money for Propaganda Campaign” — so in all likelihood, the only reason mainstream media are now starting to report on the lab leak theory is because of the success of alternative media.

Their viewers simply aren’t buying what they’re selling anymore, so they have no choice but to acknowledge what a majority of people already know, or lose what little credibility they have left.

The Case for the Lab-Leak Theory

In the video above, Freddie Sayers interviews³ Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science writer, about the two primary origin theories. Wade recently published a widely-read article⁴detailing the evidence supporting the lab-leak and natural-origin theories.

As reported by Wade in “Origin of COVID — Following the Clues: Did People or Nature Open Pandora’s Box at Wuhan?”⁵ if we are ever to solve the mystery of where this novel virus came from, we must be willing to actually follow the science, as “it offers the only sure thread through the maze.”

“It’s important to note that so far there is no direct evidence for either theory,” Wade writes.⁶“Each depends on a set of reasonable conjectures but so far lacks proof. So I have only clues, not conclusions, to offer. But those clues point in a specific direction.”

In summary, the preponderance of clues leans toward SARS-CoV-2 originating in a lab, most likely the WIV, and having undergone some sort of manipulation to encourage infectiousness and pathology in humans.

As just one example, there’s research dating as far back as 1992 detailing how inserting a furin cleavage site right where we find it in SARS-CoV-2 is a “sure way to make a virus deadlier.” One of 11 such studies was written by Dr. Zhengli Shi, head of coronavirus research at the WIV.

The arguments laid out in support of natural origin theories, meanwhile, are grounded in inconclusive speculations that require you to throw out scientifically possible scenarios. From a scientific standpoint, doing so is ill advised.

“It seems to me that proponents of lab escape can explain all the available facts about SARS2 considerably more easily than can those who favor natural emergence,” Wade writes.⁷

Fauci Pulls 180 Turnabout on Gain-of-Function Backing Too

Getting back to Fauci, he’s also now denying ever having funded gain-of-function research, even though there’s irrefutable evidence that he did. As reported by the National Review:⁸

“Dr. Roger Ebright, a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Rutgers University and biosafety expert, is contesting … Fauci’s testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on [May 11, 2021].

Dr. Fauci’s claim — made during an exchange with Senator Rand Paul⁹ — that ‘the NIH has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology’ is ‘demonstrably false,’ according to Ebright …

A research article written by WIV scientists, ‘Discovery of a rich gene pool of bat SARS-related coronaviruses provides new insights into the origin of SARS coronavirus,’¹⁰ for example, qualifies as gain-of-function and was clearly a product of NIH-funding.

Ebright insists that the research can be classified as gain-of-function under a number of different definitions, including those found in two pieces of Department of Health and Human Services guidance on the subject.

The first details the Obama administration’s 2014 decision to halt domestic gain-of-function research, which it defines as that which ‘may be reasonably anticipated to confer attributes to influenza, MERS, or SARS viruses such that the virus would have enhanced pathogenicity and/or transmissibility in mammals via the respiratory route.’¹¹

The second — drafted in 2017 as Fauci was pushing to renew government funding for gain-of-function research — provides a definition of what are called ‘enhanced potential pandemic pathogen (PPP)’ or those pathogens ‘resulting from the enhancement of the transmissibility and/or virulence of a pathogen.’¹²

Ebright claims that the work being conducted at the WIV, using NIH funds originally granted to Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance, ‘epitomizes’ gain-of-function research under the definition HHS provided in its guidance, and is the exact kind of research that led the Obama administration to conclude that gain-of-function was too dangerous to continue domestically.”

Fauci and NIH Try to Redefine ‘Gain-of-Function’

Essentially, Fauci is now trying to redefine what “gain-of-function” actually is. However, as explained above, the type of research Fauci has been funding at the WIV has always and repeatedly been referred to as gain-of-function.

It appears as though Fauci and National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins are preemptively trying to position themselves in such a way as to distance themselves from future blame, should the lab leak theory be proven true. In a May 19, 2021, statement, Collins backed Fauci’s convoluted word-wrangling and attempts at rewriting the definition of gain-of-function research, stating:¹³

“Based on outbreaks of coronaviruses caused by animal to human transmissions such as … SARS and … MERS, NIH and the NIAID have for many years supported grants to learn more about viruses lurking in bats and other mammals that have the potential to spill over to humans and cause widespread disease.

However, neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.”

In other words, both admit they funded research at the WIV and other places, but they insist none of it was gain-of-function specifically, so even if the COVID-19 pandemic turns out to have been the result of a lab leak at the WIV, Fauci and Collins had no part in the creation of that particular virus — or any other virus capable of causing a deadly pandemic — and should not be on the list of people to be held accountable.

Wordplay Won’t Save Fauci

Considering what the NIH has stated previously, and what we already know about the coronavirus research the NIAID/NIH funded, Collins’ statement appears to be a desperate lie, issued to prop up Fauci’s indefensible stance that no gain-of-function research was ever funded.

For example, as reported by the National Review,¹⁴ we know that the WIV received NIAID/NIH funding to create novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses capable of infecting both human cells and lab animals. “Chimeric viruses” refers to artificial man-made viruses, hybrid organisms created through the joining of two or more different organisms. This is precisely what gain-of-function research is all about. So, as noted by the National Review:¹⁵

“Fauci appears to have been, at best, mistaken while sparring with Senator Paul … At worst, he was playing tenuous word games meant to deceive.”

Of course, Fauci and Collins have good reason to develop sudden amnesia when it comes to the definition of complicated words like “gain-of-function.” While statistics have been massively manipulated to overcount COVID-19 deaths, there’s no doubt that this pandemic has been one of the most destructive in modern history.

Sure, we can blame global and regional leaders for playing along with the globalist game to use a hyped-up pandemic to justify a Great Reset of our global economic and societal systems, but without doubt, the creators of this virus will not get off scot-free, and neither will those who enabled its creation. And those people may well include Fauci and Collins at the NIAID and NIH.

At the end of it all, should SARS-CoV-2 be deemed a man-made bioweapon, even if its release was a total accident, which appears to be the case, a number of individuals stand to lose their careers, and perhaps their freedom, as the punishment for having anything to do with the creation of biological weapons includes both potentially hefty fines and lengthy jail sentences. The Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 states:¹⁶

“Whoever knowingly develops, produces, stockpiles, transfers, acquires, retains, or possesses any biological agent, toxin, or delivery system for use as a weapon, or knowingly assists a foreign state or any organization to do so, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both.”

Gain-of-Function Research Is the Real Threat

I believe research cooperation and sharing between nations is such that blame will ultimately be shared by multiple parties. The key issue, really, if SARS-CoV-2 did in fact come from a lab, is how do we prevent another lab escape? And, if it turns out to have been a genetically manipulated virus, do we allow gain-of-function research — based on the conventionally accepted definition — to continue?

I believe the answer is to ban research that involves making pathogens more dangerous to humans. As it stands, the same establishment that is drumming up panic by warning of the emergence of new, more infectious and dangerous variants is also busy creating them.

World leaders need to realize that funding gain-of-function research is the real threat here, and take action accordingly to forestall another pandemic. As long as researchers are allowed to mutate and create synthetic pathogens, they’re creating the very risk they claim they’re trying to prevent. We got off easy this time, all things considered. The next time, we may not be as lucky.

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Notes

^1, 2 CNN May 5, 2020

³ Unherd.com May 20, 2021

⁴ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists May 5, 2021

^5, 6, 7 Medium, Nicholas Wade May 2, 2021

^8, 14, 15 National Review May 13, 2021

⁹ National Review May 11, 2021

¹⁰ PLOS Pathogens November 30, 2017 DOI: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1006698

¹¹ PHE.gov US Government Gain of Function Deliberative Process and Research Funding Pause October 17, 2014

¹² US DHHS Framework for Guiding Funding Decisions about Proposed Research Involving Enhanced Potential Pandemic

Pathogens 2017

¹³ NIH.gov May 19, 2021

¹⁶ S.993 Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989

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U.S. Army Europe and Africa announced today that during the Swift Response 21 airborne military exercise last month along what is now called NATO’s Eastern Flank – from the Baltic to the Black Sea – troops with the 173rd Airborne Brigade ran a training exercise to practice seizing a decommissioned air base in Bulgaria that went terribly awry. In landing and attacking bunkers and other structures at the site in Cheshnegirovo the American paratroopers also assaulted a building that housed a private business with employees on site.

Nothing daunted, the Pentagon issued a release that stated “We always learn from these exercises and are fully investigating the cause of this mistake.” During the Clinton administration’s and NATO’s 78-day air and missile war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 a comparable “mistake” was made when a NATO warplane fired a missile into a house in a suburb of the Bulgarian capital of Sofia.It’s not certain what lesson the military bloc learned from that attack. But when there are no repercussions for random armed assaults and missile attacks then there is little enough incentive to rectify such errors or to prevent their recurrence. NATO’s cause is always noble, we’ve been assured – jus ad bellum – so all its actions are necessarily justified – jus in bello.

Last month’s Swift Response war games included the participation of 7,000 airborne troops from the U.S. and ten of its NATO allies. It concentrated on “joint forcible entry exercises” in Estonia, Bulgaria and Romania. It began with 800 82nd Airborne paratroopers engaging in a large-scale, night-time jump over central Estonia, linking up with other American paratroopers already in Lithuania, and from there moved to the Black Sea. The entire purpose of the drills was to confront Russia and its allies (e.g, Belarus and Abkhazia) in the Baltic and Black Sea regions.

On May 10 hundreds of paratroopers from the U.S., Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and Romania parachuted into Romania. The nation’s Mihail Kogalniceanu Airbase was the headquarters for the entire Swift Response exercise this year. The base was employed by the U.S. for the 2003 war against Iraq even before Romania joined NATO in 2004. Since then it has been used for the U.S.’s and NATO’s war in Afghanistan. In 2009 the Pentagon established a Permanent Forward Operating Site there. Since 2018 the British Royal Air Force has based four Eurofighter Typhoon combat aircraft at the air base as part of NATO’s Enhanced Air Policing mission targeting Russia in the Black Sea.

In all fairness, Bulgarians should have been warned in 2004 what NATO membership would entail for them and their nation. But then again, NATO provided them an object lesson five years earlier.

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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.

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The fear of killer robots is as old as robots themselves — thinkers like Elon Musk and Sam Harris have long argued that AI poses a serious threat to human civilization. But if you’re at all panicked about AI or robots, a new UN report may add to your anxiety, as it explains that a drone attacked (and possibly killed) soldiers all on its own. 

It’s thought to be the first recorded case of an autonomous drone attack.

The incident occurred in March 2020 in Libya, a country that was in the midst of a civil war. Turkey, a key combatant in the war, deployed the STM Kargu-2 drone, according to the UN Security Council’s Panel of Experts on Libya report. The drone, which the report refers to as a “lethal autonomous weapon,” then found and attacked Libya’s Haftar Armed Forces.

Logistics convoys and retreating forces were “hunted down and remotely engaged by lethal autonomous weapons systems such as the STM Kargu-2,” the report reads. “The lethal autonomous weapons systems were programmed to attack targets without requiring data connectivity between the operator and the munition: in effect, a true ‘fire, forget and find’ capability.”

The creator of the Kargu drone, STM, says the device “can be effectively used against static or moving targets through its indigenous and real-time image processing capabilities and machine learning algorithms embedded on the platform.”

The UN in 2018 attempted to begin working on a treaty that would ban autonomous weapons, but the move was blocked by both the US and Russia, Politico reported at the time. Human Rights Watch has been campaigning against such weapons since 2013, and has backed a campaign to stop their spread.

“Killer robot proliferation has begun,” tweeted Max Tegman, a machine learning researcher at MIT. “It’s not in humanity’s best interest that cheap slaughterbots are mass-produced and widely available to anyone with an axe to grind. It’s high time for world leaders to step up and take a stand.”

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Featured image: The STM Kargu-2, which its manufacturer describes as a “rotary wing attack drone loitering munition system.” (Source: STM)

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On April 20, The Lancet published an analysis on the efficacy of the Covid injections. This analysis supports conclusions made in my earlier analysis. That being: the Covid injections are NOT “95% efficacious”.

Beyond the analysts’ tepid language couched in scientific jargon, the graphic that appears is quite startling.  As is often true, the devil lies in the details, in this case, the difference between relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction. (For elaboration on these metrics, please see my article linked above).

Relative risk reduction (RRR) and Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNV) for leading Covid “vaccines” (Source: The Lancet)

From the “absolute risk reduction” you can calculate the “Number Needed to Vaccinate” which signifies approximately how many people must be injected to hypothetically benefit just one person. It is a metric every person needs to understand before taking the Covid injection.

Below are the Numbers Needed to Vaccinate (NNV) metrics for Covid “vaccines”:

Number Needed to Vaccinate (NNV) = 1/Absolute Risk Reduction

For Pfizer, this number is estimated at 119. This means 119 people must be injected for it to reduce a “Covid” case in one person. Therefore, 118 of those people incurred (potential) risk with no benefit whatsoever.

Some estimates are even higher, according to The Lancet, data from the Pfizer rollout in Israel suggests an NNV of 217!

These NNV figures are likely underestimates, as there is significant obfuscation with trial data. The actual efficacy is likely even less than 1% as some of the injected groups who became ill with “Covid like symptoms” were fallaciously labelled as side effects, rather than potential breakthrough infections.

Also unaccounted for, in the lucky 0.84% of people who hypothetically benefitted from the “vaccine”, are the side effects. Efficacy metrics do not include adverse events from the injections. In other words, safety and efficacy are entirely different considerations. For example, even an efficacious intervention may not be safe if the risk of harm is high.

This “vaccine” experiment is only a few months old, yet the passive VAERS reporting system in the USA has accounted for deaths following Covid injections as already being greater than the previous 21 years of deaths from all other vaccines combined, as well as over 227,000 other non-fatal adverse events. What’s more, it is reported that the VAERS system records only approximately 1% of actual adverse events.

Many alarmed researchers and doctors around the world have called to halt this experiment, citing a growing body of unusual side effects and associated deaths. For Covid injections, it must be clear that the complete safety profile is unknown.

Furthermore, the “reduction” is not a decrease in deaths and hospitalizations, rather a reduction of symptoms. The majority of these supposedly alleviated symptoms being of a generic cold and flu variety. To quote the Lancet study:

These considerations on efficacy and effectiveness are based on studies measuring prevention of mild to moderate COVID-19 infection; they were not designed to conclude on prevention of hospitalization, severe disease, or death, or on prevention of infection and transmission potential.”

On top of that, these mild “cases” which are being “prevented” are determined by the unvalidated PCR assays.

As mentioned, the efficacy is based on reduction in symptoms, and even then possibly only for a limited period of time. Already it has been announced that boosters are necessary, perhaps annually or twice a year.

This paltry efficacy is not unusual for the vaccine regime that is justified on the basis of benefitting the overall population. However, in this case, the argument for benefitting the overall population cannot apply, as no definite evidence for a reduction in transmission has been povided.

In addition, these injections are still experimental. Phase 3 trials are ongoing and this synthetic gene “therapy” technology has never been dispensed before. Every day, new information is coming to the fore, such as this animal pharmacokinetic study which shows that the injected vectors ended up in different organs, especially ovaries and spleen. Canadian researcher, Dr. Bridle, shared his concerns on recent findings of biodistribution of lipid nano-particles and the spike proteins in injected people.

Tragically, panic-stricken masses are deluded with the propaganda that these injections are 95% efficacious. This is a useless metric based on relative risk reduction. The absolute risk reduction is around 1%. Millions are unwittingly participating in an unprecedented experiment.  The Nuremberg Code and principles of Informed Consent are violated daily.

It is advisable to print out the above table and request one’s vaccinator to explain this metric. To properly exercise ethical and legal informed consent, every trial participant must understand the potential benefits and risks from the injections, the potential risks from Covid (based on age and health status) as well as the efficacious treatment alternatives for those who may need them.

Would you feel comfortable suited up with a parachute that worked about 1% of the time?  Would you then say that it is 95% effective because that particular parachute worked 95% better than the competition?

A product with very questionable, miniscule efficacy and many concerns regarding potential severe short and long-term side effects (including deaths), might be more accurately classified as a poison.

A poison can be described as ‘any substance which when introduced into or absorbed by a living organism, destroys life or injures health’. The adverse effects may take many forms from immediate death to subtle changes not realized until months or years later.” Definition of “poison”, according the Royal Society of Chemistry

One can hope that as this nefarious experiment unfolds, data and rationality will trump fear, hysteria, and the etiolated minds of the masses.  May Justice prevail and these crimes against humanity be brought to account.

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Since Joe Biden’s ascendency into the White House on January 20, he has emphasised that the U.S.’ foreign policy will be guided by human rights, even if it means calling out traditional allies. However, Washington is completely silent about the repression of anti-government demonstrations in Colombia, its closest ally in Latin America.

At the end of the May 28 meeting with his Colombian counterpart Marta Lucía Ramírez, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken even expressed “his concern and condolences for the loss of life during recent protests in Colombia and reiterated the unquestionable right of citizens to protest peacefully.” However, on the same day as Blinken’s statement, 13 deaths and hundreds of injuries were reported in Cali, the third city of Colombia. This occurred following demonstrations which degenerated into clashes between protestors and security forces.

People with bulletproof vests and guns shot at demonstrators in front of the police. The situation degenerated so badly that the military arrived to aid police to suppress protests against a new tax reform which will send many in the Middle Class into poverty. According to an official count, there are at least 59 deaths, including two police officers. There are also at least 2,300 injuries and 123 missing since protests began at the end of April. Human Rights Watch reported there were a total of 63 deaths as of May 27.

Yet, the U.S. is highly unlikely to denounce Colombia for this gross treatment of civilian protestors.

Colombia is Washington’s main ally in Latin America. For this reason, it is unsurprising that Colombia is one of the countries with the most security and military cooperation agreements with the U.S. These agreements mostly revolve around drug trafficking, civil conflict and destabilising neighbouring Venezuela.

In addition, Colombia is the only Latin American country to gain recognition as a global partner of NATO. This was achieved in 2018 only because of Washington’s insistence. This agreement allows Colombia to associate with the activities of the Atlanticist alliance, including maritime security and countering terrorism and organized crime. In exchange, Colombia receives military material and equipment from the U.S.

This agreement does not constitute a blank check for decisionmakers in the Colombian capital of Bogota. The bilateral relationship between Washington and Bogota proved to be more fluid under the aegis of Donald Trump, who at the time was being influenced by warhawk John Bolton, his National Security Adviser. However, as Colombia’s right-wing President Iván Duque is not completely ideologically aligned with Biden, many speculate that Washington wants to maintain some distance with the current administration in Bogota.

In order to take the opposite view of his predecessor Trump, who successfully used conservative and quasi-patriotic rhetoric to ascend to power, Biden wants to restore the image of American leadership internationally that was destroyed over the past two decades, particularly following the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, through terrorizing journalists and whistleblowers like Julian Assange. Such an approach involves the promotion of human rights and reviving the idea of ​​ Western-styled democracy against so-called authoritarianism – hence Biden’s willingness to take any opportunity to demonize Russia and China as they do not conform to Western liberal standards.

Under this banner of human rights, the Biden administration raised its tone vis-à-vis China, with Blinken accusing the Asian Giant of genocide against the Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang province. In addition, Blinken also attempts to incriminate Moscow over the Navalny affair. The American President even promised to discuss human rights issues during his scheduled June 16 meeting in Geneva with his Russian counterpart Putin.

The unrest and fierce crackdown that ensued in Colombia came at the worse time for U.S. diplomacy as it does not correspond to the global image that Biden is attempting to project. The U.S. is faced with a dilemma as it appears that the fundamentals of bilateral relations in Biden’s view, based around human rights, is overlooked in the case of Colombia.

It is likely that Washington is discreetly encouraging Duque to settle the crisis without additional repressive excess. That being said, even if Colombia is to continue its violent repression against protestors, it is unlikely to deeply affect its relationship with the U.S. as the South American country is now an indispensable ally and enacts all of Washington’s demands, even to the detriment of its relations with its neighbours, like Venezuela.

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A year ago, the idea that Covid-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan – a short distance from the wet market that is usually claimed to be the source of the virus – was dismissed as a crackpot theory, supported only by Donald Trump, QAnon and hawks on the right looking to escalate tensions dangerously with China. 

Now, after what has been effectively a year-long blackout of the lab-leak theory by the corporate media and the scientific establishment, President Joe Biden has announced an investigation to assess its credibility. And as a consequence, what was treated until a few weeks ago as an unhinged, rightwing conspiracy is suddenly being widely aired and seriously considered by liberals.

Every media outlet is running prominent stories wondering whether a pandemic that has killed so many people and destroyed the lives of so many more can be blamed on human hubris and meddling rather than on a natural cause.

For many years, scientists at labs like Wuhan’s have conducted Frankenstein-type experiments on viruses. They have modified naturally occurring infective agents – often found in animals such as bats – to try to predict the worst-case scenarios for how viruses, especially coronaviruses, might evolve. The claimed purpose has been to ensure humankind gets a head start on any new pandemic, preparing strategies and vaccines in advance to cope.

Viruses are known to have escaped from labs like Wuhan’s many times before. And there are now reports, rejected by China, that several staff at Wuhan got sick in late 2019, shortly before Covid-19 exploded on to the world stage. Did a human-manipulated novel coronavirus escape from the lab and spread around the world?

No interest in truth

Here we get to the tricky bit. Because nobody in a position to answer that question appears to have any interest in finding out the truth – or at least, they have no interest in the rest of us learning the truth. Not China. Not US policy-makers. Not the World Health Organisation. And not the corporate media.

The only thing we can state with certainty is this: our understanding of the origins of Covid has been narratively managed over the past 15 months and is still being narratively managed. We are being told only what suits powerful political, scientific and commercial interests.

We now know that we were misdirected a year ago into believing that a lab leak was either fanciful nonsense or evidence of Sinophobia – when it was very obviously neither. And we should understand now, even though the story has switched 180 degrees, that we are still being misdirected. Nothing that the US administration or the corporate media have told us, or are now telling us, about the origins of the virus can be trusted.

No one in power truly wants to get to the bottom of this story. In fact, quite the reverse. Were we to truly understand its implications, this story might have the potential not only to hugely discredit western political, media and scientific elites but even to challenge the whole ideological basis on which their power rests.

Which is why what we are seeing is not an effort to grapple with the truth of the past year, but a desperate bid by those same elites to continue controlling our understanding of it. Western publics are being subjected to a continuous psy-op by their own officials.

Virus experiments 

Last year, the safest story for the western political and scientific establishments to promote was the idea that a wild animal like a bat introduced Covid-19 to the human population. In other words, no one was to blame. The alternative was to hold China responsible for a lab leak, as Trump tried to do.

But there was a very good reason why most US policy-makers did not want to go down that latter path. And it had little to do with a concern either to refrain from conspiracy theories or to avoid provoking unnecessary tension with a nuclear-armed China.

Nicholas Wade, a former New York Times science writer, set out in May, in an in-depth investigation, why the case for a lab leak was scientifically strong, citing some of the world’s leading virologists.

But Wade also highlighted a much deeper problem for US elites: just before the first outbreak of Covid, the Wuhan lab was, it seems, cooperating with the US scientific establishment and WHO officials on its virus experiments – what is known, in scientific parlance, as “gain-of-function” research.

Gain-of-function experiments had been paused during the second Obama administration, precisely because of concerns about the danger of a human-engineered virus mutation escaping and creating a pandemic. But under Trump, US officials restarted the programme and were reportedly funding work at the Wuhan lab through a US-based medical organisation called the EcoHealth Alliance.

The US official who pushed this agenda hardest is reported to have been Dr Anthony Fauci – yes, the US President’s chief medical adviser and the official widely credited with curbing Trump’s reckless approach to the pandemic. If the lab leak theory is right, the pandemic’s saviour in the US might actually have been one of its chief instigators.

And to top it off, senior officials at the WHO have been implicated too, for being closely involved with gain-of-function research through groups like EcoHealth.

Colluding in deceit 

This seems to be the real reason why the lab-leak theory was quashed so aggressively last year by western political, medical and media establishments without any effort to seriously assess the claims or investigate them. Not out of any sense of obligation towards the truth or concern about racist incitement against the Chinese. It was done out of naked self-interest.

If anyone doubts that, consider this: the WHO appointed Peter Daszak, the president of the EcoHealth Alliance, the very group that reportedly funded gain-of-function research at Wuhan on behalf of the US, to investigate the lab-leak theory and effectively become the WHO’s spokesman on the matter. To say that Daszak had a conflict of interest is to massively understate the problem.

He, of course, has loudly discounted any possibility of a leak and, perhaps not surprisingly, continues to direct the media’s attention to Wuhan’s wet market.

The extent to which major media are not only negligently failing to cover the story with any seriousness but are also actively continuing to collude in deceiving their audiences – and sweeping these egregious conflicts of interest under the carpet – is illustrated by this article published by the BBC at the weekend.

The BBC ostensibly weighs the two possible narratives about Covid’s origins. But it mentions none of Wade’s explosive findings, including the potential US role in funding gain-of-function research at Wuhan. Both Fauci and Daszak are cited as trusted and dispassionate commentators rather than as figures who have the most to lose from a serious investigation into what happened at the Wuhan lab. 

Given this context, the events of the past 15 months look much more like a pre-emptive cover-up: a desire to stop the truth from ever emerging because, if a lab leak did occur, it would threaten the credibility of the very structures of authority on which the power of western elites rests.

Media blackout 

So why, after the strenuously enforced blackout of the past year, are Biden, the corporate media and the scientific establishment suddenly going public with the possibility of a China lab leak?

The answer to that seems clear: because Nicholas Wade’s article, in particular, blew open the doors that had been kept tightly shut on the lab-leak hypothesis. Scientists who had formerly feared being associated with Trump or a “conspiracy theory” have belatedly spoken up. The cat is out of the bag.

Or as the Financial Times reported of the new official narrative, “the driving factor was a shift among scientists who had been wary of helping Trump before the election or angering influential scientists who had dismissed the theory”.

The journal Science recently upped the stakes by publishing a letter from 18 prominent scientists stating that the lab-leak and animal-origin theories were equally “viable” and that the WHO’s earlier investigation had not given “balanced consideration” to both – a polite way of suggesting that the WHO investigation was a fix.

And so we are now being subjected by the Biden administration to Plan B: damage limitation. The US President, the medical establishment and the corporate media are raising the possibility of a Wuhan lab leak, but are excluding all the evidence unearthed by Wade and others that would implicate Fauci and the US policy elite in such a leak, if it occurred. (Meanwhile, Fauci and his supporters have been preemptively muddying the waters by trying to redefine what constitutes gain-of-function.)

The growing clamour on social media, much of it provoked by Wade’s research, is one of the main reasons Biden and the media are being forced to address the lab-leak theory, having previously discounted it. And yet Wade’s revelations of US and WHO involvement in gain-of-function research, and of potential complicity in a lab leak and a subsequent cover-up are missing from almost all corporate media reporting.

Evasion tactic 

Biden’s so-called investigation is intended to be cynically evasive. It makes the administration look serious about getting to the truth when it is nothing of the sort. It eases pressure on the corporate media that might otherwise be expected to dig out the truth themselves. The narrow focus on the lab leak theory displaces the wider story of potential US and WHO complicity in such a leak and overshadows efforts by outside critics to highlight that very point. And the inevitable delay while the investigation is carried out readily exploits Covid news fatigue as western publics start to emerge from under the pandemic’s shadow.

The Biden administration will hope the public’s interest rapidly wanes on this story so that the corporate media can let it drop off their radar. In any case, the investigation’s findings will most likely be inconclusive, to avoid a war of duelling narratives with China.

But even if the investigation is forced to point the finger at the Chinese, the Biden administration knows that the western corporate media will loyally report its accusations against China as fact – just as they loyally blacked out any consideration of a lab leak until they were forced to do so over the past few days.

Illusion of truth 

The Wuhan story provides a chance to understand more deeply how elites wield their narrative power over us – to control what we think, or are even capable of thinking. They can twist any narrative to their advantage.

In the calculations of western elites, the truth is largely irrelevant. What is of utmost importance is maintaining the illusion of truth. It is vital to keep us believing that our leaders rule in our best interests; that the western system – despite all its flaws – is the best possible one for arranging our political and economic lives; and that we are on a steady, if sometimes rocky, path towards progress.

The job of sustaining the illusion of truth falls to the corporate media. It will be their role now to expose us to a potentially lengthy, certainly lively – but carefully ring-fenced and ultimately inconclusive – debate about whether Covid emerged naturally or leaked from the Wuhan lab.

The media’s task is to manage smoothly the transition from last year’s unquestionable certainty – that the pandemic had an animal origin – to a more hesitant, confusing picture that includes the possibility of a human, but very much Chinese, role in the virus’ emergence. It is to ensure we do not feel any cognitive dissonance as a theory we were assured was impossible by the experts only weeks ago suddenly becomes only too possible, even though nothing has materially changed in the meantime.

What is essential for the political, media and scientific establishments is that we do not ponder deeper questions:

• How is it that the supposedly sceptical, disputatious, raucous media once again spoke mostly with a single and uncritical voice on such a vitally important matter – in this case, for more than a year on the origins of Covid?
• Why was that media consensus broken not by a large, well-resourced media organisation, but by a lone, former science writer  working independently and publishing in a relatively obscure science magazine? 
• Why did the many leading scientists who are now ready to question the imposed narrative of Covid’s animal origin remain silent for so long about the apparently equally credible hypothesis of a lab leak? 
• And most importantly, why should we believe that the political, media and scientific establishments have on this occasion any interest in telling us the truth, or in ensuring our welfare, after they have been shown to have repeatedly lied or stayed silent on even graver matters and over much longer periods, such as about the various ecological catastrophes that have been looming since the 1950s? 

Class interests

Those questions, let alone the answers, will be avoided by anyone who needs to believe that our rulers are competent and moral and that they pursue the public good rather than their own individual, narrow, selfish interests – or those of their class or professional group.

Scientists defer slavishly to the scientific establishment because that same establishment oversees a system in which scientists are rewarded with research funding, employment opportunities and promotions. And because scientists have little incentive to question or expose their own professional community’s failings, or increase public scepticism towards science and scientists.

Similarly, journalists work for a handful of billionaire-owned media corporations that want to maintain the public’s faith in the “benevolence” of the power structures that reward billionaires for their supposed genius and ability to improve the lives of the rest of us. The corporate media has no interest in encouraging the public to question whether it can really operate as a neutral conduit that channels information to ordinary people rather than preserves a status quo that benefits a tiny wealth-elite.

And politicians have every reason to continue to persuade us that they represent our interests rather than the billionaire donors whose corporations and media outlets can so easily destroy their careers.

What we are dealing with here is a set of professional classes doing everything in their power to preserve their own interests and the interests of the system that rewards them. And that requires strenuous efforts on their part to make sure we do not understand that policy is driven chiefly by greed and a craving for status, not by the common good or by a concern for truth and transparency.

Which is why no meaningful lessons will be learnt about what really happened in Wuhan. Maintaining the illusion of truth will continue to take precedence over uncovering the truth. And for that reason we are doomed to keep making the same screw-ups. As the next pandemic will doubtless attest.

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This essay first appeared on Jonathan Cook’s blog. 

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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A Johns Hopkins School of Medicine professor blasted the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for ignoring crucial data on natural immunity from COVID-19, saying that “probably half the country has natural immunity from prior infection. This is the most slow, reactionary, political CDC in American history.”

Dr. Marty Makary, also a professor at the Bloomberg School of Public Health, made the remarks during an interview on the Vince Coglianese Show, where he excoriated public health officials for denying the reality of a natural immunity to COVID-19, acquired through natural infection.

Makary explained that the CDC’s numbers on those who have contracted a COVID-19 infection are artificially low, giving a false impression of the spread of the virus and the herd immunity that has already arisen therefrom.

Referencing the roughly 30 million COVID infections cited on the CDC’s dedicated COVID-tracker webpage, Makary said “those are just the people who are confirmed to have had the infection. It’s probably five times higher, about 150 million people.”

Makary spoke positively of the broad spread of the virus in relation to immunity: “When you get natural immunity from a severe COVID infection, you have natural immunity that’s probably lifelong.”

Various studies have shown this to be the case, Makary noted, paying attention to data from Denmark, where only “six-tenths of one percent of people who had COVID ever get the infection a second time.” “And that’s when they’re around it (COVID) all the time, that’s in healthcare workers,” he added.

“Studies out of California prove that and show 38 percent of Californians had antibodies back in March before the vaccine was really kicking off. About half the country has natural immunity.”

And this “natural immunity works,” Makary continued, adding that “there is more data on natural immunity than there is on vaccinated immunity, because natural immunity has been around longer.”

Though the virus has been around “for 15 months,” Makary explained that “in the U.S. we’re not seeing re-infections.” Additionally, he recognized that Italy too, once the epicenter of the crisis, is “not seeing re-infections.”

“When they do happen, they’re rare and their symptoms are mild or they’re asymptomatic. You get breakthrough infections with natural immunity, and you get breakthrough infections with vaccine immunity. They’re mild and often asymptomatic,” he explained.

Makary voiced dismay at CDC and White House officials who routinely push for near-universal vaccination in spite of the data on natural immunity. In fact, governing bodies are guilty of “demonizing” people who decide not to get vaccinated, even when they have recovered from a COVID infection and have the antibodies, forming a natural immunity.

So incensed was the professor by the intellectual negligence displayed by public health officials that he actively discouraged recourse to their advice on COVID-related matters: “I never thought I’d say this, but please ignore the CDC guidance.”

“One of the biggest failures of our current medical leadership is ignoring natural immunity,” he said. “They’ve given out no guidance to those who’ve had the infection, they just tell them to get the vaccine as if they don’t already have antibodies and they demonize them when they’re hesitant.”

He added that the medical establishment “don’t know what to do with those who already had the infection,” leading them to simply suggest taking one of the experimental vaccines.

But the vaccines themselves are no guarantee of protection against the very virus they were created to shield from. In addition to myriad health problems arising from the currently experimental COVID vaccines, including life-threatening blood clots, the jabs have not proved adequate in preventing infection after being “fully vaccinated.”

Reports in April confirmed almost 6,000 so-called “breakthrough cases” of COVID-19 in the United States – that is, contraction of the virus two weeks after receiving a full vaccine regimen – 74 of whom died.

In fact, as more breakthrough cases were beginning to be reported, the CDC made the decision to alter how it tests and records COVID infection in vaccinated individuals, raising the COVID test-positive bar higher than that of tests from unvaccinated individuals. The CDC also announced that it would stop reporting weekly COVID breakthrough infections unless they result in hospitalization or death, subsequently suppressing the figures.

Although breakthrough cases continue to rise, Makary suggested that taking just one shot of a two-shot-recommended vaccine is sufficient for protection against COVID-19. He did note, however, that “when you get the second dose it can knock you down,” and that “getting the infection is like getting a dose.”

The medical doctor soon turned his attention to destigmatizing the decision not to vaccinate, saying that such a choice should be considered “reasonable too,” especially given that “we have fewer daily COVID cases now than we have daily flu cases in a mild flu year.”

“We’ve got to start respecting people who choose not to get the vaccine instead of demonizing them,” he said.

Makary blamed the Biden administration, as well as the CDC, for misleading the nation regarding the need for high vaccine uptake, thus hindering the perceived progress toward herd immunity. “They ignore natural immunity which changes the path to herd immunity,” he said.

“When you ignore the fact that half of the unvaccinated have natural immunity, the path to get to 85 percent immunity in the population is much more difficult, it’s much more dire. If you ignore natural immunity, the only way to get to 85 percent population immunity is to have mandates for the vaccine, and require kids to get them, and convert those who are hesitant, and demonize them. That is why you are hearing a totally different story from public health officials who ignore natural immunity.”

“Right now in America, 62 percent of all adults have been vaccinated and half of the unvaccinated have natural immunity. That means 80 to 85 percent of adults in America today have immunity. The virus can’t jump around … when 8.5 out of 10 people are protected, they’re barriered.”

“That’s called herd immunity and we are there.”

“This is the most slow, reactionary, political CDC in American history. They’re taking talking points from the WH and it’s a disgrace,” he said.

On account of the neglect of natural immunity, Makary said the government has effectively “prolonged the pandemic,” prompting him to encourage Americans who are “unvaccinated and have not had the infection … to be careful and evaluate your own individual risk.” Otherwise, “please ignore the CDC. Live a normal life.”

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Poland’s counterproductive foreign policy of depending so much on former US President Trump’s re-election, ruining relations with Russia, and openly opposing Moscow’s Nord Stream II gas pipeline with Germany are responsible for its present predicament wherein the leading Central European country now finds itself in an extremely disadvantageous geopolitical position.

No country is more upset than Poland is at US President Biden for passively allowing the Nord Stream II gas pipeline to finish construction with only the most superficial of sanctions. Its representatives have described the project as both a threat to energy security and also most recently “a gas bomb placed under European integration” due to Warsaw’s belief that Moscow will capriciously cut off the tap to its Western customers. The Eurasian Great Power would never do such a thing since it’s arguably just as dependent on its customers as they are on Russia, if not more considering its disproportionate budgetary dependence on such energy sales, which Poland is well aware of.

What worries Warsaw the most, however, is that Moscow and Berlin might “collude” with one another to jointly “manage” the geostrategic Central & Eastern European (CEE) space across which Poland envisions itself becoming the regional leader through the “Three Seas Initiative” (3SI) that it leads as well as that structure’s “Lublin Triangle” core. Poland had hitherto based almost the entirety of its recent foreign policy on former US President Trump’s re-election due to his desire to stop Nord Stream II in order to compel Europe to purchase more expensive US LNG. It also appreciated his support of the 3SI, which irked Germany because Berlin is adamantly against Poland flexing its geopolitical muscles in CEE.

In pursuit of its goal to stop Poland from regaining its historical regional hegemonic status and perhaps even expanding it beyond its prior “sphere of influence”, Germany has been waging an ongoing Hybrid War on Poland intended to overthrow its conservative-nationalist government. The Biden Administration also seems unsupportive of Poland’s current authorities at the very least, if not silently hostile even if only for simple ideological reasons. Nevertheless, both Germany and the US appreciate Poland for playing a leading role in the West’s Hybrid War on neighboring Belarus, which advances very important anti-Russian foreign policy goals. Warsaw isn’t just doing this to please them, but as part of its hegemonic ambitions through the 3SI.

The problem for Poland is that it already burned all of its bridges with Russia so it’s incapable of realistically balancing with Moscow against an increasingly hostile Berlin and perhaps soon even an equally hostile Washington, the latter two of which behave as “frenemies” by being “cordial” for the most part in public but extremely pernicious behind the scenes. Germany’s Hybrid War on Poland through its support of the liberal-globalist Color Revolution opposition pairs perfectly with what Poland regards as the US’ so-called “betrayal” through Nord Stream II and Warsaw’s suspicions of Washington’s grand strategic motives ahead of the upcoming Putin-Biden Summit to put Poland in a very disadvantageous position.

The country’s “negative nationalism”, which builds a large part of its contemporary nationalism solely around its differences (whether real, imagined, or exaggerated) with Russia, blinded it to the strategic shortcomings of its prior policies and resulted in Poland counterproductively burning its bridges with Moscow with passion. Poland recently enhanced its military cooperation with Turkey through a combat drone deal which might in the future provide some pragmatic balancing options considering Ankara’s problems with both Berlin and Washington, but the West Asian country could never repair Warsaw’s balancing act like a rapprochement with Moscow could. That latter option is unlikely though for the earlier mentioned reasons, but it remains the most optimal.

Should Poland ever be able to muster up the political will to stop meddling in Russia’s “Near Abroad” (Belarus & Ukraine), then a breakthrough might in theory be achieved, but this is regrettably unrealistic to expect from the country since it’s convinced itself that its national security is dependent on countering Russian-friendly forces in those two neighboring nations between them. Poland as a state is simply too psychologically traumatized by its history with Russia to ever trust Moscow’s strategic intentions, which was exploited by Germany and the US in order to take advantage of this leading CEE country without its leaders even realizing it until it was too late. This leads to the worst-case scenario from its perspective.

Poland now might have to confront the prospect of being compelled by circumstances to pragmatically deal with Russia if Biden makes progress on advancing a so-called “New Detente” during his upcoming summit with President Putin. Moscow would hold more cards in this case than Warsaw could since the latter couldn’t rely as much on Berlin or Washington to support its regionally destabilizing Russophobic foreign policy to the same extent as before considering the perceived consequences of Nord Stream II’s impending completion. At the same time though, Germany and the US might continue pushing Poland to meddle in Russia’s “Near Abroad”, hoping that if anything goes wrong, then Warsaw can just take the fall for it instead of them.

To put it bluntly, Poland is damned if it does, damned if it doesn’t, and this dilemma vexes its strategists. They riskily bet everything on former US President Trump’s re-election, only to have their entire grand strategy suddenly sabotaged by Biden. They’re too deep into their regional Russophobic destabilization operations in Belarus and Ukraine to pull back now, at least without “losing face” among their people, yet even a pragmatic recalibration of their politics could be seen by their citizens as having been done under so-called “geopolitical duress”, which might reduce the ruling party’s domestic support among certain nationalist forces. Although the ruling party is still pretty popular, its coalition might crack in the future under such foreign pressures.

These considerations make it very difficult to suggest the optimal course of action for Poland since there might be some heavy costs for it either way. All told, though, it would objectively be best if Poland began exploring the options for an incipient rapprochement with Russia even if only for pragmatism’s sake, perhaps seeking solely to agree to so-called “rules of engagement” for “managing” their competition in Belarus and Ukraine. In any case, Poland should seriously consider taking the initiative in independently engaging Russia without Germany or the US’ approval since neither of those two sought Poland’s in doing what they recently did. If Poland aspires for regional leadership, then it’s about time that it starts acting more like a leader and less like a follower.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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The left has said it for a year and last week Cummings confirmed it: the government’s handling of the pandemic has consistently prioritised private profit over public health. Now we must hold them to account for their crimes against us, writes CLAUDIA WEBBE MP

Last week’s explosive testimony by Dominic Cummings, former chief adviser to the Prime Minister, revealed, if true, the extent of the government’s deadly handling of the pandemic.

The most shocking admission was that, due to government negligence, unpreparedness and sheer arrogance, many thousands of people died unnecessarily because of decisions made in Number 10.

Cummings was frank in his assessment: “Tens of thousands of people died who didn’t need to die.” If we trust a word of it, there is no need to wait for an independent inquiry, the Prime Minister must urgently apologise for this deadly dereliction of duty to everyone who lost a loved one due to his government’s carelessness. Then he must resign.

It was also unearthed that, contrary to government mistruths at the time, there were significant PPE shortages with British stocks continually being sent abroad even as the pandemic accelerated.

Cummings said that Health and Social Care Secretary Matt Hancock “should’ve been fired for at least 15-20 things, including lying to everybody on multiple occasions.”

Perhaps the most severe and deadly of these “lies” was that, despite persistent government promises, there was no protective ring around care homes in the early stages of the pandemic.

As Cummings put it, “infected people went back to care homes and then infected people and it spread like wildfire inside the care homes. Also the care homes didn’t have the PPE to deal with it and they didn’t have the testing for the staff, so you had this cascading series of crises — like a domino effect, rippling through the system.”

It would be easy to write Cummings off as a self-confessed liar giving evidence to Parliament about a Prime Minister whom he branded a liar and further whom Cummings indicates was surrounded by liars in Parliament. Or perhaps the Conservatives in power have run out of opposition or people to fight with so they are eating themselves.

However, we know the government’s lack of preparedness meant that NHS staff were fatally exposed. Tragically, more than 500 NHS and care workers have died after exposure to Covid-19, amid a shameful failure to provide them with suitable PPE.

This underlines the selflessness of those who dedicate their lives and even put themselves at risk to help others.

Any reasonable government would ensure that those who have contributed most to our national effort receive a fair compensation for their heroic efforts, including a 15 per cent pay rise. Yet sadly, we do not have a reasonable government.

The details of Boris Johnson’s negligence and sheer carelessness are sickening.

Cummings confirmed that herd immunity was the initial policy of the government, which they knew would have cost at least 220,000 lives. Yet, the government denied that this was ever the policy, despite being on record saying exactly that, and got away with it due to our compliant media class.

Indeed, it should not have taken a disgruntled government employee to expose this government’s deadly handling of the coronavirus. This was a damning indictment of our media ecosystem and reveals the cosy relationship between government and client journalists, which Cummings himself exposed.

Johnson’s personal culpability and ineptitude was laid bare in the testimony. Johnson was said to regard Covid as “the new swine flu” at the start of 2020 and held a complete disregard for widespread loss of life — keen as he was to prioritise the economy over public health.

In a clear bid to grab our attention and headlines, Cummings described how officials had talked of getting the chief medical officer for England, Chris Whitty, to inject Johnson live on TV with the coronavirus “so everyone realises it’s nothing to be frightened of.”

This graphic description is only a few steps removed from Donald Trump’s encouraging people to inject bleach to combat the virus and reveals how utterly unfit for office our Prime Minister is.

What this tells us is that the government’s mishandling throughout the Covid pandemic amounts to what Friedrich Engels termed “social murder.”

Engels used this to describe conditions in Manchester in 1845, in which the ruling class places masses of workers “in such a position that they inevitably meet a too early and unnatural death.”

There is no other way to describe the government’s handling of the pandemic. It follows that everyone at the top of government associated with this utter calamity must resign.

Every community has been hit by this crisis, but it has especially impacted the poor, vulnerable and the oppressed including those in lower-paid work and who cannot work from home. African, Asian and minority ethnic communities, the disabled and those in poorer housing are among those hit hardest by this crisis.

My own community of Leicester East has been under lockdown or enhanced restrictions longer than virtually any other area. As one of the most diverse areas of Britain, Leicester is more deeply affected by the disproportionate impact of the virus.

A leaked government report found that “existing socioeconomic inequality” had left African, Asian and minority ethnic communities at greater exposure to Covid-19 as they were more likely to live in cramped and multigenerational housing in deprived areas and hold public-facing jobs.

Workers were denied proper sick pay and were forced to work, even whilst ill, in conditions which were not Covid-secure otherwise, they would suffer a loss of pay. Such were the conditions of wage exploitation in Leicester’s garment Industry.

The disproportionate suffering of areas like Leicester is a damning indictment of the government’s failure to prioritise public health and implement a Zero-Covid strategy to suppress the virus. Yet the government continues to make the same mistakes over and over again.

It should have been made simple: if you get contacted by test and trace, you must be provided with the material means to isolate. It was estimated that, at the peak of the virus, at least 20,000 people a day were not complying fully with isolation orders, allowing the virus to spread.

This is not due to moral failures on behalf of the public — but because it is impossible for people living on poverty wages to comply with guidance on self-isolation and social distancing.

Yet the government failed to ensure this for working-class people in Leicester and across Britain. They were happy to squander billions to enrich private companies but flinched at ensuring that people were not faced with a choice between destitution or infection.

A Zero-Covid approach was necessary, to suppress the virus and prioritise public health over private profit. This would have avoided a cycle of confusing and ineffective local lockdowns. Even today with the concerning rise of the B.1.617 variant, it would protect both lives and livelihoods by driving down the virus so that the economy can properly restart when it is safe to do so.

The government’s handling of the pandemic has been defined by a belief that there is a trade-off between health and the economy. It is clear which side they are on, as they have consistently prioritised private profit over public health.

Yet this is a false dichotomy. Partly due to the government’s many attempts to prioritise the economy, from the initial herd immunity strategy, the Eat out to Help Out scheme and the rush to allow people into high-streets to do their Christmas shopping, we have the highest number of excess deaths in Europe, one of the worst death rates in the world and are also facing our worst recession for over 300 years.

Across the world, countries that have pursued a zero-Covid strategy are returning to normality, with all the economic benefits that brings. The government must follow the best examples set by countries across the world, especially across East Asia and the Pacific and adopt a zero-Covid strategy. This is the only way to prioritise the protection of everyone in Britain and especially those whom the virus has disproportionately affected.

This episode must be a wake-up call. We have a government responsible for “social murder,” yet they are still running high in the polls — it us up to us on the left to tell the truth in our neighbourhoods, communities and workplaces and continue to fight for a society which is built around people’s needs, health and wellbeing.

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Claudia Webbe MP is the Member of Parliament for Leicester East You can follow her at www.facebook.com/claudiaforLE and www.twitter.com/ClaudiaWebbe.

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Before we give in to hopes that the Biden/Putin Summit will result in better relations between the US and Russia, we should remember the Trump/Putin Summit in Helsinki in July 2018.  The US media and the Democrat Party used the Trump/Putin Summit to blacken the event as where Putin “cemented his status and the status of Russia as US public enemy #1.”

The American Establishment made certain the summit would fail. Three days prior to the summit the Department of Justice indicted 12 Russian GRU officers.  Two days prior to the summit Senate Democrats urged Trump to cancel the summit meeting.

CIA Director John Brennan said that the press conference following the summit showed that Trump exceeded “the threshold of high crimes and misdemeanors. It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecile, Trump is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

In other words, the Democrat Party, the US military/security complex, and the American media considered Trump’s meeting with Putin an act of treason.  Regardless of whether anything good happened at the Trump/Putin Summit, the media presstitutes, Democrats, and CIA controlled the narrative.

The question before us is:  If it was treason for Trump to meet with Putin, why is it permissible for Biden to meet with Putin?

The answer perhaps is that the Biden/Putin Summit is a propaganda trap for the Kremlin.  Just as the Kremlin walked into a propaganda trap when it allowed Navalny to take his poison complaint to Germany, the Kremlin might be repeating the folly by agreeing to the meeting with Biden.

We know from reports of the pre-summit meeting of Lavrov and the US Secretary of State that Biden’s agenda is a list of accusations against Russia.  In other words, Biden’s intent is to hold Putin accountable.  Obviously, no improved relations can come from such a meeting unless Putin confesses to the accusations and promises to behave better in the future.  Otherwise Washington’s narrative will be that the summit was a failure due to Putin’s unreasonableness.  Putin wouldn’t agree to stop poisoning people. Putin wouldn’t agree to stop invading countries. Putin would not agree to stop interfering in elections.  Putin would not agree to stop cyber attacks.

In other words, Washington will use the summit to reiterate the status of Putin’s Russia as “US public enemy #1.”  This is almost certain to be the outcome. Washington is using the Russian desire to be accepted by the West to draw an incautious Kremlin into a propaganda trap.

The Biden regime consists of ideologues and is probably the least professional government in US history.  But professionalism has nothing to do with it.  Biden has many of the same people—Victoria Nuland for example—who organized the “Maidan Revolution” and installed in Ukraine a government hostile to Moscow.  Despite Kremlin diplomatic efforts in the European Union, recently the European Parliament voted to support regime change in Russia.  With such a high degree of Western hostility toward Russia, how can the Kremlin expect any positive result from a summit?

The Kremlin has not understood that Russia is worth far more to Washington as an enemy than as a friend.  The “Russian threat” is the basis for the one thousand-billion-dollar annual budget of the US military/security complex and the power that goes with this enormous sum.  Without the “Russia threat,” what is the justification for the budget.

The “Russian threat” also keeps Western Europe and NATO in line with US policy.  If there is no Russian threat, what is the point of NATO?  What would prevent European countries from having independent foreign policies, thus contributing to a multi-polar world?  Biden’s interest is to heighten, not reduce, tensions with Russia. We should remember that the CIA, FBI, Democrats, and the US media orchestrated “Russiagate” in order to prevent Trump from normalizing relations with Russia.  There is no basis for believing that Biden will be permitted to do what Trump was prohibited from doing.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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Abstract

Background

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“It is just when people are all engaged in snooping on themselves and one another that they become anesthetized to the whole process. As information itself becomes the largest business in the world, data banks know more about individual people than the people do themselves. The more the data banks record about each one of us, the less we exist.”—Marshall McLuhan, From Cliche To Archetype

We’re being spied on by a domestic army of government snitches, spies and techno-warriors.

This government of Peeping Toms is watching everything we do, reading everything we write, listening to everything we say, and monitoring everything we spend.

Beware of what you say, what you read, what you write, where you go, and with whom you communicate, because it is all being recorded, stored, and catalogued, and will be used against you eventually, at a time and place of the government’s choosing.

This far-reaching surveillance has paved the way for an omnipresent, militarized fourth branch of government—the Surveillance State—that came into being without any electoral mandate or constitutional referendum.

Indeed, long before the National Security Agency (NSA) became the agency we loved to hate, the Justice Department, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration were carrying out their own secret mass surveillance on an unsuspecting populace.

Even agencies not traditionally associated with the intelligence community are part of the government’s growing network of snitches and spies.

Just about every branch of the government—from the Postal Service to the Treasury Department and every agency in between—now has its own surveillance sector, authorized to spy on the American people. For instance, the U.S. Postal Service, which has been photographing the exterior of every piece of paper mail for the past 20 years, is also spying on Americans’ texts, emails and social media posts. Headed up by the Postal Service’s law enforcement division, the Internet Covert Operations Program (iCOP) is reportedly using facial recognition technology, combined with fake online identities, to ferret out potential troublemakers with “inflammatory” posts. The agency claims the online surveillance, which falls outside its conventional job scope of processing and delivering paper mail, is necessary to help postal workers avoid “potentially volatile situations.”

Then there are the fusion and counterterrorism centers that gather all of the data from the smaller government spies—the police, public health officials, transportation, etc.—and make it accessible for all those in power. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the complicity of the corporate sector, which buys and sells us from cradle to grave, until we have no more data left to mine.

It’s not just what we say, where we go and what we buy that is being tracked.

We’re being surveilled right down to our genes, thanks to a potent combination of hardware, software and data collection that scans our biometrics—our faces, irises, voices, genetics, even our gait—runs them through computer programs that can break the data down into unique “identifiers,” and then offers them up to the government and its corporate allies for their respective uses.

All of those internet-connected gadgets we just have to have (Forbes refers to them as “(data) pipelines to our intimate bodily processes”)—the smart watches that can monitor our blood pressure and the smart phones that let us pay for purchases with our fingerprints and iris scans—are setting us up for a brave new world where there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.

For instance, imagine what the government could do (and is likely already doing) with voiceprint technology, which has been likened to a fingerprint. Described as “the next frontline in the battle against overweening public surveillance,” the collection of voiceprints is a booming industry for governments and businesses alike. As The Guardian reports, “voice biometrics could be used to pinpoint the location of individuals.”

We are now the unwitting victims of an interconnected, tightly woven, technologically evolving web of real-time, warrantless, wall-to-wall mass surveillance that makes the spy programs spawned by the USA Patriot Act look like child’s play.

Fusion centers. See Something, Say Something. Red flag laws. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Contact tracing apps.

These are all part and parcel of the widening surveillance dragnet that the government has used and abused in order to extend its reach and its power.

The COVID-19 pandemic has succeeded in acclimating us even further to being monitored, tracked and reported for so-called deviant or undesirable behavior.

Consequently, we now live in a society in which a person can be accused of any number of crimes without knowing what exactly he has done. He might be apprehended in the middle of the night by a roving band of SWAT police. He might find himself on a no-fly list, unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. He might have his phones or internet tapped based upon a secret order handed down by a secret court, with no recourse to discover why he was targeted.

This Kafkaesque nightmare has become America’s reality.

Despite the fact that its data snooping has been shown to be ineffective at detecting, let alone stopping, any actual terror attacks, the government continues to operate its domestic spying programs largely in secret, carrying out warrantless mass surveillance on hundreds of millions of Americans’ phone calls, emails, text messages and the like.

The question of how to deal with government agencies and programs that operate outside of the system of checks and balances established by the Constitution forces us to contend with a deeply unsatisfactory and dubious political “solution” to a problem that operates beyond the reach of voters and politicians: how do you hold accountable a government that lies, cheats, steals, sidesteps the law, and then absolves itself of wrongdoing?

Certainly, the history and growth of the NSA tracks with the government’s insatiable hunger for ever-great powers.

Since its official start in 1952, when President Harry S. Truman issued a secret executive order establishing the NSA as the hub of the government’s foreign intelligence activities, the agency—nicknamed “No Such Agency”—has operated covertly, unaccountable to Congress all the while using taxpayer dollars to fund its secret operations. It was only when the agency ballooned to 90,000 employees in 1969, making it the largest intelligence agency in the world with a significant footprint outside Washington, DC, that it became more difficult to deny its existence.

In the aftermath of Watergate in 1975, the Senate held meetings under the Church Committee in order to determine exactly what sorts of illicit activities the American intelligence apparatus was engaged in under the direction of President Nixon, and how future violations of the law could be stopped. It was the first time the NSA was exposed to public scrutiny since its creation.

The investigation revealed a sophisticated operation whose surveillance programs paid little heed to such things as the Constitution. For instance, under Project SHAMROCK, the NSA spied on telegrams to and from the U.S., as well as the correspondence of American citizens. Moreover, as the Saturday Evening Post reports, “Under Project MINARET, the NSA monitored the communications of civil rights leaders and opponents of the Vietnam War, including targets such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Mohammed Ali, Jane Fonda, and two active U.S. Senators. The NSA had launched this program in 1967 to monitor suspected terrorists and drug traffickers, but successive presidents used it to track all manner of political dissidents.”

Senator Frank Church (D-Ida.), who served as the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence that investigated the NSA, understood only too well the dangers inherent in allowing the government to overstep its authority in the name of national security. Church recognized that such surveillance powers “at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide.”

Noting that the NSA could enable a dictator “to impose total tyranny” upon an utterly defenseless American public, Church declared that he did not “want to see this country ever go across the bridge” of constitutional protection, congressional oversight and popular demand for privacy. He avowed that “we,” implicating both Congress and its constituency in this duty, “must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision, so that we never cross over that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.

The result was the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), and the creation of the FISA Court, which was supposed to oversee and correct how intelligence information is collected and collated. The law requires that the NSA get clearance from the FISA Court, a secret surveillance court, before it can carry out surveillance on American citizens. Fast forward to the present day, and the so-called solution to the problem of government entities engaging in unjustified and illegal surveillance—the FISA Court—has unwittingly become the enabler of such activities, rubberstamping almost every warrant request submitted to it.

The 9/11 attacks served as a watershed moment in our nation’s history, ushering in an era in which immoral and/or illegal government activities such as surveillance, torture, strip searches, SWAT team raids are sanctioned as part of the quest to keep us “safe.”

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, George W. Bush secretly authorized the NSA to conduct warrantless surveillance on Americans’ phone calls and emails. That wireless wiretap program was reportedly ended in 2007 after the New York Times reported on it, to mass indignation.

Nothing changed under Barack Obama. In fact, the violations worsened, with the NSA authorized to secretly collect internet and telephone data on millions of Americans, as well as on foreign governments.

It was only after whistleblower Edward Snowden’s revelations in 2013 that the American people fully understood the extent to which they had been betrayed once again.

Even so, nothing really changed.

Since then, presidents, politicians, and court rulings have come and gone, but none of them have done much to put an end to the government’s “technotyranny.”

At every turn, we have been handicapped in our quest for transparency, accountability and a representative democracy by an establishment culture of secrecy: secret agencies, secret experiments, secret military bases, secret surveillance, secret budgets, and secret court rulings, all of which exist beyond our reach, operate outside our knowledge, and do not answer to “we the people.”

Yet the surveillance sector is merely one small part of a shadowy permanent government comprised of unelected bureaucrats who march in lockstep with profit-driven corporations that actually runs Washington, DC, and works to keep us under close watch and, thus, under control. For example, Google openly works with the NSA, Amazon has built a massive $600 million intelligence database for the CIA, and the telecommunications industry is making a fat profit by spying on us for the government.

Most recently, the Biden Administration indicated it may be open to working with non-governmental firms in order to warrantlessly monitor citizens online.

This would be nothing new, however. Vast quantities of the government’s digital surveillance is already being outsourced to private companies, who are far less restrained in how they harvest and share our personal data.

In this way, Corporate America is making a hefty profit by aiding and abetting the government in its militarized domestic surveillance efforts.

Cue the dawning of what The Nation refers to as “the rise of a new class in America: the cyberintelligence ruling class. These are the people—often referred to as ‘intelligence professionals’—who do the actual analytical and targeting work of the NSA and other agencies in America’s secret government. Over the last [20] years, thousands of former high-ranking intelligence officials and operatives have left their government posts and taken up senior positions at military contractors, consultancies, law firms, and private-equity firms. In their new jobs, they replicate what they did in government—often for the same agencies they left. But this time, their mission is strictly for-profit.”

The snitch culture has further empowered the Surveillance State.

As Ezra Marcus writes for the New York Times, “Throughout the past year, American society responded to political upheaval and biological peril by turning to an age-old tactic for keeping rule breakers in check: tattling.”

This new era of snitch surveillance is the lovechild of the government’s post-9/11 “See Something, Say Something” programs combined with the self-righteousness of a politically correct, technologically-wired age.

Marcus continues:

“Technology, and our abiding love of it, is crucial to our current moment of social surveillance. Snitching isn’t just a byproduct of nosiness or fear; it’s a technological feature built into the digital architecture of the pandemic era — specifically when it comes to software designed for remote work and Covid-tracing… Contact tracing apps … have started to be adapted for other uses, including criminal probes by the Singaporean government. If that seems distinctly worrying, it might be useful to remember that the world’s most powerful technology companies, whose products you are likely using to read this story, already use a business model of mass surveillance, collecting and selling user information to advertisers at an unfathomable scale. Our cellphones track us everywhere, and our locations are bought and sold by data brokers at incredible, intimate detail. Facial recognition software used by law enforcement trawls Instagram selfies. Facebook harvests the biometric data of its users. The whole ecosystem, more or less, runs on snitching.”

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, what we are dealing with today is not just a beast that has outgrown its chains but a beast that will not be restrained.

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Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

Featured image is from Global Look Press / Jaap Arriens

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