The Future of Australian Universities: Bogans of the Pacific

April 5th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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The Oxford AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine is facing a further wave of scepticism and restrictions as Canada and Germany halt its use in younger patients, citing reports of clotting disorders in recently vaccinated people.

On 30 March, Canadian provinces suspended the use of the vaccine in people aged under 55. The pause was recommended by the country’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI), which pointed to reports of “rare cases of serious blood clots” in Europe.1 These included instances of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis (CVST), the agency said. Most but not all cases had occurred in women aged under 55, and the syndrome typically appeared 4 to 16 days after receiving the vaccine. The fatality rate among those developing such clots had been as high as 40%, said Shelley Deeks, vice chair of NACI, announcing the recommendations. “There is substantial uncertainty about the benefit of providing AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccines to adults under 55, given the potential risks,” she said, presenting the recommendation as a temporary measure while more data are gathered.

The announcement came just as Canada expected delivery of 1.5 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine offered by US president Joe Biden. About 500 000 shots of the vaccine have been given in Canada so far.

Several Canadian newspapers accused the government of overreacting just as the country slides into a third wave. “Constantly changing guidelines are undermining public trust in all vaccines,” argued the editorial board of the Toronto Star, noting that NACI had once recommended against the AstraZeneca vaccine in the over-65s.2

Germany looks towards Sputnik

On 31 March, German states suspended the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in the under-60s, following a draft recommendation from Germany’s Standing Immunisation Committee (STIKO).3 Unlike Canada’s recommendation, STIKO does not counsel a temporary pause while clots are investigated, but a lasting halt.

STIKO has not decided what course to recommend for people under 60 who have already had one AstraZeneca shot, but will soon announce a plan, it said. Meanwhile Germany’s chancellor Angela Merkel this week joined French president Emmanuel Macron in a phone call with Russia president Vladimir Putin to discuss potentially obtaining the Sputnik vaccine.

Germany’s decision leaves the AstraZeneca vaccine stopped in four European countries—Denmark, Latvia, the Netherlands, and Norway—and age restricted in six more—Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Lithuania, and Sweden. It is used for all adults in 12 European countries: Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Estonia, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, and the UK.

Neither AstraZeneca nor the vaccine’s developers at Oxford University commented on the German and Canadian decisions. But the European Medicines Agency (EMA) came to the vaccine’s defence, arguing that the number of clotting events described by German authorities was out of line with global experience. Germany has reported 31 cases of cerebral thrombosis in 2.7 million doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine, roughly one incident per 90 000 shots.

The EMA is investigating 62 case reports of CVST from around the world, including 44 total cases from the European Economic Area, in which 9.2 million shots of the vaccine have been given, suggesting one incident per 210 000 shots. Not all the German reported cases are in the EMA’s data, however.

EMA chief Emer Cooke said there is no proof of any causal link between the vaccine and the clotting disorder, a syndrome of which frequency in normal years has never been reliably measured. Cooke released the preliminary EMA report into the matter, which concludes that “the benefits of the AstraZeneca covid vaccine, with the latest data suggesting an 85% reduction in hospital admissions and death from covid-19, far outweigh any possible risks.”4

Clotting theory explained

The EMA’s report and the new Canadian guidance described the mechanism postulated by researchers who do believe that the vaccine is triggering clots. Unusually, patients exhibit thrombocytopenia, a shortage of clotting platelets in blood tests, even as they suffer clots. The same apparent contradiction is seen in heparin induced thrombocytopenia, and also sometimes in thrombosis associated with covid-19.

This type of adverse event is being named vaccine induced prothrombotic immune thrombocytopenia. An antigen or protein generated by vaccination with AstraZeneca’s product is activating platelets to begin clotting, University of Greifswald researcher Andreas Greinacher told a press conference on 31 March. His team’s research awaits publication in the Lancet but a draft version, not peer reviewed, is online.5

Greinacher expressed astonishment that their findings were being used to justify restricting the vaccine. “People being severely sickened by covid-19 outnumber those who suffer from the vaccination reaction by several orders of magnitude,” he said. “To stop or to avoid vaccination only for the fear of getting an extremely rare, adverse reaction would be completely wrong.”

But such reassurance is increasingly falling on deaf ears in countries where the vaccine is a distant third favourite behind those of Moderna and Pfizer. In Ontario, despite soaring covid-19 case numbers, premier Doug Ford said this week, “I’d rather wait a month or two for Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson than roll the dice on AstraZeneca.”

Bavaria’s prime minister Markus Söder complained that repeated bad news stories had sunk in with the public. “At AstraZeneca we can expect some new problem every day. And you can feel that in the perception outside,” he said, arguing that the vaccine should simply be given to “whoever wants it and who dares to do it.”

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Notes

1. Health Canada. NACI rapid response: recommended use of AstraZeneca covid-19 vaccine in younger adults. 30 March 2021. www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/immunization/national-advisory-committee-on-immunization-naci/rapid-response-recommended-use-astrazeneca-covid-19-vaccine-younger-adults.html.

 2. Star editorial board. Constantly changing guidelines are undermining public trust in all vaccines. 29 March 2021. www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2021/03/29/constantly-changing-guidelines-are-undermining-public-trust-in-all-vaccines.html.
4. European Medicines Agency. Signal assessment report on embolic and thrombotic events with covid-19 vaccine (ChAdOx1-S [recombinant]): Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca (other viral vaccines). 24 March 2021. www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/prac-recommendation/signal-assessment-report-embolic-thrombotic-events-smq-covid-19-vaccine-chadox1-s-recombinant-covid_en.pdf.

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Nothing makes better sense to the political classes than small time demagoguery when matters turn sour. True, the United Kingdom might well be speeding ahead with vaccination numbers, and getting ever big-headed about it, but there is still good reason to distract the voters.  Coronavirus continues to vex; the economy continues to suffer. In February, the Office of Statistics revealed that Britain’s economy had shrunk by 9.9%.  The last time such a contraction was experienced was in 1709, when a contraction of 13% was suffered as a result of the Great Frost which lasted for three devastating months.

With Brexit Britain feeling alone, it is time to resort to mauling targets made traditional during the 2016 campaign to exit the European Union: the asylum seeker, the refugee and anyone assisting in that enterprise.  And the person best suited to doing so is the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who outlined the government’s New Plan for Immigration on March 24th.  It has three objectives with one overarching punitive theme “to better protect and support those in genuine need of asylum.”  The authenticity of that need will be aided by deterring “illegal entry into the UK, thereby breaking the business model of criminal trafficking networks and protecting the lives of those they endanger”.  Those with “no right to be” in the UK will also be more easily “removed”.

It is in the nature of such policies to conceal the punitive element by extolling virtues. 

“The UK accepted more refugees through planned resettlement schemes than any other country in Europe in the period 2015-2019 – the fourth highest resettlement schemes globally after the USA, Canada and Australia,” reads the policy statement. “The UK also welcomed 29,000 people through the refugee family reunion scheme between 2015 and 2019. More than half of these were children.”  

This self-praise ignores the inconvenient fact that the UK received fewer applications for asylum than European states such as France and Germany in 2020.  According to the UNHCR, both countries received four times the number in 2020.  “The number of arrivals in the UK in 2020,” remarks academic Helen O’Nions, “was actually down 18% on the previous year.”

It does not take long, however, to identify and inflate the threats: people crossing the English channel in their “small boats reached record levels, with 8,500 … arriving this way” in 2020.  Sinister imputations are made: 87% of those arriving in small boats were male.  In 2019, 32,000 illegal attempts were made to enter the UK, but foiled in Northern France while 16,000 illegal arrivals were detected in the UK.

The Home Office laments the rapid increase of asylum claims; decisions cannot be made “quickly”; “case loads are growing to unsustainable levels”.  Never mind the UN Refugee Convention and human rights: what matters is bureaucratic efficiency.  To achieve that, Patel hopes to “stop illegal arrivals gaining immediate entry into the asylum system if they have travelled through a safe country – like France.”  Any arrivals doing so could not be said to be “seeking refuge from imminent peril”.  Stiffer sentences are also suggested for those aiding asylum.  “Access to the UK’s asylum system should be based on need, not on the ability to pay people smugglers.”

Much of what the Home Office makes of this is nonsense.  It entails a fantasy about a model cut, idealised asylum seeker: those with state documents from the persecuting state, clearly of the identifiable sort, all morally sound.  The murkier reality necessitates deception as an indispensable part of the process.  To not have documents makes travel impossible.  Alternative routes and means are therefore required.

The threat to relocate and refuse those seeking asylum would also breach the UK’s own Human Rights Act of 1998, obligating the state to prevent people from being returned to places where they are at the risk of torture, inhuman, degrading treatment or cruel and unusual punishment.  That principle is also a cardinal feature of the Refugee Convention.

The view from those who actually have more than a passing acquaintance with the field is vastly different from Patel’s.  Politely, some 454 immigration scholars in the UK have told the Home Secretary in an open letter that she does not know what she is talking about.  The New Plan, for instance, may have 31 references, but “there is just one reference to research evidence, a research paper on refugee integration.”  The undersigned scholars suggest that Patel look more deeply, as the plans being proposed “not only circumvent international human rights law, but are also based on claims which are completely unfounded in any body of research evidence.” 

The scholars also note that asylum seekers and refugees lack safe and legal routes, with countries across Europe, North American and Australasia going “to huge efforts and massive expense in recent decades to close down access to the right to asylum.”

The markings of the New Plan resemble, all too closely, the Australian approach of discrimination which has become an exemplar of how to undermine the right to asylum: an obsession with targeting those people smuggling “gangs” and associated business rackets, merely code for targeting those fleeing persecution; distinguishing the method of arrival in order to demonise the plight of the asylum seeker; the decision that, irrespective of the claims of asylum, no sanctuary would ever be given to certain individuals because they chose to jump a phantom queue and not know their place.

The open letter also notes the “distinct and troubling echoes” of “the Australian Temporary Protection Visa programme and the vilification of people with no option but to travel through irregular means to flee persecution and seek sanctuary.” 

Another unsavoury aspect of the British turn in refugee policy towards the antipodean example can be gathered by the possible use of offshore detention centres.  Canberra relies on the liberal use of concentration camps on remote sites in the Pacific, centres of calculated cruelty that serve to destroy the will of those whose governments have already done much to encourage their flight.  The official justification is one of killing asylum seekers with kindness: We saved you from almost certain drowning at sea, only to seal you within the confines of legal purgatory.  In the New Plan, one senses a touch of envy for it. 

In October last year, it was revealed that the UK Prime Minister’s office was considering the detention of asylum seekers in places as varied as Moldova, Morocco and Papua New Guinea.  According to documents obtained by The Guardian, the Foreign Office had been charged with a task by Downing Street to “offer advice on possible options for negotiating an offshore asylum processing facility similar to the Australian model in Papua New Guinea and Nauru”.  Patel herself had flirted with the idea of establishing centres at Ascension and St. Helena, though she has had to content herself with ill-suited military barracks on the mainland that facilitated the spread of COVID-19.

Alison Mountz, in The Death of Asylum, makes much of this transformation of the island from a point of transit to that of hostile containment.  From field research conducted in Italy’s Lampedusa Island, Australia’s Christmas Island and the US territories of Guam and Saipan, Mountz argues that “the strategic use of islands to detain people in search of protection – to thwart human mobility through confinement – is part of the death of asylum.”  Officials such as Patel are happy to help matters along. 

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

Featured image: Priti Patel speaking at a fringe event organized by Brexit Central, during the Conservative Party annual conference. Source: Empics Entertainment

Brazil Abetted Overthrow of Allende in Chile

April 5th, 2021 by The National Security Archive

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On 57th anniversary of military coup in Brazil, the National Security Archive Posts Declassified Documentation on Brazilian Regime’s Effort to Subvert Democracy and Support Dictatorship in Chile

The Chilean ambassador to Brazil, Raúl Rettig, sent an alarming cable in March 1971 to his foreign ministry titled “Brazilian Army possibly conducting studies on guerrillas being introduced into Chile.” Multiple sources had informed the Embassy that the Brazilian military regime was evaluating how to instigate an insurrection to overthrow the Allende government. The military had established a “war room” with maps and models of the Andean mountain range along the Chilean border to plan infiltration operations, stated the cable, classified “strictly confidential.” According to Rettig’s report, “the Brazilian Army apparently sent a number of secret agents to Chile who would have entered the country as tourists, with the intention of gathering more background on possible regions where a guerilla movement might operate.” No date had yet been set, one informant said, to initiate this “armed movement.”

The revealing Rettig cable is one of hundreds of documents obtained from Brazilian, Chilean and U.S. archives by investigative reporter Roberto Simon for his new book, Brazil against Democracy: the Dictatorship, the Coup in Chile and the Cold War in South America. Published in Brazil last month, the book exposes the clandestine role Brazil’s military regime played in the September 11, 1973, coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet to power, as well as the Brazilian contribution to Chile’s apparatus of repression during his 17-year dictatorship.

1970-09-21 document

“The book shows how the Brazilian military dictatorship actively worked to undermine Chile’s democracy during the Allende years and, after 1973, to help the Chilean junta consolidate its power,” Simon noted in an interview with the National Security Archive. “Brazil provided direct support to, and a model for, the Pinochet dictatorship.”

In addition to Brazil’s reported plan to foment an anti-Allende insurrection in Chile, the book contains numerous other historical revelations, among them:

  • Within days of Salvador Allende’s historic election on September 4, 1970, the U.S. ambassador to Chile, Edward Korry, met with Brazil’s ambassador in Santiago, Antonio Cândido da Câmara Canto, and shared details of initial U.S. efforts to block Allende’s inauguration. On White House orders, Korry said, the Embassy was passing hostile information about Allende to Chilean military commanders and threatening to cut off economic aid and credits if he assumed the presidency of Chile. Ambassador Câmara Canto’s report on the meeting was considered so important in Brazil that Foreign Minister Mario Gibson Barboza summarized it in a report to the President of the military regime, General Emílio Garrastazu Médici.
  • The Brazilian military established back-channel communications with Chilean military officers who opposed Allende and even secretly arranged for some of them to come to Brazil for discussions about coup plotting.
  • Brazilian agents established ties with the pro-terrorist Patria y Libertad organization in Chile. After a failed coup attempt in June 1973, Brazil provided protection and asylum for senior members of Patria y Libertad.
  • Brazil obtained intelligence on early coup plotting, identifying military officials who were preparing to overthrow Allende. At one meeting held at the El Bosque airbase on August 2, 1973, Chilean officers evaluated the elements of the 1964 coup in Brazil to see what might be useful for their plans to assume power.
  • In the days after the September 11, 1973, military golpe, Brazil’s foreign ministry aided the new Chilean junta’s diplomatic effort to present the coup in the most positive light. The book provides new details on Brazil’s effort to be the first country to officially recognize Chile’s new military regime. Brazilian officials also helped draft some of the initial speeches for Pinochet’s representatives at the United Nations to justify the bloody coup at the U.N. General Assembly. Brazil also poured considerable economic aid and financial credits into Chile following the coup, totaling over $1.2 billion in today’s dollars.
  • Brazil sent a team of intelligence agents to Santiago to participate in the prisoner interrogations at the National Stadium, which became a mass detention, torture, and execution center after the coup. According to the book, the secret mission was led by Colonel Sebastião Ramos de Castro, from Brazil’s intelligence service, the Serviço Nacional de Informações, (SNI).
  • Brazil trained dozens of officials and agents from the feared Chilean secret police force, DINA, among them agents who participated in international assassination missions including the car-bombing of former Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt, in Washington D.C. Senior military officials also spent considerable time in Brazil, among them Humberto Gordon, who was stationed in Brasília as a “military attaché” in 1974 and rose to become head of Pinochet’s secret police agency, the Central Nacional de Informaciones (CNI).
  • Drawing on U.S. intelligence records declassified in 2019, the book presents a more detailed description of Brazil’s role in the Southern Cone collaboration of secret police forces known as Operation Condor. Brazil, according to one CIA document, attempted to “control” Condor’s missions, resisting efforts by Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina to engage in targeted assassination operations outside the Southern Cone, and preferring to engage in a number of bilateral rendition operations to kidnap and disappear leftist opponents in the region. According to a 1977 State Department intelligence analysis, Brazil – along with its smaller allies, Paraguay and Bolivia – was “(acting) as a damper on Condor,” and Brazilian officials had stopped attending Condor meetings.

The book highlights a dramatic scene in December 1971 when the head of Brazil’s military regime, General Emílio Garrastazu Médici, came to Washington and met privately with President Richard Nixon at the White House. The two leaders candidly discussed efforts to depose Allende. Médici told Nixon that Allende would be overthrown “for very much the same reasons that Goulart had been overthrown in Brazil,” and “made it clear that Brazil was working towards this end.”

Nixon responded “that it was very important that Brazil and the United States work closely in this field” and offered “discreet aid” and money for Brazilian operations against the Allende government. Nixon made clear that Brazil could help the U.S. defeat Allende and other leftist governments and movements throughout Latin America and said he “hoped we could cooperate closely, as there were many things that Brazil as a South American country could do that the U.S. could not.”

Memorandum

The now famous Nixon-Médici Oval Office meeting was recorded in a Top Secret White House memorandum of conversation that the National Security Archive first obtained and publicized in 2009; the Archive also posted CIA intelligence summaries of reaction to the meeting by some Brazilian military officers, including one who believed that “the United States obviously wants Brazil to ‘do the dirty work’” in South America.

But, the abundance of documentary evidence that Roberto Simon has meticulously gathered for O Brasil Contra A Democracia reveals that Brazil did its own ‘dirty work’ in Chile—as well as in Uruguay, Bolivia, and other parts of the Southern Cone. Although the military regime may have coordinated and collaborated with the Nixon administration, Brazil’s military dictatorship acted for its own geo-political preservation, rather than at the behest of Washington.

“The image of Brazil’s military regime as ‘Washington’s puppet,’ fully aligned with the regional superpower, is a myth that relegates Brazil to a mere subsidiary role in the region,” Simon asserts in his introduction. “The book demonstrates that the opposite was true: the Brazilian dictatorship had its own motivations – strategic, ideological, economic and more – to intervene in Chile.”

Indeed, the book represents a watershed publication for the historiography of the overthrow of democracy and advent of dictatorship in Chile—a historiography which has, until now, focused almost exclusively on the role of U.S. covert intervention in the September 11, 1973 military coup. “This book is a game changer for the historical narrative on imperial intervention in Chile,” according to Peter Kornbluh, who directs the Chile and Brazil documentation projects at the Archive. “It provides a far fuller understanding of the history of foreign violations of Chile’s sovereignty, and suggests there is more to be learned.”

Read the documents here.

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Guided by an Indigenous leader, we drove down dusty roads in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve, a “green island” encircled by oil palm plantations in the Brazilian Amazon.

Uniform rows of oil palms cover huge swaths of land here in the northeast of the state of Pará, once home to a vibrant expanse of rainforest. Our Mongabay reporting team was there to discover if the palm oil business, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, is sustainable and ecologically responsible, as industry representatives told us.

Federal prosecutors have pursued the country’s leading palm oil exporters in the courts for the past seven years, alleging the companies are contaminating rivers, poisoning the soil, and harming the livelihoods and health of Indigenous and traditional peoples, charges the companies deny.

The stories of abuse we heard from our guide seemed almost unbelievable. After hearing dozens of claims of water contamination in the Indigenous villages, the local chief, Lúcio Tembé, led us to a mill run by Biopalma da Amazônia — Brazil’s top palm oil producer and exporter — close to the Acará River, which meanders through the forest for almost 400 kilometers (250 miles) before spilling out into the Amazon gulf.

“Look,” Tembé said, “they will throw [palm oil] residue in the river!”

Leaving our car, we watched from the riverbank, filming as unmarked trucks, and then a man with a shovel, dumped waste into the waterway. Tembé told us that the dark brown residue was a toxic sludge of organic materials, insecticides and herbicides from local palm oil mills. Every day, dozens of trucks dump this waste into the Acará River, he added.

Industry representatives would later tell us that such things do not happen, and that palm oil production isn’t harmful to human health or to the environment. But the dumping we saw, as well as the rapid onset of coughing, shortness of breath, nausea and headaches when we inhaled the fumes from palm trees doused with pesticides, was enough to convince us that these claims were worth pursuing.

Over the past year we investigated allegations made by local communities of widespread abuses by palm oil companies in Brazil, discovering what appears to be an industry-wide pattern of brazen disregard for Amazon conservation and for the rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities.

“The oil palm only brought a lot of problems. First of all, it brought destruction of our fauna, our flora, our rivers,” Tembé said as he looked out over the Turé River, close to the Turé-Mariquita reserve, an Indigenous territory about 250 km (150 mi) south of the city of Belém on Brazil’s north coast. “This water isn’t clean. But in the past we drank it. This river and the forest around it were like a supermarket for the population; it was where we fished, where we hunted.”

The rights of Indigenous people and traditional communities are protected under Brazil’s Constitution and international accords to which Brazil is a signatory. The Constitution also establishes that all Brazilians have the right to an “ecologically balanced environment.”

But laws issued by Pará state have often overshadowed these commitments in practice. Biopalma’s mill and one of its plantations lie adjacent to the Acará River and were constructed without a buffer zone as is required by law, according to documents seen by Mongabay.

Since 2014, federal prosecutors have faced a legal battle to approve a forensic investigation into pesticide contamination and the socioenvironmental and health impacts in Biopalma’s production zone in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve. “These are not minor problems faced by Indigenous peoples,” Felício Pontes Júnior, one of the federal prosecutors, wrote in a legal filing in the case. “The defendant [Biopalma] is aware of the Indigenous complaints.”

The claims date back to 2012, when Indigenous and traditional communities first raised the alarm. When the lawsuit was filed, a judge rapidly issued an injunction allowing a forensic investigation, but this was later overturned by another judge. The Federal Prosecutor’s Office appealed and a final ruling is yet to be issued.

“The company says it has no impact. So, if it says it doesn’t have [an impact] and we say it does, let’s do the forensic report,” Pontes Júnior told Mongabay in a phone interview in January.

Aerial view of Biopalma’s Castanheira mill and palm plantation just a few meters away from the Acará River, in Tomé-Açu municipality, in northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Wilson Paz for Mongabay.

A troubled industry booms

Palm oil has become ubiquitous in consumer societies. It’s one of the primary vegetable oils produced and traded worldwide. That’s partly because of its immense versatility: 80% of its production is channeled into the food industry, where it’s a key ingredient in consumer products made by conglomerates like Unilever and Nestlé.

Though most of us will never see it in its raw state, many of us will eat it in some form today. Various derivatives of palm oil are found in chocolate, ice cream, cookies, margarine and countless other products. It’s found in hygiene, beauty and cleaning items and even at the gas pump in the form of biodiesel. Rich in vitamins A and E and the best substitute for trans fats, which were banned in the United States in 2018, it is the oil of choice of global capitalism.

But researchers are growing increasingly concerned over the socioenvironmental crises its popularity has brought to many rural communities in tropical nations. The damage done to rainforests, wildlife, Indigenous peoples and water supplies in Malaysia and Indonesia, which together account for 85% of global palm oil production, is well documented, as are problems in Africa, where the industry has grown in recent years. Less studied and publicized to date are its impacts in the Brazilian Amazon.

Though Brazil accounts for just 1% of global palm oil production (about 540,000 tons in 2020), the industry is spreading rapidly here. Oil palm coverage in northern Pará — today responsible for about 90% of Brazilian production — increased almost five-fold to 236,000 hectares (583,169 acres) between 2010 and 2019. While national production dipped slightly in 2018, production in Pará rose by 47,653 tons (3.2%) over the same period.

Despite a push by the government of then-president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to stimulate palm oil production in 2010 by mandating its use as a biofuel, almost allBrazilian production is still used in the food industry, mostly as a soybean oil substitute. Lula also launched a national biodiesel program in 2004, and a sustainable palm oil production program in 2010, which further stoked demand.

When it was launched, the sustainability policy aimed to guarantee the supply of biofuel while protecting the environment by banning deforestation in native forest areas for the expansion of corporate plantations.

Pará has the highest deforestation rate in Brazil. Although cattle ranching and soy cultivation are the top drivers of deforestation, there are increasingly concerns about the damage associated with palm oil in the region. Researchers expect a massive expansion of the Amazon oil palm crop by 2030, driven by a government target to double the proportion of biodiesel used in the country and phase out fossil fuels.

Most of Brazil’s palm oil production is controlled by eight companies. The top producer, Biopalma, was a subsidiary of Brazilian mining giant Vale, which is responsible for the two most catastrophic environmental disasters in Brazil’s history in terms of affected area. As part of a divestment plan, Vale sold Biopalma at the end of 2020 to Brasil BioFuels S.A. (BBF), an energy company. In a document sent to Brazil’s antitrust regulator, Cade, BBF said all its oil palm is used for power generation.

Brazil exported almost 90,000 tons of palm oil in 2017, mostly to Colombia, the European Union, the U.S. and Mexico, according to Trase, a research group run by the Stockholm Environment Institute and the NGO Global Canopy. Biopalma accounted for almost three-quarters of these exports. The company, which has operated in Pará since 2007, has announced an ambitious goal of becoming the largest palm oil producer in the Americas.

‘Poisoned’ water

As the palm oil industry expands in Brazil, the threat of water contamination has become a growing concern. We visited Turé-Mariquita in the Amazon’s dry season, when companies spray agrochemicals in huge quantities. Activists say that in the rainy season, when river levels rise substantially and flood the land, all the accumulated toxins enter the river system, polluting the water and killing fish and other aquatic life.

We weren’t the first visitors to experience the impact of the oil palm plantations. Researchers Jamilli Medeiros de Oliveira da Silva and Brian Garvey told us how they had bathed in a stream near the Acará River where it flowed past a pesticide-drenched field.

“Our skin itched and we stayed sick for two, three weeks,” says Garvey, a researcher with the University of Strathclyde, in Glasgow, Scotland. “Several studies show that the water is contaminated. We witnessed them [Biopalma staff] dumping poison just a few meters from the river.”

A 2014 analysis by a federal laboratory under the umbrella of the Ministry of Health identified banned pesticides like endosulfan in rivers and streams near oil palm plantations in the Acará region. Researchers collected data from 18 aquatic locations and identified the presence of pesticides in 80% of samples collected during the rainy season, with some agrochemicals linked to hormonal disorders and cancer.

There’s no lack of anecdotal evidence regarding pesticide poisoning. “My husband’s aunt died of cancer,” Indigenous leader Uhu Tembé told Mongabay in the Yriwar village. “We say that’s because of this [oil palm-linked pollution], because these diseases didn’t exist in our village before. And today there is a lot of disease in our village … In the summer, we have a lot of headaches because that’s when they [the companies] throw poison.”

Cíntia Tembé, another resident of the Turé-Mariquita reserve, speaks of witnessing a previously healthy young man, whose job it had been to spray chemicals over the oil palms, fall ill and die in the local hospital. “He arrived there with exaggerated pain in the abdomen,” she said at his home in the Arar Zena’i village. “It was terrible. Blood started to come out of his ear, nose, eyes … as if something had burst inside him.”

Brazil is the largest consumer of agrochemicals on the planet, purchasing about a fifth of all pesticides produced globally. Dr. Peter Clausing, a toxicologist at the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) in Germany, said four out of nine pesticides approved for use in oil palm plantations in Brazil are listed as “highly hazardous.” Two of them — glufosinate-ammonium and methomyl — are banned in the European Union.

Waste generated during palm oil production contains a considerable amount of organic nutrients and heavy metals that can contaminate rivers, pollute the air and generate greenhouse gases. The effluent is typically released into rivers as a cheap and easy disposal method, according to Clausing.

Alleged palm oil residue being dumped in the Acará River, close to Biopalma’s Castanheira mill in Tomé-Açu municipality, northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.

“My sister died of cancer because she drank water from the [Turé] river,” Emídio Tembé, chief of the Tekena’i Indigenous village, told Mongabay in 2019, during our visit to the Turé-Mariquita reserve. “She died of cancer [three] years ago due to poisoned water,” he added, referring to the pesticides sprayed by Biopalma. “It’s been nine years since we could not drink water from the river because it’s polluted with poison.”

When Biopalma began planting its oil palm crop in the Turé-Mariquita area in 2010, residents told us, locals experienced a mysterious wave of chronic, debilitating, and sometimes fatal, symptoms: headaches, itching, skin rashes and blisters, diarrhea and stomach ailments. Many of the health complaints arose shortly after drinking from or bathing in local streams and coincided with the annual pesticide-spraying season.

The accounts of the impact of oil palm pesticides on Indigenous and traditional communities are supported by a 2017 study that found traces of three pesticides (two of them typically listed among those used in oil palm cultivation) in the major streams and wells used by the Tembé people in Turé-Mariquita.

According to research from the University of Brasília (UnB), the number of reported cases of skin disorders in 2011 and 2012 increased considerably. “About a year after planting, there were many complaints of skin diseases and headaches. It was quite intense for about six months,” a local health worker told the researchers. “In 2005, the rates of skin diseases, diarrhea, flu and headaches were almost zero.”

Among the pesticides found in surface and underground water in the reserve were glyphosate-based herbicides. Glyphosate has been shown to be carcinogenic and has been banned or restricted in more than 20 nations, although not in Brazil. Also detected in samples of surface water and sediment taken by the researchers was the insecticide endosulfan, a persistent organic pollutant banned in Brazil in 2010.

“The most important scientific finding of this study is the identification for the first time, at least as far as we know from the scientific literature, of glyphosate-based herbicide residues in environmental water samples, both superficial and underground, in an Indigenous reserve surrounded by oil palm,” Sandra Damiani, the UnB researcher who conducted the study, told Mongabay. “In addition, our data also corroborates the presence of residues of other organic contaminants in the environment, this time not only in water, but also in sediment samples collected in the same water bodies studied.”

Damiani said they found contaminant residues in all six sampled streams and 40% of the wells sampled. Residue presence in groundwater samples was considered “particularly worrying” because these water sources are the only alternative to streams for Indigenous people in the area.

“We noticed a very large increase [in the number] of water wells after the company arrived,” Damiani told Mongabay. “And the presence of residues in the wells was a surprise, and it was something that caught our attention and requires great care because the [Indigenous] population uses either the stream directly or underground wells. If both have contaminants, what will they do?”

The maximum levels of glyphosate and endosulfan residues found in the water by the researchers were 45.5 micrograms per liter (μg/L) and 0.03 μg/L, respectively. While these are within the legal bounds in Brazil, they are well above the much stricter levels set by the European Union. “This is a controversial discussion,” Rosivaldo Mendes, a researcher at the laboratory that analyzed the samples, told Mongabay. “For me, the safe limit is having nothing [in the water].”

Following the disclosure of her findings to the authorities, Damiani says, she was told that the companies agreed to not use pesticides around Indigenous reserves in the future.

BBF, the energy company that acquired Biopalma, said in a statement it was unable to assess the accuracy of the academic studies since it did not have access to the results of the analysis. The company said it “faithfully complies with the environmental standards and procedures applicable to palm oil production and is unaware of the situation reported in such a study.”

Legally, the glyphosate limit for drinkable water in Brazil is 500 μg/L. “Water is [only] considered unsafe if it is above [this level],” Mendes said, adding he disagrees with this parameter.

Brazilian legislation sets no limits for any pesticide residue found in sediments, even though they could potentially contaminate crops and pose a public health risk. Damiani’s sampled sediments were found to contain DDT and its degradation products at levels that greatly exceed the thresholds established by the National Environment Council, a regulatory body. DDT is banned in more than 40 countries, including Brazil and the U.S. There is no national limit on sediment contamination with endosulfan.

Damiani said they found residues of at least one contaminant in almost a third of the 33 samples collected in the Turé-Mariquita reserve, with a much higher percentage for glyphosate-based herbicides in water collected during the dry season. Two-thirds of the groundwater samples and more than a third of surface samples contained traces of glyphosate-based herbicides.

Nazaré Coutinho Pereira, a resident of the Tembé Indigenous Reserve looks over the Acará-Mirim river. Image by Karla Mendes.

Nazaré Coutinho Pereira, a resident of the Tembé Indigenous Reserve looks over the Acará-Mirim river. Image by Karla Mendes.

Research from the Federal University of Pará (UFPA) also detected glyphosate in water samples collected in the municipality of Tailândia, another key oil palm cluster in Pará’s northeast. The 2018 study also found atrazine, a widely used weedkiller, and the presence of aquatic plants, indicative of water pollution from nitrogen-, phosphorus- and potassium-based fertilizers. Its use is not allowed for palm oil in Brazil but family farmers often refer to atrazine as one of the main pesticides used in palm crops, researchers told Mongabay.

In this region, the top palm oil producers are Agropalma, the country’s second-largest producer and exporter, and Belem Bioenergia Brasil (BBB).

Agropalma is the only Brazilian company certified by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO), the world’s leading palm oil sustainability certification scheme. It is a subsidiary of the Brazil-based Alfa conglomerate, a major player in the finance, insurance, agribusiness, building materials, communications, leather and hotel sectors.

BBB previously counted Brazilian oil giant Petrobras, the firm at the center of the Lava Jato corruption scandal that landed former president Lula in jail, as one of its main shareholders. It is now controlled by Portuguese oil company Galp and Ecotauá Participações, a holding company.

The UFPA study, led by Rosa Helena Ribeiro Cruz, collected nine water samples in the tributaries of sub-basins of the Anuerá and Aui-Açu rivers. The toxicological tests, carried out by the same laboratory that analyzed the samples collected in the Turé-Mariquita reserve, found “significant levels of glyphosate,” but still within the regulatory limits, from two collection points in the outflowing streams from BBB’s plantations, Cruz said.

Atrazine within Brazil’s regulatory limit of 2 μg/L was also detected at two points — outflowing streams from BBB site and in a community closer to Agropalma’s plantations, the researcher noted — including an intersection between oil palm, corn and soybean crops. Banned in the EU, the herbicide is still often detected in water samples two decades after its use was prohibited. Atrazine is quite toxic, and potentially carcinogenic to humans, and persists in the environment, especially in water bodies.

“There is no way to say that there is no water contamination,” Cruz said. “We came to the conclusion that this pesticide glyphosate is being used. But as they are pesticides that are under the ground, in the water, it will be diluted.” She added that no previous data on river contamination for Tailândia were available.

No traces of pesticides were detected from collection points inside Agropalma’s plantations, where the researchers were escorted by company minders.

“BBB didn’t let us enter the company [plantation area], only Agropalma. But we were accompanied all the time,” Cruz told Mongabay, adding that the collection points were chosen by the company. “Two people were assigned to accompany us and at the same point where we did the collection, they did it too. But then there is this doubt: I don’t know if they really took us to the points where there is leaching into the soil… They wanted us to do my analysis inside their laboratory, they wanted us to stay inside Agropalma, paying for [our] lunch, coffee, dinner, all support, but we didn’t accept it.”

Agropalma’s director of sustainability, Tulio Dias Brito, said the company does not use atrazine. He also challenged the research, claiming that the points where Cruz detected atrazine do not have any connection with Agropalma’s area.

“They are far from Agropalma and … they are upstream… So, there is no way, even if I had sprayed… an atrazine truck at a stream of Agropalma, it would not reach this point,” Brito told Mongabay in an interview in February.

Geographer Daniel Sombra, coordinator at UFPA’s Laboratory of Environmental Analysis and Cartographic Representations, disagrees. Although the natural watercourse is upstream, he said, it could also flow downstream, given the high level of variation of the tides of the Amazon rivers.

“[This point] is 2 km upstream on the Aiu-Açu river… It may be that they [the pesticides] came from upstream plantations, which are from other properties, including family farms cultivating oil palm, some linked to BBB. But it is not impossible that the effects deposited downstream could move 2 km upwards,” noted Sombra, who built the maps for Cruz’ thesis. “So, it is undetermined whether it really came from upstream or downstream. The fact is: the pesticides collected are typical residues of palm monoculture.”

Brito also challenged the research’s allegations about the presence of aquatic plants as indicative of water pollution from nitrogen-, phosphorus- and potassium-based fertilizers, claiming that the photos from the study didn’t show any macrophyte superpopulation; the existence of many factors in the area could have triggered macrophyte growth, including sun incidence and a nearby road, while laboratory testing for these substances was lacking. Brito also argued that none of the collection points are close to Agropalma, adding that other factors should be taken into account.

Brito says Agropalma has collected water samples from the outflowing streams and within its area as well to check the presence of phosphorus and nitrogen at eight pre-selected points since 2015, as one of the requirements of the Palm Oil Innovation Group (POIG), an industry group. The results of the sampling are recorded and published in the company’s annual sustainability report.

“When comparing streams that cross the palm plantation, we compare them with streams that only cross primary forests,” Brito said. “The species composition is not exactly the same: some populations are favored, others are disadvantaged, but the ecological function is fulfilled. And the water quality is adequate, it is good.”

Moreover, he said that Agropalma has monitored watercourses within its farms in partnership with NGO Conservation International and UFPA’s department of biological sciences, which monitor water quality and aquatic fauna on company property. “So far, we have not received any indication of contamination,” he noted. He also cited a UFPA study that found that oil palm plantations “appear to be one of the least deleterious for native fauna” compared to the different options available for use of soil in the Amazon basin.

According to Brito, Agropalma only uses herbicides, mostly glyphosate, but is testing other compounds. “Our mission is not to use [glyphosate] anymore,” he said. “But it is very difficult because we have to keep the crown of the plants clean. And we also publish every year the amount of active ingredients that we use.”

Smallholders quoted in Cruz’s research said that glyphosate, known locally as mata-mato, was the main pesticide used in oil palm cultivation in Tailândia, even though they said the risks are unknown.

Brito said Agropalma only provides glyphosate after carrying out the due training with farmers.

In a statement, Gilberto Cabral, a BBB spokesman, said the company observes “the best practices applicable in environmental terms” and “without substantial change in land use.” According to him, the trees were planted between 2011 and 2015 in areas that had been used as pastures or areas that were already degraded before 2005.

However, he noted, Tailândia’s land is also used by independent palm producers and by producers of other crops, such as corn and soybeans, “with recurrent use of pesticides in all areas sown.”

As a means of environmental monitoring, Cabral said, the company periodically analyzes surface waters, upstream and downstream, and underground, in order to detect any changes.

“The company strictly observes the dosages and other instructions expressed on the labels and package inserts of the few pesticides it uses, since we prioritize preventive, mechanical (brushing) and biological (Bacillus thuringiensis) means of control on a large scale,” he wrote.

Roberto Yokoyama, the head of the Brazilian Association of Palm Oil Producers (Abrapalma), said if the contamination of watercourses has indeed occurred in Pará, there should be an official investigation.

Yokoyama challenged Cruz’ research, claiming the levels of atrazine found in watercourses and the fertilization period were misrepresented. He also challenged the methodology used by the researcher and argued that the study did not present evidence that proved palm oil plantations were the source.

“The data and results that the master’s thesis presents, in fact, do not indicate that oil palm plantations were responsible for the application of atrazine and glyphosate in their plantations,” Yokoyama wrote.

Aerial view of palm crops in Tomé-Açu municipality, in northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 11, 2019. Image by Wilson Paz for Mongabay.

Scientific evidence of health impacts

Several studies provide evidence of the harmful health impacts of the contaminants found in Turé-Mariquita and Tailândia. Endosulfan levels of 0.01 μg/L (a third of the concentration found in the water in Damiani’s study), for example, have been shown to be lethal to fish. Studies also detected serious health issues linked to exposure to DDT, diuron and glyphosate-based herbicide residues. There is also growing evidence for atrazine’s carcinogenic potential.

Another concern is the possible proliferation of cyanobacteria and the generation of cyanotoxins in streams containing glyphosate-based herbicides. Cyanotoxins are powerful natural poisons, and some can cause rapid death by respiratory failure.

The regulations governing the use of pesticides in Brazil apply only to the active ingredients, and fail to consider the toxicity of the complete formulation, as well as the interaction between contaminants, whose health impacts can be worse but are often not studied or poorly understood. Lab tests using human cells have shown that glyphosate formulations can be up to a thousand times more toxic than just the active ingredient alone, which means that individual analysis of active ingredients can underestimate the risks to living organisms.

Brazil banned the use of endosulfan in 2010 and DDT in phases from 1985 to 2009, citing their high toxicity and the capacity for bioaccumulation and persistence in the environment. Both are considered persistent organic pollutants under the Stockholm Convention, a global treaty.

It’s thought the DDT found in the Turé-Mariquita samples may have originated from its widespread use to control malaria-bearing mosquitos in the Amazon.

At least seven herbicides and 16 insecticides are currently used in oil palm cultivation in Brazil and other countries that grow the crop. Damiani notes the lack of transparency regarding agrochemicals used by Brazilian palm oil companies, as well as the amounts and periods of application — a lack of publicly available data that could potentially conceal much higher exposure of Amazonian communities to oil palm pesticides.

Damiani obtained access to pesticide data collected by prosecutors from Biopalma and other palm oil firms. “Scientific research corroborates the Tembé’s claims,” she said. But “this data we obtained is [just] a snapshot of a reality that requires more frequent monitoring.”

Another study in 2014 by the Instituto Evandro Chagas (IEC), the federal laboratory that carried out the testing for Damiani’s and Cruz’ studies, found endosulfan residues and cyanobacteria, but no pesticide residues, in another oil palm-growing area. According to Mendes, the lab researcher, further systematic analysis of the impacts of oil palm plantations’ pesticide use in Pará is needed, but previous attempts to secure funding have failed.

While the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve’s residents can point to Damiani’s study to corroborate their claims, their neighbors, including in the Tembé Indigenous Reserve, have voiced similar contamination and disease concerns, but lack any scientific evidence to support their accounts.

Their ancestral lands abut oil palm plantations owned and operated by BBB. The reserve’s Indigenous inhabitants say BBB is shirking its obligations by denying the existence of a tributary of the Acará-Mirim River that runs inside one of their oil palm plantations. Mongabay visited the area and verified the existence of a river inside the property.

In the nearby village of Acará-Mirim, Funai, the federal agency for Indigenous affairs, has set up a water supply system at the center of the community. But it doesn’t reach Nazaré Coutinho Pereira’s house by the banks of the Acará-Mirim River. “We keep drinking this water because there’s no [other] option,” Pereira said. “We consume a lot of water to drink, to wash, [but] the body always becomes itchy and we need to take medicine.

“[When] we fill a can with this water, in a few hours we can see a finger of mud in the bottom of the pan,” she added. Come the rainy season, she said, “all the poisons, all the dirt comes … dead animals on top, oxen, horse, they throw everything in the river … and we drink the juice from it all.”

Pereira said she has experienced symptoms including diarrhea after drinking the once-clean river water, something that didn’t happen in the past. “I feel my stomach get big, it gets full, unwilling to eat,” she said. “I also have urinary infections very often.” Residents who drink from Funai’s water supply also describe similar symptoms, she added.

In a statement, BBB denied the use of pesticides, saying it only used “mineral fertilizers that contribute to the growth of plants, both cultivated and native.” The company acknowledged the existence of a river called “Rio Pequeno” near its farm, but said that its plantations “are within a regulatory distance from this water body.”

It added its technicians are investigating the situation, including “rigorous analysis of all water bodies near the plantations.” The company said it received on February 18 a complaint from the Tembé Indigenous Association of Vale do Acará about the carrying of liquid effluents, distributed in the planting plots as complementary organic fertilizer, for streams that flow into the river that serves the community in which they live.

A decade-long legal battle

Local communities have frequently pursued legal action against Brazil’s major palm oil players. Biopalma has been targeted by the Tembé people of the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Reserve and by small farmers and Afro slave-descendant quilombola communities.

The Tembé say they were not properly consultated before Biopalma’s oil palm venture got up and running. “We were not listened to for this project; when we saw it, the project was already established around our territory,” Lúcio Tembé, chief of the Turé Indigenous village, said. Pontes Júnior, the federal prosecutor, points to a loophole in Brazilian law that requires a buffer zone of 10 km (6 mi) and a socio-environmental impact study for ventures around conservation areas, but not around Indigenous reserves.

For large development projects, like dams, such a buffer zone is also mandatory for Indigenous reserves, given the potentially harmful impacts of these types of developments. But palm oil plantations are considered an “agrosilvopastoral culture” with “low polluting and degrading potential” by the state environmental council, and so are not required to go through the same licensing process, instead qualifying for a simplified licensing process.

Brazil is a party to international conventions that require consultation with, and consent by, Indigenous and traditional communities who will be impacted by major development projects. In this case, however, there was no prior consultation, and the impact was not assessed, Pontes Júnior said. “Everything depends on [getting] this forensic report. From this forensic report, a series of other actions will be triggered… [But] without this forensic report I have my hands tied in this action,” he said.

In a statement, the Federal Circuit Court for the First Region in Brasília said a rulingmay be made in March.

Another enabling factor in the oil palm industry’s environmental violations can be found in the plantation licensing process. In Pará, the state government didn’t acknowledge the presence of Indigenous or traditional communities when granting licenses for oil palm cultivation, prosecutors say.

The Turé-Mariquita reserve, for example, was demarcated in 1991, 16 years before Biopalma arrived in the region. The Tembé themselves have been present in Pará since the second half of the 19th century, when they were forced to migrate from neighboring Maranhão state.

Since their first recorded contact with Portuguese colonizers in 1615 in Maranhão, the Tembé have had to face forced proselytization by missionaries, slavery, infectious diseases, persecution, conflict, and extreme droughts that devastated the land. A branch of the Tupi-Guarani family, they called themselves Tenetehara but in the migration process came to be called the Tembé in Pará; those who remained in Maranhão are called the Guajajara.

The presence of several quilombola settlements, or quilombos, also dating back more than a century was similarly ignored during the licensing process. State and federal prosecutors say this renders the process invalid, given the lack of attention paid to the impacts on these communities. Pontes Júnior and state prosecutors Eliane Cristina Pinto Moreira and Raimundo Moraes have also called on the Pará state environmental council, Coema, to reform its palm oil licensing policy to introduce more regulation, but the requests have been rejected.

Researchers at UFPA have found that Biopalma’s Castanheira processing mill, next to the Acará River, received two separate licenses — one from the municipality of Acará and one from the state — yet neither defines any buffer zone requirements. “The conditions are ridiculous, i.e., annual reports of activities, something that the legislation already establishes… The environmental authority simply relies on the companies’ self-monitoring procedures,” lead researcher Elielson Pereira da Silva told Mongabay. He added that the environment secretary in Acará had only shown him the documents on condition he not make any copies or photograph them.

In a statement, Pará’s Secretariat of Environment and Sustainability (Semas-PA) said
it carried out inspections from May to December 2019 in six municipalities, including Acará and Tomé Açu, and at the time “there were no violations of current environmental standards.”

In relation to the pollution of watercourses, Semas-PA said it plans to inspect the area; there are also scheduled inspections for Tailândia’s oil palm farms, but monitoring rivers and streams within Indigenous Reserves is the responsibility of the federal government, it added.

Brazil’s Ministry of Health, Funai, and the municipalities of Acará and Tailândia did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

‘Desperate’ strategy to be heard

Brazilian companies like Biopalma portray their operations as sustainable to consumers in Latin America, Europe and the U.S. But palm oil companies the world over have long been accused of destroying traditional livelihoods, leaving poverty and social deprivation in their wake. In Pará, the industry has left many Indigenous and traditional residents feeling estranged from their culture, which is deeply intertwined with the natural world.

By 2019, Biopalma’s plantations had encircled the Tembé’s lands, and local resistance morphed into campaigns of direct action against the company. Tired of nearly a decade of fruitless campaigning for compensation through official channels, the Tembé took direct action, seizing company vehicles in the hope of forcing Biopalma to hear their concerns. Uhu Tembé, an Indigenous leader, told Mongabay how she and her husband seized a Biopalma tractor during the protest and used it to bulldoze oil palm trees near the village of Yriwar in the Turé-Mariquita reserve.

“We have been asking for [Biopalma’s] help for a long time to clean the area so we can plant; they never answered. Then we decided to get their machinery to do it ourselves … because we’ve been asking them for ten years,” Uhu said, pointing to the tractor that sat outside her home for three months. “We are cleaning it up here to plant our cassava, corn, rice. We don’t eat this here,” she added, pointing to oil palms. “They did not respect our land, our area. That’s why we feel outraged.”

Frustration with palm oil companies has grown across the region over the last years, and the seizure of company property by the Turé-Mariquita residents is not an isolated case.

Like the Indigenous communities, the quilombolas have also protested against Biopalma, blocking roads to call for development assistance. But such actions may have provoked violence, including the murder of a quilombola leader in 2018, and an arson attack on the home of another.

The Mongabay team visited the village of Acará-Mirim in the neighboring Tembé Indigenous Reserve the day after residents had seized tractors and a car from BBB. Indigenous leader Valdevan Evangelista dos Santos Tembé said their goal was to force a dialogue with the company, and that they would return the vehicles once an agreement was reached. In the meantime, residents used the machinery to prepare the area to plant crops.

“All Indigenous leaders in Acará-Mirim and Cuxiu-Mirim villages agreed to do this protest. We agreed to put on war paint [over] our bodies, take our bows and arrows and seize the company’s … tractors,” Valdevan Tembé said. “What was our objective? To bring the company’s manager to our village to talk to us and sign an agreement. We would only give them back their machines after they start the construction works they promised us.”

The protests have had some successes. For Valdevan Tembé and his neighbors, BBB committed to conducting a social and environmental impact study to determine if the plantations had damaged the Indigenous communities. BBB said the study was contracted and is being carried out at the moment, with completion expected for the first semester of this year to be “the basis for the adoption of measures to mitigate any impacts.”

BBB also made some improvements to the road requested by the Acará-Mirim villagers, Lúcio Tembé said.

In Turé-Mariquita, Biopalma went to court to get its machines back. The villagers handed them back three months after seizing them, with the company agreeing to pay each community 30,000 reais (about $5,600) quarterly for three years to finance local development projects, according to Urutaw Turiwar Tembé, chief of the Yriwar Indigenous village. “It is not enough for us, but it was what they gave us. We fought for more, but we failed,” he said.

But none of these projects have been completed so far, Urutaw Tembé said, due to higher costs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. According to him, instead of paying the quarterly amount, Biopalma only paid annually.

The Indigenous have tried to seal a new deal to replace the amount for the obligation for carrying out the projects, regardless of the amount but “it became very complicated to negotiate” after Biopalma’s sale to BBF, Urutaw Tembé noted.

In a statement, BBF said its relationship with Indigenous communities close to palm plantation areas “is always maintained in a spirit of technical and social cooperation” under agreements made last year that included providing clean drinking water, ensuring food security, and educational and cultural schemes.

November 2015 saw the first major mobilization of Indigenous people, quilombolas, ribeirinhos (traditional riverside dwellers) and residents of neighboring communities against the palm oil firms. About 140 people came together and occupied Biopalma’s Vera Cruz headquarters, paralyzing the company for 11 days.

The protest began when Biopalma started operating a ferry on the Acará River, close to the Vila Formosa quilombola community. The quilombolas asked if they could also use the company ferry to travel to other communities or even to the city, but were rebuffed, leading to the occupation. Days later, a judge intervened and the protesters left peacefully. Biopalma denounced the occupation, alleging its property had been looted, and a judge in Acará ordered the arrest of the leaders of the associations involved in the occupation. One quilombola leader was jailed for eight months.

However, in a counterargument of appeal signed in early 2020 in defense of the Tembé’s November 2019 protests against Biopalma, federal prosecutor Felipe Moura de Palha e Silva said the demonstration was a legitimate act of Indigenous resistance made in response “to the years of illicit conduct by the company, which severely damages their health,” and was carried out “in a desperate attempt to at least be heard [in] a dispute over Indigenous rights.”

The prosecutor encouraged both sides in the conflict to engage in mediation over Biopalma’s omission of environmental impacts and the need for corrective environmental licensing, among other points of contention. “For these issues, the company omits and tries to criminalize the demonstration of the Indigenous people through lawfare and police procedures,” Silva wrote.

In a statement, Biopalma said it filed a repossession suit given “the repeated undue seizures of agricultural machinery” through “serious threats like wielding melee weapons against Biopalma employees.”

Residents of Yriwar village watch Biopalma's seized tractors knocking down palm trees a few meters away from their house. Image by Thais Borges.

Residents of Yriwar village watch Biopalma’s seized tractors knocking down palm trees a few meters away from their house. Image by Thais Borges.

Fewer game animals, more pests

The arrival of the oil palm plantations in the Amazon has driven out the wildlife that Indigenous and traditional communities often hunt for food and ushered in an influx of disease-carrying insects and venomous snakes, the communities say.

Before the plantations encircled the reserve, “we [easily] found, very close to here, paca, armadillo, a lot of fish,” said Nazaré Coutinho Pereira from Acará-Mirim village. “Hunting has changed because there are no more [animals]. It is difficult for us to find [animals to hunt] … There’s nothing else [left], neither hunting nor fish.”

In Yriwar village, residents say game animals like tapir and tortoise have disappeared since Biopalma arrived. And even when they do catch animals, they are afraid to eat them due to the risk of pesticide poisoning. The few animals that remain, such as foxes, reportedly also suffer symptoms such as hair loss, while many others have been found dead from no obvious cause, according to Lúcio Tembé.

The cultivation of oil palms close to Indigenous reserves affects livelihoods and lifestyle quality in other ways beyond depriving residents of hunting and fishing. Urutaw Tembé said they have seen an increase in the number of insects and snakes.

The plantations “touched our territory [and] didn’t respect the buffer zone. This has brought us a lot of damage today: insects, lizards … that we had never seen [before]. Venomous snakes, many snake species … flies, flies that bother us. It ends up hurting the children’s bodies, triggering allergies,” he said.

According to Indigenous residents, the swarms of pests are caused by the loss of native vegetation and the large number of rodents attracted by fallen palm leaves. The snakes, in turn, are drawn by the abundance of the rodents, posing a serious health threat to residents, for whom the nearest clinic is an hour’s drive away and the closest hospital about four hours away.

Urutaw Tembé also complained about the damage caused by the planting of pueraria (Pueraria phaseoloides), a crop in the pea family that is used by the oil palm companies to fix nitrogen in the soil, control weeds, and reduce erosion. The Tembé say it attracts insects during the dry season that burrow beneath the skin, causing rashes.

Indigenous chief Lúcio Tembé poses for a photograph in front of Biopalma’s Castanheira mill, just a few meters away from the Acará River, in Tomé-Açu municipality, northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.

Forests replaced by palm crops

Biopalma has said in the past that it established its plantations only on already cleared land, but Indigenous residents and researchers dispute this.

Sandra Damiani from UnB, who investigated the pesticide use in the area, said she found evidence of about 300 hectares (740 acres) of deforestation for oil palm around Turé-Mariquita, where old-growth forests were felled as loggers first encroached, followed by agricultural settlers, a mining company whose pipeline crosses the reserve, and finally by Biopalma.

Studies have shown that the conversion of forests into oil palm plantations is a major problem, not only locally, but across northeast Pará. Research suggests between 9%and 39% of oil palm production occurred in deforested areas in Pará between 1989 and 2014, raising concerns about future expansion. This casts into doubt Biopalma’s claim, and that of other companies, that their oil palm production stems only from previously cleared land.

Another study found that 40% of oil palm expansion in Pará had replaced woody vegetation, despite the government’s ban on oil palm plantations expanding into forests and lands deforested before 2008.

The use of heavy machinery on the plantations also has an impact on biodiversity by scaring off game animals, Damiani said. The reduction in both abundance and diversity of animals was noticed immediately by Indigenous people after the planting of palm oil crops bordering their land, she said. Numerous bird species, for example, were no longer seen after the conversion to oil palm.

The native vegetation in the now-deforested territory outside the Indigenous reserve was important for the community to collect non-timber forest products, including herbs and honey that are used as medicines, vines for making of utensils, seeds for handicrafts, and fruits such as pequiá (Caryocar villosum), uxi (Endopleura uchi), bacuri(Platonia insignis) and bacaba (Oenocarpus bacaba).

The Indigenous people initially welcomed the increased access to urban centers that the new roads laid by Biopalma facilitated. But the roads also increased exposure to outsiders, making them feel that they were losing control of their territory. Another consequence of more roads has been an increase in illegal logging in the area. Numerous studies in the Amazon have identified road construction as an important vector of deforestation, and the Mongabay team regularly saw trucks loaded with timber passing through the area.

In a statement, BBF said it has identified “the role of illegal deforestation gangs in areas close to its farms” since it took control of Biopalma in November 2020 and had reported the allegations to the authorities. It added that palm oil crops were “planted in the parcels of land authorized under the terms of the applicable environmental legislation.”

Truck loaded with palm oil fruits in Tomé-Açu municipality, northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.

Deforestation in quilombola areas is also occurring as the direct result of oil palm expansion. Nearly 4,800 hectares (11,900 acres) of forest was cleared between 2007 and 2018 to make way for oil palms in the municipality of Acará, according to research by Jamilli Medeiros de Oliveira da Silva at São Paulo State University (UNESP). The study looked at satellite imagery from Mapbiomas — a network of NGOs, universities and tech firms that include Google — and crosschecked them with NASA’s Landsat 5 and 8 data.

This further disproves the companies’ and government’s claims that oil palm plantations were established only on previously cleared land.

In 2010, the federal government launched an agroecological zoning program for palm oil cultivation in deforested areas in the states that make up the Brazilian Amazon. Called ZAE-Dendê, it offered benefits to palm oil companies for meeting certain sustainability requirements. But as Damiani and da Silva found in their research, some areas were deforested and overlapped onto traditional quilombola communities.

Adriano Venturieri, the researcher who led the palm oil agroecological zoning program, said the quilombola communities were not considered because their presence was not formally acknowledged at the time. He added the program may be updated at any time to include this data.

Quilombolas affected

Like the Indigenous communities impacted by the plantations, the quilombola communities in Acará — the third-largest palm oil-producing municipality in Brazil —complain about similar issues arising from the plantations, including deforestation, reduced water levels in their streams, and pesticide pollution.

“They wanted to plant oil palm here. We did not allow it,” José Renato Gomes de Gusmão told Mongabay at his home in 19 de Massaranduba, a quilombola village in the Tomé-Açu region. “People who live close [to the palm plantations] got sick [with] too much poison. The waters are gone, with so much poison that they throw. The streams are all gone.

“I don’t like it,” he added. “The palm brought a lot of income, a lot of jobs… [But] it is not healthy.”

Researchers Brian Garvey and Jamilli Medeiros de Oliveira da Silva said they heard similar stories of water contamination in quilombola communities close to the Acará River. In 2016, a palm oil spill in the river left a yellow slick on the water’s surface for more than a week. Quilombola communities including Vila Formosa village, where the protest over Biopalma’s ferry began, were devastated as the fish they relied on died out. Since then, fish catches have declined, and even the river dolphins have disappeared, residents say.

In 2019, two palm oil spills near Agropalma’s plantations in Tailândia polluted the Acará River and its tributaries. The company’s director of sustainability, Tulio Dias Brito, said all of the oil was collected and the impact was “virtually nonexistent.”

“We have the floating barriers that surround oil in the river … We managed to surround the oil there and we managed to collect it to the last drop,” he told Mongabay. “No fish, no tree died. So, there was no environmental impact. Although the volume was a few tons of hollow oil, which is a relatively large volume, the environmental impact was zero, objectively speaking … We have all the proof: the photo before, the photo after.”

Elielson da Silva from UFPA visited the area in the days after the second oil spill in October 2019 and documented the environmental impacts, including water contamination and the death of animals and fish. “There was contamination. I was there. I photographed people, I witnessed the [damages of the] oil spill,” he told Mongabay, adding that residents said that there were three oil spills that year.

Water contamination issues derived from both pesticides and oil spills have been faced by quilombola communities close to Agropalma’s concession for several decades, but the situation worsens each year, especially the degree of fish contamination, a quilombola, who talked on condition of anonymity after receiving death threats, told Mongabay.

“The water is muddy, it’s dark; it’s so dark that we cannot have any visibility,” the source said.

After the 2019 oil spills, the source noted, one of the main impacts was scarcity of fish. The fishes are only coming back now, the source noted. “The fish eat the palm oil; it fills its belly. Then you go fishing, when you open the fish, where its tripe ends from its gills, everything is full of oil palm… The oil hardens inside the fish… The fish dies with that inside.”

Photographs from an environmental inspection released by Tailândia municipality and seen by Mongabay corroborate the allegations of negative environmental impacts from Agropalma’s oil spill. The document, dated May 2019, ordered that steps be taken to repair the rivers and streams.

In a statement, Semas-PA said it had recorded an infraction notice against Agropalma, without providing further details.

Palm fruits stored on the road in Tomé-Açu municipality, northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 12, 2019. Image by Thaís Borges for Mongabay.

Community-wide impacts

During our investigation, we witnessed how the oil palm plantations impact the daily lives of people living in the wider Pará community — at a school, for example, which was surrounded by palm trees. Although the companies say the agrochemicals they use are not toxic, this particular school endured a forced three-day closure while the firm was spraying, residents told Mongabay.

“There was no class for three days [and] no one could pass through the area,” said Alex de Oliveira Pimentel, a local farmer. “[The company] said [the pesticide used] was organic, [that] it wasn’t unhealthy… But the requirement was that nobody could pass through the area for 48 hours.”

Aerial view of a school completely surrounded by oil palm plantations in Tomé-Açu municipality, in northern Amazon’s Pará state, on November 13, 2019. Image by Wilson Paz for Mongabay.

Beyond the contamination of the soil and water, Pimentel said farmers have lost their crops due to the spread of pests and disease from the palm plantations, including butterfly infestations destroying fruit crops like dragon fruit and cashew.

When the big agribusiness companies first came to the Tomé-Açu region, they approached several small farmers with an offer to lease their lands for oil palm cultivation. Some resisted, unwilling to turn over their land to grow a then-unknown crop.

Among them was José Edimilson Ramos Rodrigues, one of many farmers in his community who rejected the lease offer. But that has not stopped the community from feeling the impact of the plantations, which now surround them. The residents have regularly complained about water contamination, reduced fish catches, and animal deaths since the oil palms were planted close to the river.

Rodrigues said he has noticed some changes in local crops, including a vine that now grows in coconut trees and which he said didn’t exist before. He said the damage done far outweighs any benefits from the lease offer. “There’s no way. What we must do is try to avoid … so that it won’t happen again,” he said.

Lax agrochemical controls

The spread of pesticide use in Indigenous and traditional communities has once again shone a light on the lax regulatory climate governing the sales and use of harmful chemicals in Brazil. Only one company is officially approved by Pará state to sell pesticides in Tailândia, but a thriving illegal market has flourished, selling glyphosate under the local name mata-mato. The farmers’ union in Tailândia, Sintraf, told UFPA researcher Rosa Helena Ribeiro Cruz that the palm oil companies do not dispose of the packaging properly, opening the possibility for misuse later on. Proper package disposal is regulated by a federal law, which holds the farmer, vendor and manufacturer legally responsible for any such misuse.

Tailândia’s farmers also said they were initially given personal protective equipment by Agropalma and BBB, but the supplies were short-lived, even though people began falling ill due to the use of pesticides.

Brito, the Agropalma director, denied all the accusations. According to him, the company collects the agrochemical packaging, which is incinerated. He said Agropalma also controls all glyphosate provided to farmers and provides appropriate safety equipment.

Cabral, BBB spokesman, said it is common for farmers to plant other crops in areas adjacent to palm groves, which are managed separately. Pesticide packaging supplied by the company is “inert and recyclable” and is collected by local companies after use; the use of appropriate safety equipment is also inspected, he added.

Sintraf also told Cruz that the use of pesticides by the palm oil firms had led many local farmers to adopt new practices, heavily reliant on agrochemical use, and abandon their traditional farming methods. This has compounded the pollution of rivers, as up to half the farmers in some communities have switched to using pesticides.

The Ministry of Health launched a health surveillance program in the 1990s for people exposed to pesticides, but the system failed to produce any reports for Tailândia, Cruz noted.

For some federal prosecutors, the problems caused by the palm oil industry’s inroads into the Amazon over the past decade are a repeat of what they witnessed with the cattle, soy and mining sectors and all development projects.

“The palm oil [sector] doesn’t differ at all from the other monocultures established here in the Amazon,” prosecutor Felipe Moura de Palha e Silva told Mongabay. “The modus operandi follows a primer as well, which is a primer for violating the rights of communities.”

In Tomé-Açú, game animals and fish were once plentiful. Now only oil palm trees grow, in some cases within meters of the Indigenous reserves.

“The palm oil company left us in a space like an egg … Only the company profits,” said Urutaw Tembé, pointing to oil palms just a few feet from his home in Yriwar village. “We are dying with pesticides, with water contamination. How does a company like this come from outside to enrich [itself] on our land? We don’t accept it … We will keep fighting.”

Residents of the village of Acará-Mirim in the Tembé Indigenous Reserve use with seized tractors from palm oil company Belem Bionergia Brasil (BBB) on November 14, 2019. Image by Karla Mendes

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Karla Mendes is a staff contributing editor for Mongabay in Brazil. Find her on Twitter: @karlamendes

Sources

Damiani, S., Ferreira Guimarães, S. M., Leite Montalvão, M. T., & Sousa Passos, C. J. (2020). “All that’s left is bare land and sky”: Palm oil culture and socioenvironmental impacts on a Tembé Indigenous Territory in the Brazilian Amazon. Ambiente & Sociedade23. doi:10.1590/1809-4422asoc20190049r2vu2020l6ao

Da Silva, J. M. O. (2020). O território quilombola do Alto Acará/PA como resistência à expansão do agronegócio do dendê (The quilombola territory of Alto Acará / PA as resistance to the expansion of palm oil agribusiness) (Master’s thesis, São Paulo State University, São Paulo, Brazil). Retrieved from https://repositorio.unesp.br/handle/11449/194439

Kogevinas, M. (2019). Probable carcinogenicity of glyphosate. BMJ365, l1613. doi:10.1136/bmj.l1613

Benami, E., Curran, L. M., Cochrane, M., Venturieri, A., Franco, R., Kneipp, J., & Swartos, A. (2018). Oil palm land conversion in Parà, Brazil, from 2006-2014: Evaluating the 2010 Brazilian sustainable palm oil production program. Environmental Research Letters13(3), 034037. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aaa270

Cruz, R. H. (2018). Impactos socioambientais de produção de palma de dendê na Amazônia paraense: Uso de agrotóxicos e poluição ambiental nas sub-bacias hidrográficas, Tailândia (PA) (Socioenvironmental impacts of palm oil production in Amazonian Pará: Use of pesticides and environmental pollution in hydrographic sub-basins, Tailândia (PA)) (Master’s thesis, Federal University of Pará, Belém, Brazil). Retrieved from http://repositorio.ufpa.br/jspui/handle/2011/10316

Smedbol, É., Gomes, M. P., Paquet, S., Labrecque, M., Lepage, L., Lucotte, M., & Juneau, P. (2018). Effects of low concentrations of glyphosate-based herbicide factor 540® on an agricultural stream freshwater phytoplankton community. Chemosphere, 192, 133-141. doi:10.1016/j.chemosphere.2017.10.128

Damiani, S. (2017). Impactos socioambientais do cultivo de dendê na terra indígena Turé-Mariquita no nordeste do Pará (Socioenvironmental impacts of oil palm cultivation in the Turé-Mariquita Indigenous Territory in northeastern Pará) (Master’s thesis, University of Brasília, Brasília, Brazil). Retrieved from https://repositorio.unb.br/handle/10482/31503

Furumo, P. R., & Aide, T. M. (2017). Characterizing commercial oil palm expansion in Latin America: Land use change and trade. Environmental Research Letters12(2), 024008. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/aa5892

Myers, J. P., Antoniou, M. N., Blumberg, B., Carroll, L., Colborn, T., Everett, L. G., … Benbrook, C. M. (2016). Concerns over use of glyphosate-based herbicides and risks associated with exposures: A consensus statement. Environmental Health15(1). doi:10.1186/s12940-016-0117-0

Dislich, C., Keyel, A. C., Salecker, J., Kisel, Y., Meyer, K. M., Auliya, M., … Wiegand, K. (2016). A review of the ecosystem functions in oil palm plantations, using forests as a reference system. Biological Reviews92(3), 1539-1569. doi:10.1111/brv.12295

Vijay, V., Pimm, S. L., Jenkins, C. N., & Smith, S. J. (2016). The impacts of oil palm on recent deforestation and biodiversity loss. PLOS ONE11(7), e0159668. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0159668

Mesnage, R., Arno, M., Costanzo, M., Malatesta, M., Séralini, G.-E., & Antoniou, M. N. (2015). Transcriptome profile analysis reflects rat liver and kidney damage following chronic ultra-low dose roundup exposure. Environmental Health14(1). doi:10.1186/s12940-015-0056-1

Mesnage, R., Defarge, N., Spiroux de Vendômois, J., & Séralini, G.-E. (2014). Major pesticides are more toxic to human cells than their declared active principles. BioMed Research International2014, 1-8. doi:10.1155/2014/179691

Saldanha, G. C., Bastos, W. R., Torres, J. P. M., & Malm, O. (2010). DDT in fishes and soils of lakes from Brazilian Amazon: Case study of Puruzinho Lake (Amazon, Brazil). Journal of the Brazilian Chemical Society21(2), 306-311. doi:10.1590/s0103-50532010000200016

Stanley, K. A., Curtis, L. R., Massey Simonich, S. L., & Tanguay, R. L. (2009). Endosulfan I and endosulfan sulfate disrupts zebrafish embryonic development. Aquatic Toxicology, 95(4), 355-361. doi:10.1016/j.aquatox.2009.10.008

Featured image: Harvest time at a palm oil plantation in Pará, Brasil. Photo by Miguel Pinheiro/CIFOR.

Closing the Net on Industrial Fishing

April 5th, 2021 by Tim Thorpe

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It was clear from the title and the promotion of the Netflix documentary Seaspiracy that it was going to adopt a similar approach to the highly influential 2014 documentary Cowspiracy, which uncovered the sheer scale and destructive impact of animal agriculture.

Seaspiracy follows Ali, an activist and filmmaker who embarks on a journey of discovery which starts with beach clean-ups, before exposing viewers to the more serious issues of plunder and devastation of the oceans, and even the brutal world of modern slavery.

The 90-minute documentary covers a lot of ground and makes for informative viewing, weaving interviews with scientists and activist into a strong narrative.

Lifting the lid

Like Cowspiracy before it, Seaspiracy takes the form of an exposé, shining a light on industry practices that will shock and disgust audiences, and displaying alarming statistics which paint a picture of ocean ecosystems on the brink of collapse.

We’re told that sharks are killed at a rate of over 11,000 per hour across the world, mostly as by-catch from commercial fishing, with some shark species populations declining by more than 90 percent in just the last few decades. Six out of seven species of sea turtle are either threatened or endangered, and seabirds have declined by around 70 percent due to competition with the fishing industry for their natural source of food.

Much of the information in the film will be known to environmentalists. Previous campaigns have highlighted the horrors of the shark finning industry and of ‘ghost gear’ – fishing nets and equipment that continues to wreak havoc for years after being discarded. Documentaries like The Cove have also covered parts of this story before.

But this information will be new to many viewers, and the framing of the film – lifting the lid to expose a secretive and corrupt industry – acts as an effective hook which compels viewers to watch on and discover more.

The issue of plastics in the ocean has gained considerable public interest in the last couple of years, and this is where the film begins. The narrative then moves on to the “whale in the room” – that industrial fishing itself, and our massive demand for fish, is the real problem.

‘Sustainable’

The film then takes aim at ocean conservation groups like the Marine Stewardship Council and the Earth Island Institute, as well as certification schemes which claim to offer consumers a ‘sustainable’ seafood option. Using clips taken from interviews with staff at these organisations, and commentary from other conservationists, notably George Monbiot, the film offers a simple but powerful critique of their approach which attempts to work with the fishing industry to curb its worst excesses.

The suggestion that these groups are complicit or even entirely ‘bought’ by the fishing industry may be unfair, and the heavily edited interviews, packed with leading questions and absent of context, tell us little about the activities or motivations of the organisations involved. But what the film gets right here is far more important than what it gets wrong.

The inability of conservationists and government agencies to truly know what goes on at sea, or to enforce the most even the basic laws and standards, is painfully obvious. Alongside a failure of public and political engagement with the issue, this is leading to rapid destruction of the world’s most diverse ecosystems, and with them the very life systems on which we depend.

Seaspiracy:” A must watch whether it looks interesting to you or not – The  Oakland Post

Seaspiracy does an excellent job of describing the complex relationships found in ocean food chains and explains how the extinction of some species can lead to the loss of many more. It also highlights the profound dependence we have on marine ecosystems to regulate the climate.

By far the planet’s largest store of both carbon and heat, the condition of the oceans has an enormous impact on the climate and our ability to prevent a run-away climate emergency. Destruction of oceanic plant and animal life by industrial fishing is likened to deforestation on land, but on an even greater scale, undermining the ocean’s ability to remove and store carbon from the atmosphere.

Innocent

The film uses graphic and deeply upsetting footage throughout. Even those who struggle to empathise with marine animals will surely be affected by its depictions of the violence and cruelty inflicted on fish, sharks, dolphins and whales at the hands of humans.

The emotionally powerful footage sets the scene for the latter part of the film, which explains the extraordinary sensory and communicative capacities of fish, challenging the viewer to overturn their preconceptions of fish as simple or lesser animals.

Veteran oceanographer Dr Sylvia Earle gives some of the most thoughtful commentary on this topic.

“We feel pain, we feel touch, but fish have a lateral line down their sides that senses the most exquisite little movements in the water, so you see a thousand fish moving like one fish…

“Those who say it doesn’t matter what you do to a fish because they can’t feel anything, or that they can’t relate to pain, or they can’t sense danger in the future… well they haven’t really observed fish.

“I think it’s a justification for doing dastardly things to innocent creatures. That’s the only explanation I can think of for treating fish with such a barbaric attitude.”

Hope

The film closes by addressing some of the concerns that viewers might have about no longer eating fish, and rightly draws the conclusion that eliminating fish from our diets is the single biggest thing each of us can do to protect our oceans.

No doubt Seaspiracy will be criticised for reducing the complexities of the fishing industry into a somewhat vague global conspiracy.

But the simplicity of its message is also its strength, standing in stark contrast to the innumerable sustainability initiatives which leave most of us entirely confused about the causes of ocean degradation and unaware of the basic choice we have to make.

Doubtless this film will help to change people’s minds about the fishing industry.

If you haven’t already, watch it and use it to open conversations with family and friends about what we can do to protect our seas and the animals that live in them. Stick with it to the end and you’ll be offered a hopeful vision of the future, based on the incredible resilience of ocean ecosystems and their ability to recover, if only we would give them the chance.

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Tim Thorpe is a campaigns and policy officer at The Vegan Society and tweets at @TimSRT. He has a background in environmental science and conservation and writes about farming and environmental issues. Interested in veganism and the environment? Why not take the seven-day planet-saving vegan pledge at www.vegansociety.com/plateup.

Featured image: Fish near a FAD in the Pacific Ocean. Photo: © Paul Hilton / Greenpeace.

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***

Father Steve Kelly, S.J., a Jesuit priest and longtime nuclear resister, arrived in Tacoma, Washington March 30th to appear in the US District Court on a warrant for a previous probation violation. 

Kelly had been arrested on a charge of trespassing at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor in Silverdale, Washington during a Pacific Life Community nonviolent direct action in March 2017. Kelly refused to cooperate with a federal judge’s imposition of supervised release following his September 2017 trial, and an arrest warrant was issued. Kelly has consistently refused cooperation with any sentencing terms throughout his history of resistance.

After being taken in chains from Brunswick, Georgia, where he had been imprisoned for his part in the 2018 Kings Bay Plowshares, Kelly arrived in Tacoma, Washington on March 30, 2021, and was scheduled to have a preliminary court hearing before a Federal judge the next day on the outstanding warrant. Because of Kelly’s intention to appear in person at all court proceedings, he waived his appearance and was represented by his attorney, Blake Kremer. Magistrate Judge David Christel set another court hearing for April 13th. Kelly is currently enjoying the hospitality of the Federal Detention Center (FDC), SeaTac, Washington.

After the preliminary hearing ended, Kremer worked with the probation office and their post-release unit to resolve probation issues. Although the initial recommendation was that Kelly be ordered to live in a halfway house and continue to be supervised by the court, Kremer argued that kelly will have served his maximum sentence by the April 13th hearing date and therefore the court could not impose any additional conditions. The probation office agreed, and on April 1st   changed their position, writing:  “we will be recommending Father Kelly’s term of probation to be revoked and he be sentenced to time served with no option for supervision to follow.”

Kelly was ordained a Roman Catholic priest in the Jesuit order in 1990, and engaged in his first Plowshares action – “Jubilee Plowshares” – in 1995. Since then, he has participated in numerous Plowshares actions and other witnesses against nuclear weapons and war making. In that time he has spent over 10 years behind bars, and roughly one-third of that time in solitary confinement (for non-cooperation).

Most recently, on April 4, 2018, on the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Kelly and others, known as the the Kings Bay Plowshares 7, entered Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, the US Navy’s East Coast Trident nuclear ballistic missile submarine base. All seven defendants pled not guilty, insisting that they had not entered the base to commit a crime, but rather to prevent one from occurring, the crime of “omnicide”, the destruction of the human race which is possible in a nuclear war. In the face of this threat that the US nuclear arsenal poses to the world, they believed what they had done was not illegal, but a “symbolic disarmament”, an act of necessary civil resistance. All seven were found by a jury to be guilty on three felony counts and a misdemeanor charge.

Fr. Kelly conducting Mass and shared Eucharist at the Bangor Trident base on March 12, 2015. (photo by Leonard Eiger, Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action)

Prior to the action at Kings Bay, Kelly and four others, in what is known as the Disarm Now Plowshares, were arrested at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor on All Souls Day, November 2, 2009, after entering the nuclear warhead storage area at Strategic Weapons Facility Pacific, to expose the nuclear warheads that are deployed on OHIO Class “Trident” ballistic missile submarines. Bangor is home to the Largest Concentration of Deployed Nuclear Weapons in the U.S.

The combined fourteen ballistic missile submarines at Bangor and Kings Bay, carrying the Trident II D5 ballistic missile armed with some combination of W76-1 (100 kiloton) warheads and W88 (475 kiloton) warheads, in addition to some small number of the newer “low-yield” W76-2 warhead are, in addition to being what the US government calls “the most survivable leg of the US nuclear triad,” arguably a first-strike nuclear weapon, which is inherently destabilizing to any efforts toward cooperation and disarmament efforts with Russia. The continuing warhead modernization and current construction of the next generation of ballistic missile submarines, with plans for a new warhead and missile, is contributing to a new and far less stable nuclear arms race.

As a person of deep spiritual convictions, Fr. Kelly understands that “It’s a Sin to Build a Nuclear Weapon,” as Jesuit Father McSorley once wrote. McSorley explained that, “The taproot of violence in our society today is our intention to use nuclear weapons. Once we have agreed to that, all other evil is minor in comparison. Until we squarely face the question of our consent to use nuclear weapons, any hope of large scale improvement of public morality is doomed to failure.”

Reaching to the heart of Gospel teachings, in Kelly’s own words: “The Gospel has many instances of the parables of Jesus inserting himself between the flock and the dangers; namely the thief and the wolf. In today’s or rather contemporary application of the Gospel is that Christ is incarnate in the poor in the flock and the thief is the budget dedicated to war profiteering and nuclear annihilation. The wolf is the ever-present danger of the threat and, God forbid, the use of nuclear weapons. So it is my life long quest to imitate the Good Shepherd. I will insert myself between the dangers and the flock.”

“In order to use my limited time I will, along with others, try to embody the vision given to us through the prophet Isaiah. It is a conversion of weapons to devices for human production. The gift of Isaiah 2:4 is an economic, political, and moral conversion of the violence of nuclear annihilation. With others, I hope to be instruments in God’s hands for showing a way out of the escalation, the proliferation of this scourge of humanity. I feel strongly that Martin Luther King Jr. would agree with the principle I attribute to Gandhi that we cannot be fully human while one nuclear weapon exists.”

Aside from Fr. Kelly’s deeply held, and practiced, beliefs, courts in the US have consistently refused to allow Kelly (and other Plowshares activists) to present any kind of reasonable defense. Federal prosecutors have asked, and judges have agreed, in nearly every case, to prohibit the defendants from introducing anything constituting a reasonable defense – including religious motivations, international law and treaties, Nuremberg principles, necessity defense, or the existence, numbers, or lethality of nuclear weapons, all of which are established, public knowledge and/or precedent.

In contrast to the repressive court system in the US, Plowshares actions have also occurred in Australia, Germany, Holland, Sweden, New Zealand and Scotland, Ireland, and England, and many of the trials in these cases resulted in jury acquittals, In the case of the Pitstop Ploughshares, five members of the Catholic Worker Movement who damaged a United States Navy C-40 transport aircraft (enroute to Iraq) at Shannon Airport, Ireland in 2003, were allowed to present a reasonable defense and were acquitted by a jury that determined the defendants had acted to save lives and property in Iraq.

Rather than prosecute Fr. Kelly and others who attempt to shine the light of conscience on nuclear weapons, which represent an omnicidal threat to humanity, the US government should instead listen to their warnings and begin, as required by Article VI of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), to which the US is a signatory, to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.”

 

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Featured image: Fr. Kelly celebrating the Eucharist by Leonard Eiger, Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action.

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***

Jordan has detained a former crown prince at home and arrested two senior ex-officials and several others, sources have told Middle East Eye, amid a possible coup plot.

A large number of security forces have been deployed on Amman’s main streets and around its most sensitive sites.

Prince Hamzah bin Hussein, the 41-year-old half-brother of King Abdullah II and crown prince until 2004, has been detained at home, sources in Amman said, though the government has denied he has been arrested.

“We asked him to stop activities and movements that are used against Jordan’s stability,” the Jordanian army said in a statement.

The army added that Sharif Hassan bin Zaid, a member of the royal family, and Bassem Awadallah, who was director of King Abdullah’s office in 2006, have been arrested following “comprehensive investigations undertaken by security agencies”.

In a video sent to the BBC by his lawyer on Saturday evening, Prince Hamzah denied any wrongdoing and said he was not part of any conspiracy. He also accused the country’s leaders of corruption, incompetence and harassment.

In the video, he said:

“I had a visit from the chief of general staff of the Jordanian armed forces this morning in which he informed me that I was not allowed to go out, to communicate with people or to meet with them because in the meetings that I had been present in – or on social media relating to visits that I had made – there had been criticism of the government or the king.”

He said that he was not accused of making the criticisms himself.

However, he went on to say:

“I am not the person responsible for the breakdown in governance, the corruption and for the incompetence that has been prevalent in our governing structure for the last 15 to 20 years and has been getting worse… And I am not responsible for the lack of faith people have in their institutions.

“It has reached a point where no one is able to speak or express an opinion on anything without being bullied, arrested, harassed and threatened.”

‘Investigations are continuing’

A senior Middle East intelligence official briefed on the events told the Washington Post that investigations were ongoing into an attempt to unseat the king. The Post reported that tribal leaders and members of the Jordanian security establishment are said to have been involved in the plot.

“At least 20 more people involved with Prince Hamzah have been arrested at the same time,” a Jordanian source told MEE.

“It could be a failed coup attempt, but nobody knows the exact details.”

Major General Yousef Huneiti, chairman of Jordanian armed forces, said:

“The investigations are continuing. We will announce the results when we finish. All procedures were taken according to law. All people are under the law. Jordan’s safety and stability is the priority.”

Yaser al-Majali, director of Hamzah’s office, and Adnan Abu Hammad, who manages the prince’s palace, are among the detainees.

Sharif Hassan bin Zaid was formerly King Abdullah’s special envoy to Saudi Arabia. Some local websites in Jordan say he holds Saudi citizenship.

Following his work in the king’s office and a stint as finance minister, Awadallah established new businesses in UAE and Saudi Arabia. Some sources say he works as a consultant for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Hamzah is the son of the late King Hussein and his fourth wife, the US-born Queen Noor. He was replaced as crown prince in 2004 in favour of King Abdullah’s son Hussein.

In a statement, the Saudi royal court said:

“We stand with Jordan and support the decisions of King Abdullah to preserve the security of his country.”

Meanwhile, the US State Department described King Abdullah as a “key partner” and said he “has our full support”.

Egypt voiced its support for the king and his efforts “to maintain the security and stability of the kingdom against any attempts to undermine it”, Egypt’s presidential spokesman wrote on Facebook.

The Gulf Cooperation Council said in a statement that the GCC stood with Jordan and all its measures to maintain security and stability.

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The PCR False Positive Pseudo-Epidemic. Dr. Mike Yeadon

April 5th, 2021 by Dr. Mike Yeadon

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

This important article by Dr. Mike Yeadon was first published in November 2020

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How a novel virus met a partly-immune population

In Spring 2020 a novel coronavirus swept across the world: novel, but related to other viruses. In the UK, unknown at the time, around 50% of the population were already immune. The evidence for this is unequivocal and arose due to prior infection by common cold-causing coronaviruses (of which four are endemic). This prior immunity has been confirmed around the world by top cellular immunologists. There is even a very recent paper from Public Health England on the topic of prior immunity and a wealth of other evidence from studies on memory T-cells, studies on household transmission and on antibodies.

Because of the extent of the prior immunity, and as a result of heterogeneity of contacts, once only a low percentage of the population, perhaps as low as 10-20% had been infected, “herd immunity” was established. This is why daily deaths, which were rising exponentially, turned abruptly and began to fall, uninterrupted by street protests, the return to work, the reopening of pubs and crowded beaches during the summer. (See this explainer by the data scientist Joel Smalley.)

Immunity to ordinary respiratory viruses occurs mainly through T-cells which ‘take a picture of the invader’ at a molecular level, ‘reproduce’ it on certain immune cells and essentially ‘never forget a face’. This T-cell immunity is robust and durable. Those exposed to the highly related SARS virus in 2003 still have this immunity 17 years later. In relation to SARS-CoV-2, the pattern of immunity to date is identical and after around 800 million infections across the world, there is no convincing evidence for significant levels of re-infection. Not only are those who’ve been infected and have now recovered immune (they cannot get ill again with the same virus), but importantly they do not participate in transmission. (See my article on what SAGE got wrong for Lockdown Sceptics.) Furthermore, because the immune response is diverse, a proportion of them will also be immune to novel but similar viruses in the future.

In Spring, however, this virus did kill or hasten the end for approximately 40,000 vulnerable people, who were mostly old (median age 83, which is longer than that cohort’s life expectancy when born) and many of whom had multiple other medical conditions. There were some rare and very unfortunate younger people who also died, but age is clearly the strongest risk factor.

But due to extraordinary errors in modelling created by unaccountable academics at Imperial College, the country was told to expect over a half a million deaths. Three Nobel prize-winning scientists wrote to that modelling team in February correcting their errors. This was done confidentially. This expert, third-party estimate was remarkably accurate – it predicted that there would be a total of 40k deaths from COVID-19. I believe this is in fact correct and is what has happened. While I have no proficiency in modelling, I can distinguish predictions that are biological plausible from those which are literally incredible. When inputs to a model are wrong or missing, their outputs cannot be trusted. The Imperial model made the extreme assumption that there was zero prior immunity in the population or social contact heterogeneity.

It is now appreciated that this virus is less of a threat to those under 70 than seasonal flu, even with a flu vaccine, which routinely provides <50% effectiveness and usually much less.

The ease with which humans develop immunity to this virus is striking. Incidentally, it is this immune adeptness which has probably played an important role in why, against prior pessimism, many vaccines for SARS-CoV-2 have apparently ‘worked’ (though there is much to criticise about how efficacy has been defined, because a reduction in the propensity to become PCR positive has not previously been regarded as a leading indicator of the degree to which a vaccine will protect a population against severe illness).

Available evidence suggests that herd immunity at a national level (in England) was attained as early as May. (Joel Smalley again.) There have been no alternative explanations promulgated for the force which bore down on infections and deaths during the largely unmitigated spreading of the virus early in Spring. As an example of evidence that we are at herd immunity, London is relatively peaceful in relation to the virus now, having been the national epicentre in Spring, with hundreds of deaths daily in the capital.

Government actions have been nothing but peculiar from the very beginning

In any other year, that would be the end of the tale. Neither the existence of prior immunity nor that herd immunity can be readily reached without us noticing are new.

What was new was the belief that forcing citizens to run and hide from a respiratory virus with greater contagiousness than ‘flu was other than a fool’s errand. Acts of Parliament giving the executive a degree of power more suited to a war, and with it, a budget 10 times larger than any previous such emergency, were also deemed necessary, none of these being justified by the situation or by science. (See Jonathan Sumption make this point.)

We were invited to “Save the NHS” by not attending hospitals or seeing our doctors: soon both were heavily restricted and have remained so ever since. Most corrosively, broadcasters were and still are heavily constrained from free expression by innocent-sounding Ofcom guidelines.

I am of the view that the effect of these guidelines approximates censorship. When scientific debate is stifled, people die. Science requires the airing of opinions and debate to allow the evolution of ideas. Censorship has meant that nothing has been learnt, no model adjusted and errors compounded.

The Government was told to expect a ‘second wave’, and a huge one at that. This was mystifying. Virus don’t do waves and no reason to expect an exception on a truly unprecedented scale has ever been forthcoming. I hasten to distinguish what I have termed a secondary ripple from what SAGE means by a ‘second wave’.

The secondary ripple term recognises that not everyone will have been infected by mid-summer. As an important aside, I’ve invited many to consider how long it takes for an influenza epidemic, which we experience most years, to criss-cross the country before apparently burning out, only to occur the next year, because it’s one of the few respiratory viruses which mutates so quickly that, by the time a year has gone by, it’s sufficiently different from what our immune systems have seen before that it can wreak brief havoc upon us once again. The answer to that time question is variously given as three to four months.

I ask readers to consider how long might it be expected to take for a more contagious respiratory virus like SARS-CoV-2 to thoroughly criss-cross the country. It seems hard to credit that with taking longer than four months. We know the virus was in the UK at least by February 2020 (potentially earlier) and so by June it’s not at all unlikely that it had travelled almost everywhere. It has been argued that perhaps lockdown was very effective and so many people will still be susceptible, as SAGE claims. We know that is not correct. Lockdown was started far too late to repress the spread of the virus, as even Professor Whitty agreed in giving testimony to a parliamentary select committee in the summer. As he said, the lockdown began after the peak of infection – the outbreak was already in retreat by Mar 23rd.

Remember also that just because we were in ‘lockdown’ doesn’t mean much changed when it came to the transmission of the virus. Many people continued to go to work, other people still shopped almost every day, supply chains for all essential goods continued with few interruptions. Hospitals were open and, for the most part, extremely busy, as were care homes. The virus travelled along these routes and did not need to travel far, having reached every major urban centre before anyone even thought of locking us down or any other measures. When lockdown was lifted, there wasn’t the slightest alteration in the long, slow decline in the number of daily deaths. Personally, I don’t think there’s any evidence that the spring lockdown achieved anything in terms of saving lives from SARS-CoV-2, but there is evidence it contributed to some deaths, including deaths from non-COVID-19 causes. Reflecting back, months after, its main effect was to condition us to accept SAGE’s guidance as this was followed by the Government and echoed by media. This doesn’t mean locking people down is a sensible policy. The onus remains on its advocates to persuade us that it is, and I’m afraid they’ve not persuaded me.

So, no: there’s no good reason to think that large proportions of the nation were spared exposure to the virus as a result of the first lockdown. But it is true that some regions did experience less deaths in spring than others and while some are almost certainly due to more extensive prior immunity, others probably were incompletely exposed. That’s what I mean by secondary ripple: as transmission was increased by cooler weather, a limited amount of disease did reappear. But this was always going to be local, self-limiting and under no circumstances a public health emergency for a city, let alone a nation. This secondary ripple started at the beginning of September and was over by the end of October. Symptom-tracking data, NHS triage data and notified disease data all support that hypothesis. After this ripple, immunity levels in the underexposed pockets of the country have been topped up to herd immunity levels. From now on, COVID-19 outbreaks will be a feature of winter but will not be able to spread beyond small outbreaks.

No, what SAGE meant by a ‘second wave’ was a really big one, with twice as many deaths as in spring 2020. This is completely without precedent.

Planning for a ‘second wave’ might have led to its very creation

Viruses don’t do waves (beyond the secondary ripple concept as outlined above). I have repeatedly asked to see the trove of scientific papers used to predict a ‘second wave’ and to build a model to compute its likely size and timing. They have never been forthcoming. It’s almost as if there is no such foundational literature. I’m sure SAGE can put us right on this.

The post-WW1 “Spanish flu” appears to be all there is where it comes to evidence of waves. Most scholars accept that what most likely happened was that more than one infectious agent was involved. It was 102 years ago and no molecular biological techniques indicate multiple waves of a single agent then or anywhere else. In any case, that was influenza. There have been no examples of multiple waves since and the most recent novel coronavirus with any real spread (SARS) performed one wave each in each geographical region affected. Why a model with a ‘second wave’ in it was even built, I cannot guess. It seems completely illogical to me. Worse, as far as the public can discern, the model fails to account for the unequivocally demonstrated population prior immunity, to which must be added the recently-acquired immunity arising from the spring wave. This is why I’m reasserting what I’ve been argued for months – a ‘second wave’ cannot happen and must, perforce, not be happening as described

Despite the absence of any evidence for a ‘second wave’ – and the evidence of absence of waves for this class of respiratory virus – there was an across-the-board, multi-media platform campaign designed to plant the idea of a ‘second wave’ in the minds of everyone. This ran continually for many weeks. It was successful: a poll of GPs showed almost 86% of them stated that they expected a ‘second wave’ this winter.

As research for this piece, I sought the earliest mention of a ‘second wave’. Profs Heneghan and Jefferson, on Apr 30th, noted that we were being warned to expect a ‘second wave’ and that the PM had, on Apr 27th, warned of a ‘second wave’. The Professors cautioned anyone making confident predictions of a ‘second’ and ‘third wave’ that the historical record doesn’t provide support so to do.

I looked for mentions by the BBC of a ‘second wave’. The following report was on June 24th and at least two of the three scientists interviewed were SAGE members. The strange thing though is that SAGE minutes (brought into the public domain by Simon Dolan’s judicial review) early in the year made no mention of a sizeable ‘second wave’. Not one. On February 10th, there was a mention of multiple waves for post-WW1 flu. On Mar 3rd and 6th, there is mention of a single SARS-CoV-2 wave with most (95%) of the impact early on. What looks to be the final document, Mar 29th, still just refers to one wave. This is what history and immunology teaches. So, what happened later in the year to alter the clearly held view of SAGE that the virus would manifest itself in a single wave? We need SAGE to tell us.

PCR is a powerful tool, but has weaknesses when used on an industrial scale

Despite this bothersome oddity about a ‘second wave’ and almost as if there was a plan for one, the PCR (polymerase chain reaction) testing infrastructure in the UK began to be reshaped.

PCR is a quite remarkable technique, which has unparalleled ability to find truly tiny quantities of a fragment of a genetic sequence, right down to the level of finding a single, broken fragment of a virus in a messy biological sample. There are notable limitations, well known to those who’ve personally used PCR in a research context. The most important one is its propensity to suffer from contamination, and the integrity of a PCR is very easily destroyed by invisible levels of contamination even in the hands of an expert, working alone and on a small handful of samples.

This is a good moment to mention that the PCR test protocol for SARS-CoV-2, which everyone in the world is now using, was invented in the lab of Prof Drosten in Berlin. The scientific paper in which the method was described was published in January 2020, two days after the manuscript was submitted. One of the authors of the paper is on the editorial board of the journal that published it. There is concern that this extremely important article, which contains a PCR test protocol that has been used to run hundreds of millions of PCR tests across the world, including the UK, was not peer-reviewed. No peer review report has been released, despite many requests to do so. Furthermore, as a method, it contains numerous technical weaknesses, some of which are serious and highly complex. Suffice to say that a very detailed dissection of the paper and of the Drosten protocol has been made by Drs Borger and Malhotra, experienced and concerned molecular biologists. A group of other medics and scientists (of which I am one) have put their names to a letter, which accompanies the dissection, to the whole editorial board of the journal, Eurosurveillance, demanding that the paper be retracted. This was submitted on Nov 26th.

In addition, the Portuguese high court determined two weeks ago that this PCR test is not a reliable way to determine the health status or infectiousness of citizens, nor to restrain their movements. Other countries are also receiving legal challenges, one being submitted earlier this week in Germany by Reiner Fuellmich, a lawyer who successfully sued VW in relation to diesel emissions (The YouTube video in which Fuellmich sets out the principal points of concern about the misuse of PCR has been removed). I am aware of other legal challenges being assembled in further countries, including Italy, Switzerland and South Africa. With the scientific validity of this test under severe challenges, I believe it must immediately be withdrawn from use.

There are deep concerns internationally about the reliability and selectivity of this PCR test protocol and this should be borne in mind through the rest of this article.

NHS labs ran PCR competently in spring

In spring, the relatively constrained amount of PCR testing was at least conducted independently by very many, experienced labs and I am of the view that it was trustworthy, reaching more than adequate numbers of tests by the end of May (50k per day). Now it’s being run in newly-established large, private labs and most of their current staff are far less experienced than those in the NHS labs. We have no idea why this has happened. Regardless of any concerns about testing capacity, the need was and should have been expected only to be of limited duration. Remember, viruses don’t do waves and we’d already been fully exposed to the virus. Of course, it was argued that “a second wave was coming”, so we’d need more capacity. But as I’ve already shown, the certainty of expectation of a ‘second wave’ was bizarre and unaccountable.

So why was PCR testing removed from NHS labs? One answer is because they didn’t have the capacity to cope with testing requirements for a ‘second wave’. But this is circular: it was simply impossible to claim with certainty that there’d be such a wave. Also, it’s not true that the NHS labs couldn’t cope. As a staff member there pointed out: “I want to know why the new super-labs have been set up, because if they gave the NHS labs the (consumables) resources they could easily do the tests. Our lab has been ready for ages to do large numbers of tests. We have the equipment and we have staff. We lack only the test kits and these are not available to any new labs, either.”

It wasn’t just NHS lab staff who were perturbed by the move. I’m quoting extensively from this article because it contains crucial information. The President of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences (IBMS), the leading professional body in the field of biomedical science, said:

It concerns me when I see significant investments being made in mass testing centres that are planning to conduct 75,000 of the 100,000 tests a day. These facilities would be a welcome resource and take pressure off the NHS if the issue around testing was one of capacity. However, we are clear that it is a global supply shortage holding biomedical scientists back, not a lack of capacity. The profession is now rightly concerned that introducing these mass testing centres may only serve to increase competition for what are already scarce supplies and that NHS testing numbers will fall if their laboratories are competing with the testing centres for COVID-19 testing kits and reagents in a ‘Wild West testing’ scenario. The UK must avoid this for the sake of patient safety. It is clear that two testing streams now exist: one delivered by highly qualified and experienced Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) registered biomedical scientists working in heavily regulated United Kingdom Accreditation Services (UKAS) accredited laboratories, the other delivered mainly by volunteer unregistered staff in unaccredited laboratories that have been established within a few weeks. This has presented another key concern – in that we have not been involved in assuring the quality of the testing centres and are now being kept at arm’s length from their processes, even when they exist close to large NHS laboratories.

On proof reading this article, I was struck at how powerful the case was for keeping things under the quality control of the NHS. What could the motives against this sensible plan have possibly been?

These testing facilities were presumably expected to be temporary. If so, why would it make sense to spend large sums of money and to displace equipment and consumables, which were the sole key missing item when the Lighthouse super-labs were announced, instead of using existing, keen, accredited staff who knew what they were doing? Those new labs would be as limited by consumables as the NHS labs.

We never really needed mass testing of those without symptoms

Arguably, we would never have been short on capacity if we had limited the testing to those with symptoms. The only reason one might even consider mass testing of those without symptoms is if you were convinced that those without symptoms were significant sources of transmission. This has always seemed to me to be a very tenuous assumption. Specifically, respiratory viruses are spread by droplets of secretions and generally the expulsion of these is linked to the symptoms of infection – coughing in particular. Humans have evolved over millions of years to recognise threats to health by close observation of the health status of others. It works well. We’re familiar with avoiding those with flu-like symptoms in winter and behaving responsibly by staying away from work and vulnerable people when we are symptomatic. The burden of proof rests with those claiming something very different in the case of SARS-CoV-2 to show conclusively that asymptomatic people are indeed major sources of transmission. I don’t think that case has at all been made. The medical literature on this is contradictory but almost all the papers claiming such transmission originated in China.

Consequently, there is simply no need to get into the business of mass testing the population. Indeed, as we will see, such mass testing brings with it, when using PCR as the method, a severe risk of what we call a “PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic”. This could never happen if we were not using PCR mass testing of the mostly well. So, for whatever reason and against all historical precedent and immunological reasoning, a major initiative was launched with the goal of reaching 500,000 tests a day by year’s end. Again, unaccountably, the Government didn’t just get on and build these new labs, working in parallel with the available NHS capabilities. Instead, responsibility for testing was swept out from 44 NHS labs, with skilled and accredited staff who’d already been running SARS-CoV-2 PCR. In their place, new labs were created, outside the help and control network of the Institute of Biomedical Sciences. These Lighthouse Labs are still not all fully accredited under UKAS to ISO 15189, a quality management system accreditation relating to medical laboratories.

There is a reliable test, fully-characterised and already validated with real-world use

At the end of October, the British Army was called in to help Liverpool City Council find the cases which the ONS PCR testing survey predicted should be there but which were no longer being found in the numbers expected. It was possible that people were no longer coming forward to be tested, though there is no way to be sure of this. Despite not having sought consent from the parents of school children and the absence before the survey began of proper protocols and ethics review, scores of thousands of people were tested using a lateral-flow test (LFT). (See here and here for more details on the LFT.) These look rather like the familiar pregnancy test kits you can purchase over the counter. They look similar, because they use related tried and trusted technology to detect virus proteins in the swab, not RNA. All tests have limits and weaknesses. However, the LFTs are not subject to the same flaws as PCR – specifically the risk of over-amplification and of cross-contamination before the test is actually run. LFT has similar sensitivity and specificity in the lab to PCR. It is certainly capable of identifying the same proportion of those truly infected as PCR.

In brief, the army found very few people with positive LFT results, only slightly higher than the background operational false positive rate: just over 0.3%, values expected when the tests are used in the real world. Since testing began, the positive rate has tended to a mean of 0.7% which might mean a few people were positive. My own experience of reading around this area is that this (around 0.7%) is almost certainly the true false positive rate when, in the real-world, careful but inexpert people administer the LFT. It meant that, in the city in the centre of the national hotspot for COVID-19, almost no one had the virus. This experiment has been repeated for 8,000 people in Merthyr Tydfil resulting in 0.77% testing positive. That these two test series have returned such similar values suggests that this is indeed the true, operational false positive rate for the LFT, though another test series will be helpful in refining that possible interpretation. Some leapt to criticise the LFT, as if it was its fault that it couldn’t find the expected cases. Of course, to many of us, the results were exactly what we’d expected, because we were by then sure that PCR was wildly over-reading. PCR has gone wrong before and Occam’s razor indicated that this was by far the most likely explanation for the otherwise inexplicable failure of PCR “cases” to correlate with symptomatic disease. These are the kind of results expected in populations protected by herd immunity. They’re completely inconsistent with a city and town in the grip of a highly-infectious respiratory virus.

To the Lighthouse

By September, the great bulk of PCR testing was being run by large, private labs, some of which are called Lighthouse Labs, and I’ll use this term as a coverall for all such labs. It was as September began that literally incredible things started to happen. Students returning to University towns were all required to submit to swabbing and PCR testing. We were then told there was an epidemic running through young people and it was just a matter of time before it reached the elderly and that would be that. The percentage of tests which were returning positive started skyrocketing, reaching in some towns values that were close to those in A&E at the peak of the pandemic in April. Strong linkage was observed between numbers of tests run and their positivity. This is most odd and can happen if the error rate increases with the pressure on the testing system.

Now, in late November, we are told there are sometimes 25,000 new “cases” daily and that several hundred daily “COVID-19 deaths” are occurring. How can this be happening if I’m right and the population has achieved herd immunity (as supported by large numbers of scientific papers detailing extensive T-cell immunity, as well as careful examination of the profile of deaths in spring vs recently, and the examination of patterns of deaths around the country recently as compared with spring)? It’s a conundrum.

As the numbers of daily PCR tests conducted began to climb very steeply, reaching 370,000 per day in mid-November, many of us have had the uncomfortable feeling that the chances of PCR testing on this scale returning accurate results are vanishingly small. To avoid cross-contamination and to have such high throughput flies in the face of decades of relevant experience for some of us. The classic triad of speed, throughput and quality always has one of them as the lead, limiting factor. In this case, my entire career experience tells me that the limiting factor is quality.

How we can square these claims of tens of thousands of daily “cases” and an unprecedented ‘second wave’ of deaths with the unfeasible quantity of testing using a technique considered by bench experts difficult to perform reliably even on a small scale?

A PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic looks just like a real epidemic, but isn’t

It’s important to appreciate while digesting this counter-narrative which, unlike the official line, is at least internally consistent, that the only data suggesting a ‘second wave’ is upon us are PCR results. Everything is dependent on this. A “case” is a positive PCR test. No symptoms are involved. A “COVID-19 admission” to a hospital is a person testing positive by PCR before, on entry or at any time during a hospital stay, no matter the reason for the admission or the symptoms the patient is presenting. A “COVID-19 death” is any death within 28 days of a positive PCR test. If there is any doubt about the reliability of the PCR test, all of this falls away at a single stroke.

I have to tell you that there is more than common-or-garden doubt about the PCR mass testing that purports to identify the virus. We have very strong evidence that the PCR mass testing as currently conducted is completely worthless.

At this point, it’s appropriate to give the game away and invite you to read the explanation that the team of which I’m part have assembled.

In brief: the pandemic was over by June and herd immunity was the main force which turned the pandemic and pressed it into retreat. In the autumn, the claimed “cases” are an artefact of a deranged testing system, which I explain in detail below. While there is some COVID-19 along the lines of the “secondary ripple” concept explained above, it has occurred primarily in regions, cities and districts that were less hard hit in the spring. Real COVID-19 is self-limiting and may already have peaked in some Northern towns. It will not return in force, and the example again is London. Even here, certain boroughs, e.g. Camden and Sutton, have had minimal positive test results. I’ve explained a number of times how this happened – the prominent role of prior immunity is often ignored or misunderstood. The extent of this was so large that, coupled with the uneven spread of infection, it needed only a low percentage of the population to be infected before herd immunity was reached.

That’s it. All the rest is a PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic. The cure, of course, as it has been in the past when PCR has replaced the pandemic itself as the menace in the land, is to stop PCR mass testing.

In case you’re still not convinced and think several hundred people are dying of COVID-19 each day, please watch this 10 min explainer video, created by data scientist Joel Smalley. By the end you will appreciate how the difference between reporting date and date of occurrence in relation to deaths and the large difference in this regard between COVID-19 deaths, most of which occur in hospital, and non-COVID-19 deaths, many of which happen at home, gives at any moment an impression of excess deaths which, when corrected for this differential delay, collapses into nothing or into such a small signal that surely it’s not faintly a public health concern. It’s also important to be aware that, for the best of intentions, physicians are too quick to assign COVID-19 as the cause of death, partly because the death sometimes has the right kind of elements, but mostly because the rules require them to: any death within 28 days of a positive test has to be recorded as a COVID-19 death, no matter what the circumstances. The degree of misattribution is so large that the number of deaths from the top 10 leading causes have been pushed far below normal levels, which is highly suggestive of these deaths having been mislabelled. Do note, you should at this point expect some excess deaths, if from nothing else, a number of people dying – mostly at home – from non-COVID-19 causes, a result of restricted access to healthcare for eight months.

I think the evidence is unequivocal that we are in a PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic

It’s happened before, with whooping cough (caused by a bacterium, but the technique for diagnosing the disease was the same, PCR). Hundreds of apparent “cases” were diagnosed at a hospital in New Hampshire using PCR and physicians fitted the symptoms of various coughs and colds to what the “gold standard test” was telling them. In fact, not a single person had the disease. The positivity in the PCR test was around 15%, but no actual infection was found. 100% of the PCR positives were false. Unrealistically high positivity and no recent, independent confirmation of infection is now the situation in UK.

To the Lighthouse (again)

How can this PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic be occurring? A false positive is simply a positive outcome of a test when the item sought was absent from the original sample (there are a variety of sources of false positives and they are often ignored or confused). Most false positives in PCR occur due to cross-contamination. This can occur if a sample containing the virus is even briefly in contact with a sample not containing the virus. Contamination can and does happen at any of the stages from sample acquisition all the way into the reaction vessel in which the cyclical amplification of PCR takes place. This contamination can include the reference material used to confirm the test run is working, the so-called positive control, itself a piece of synthetic viral RNA. Such positive controls are potent sources of error as they are an intensely concentrated supply of the very material sought in miniscule amounts by the test, right down to a single, broken fragment of virus. Other common sources of contamination are a small number of samples which actually do contain the virus, which almost certainly continues to circulate at low levels and may already have become endemic (like the four, common cold-inducing coronaviruses, OC43, HKU1, 229E and NL63).

It is my opinion, and I am not alone, that industrialized molecular biology PCR mass testing is and always was unfeasible on the scale it’s currently being conducted. With high speed and throughput, something has to give and in this case it’s quality. Here are just a few of the reasons why you should no longer have any faith or confidence in the PCR testing in use in UK. As the drive to industrialize the process proceeded, responsibility for PCR testing was mostly moved into one centralised set of facilities called Lighthouse Labs. I shall describe testimony (for Milton Keynes) and video evidence (Randox in Northern Ireland) which are concordant.

We have horrifyingly clear evidence that the work processes, staffing, lack of quality control and external validation means that this facility cannot work reliably and produce trustworthy testing results. I have spoken at length to the brave scientist who’s blown the whistle on the Milton Keynes super-lab, Dr Julian Harris, who is one of the most experienced lab PCR scientists in the UK. He was been involved in high biosecurity level labs since 1987 and has operated PCR for decades. What’s been missed in the expose is that his concerns are not only with health and safety (though these are important). Almost any building can be adapted to carry out a highly sensitive assay such as PCR, while keeping contamination issues down to a minimum. The problem with the Milton Keynes site is the lack of thought that went into minimising thr risk of contamination of the COVID-19 PCR Assay. To this should be added the fact they have no appropriate biosafety level 2 and contagion expertise on site (as clearly stated in the HSE reports that can be viewed at the foot of Julian Harris’s article for Lockdown Sceptics here). It is this that is a recipe for disaster in terms of the inflation of positive test results by the generation of false positives.

No-one competent is inspecting these facilities, staff processes and results. The only person capable of looking from stem to stern who’s actually done so is Dr Julian Harris and he unequivocally condemns the operation. He highlighted overcrowded, bioinsecure workspaces, the absence of health and safety training, poor safety protocols and a lack of suitable PPE, such as the enforcement of wearing paper-visitor lab coats when handling swab samples in Class II BSCs – was this to cut down on laundry expenses? Handwashing facilities were available, but as the HSE discovered, they were often out of soap, sanitizer and towels, a consequence of personnel not knowing where to go to replenish these supplies.. The Health and Safety Executive was called in (by Dr Harris). Management of the facility failed to answer requests to set up a visit, so eventually, they made unannounced visits in late-September (see letters from the HSE at the base of Dr Harris’s piece). Their visits, which most unusually (and tells us of the degree of concern they felt) were accompanied by HM Inspector of Health and Safety, uncovered safety breaches at the Lighthouse Lab in Milton Keynes.

“I found they’ve got no experience with this sort of facility or handling bio-hazardous materials, and then they’re just launched into this activity,” Dr Harris says of the Milton Keynes team. Dr Harris was so troubled by what he saw that he contacted the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). He saw two people using biosecurity cabinets – enclosed, ventilated workspaces where scientists open the tubes containing the contaminated swabs – which were only calibrated to have protective airflow for one person. “Once you disrupt that [airflow] by overloading plus too much disruption of the veil nearest the operator, you might as well be working on an open bench. It just disrupts the whole reason for a cabinet to protect the operator. And it is really disturbing,” Dr Harris says. He alleges that the lab recruited local young people to work long shifts.

Dr Harris says he saw mobile phones being used in the labs and then taken to the canteen. The HSE visited the Milton Keynes lab and found five material breaches of health and safety legislation. A UK Biocentre manager admitted to the HSE that the training in place did not look “robust enough” for these new recruits. Dr Harris tells me that there was little or no Health and Safety training at all, despite the facility being rated BSL2.

It’s not only procedural issues in the labs that are concerning. With individual PCR tests, the scientist views the change in signal vs cycle and determines whether a test is positive, negative or indeterminate. In high throughput mode, this can only be done by software. Thus, the choice of provider is absolutely crucial to the accuracy and trustworthiness of the output, not only for an individual sample but also at a population level. For reasons not explained, the facility chose a software product which was apparently inferior to another. Why did the Lighthouse Lab choose an inferior product? In the example given, it ‘under-called’ positives but that doesn’t tell you that’s what it does now. What it does tell us is that it’s less reliable at ‘calling’ results. Surely the firm whose product performed better and had already passed regulatory standards would have been the better choice?

Underscoring their problems with staffing, the Lighthouse Lab did have a quality management system (QMS) specialist while Dr Harris worked there. However, that person resigned and, as far as I know, has not yet been replaced with someone of equivalent experience. This will undoubtedly have contributed to continuing failure to be UKAS accredited to ISO 15189, quality and competence in medical laboratories. While this can be seen as voluntary, the customer (Her Majesty’s Government) determines whether or not such accreditation is essential. Given there has never been a medical diagnostic test of such importance in the entire history of the nation, HMG must surely have specified ISO 15189 accreditation. If they have not, that is in my view a severe dereliction of duty. In any case, its absence does not in any way reduce the need to run these critical PCR tests to the highest standards and for the output to be trustworthy.

Separately, though the HSE accreditation doesn’t prove quality and accuracy of the end product, the test results, and that the facility is still not so accredited, indicates a continuing failure to get to grips with the overlapping issues in the lab which directly pertain to end-to-end sample integrity.

This detailed recounting of evidence is not designed to be a teach-in on health and safety, important though that is. It is instead to demonstrate that neither management nor staff have the scrupulous attention to every detail required to ensure sample integrity from end-to-end, which is merely the starting point to have any chance at all to successfully run this delicate and powerful technique, which is notoriously susceptible to cross-contamination of the smallest kind. Although the integrity of the laminar airflow is preserved in the cabinets – simultaneously protecting operator and sample – it does not cater for the overloading of the working area and clogging up the back grates that is dangerous for sample integrity and contagion exposure of personnel.

Micro-pipetting (dispensing volumes ranging from 1ml down to 0.0005ml) relies on highly accurate pipetting devices and their proper use is crucial in any application of molecular biology technologies and it is therefore the case with PCR. These micropipettors are used by personnel throughout the COVID-19 testing process. If misused, that can result not only in the incorrect volume of sample being withdrawn and dispensed into another receptacle, but can be the cause of contaminating test samples. As most staff had little to no PCR experience and in many cases, no experience of professional laboratory work at all, this would contribute to the inaccuracy of the end product – the COVID19 test results. As a hallmark of how low the hiring bar has been set, the Milton Keynes facility has a staff member who carries out ‘pipette training’. Dr Harris commented that even this individual had difficulties in understanding the standing operating procedure used for the pipette training, having come from their previous role of stacking shelves in Tesco’s. Micropipetting is a fundamental skill usually learnt at the beginning of a scientific career. I’ve never heard of such a role anywhere before in 39 years of conducting and supervising laboratory work in UK.

It is imperative that those performing liquid handling in a biofacility comprehensively understand how liquid biosamples can spread by droplets and aerosols. Most importantly, how they can inadvertently contaminate the sample(s) as well as expose the personnel to contagion. These skills must become second-nature – acquired over many months to years – before anyone is allowed to step foot in such a biohazardous environment.

Finally, I asked Dr Harris when, in the sequence of steps, the ‘negative control’ samples were placed. The most vulnerable part of the task to cross-contamination is the bag opening to sample placement in the final, racked tubes, which are then placed into the automated workflow, finally dispensing sample for testing into the PCR plate. Therefore, I expected to be told that there were at least two negative control swab samples (unused with their own bar codes) that were included at this initial stage of the process. One should insert some unused tubes early on, so that, if there was cross-contamination, it would be detected in the final, PCR step.

But no. The sole, negative control that is used at Milton Keynes is virus-free medium, carefully placed into a designated well as part of the first stage of the automated liquid handling process, where simultaneously 0.2ml of each sample is transferred to a well of a 96-well plate, each well containing the virus inactivation buffer. But this bypasses the first steps where cross-contamination may occur – that is, during the initial processing of samples. That’s not only bad scientific technique but, in my view, bad scientific acumen. If I was teaching an undergraduate student, and they came up with this as an experimental design, I would fail them. It’s no wonder that the positivity rate – the percentage of tests which come up positive – is so high as to be literally unbelievable. I’m sure the Lighthouse Lab tells its client that there’s no evidence of cross-contamination, as the negative controls are consistently free of virus. Yet we drive our entire national policy on the strength of this?

Randox

There are a small group of large labs which were set up at speed to become “Lighthouse Labs” or “Superlabs”. A second one, the Randox facility in Antrim, Northern Ireland, has been the subject of a Channel 4 Dispatches program. This detailed documentary film centres on this very large, private contract lab testing over 100K COVID-19 samples per day using PCR. Watching this program with an eye of someone experienced in lab procedures related to mass testing (though not this technique) I observed: workers cutting open plastic bags containing swab samples in tubes, some of which had leaked. The scissors were then used to open the next bag and so on. Tubes were wiped externally using a wipe, but the same wipe was used to mop the outsides of several tubes in a row. The tubes were then placed on their sides in a tray, where they were free to roll around and touch other tubes. Workers kept on the same pair of disposable gloves while opening a large number of such bags, one after another. A worker commented that just under 10% of tubes with red caps leaked. Randox stated that it didn’t make the tubes and that a fix was in progress.

Firstly, using scissors or any sharp instruments shouldn’t be used with biohazardous samples in BSL2/3/4 facilities. The exposure of the biosample contents to the air-conditioned room environment, plus the sample fluid contaminating cardboard boxes, is a recipe for disaster and could lead to:

  1. Cross-contamination between samples
  2. Cross-contamination between samples and personnel
  3. Cross-contamination between sample and the room environment
  4. Exposure of personnel to contagion of unknown origin(s)

A consultant microbiologist, who’d run an NHS pathology lab for 1- years, commented for the film: “If you have a tube which has leaked and is in your unpacking environment, it’s then quite easy for that to get onto other tubes. If the leaked sample was positive, it would cause the other tubes to become positive. These are very sensitive tests we’re using and it’s very easy to get (contamination-related) false positives. We would be shut down if we performed that way”.

Taking Milton Keynes and Randox together, I contend that there was a policy decision to create an expectation in the minds of most people that a ‘second wave’ was expected, and that this would require increased testing capability. The conditions which resulted from these industrialisation attempts (Lighthouse Labs and similar) by virtue of the poor sample handling evidenced in two examples (Milton Keynes, in the same building which houses the U.K. Biobank, and Randox, on a former military base) actively created that ‘second wave’ (of misdiagnosed cases, admissions and deaths). I believe the unavoidable conclusion is that the mechanism whereby large numbers of “cases” were and still are being created is insidious, uncontrolled and undetected cross-contamination during the swab sample processing stages.

I have no doubt that those conducting the manual steps of pipetting are doing their best. But they do not have the skills and experience of this technique, which must be performed repetitively and for hours, while never creating a burst of micro-aerosol as they drive the thumb plunger on the pipette slightly too fast, or creating a micro-splash as they change the disposable tip. They must never contaminate a fingertip of a glove as they open a potentially leaking tube and then touch another. They must never disturb the laminar airflow in the hoods so as to facilitate invisible levels of contamination from one tube to another. There are so many ways in which miniature levels of contamination compromise sample integrity and increase the number of positives, and no one has taught them to avoid them all.

In these two PCR mass testing factories, among the largest, there is now strong evidence of completely inadequate effort to ensure that end-to-end sample integrity is maintained. These are, in my view, simulacra of proper testing facilities. Meanwhile, daily testing capacity has grown considerably, approaching the goal of conducting 500,000 tests by PCR daily.

Criticisms of PCR (again)

Even if the Lighthouse Labs did work from a technical perspective, the Government has admitted that PCR’s characteristics as a test are literally out of control. Lord Bethel confirmed in a written answer that the UK Government does not know the operational false positive rate (OFPR). While the Government claimed it could adopt as an estimate a range from prior related tests (0.8-2.3%) this is tendentious. These earlier tests were done by highly experienced lab scientists working at relatively small scale. Each PCR test will have a unique false positive rate dependant on the design of the test and it cannot be deduced from other tests. The Lighthouse Labs are mostly staffed by young and inexperienced people, many of whom have never previously worked professionally in a lab. It is absurd to suggest the combination of inexperienced staff, coupled with an industrialized process of a technique so sensitive to cross-contamination that such cross-contamination is a routine problem in research labs performed by careful, knowledgeable scientists, could yield reliable, trustworthy results.

I maintain that lack of knowledge of the OFPR alone renders this PCR test in this configuration completely incapable of providing trustworthy results. If this was a diagnostic test in use in the NHS today, no physician would submit a patient sample to it, because it would be impossible to interpret a positive result. Of course, it is a diagnostic test in use today.

In summary, I argue that it is criminally dangerous to drive policy based in any way on this test (set up the way it is) and its results. No amount of argument or prevarication can alter these damning facts.

Conclusions

Source: Public Health England weekly national Influenza and COVID- 19 surveillance report, Week 48 (w/e Nov 26th)

The entire ‘second wave’ is supported solely on the back of a flawed mass PCR test, which at industrialized scale was never, in my view and the views of others skilled in PCR, capable of delivering trustworthy results. I have detailed the evidence supporting the claim that the autumn PCR test results are not reliably detecting COVID-19 infection. It may seem a leap to damn the PCR test and claim that there isn’t an epidemic but a pseudo-epidemic. But even in the hands of skilled and careful people, the strange phenomenon of the PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic has occurred several times before. In large, industrialised labs, it is very likely that significant and unmeasured cross-contamination related false positive rates are occurring.

The key sign of a PCR false positive pseudo-epidemic is the relative paucity of excess deaths equal to the deaths claimed to be occurring as a result of the lethal infective agent. This key sign is present.

The unprecedented “’second wave’ conundrum is solved. It’s of course not happening, but why a ‘second wave’ was talked up, months before unreliable PCR testing data was brought into service, demands deeper investigation. It’s not a science matter: not unless the team predicting the wave can produce the scientific literature upon which the prediction and modelling was based.

As a reference, I spent over an hour consulting with the owner-manager of a well-run facility in another country, which mainly serves private clients. This person only hires staff to do this kind of work who have at least four years’ experience of PCR, not just of highly competent laboratory experience. These will in almost all cases be post-doctoral students, having already obtained a research-based PhD involving use of PCR techniques.

Those who observe that PCR testing at scale elsewhere seems to run well tell us only that it can be done acceptably if it’s set up carefully. That’s assuming you can trust their results, something to which my research cannot extend. In any case, in no way does that observation undermine any of what I’ve written.

Until we end the use of PCR mass testing, there is no chance that “cases” will reduce to very low levels. Lateral flow tests must become the gold standard test for COVID with PCR only used for confirmatory diagnosis. This will minimise the number of PCR tests that need to be performed allowing testing to return to competent NHS laboratories. Without such an intervention, even if the virus stopped circulating, I believe we’ll still hear of tens of thousands of “cases” every day, and several hundred deaths.

As the above graph clearly shows, there was a notable peak of excess deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 in the spring, but it has not returned. As noted earlier, some excess deaths are now to be expected at very least as a consequence of prolonged and widespread restricted access to the NHS.

So, just one wave, as expected. The ‘second wave’ of “cases” and even “COVID-19 deaths” are an artefact of flawed testing.

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Dr Mike Yeadon, former CSO and VP, Allergy and Respiratory Research Head with Pfizer Global R&D and co-Founder of Ziarco Pharma Ltd

Featured image: Chief Medical Officer, Professor Chris Whitty and Chief Scientific Adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance give a Coronavirus Data Briefing in 10 Downing Street on September 21st. Picture by Pippa Fowles / No 10 Downing Street.

The following text is the translation from French (by the author).  Texte de la lettre en français

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Mr. François Legault,

Premier of Quebec

April 3, 2021

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Dear Mr. Legault,

I am writing to you regarding your government’s decision to consider a new lockdown in order to protect Quebecers against the pandemic.

This letter addresses the issue of estimating deaths attributed to Covid-19.

On April 16, 2020: a  directive by the Quebec Ministry of Health and Social Services  regarding the identification and categorization of the cause of death was issued:

“If the presumed cause of death is Covid-19 (with or without a positive test) an autopsy should be avoided  [emphasis in Ministry document] and death should be attributed to Covid-19 as the probable cause of death. In addition, deaths, the probable cause of which is Covid-19, are considered natural, and are not the subject of a notice to the coroner. ” [translated from French]

Below is the text [in French] of the directive sent to the directors of the OPTILAB Clusters (the clinical-administrative and medical co-directors). (Les Grappes – OPTILAB, medical biology laboratories)

 

 

The directive was issued on April 16, 2020. And five days later, Monday April 21, 2020, the Ministry of Health reported that Covid-19 had become (for the month of April): “…  the main cause death in Quebec [44.9%]   beating the daily average of deaths attributable to cancer and heart disease. “

On April 21, 2020, at your press conference you reported that the deaths attributed to Covid-19 had gone fly high, and that these deaths were mainly concentrated in seniors’ residence homes (CHLSD).

Below is the (daily) mortality data in Quebec corresponding to the week of April 12 to 18, 2020 measured (and categorized) according to the criteria issued by the Ministry of Health and Social Services.

Was this surge in Covid mortality the result of the “killer virus”, namely the so-called “deadly pandemic”?

Or was it the result of the directives issued by the Ministry of Health and Social Services (April 16, 2200) which are largely based on erroneous criteria?

See below:

  •  “presumed” cause of death” is Covid-19,
  • “With or without positive test”,
  • “probable” cause of mortality,
  • “Autopsy should be avoided” in the case of Covid-19.
  • “Deaths whose probable cause is Covid-19, are considered natural, and are not the subject of a notice to the coroner”

It is not even necessary to require a “confirmed positive case” (RT-PCR test) to establish whether the death is caused by the virus. The Covid-19 “presumed cause of death” (which proves absolutely nothing) is sufficient.

I should also mention that this directive does not allow the recording of co-morbidities. And if the family of the deceased does not accept the Covid-19 categorization (which does not require the PCR test), the autopsy request procedures are complex (almost impossible, two hospitals for the whole of Quebec) .

There were no cases of death attributable to Covid in Quebec prior to mid-March 2020. And suddenly in April the death figures associated with Covid-19 go fly high, to become in April 2020 the main cause of death in Quebec.

Today, Covid-19 is categorized as the third leading cause of death in Quebec. This categorization was also used to distort the causes of death in the CHSLDs. It is not the virus which caused “a real massacre” in the CHSLDs. Quite the opposite.

My understanding is that these erroneous directives of the Ministry of Health issued in April 2020 are still in effect.

At the beginning of April 2021: more than 10,600 cases of mortality in Quebec are assigned to Covid-19 (based on the arbitrary criteria of the Ministry of Health and Social Services).

Inevitably, the mortality statistics associated with Covid as well as the numerous media reports help fuel the fear campaign.

The Lockdown

The figures pertaining to Covid deaths are used by the Ministry of Health and the government to justify the draconian measures imposed on Quebecers including the lockdown, the curfew, the wearing of masks, social distancing, closing of schools, colleges and universities as well as the partial closure of the national economy, which inevitably leads to precipitating the bankruptcy of small and medium-sized businesses in all regions of Quebec.

The lockdown is not a solution, quite the opposite. You do not resolve a public health crisis by closing down major sectors of the national economy. The solution put forth by the government (if applied) will result in more poverty and unemployment. It will also lead to a fiscal crisis of the State and an unprecedented public debt.

The government should reassure the people of Quebec. There is absolutely no basis for a fear campaign. Rarely mentioned by the media, CoV-SARS-2 is not a “deadly virus”. According to the World Health Organization (WHO):

Most people infected with the COVID-19 virus will experience mild to moderate respiratory illness and recover without requiring special treatment.  Older people, and those with underlying medical problems like cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic respiratory disease, and cancer are more likely to develop serious illness.

The Covid-19 vaccine is not a solution to restore the so-called “normality”. It is not required for people experiencing “a mild to moderate respiratory illness”.

Moreover, the mRNA vaccines are still at the “experimental” stage. In the European Union (EU), there have been over a period of less than three months  (from December 27, 2020 – March 13, 2021) 3,964 deaths and 162,610 injuries.   (See Eudra Vigilance reports )

Is this Really a Third Wave?

The estimates are misleading. I would suggest that the government of Quebec carry out an analysis on the methodology of the RT-PCR test (applied to CoV-SARS-2) in order to assess the reliability of the estimates pertaining to positive covid-19 cases. See the WHO’s corrigendum (below)

The WHO’s Mea Culpa

The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a corrigendum in a Memo dated January 20, 2021 pertaining to its own guidelines regarding the RT-PCR test. Theses guidelines  were put forth at the outset of the crisis by the WHO in January 2020. They were approved and applied by the governments of WHO Member States [starting in early February].

The contentious issue pertains to the number of amplification threshold cycles (Ct)

The WHO as of January 2021 retracts and now asks the governments to repeat the test if the amplification (Ct) standards (threshold) were applied at 35 cycles or above:> 35 cycles:

“WHO guidance Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed (1). The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT [nucleic acid amplification] technology.

WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity. ” ( WHO January 20, 2021, emphasis added)

Erroneous Estimates

This is not an issue of  “Weak Positives” and “Risk of False Positive Increases”. What is at stake is a “Flawed Methodology” which leads to invalid estimates. 

What this admission of the WHO confirms is that the estimate of covid positive from a PCR test (with an amplification threshold of 35 cycles or higher) is invalid. In which case, the WHO recommends retesting:  “a new specimen should be taken and retested…”.

Repeat the Test?

While the implementation of this WHO recommendation to “Retest”  is (in practice) an impossibility, the fact remains that the results of the PCR test established (since February 2020) according to the WHO’s erroneous guidelines are invalid.

According to scientific opinion (Pieter Borger et al). :

“if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used (as is the case in most laboratories in Europe & the US), the probability that said person is actually infected is less than 3%, the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%  (Pieter Borger, Bobby Rajesh Malhotra, Michael Yeadon, Clare Craig, Kevin McKernan, et al, Critique of Drosten Study)

 

I am at your disposal for any clarifications regarding the content of this letter

 

Yours respectfully,

Michel Chossudovsky

Director,
Center for Research on Globalization (CRG),
Montreal

[email protected]

Professor of Economics (emeritus),

University of Ottawa, Ottawa

Michel Chossudovsky Biographical note

 

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In the shadow of the decline of the value of the Turkish lira and the weakness of the Turkish economy resulting from many factors, the most important of which is the loss of profits from the tourism season on the one hand and the policies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan‘s son-in-law Berat Bayrak when he was Minister of Finance and how the value of the lira declined during his reign and his attempt to court Germany, perhaps for some aid from here or from over there.

These financial problems called on Ankara to financially limit the support of its militants and mercenaries in northern Syria by cutting the salaries.

There may be other reasons behind the suspension of salaries, among them the pressure on the factions to implement a Turkish plan that is being prepared in northern Syria and its features are still ambiguous.

 As it has been reported that Turkey has stopped the salaries of the so-called Watani Army militants loyal to it in northern Syria about two months ago.

The sources said that a state of discontent and restlessness prevails in the ranks of the Ankara factions militants against the background of their salaries being cut off, noting that the Turkish intelligence services responsible for communicating with the armed factions and financing them, have deducted sums from the salaries of the militants in exchange for military allowances.

It should be noted that members of the Syrian National Army are organizing a protest in the city of Al-Bab, east of Aleppo, due to the delay of the officers ’salaries for more than 70 days.

The sources pointed out that the last salary received by the Ankara factions militants from the Turkish side was in the first month of this year, while the funding was cut off during the months of February and March, without any clarifications from the Turkish side about the reasons for stopping salaries and when they can return again.

The sources stated that the suspension of salaries was preceded by another similar incident, during which Turkish intelligence officials promised the armed factions financial rewards after they took control of Tal Abyad in the northern countryside of Raqqa. However, Turkish officials later delayed the delivery of the bonuses and then evaded them, and no amount was paid to the militants.

On the other hand, sources reported that there are 500 militants who were transferred again from northern Syria towards Libya via Turkey. Ankara is trying to reduce the economic burdens left by supporting armed groups in northern Syria by transferring them to several countries, as happened in Libya and Azerbaijan.

Against the background of these activities, Al-Nusra once again raises the prices of fuel in its areas of control.

Where the Al-Nusra Front organization once again raised fuel prices within the areas under its control in northern Syria, where its affiliated Watad company, which has a monopoly on the sale and import of fuel from Turkey, issued the decision to raise prices, justifying it by the decline in the value of the Turkish lira against the US dollar.

Sources indicated that Al-Nusra raised the price of a gas cylinder to 88.5 Turkish liras, after it was 80.5 Turkish liras, and set the price of one liter of imported gasoline at 6.30 Turkish liras instead of 5.31 Turkish liras.

As for the price of a liter of imported diesel, it increased by half a Turkish lira to become 6 lira, after it was 5.49, at a time when the price of refined diesel was recorded at 4.27 Turkish lira.

This increase in fuel prices is considered the second imposed by the Al-Nusra Front during the current month, as the prices previously witnessed a rise on which was described at the time as unprecedented in terms of its high percentage, which came in conjunction with the collapse of the value of the Turkish lira. People in areas controlled by armed groups are forced to deal with them

This is what leads to general discontent on the part of the people of the areas occupied by these armed factions. This matter did not stop the Levantine Front from its desperate actions to compensate for the lack of Turkish support for it, so it stole equipment, machinery and tractors from the people living in the city of Afrin and sold them in dollars on the pretext that the people did not pay an imposed tribute. by them

Where the sale of agricultural tractors in the city of Azaz, which is under the control of the Turkish-backed armed factions in the northern countryside of Aleppo revealed the scale of the thefts that the militants commit against civilians and their property that are confiscated from them under various pretexts in various regions, to sell them in other areas under the pretext that they are war spoils.

The sale of tractors by the militants of the Levant Front faction in favor of the so-called local councils in the Azaz area, so it became clear later that these tractors were stolen from people in the city of Afrin and its villages, under the clause of confiscation because of their owners’ refusal to pay Royalties on their agricultural business.

Sources indicated that the Shamiya gunmen sold the stolen tractors at the amount of $ 2,300 to several “local councils” in the villages of the Soran district of the Azaz area.

The sources added that other sales took place in the village of Kafrghan, and not only agricultural tractors, but also, several motorcycles stolen from Afrin, which were sold to militants as war spoils taken by the SDF.

Since Turkey and the armed factions took control of it, Afrin region has been witnessing continuous robbery and looting of their properties, in addition to the displacement that is taking place. 

They were presented to him by the various factions that are expelling the people of the region from their homes and lands, and housing the militants and their families in their place.

All these desperate actions and behavior by the Turkish factions are nothing but confirmation of their involvement in the looting and theft of factories, facilities, and infrastructure in the areas, they occupied during the previous conflict with the Syrian army.

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Read part I here:

Canada Ties to the U.S. Empire: Lester Pearson and the Myth of Canada as “Peaceable Kingdom”

By Richard Sanders, March 31, 2021

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Pearson was central to the constitutional coup that propelled him into power by orchestrating the toppling of Prime Minister John Diefenbaker (1957-1963).

John F. Kennedy had no love for Canada’s Progressive Conservative leader. “My brother really hated only two men in all his presidency,” said Robert Kennedy. “One was Sukarno [Indonesia’s left-wing president] and the other was Diefenbaker.” The central focus of JFK’s hatred for Diefenbaker was his defiant refusal to allow the U.S. to arm Canadian missiles with American nuclear warheads.[1]

Diefenbaker’s demise was orchestrated by a bevy of highly skilled experts in covert action from the CIA, State Department, White House and Pentagon, plus two successive U.S. ambassadors to Canada, America’s leading pollster (aided by the world’s best computer technology), and the U.S. Air Force general who then led NATO.

McGeorge Bundy, then Special Assistant for National Security Affairs, even bragged that acting U.S. Secretary of State “George Ball and I knocked over the Diefenbaker government….”[2]

As usual, these American coup artists relied on local compradors to aid their efforts in replacing an uncooperative ally.

Diefenbaker had to go and who could be better than Pearson to replace him? For decades, Pearson had proven himself as a stalwart supporter of U.S. imperial interests. Canadian co-conspirators included an RCAF commander, the air marshal who chaired Canada’s military chiefs of staff, Liberal power brokers and top newsprint journalists.

Although Pearson was America’s man in Ottawa, U.S. power brokers knew that he sometimes had to pander to a large swath of the Canadian electorate which had anti-American feelings.

To retain support from these voters, Pearson had to appear to be more critical of the U.S. than he really was. This was revealed by Walton Butterworth, the JFK-appointed U.S. Ambassador to Canada (1962-1968), in a secret telegram at the climax of the U.S. coup in early February 1963.

His once-secret message, recalling that “Diefenbaker first came to power on wave of anti-U.S. jingoism,” scorned him as an “undependable, unscrupulous political animal” who U.S. authorities had just “boxed … in.”

Butterworth noted that when Diefenbaker cried foul regarding the U.S. forceful intrusion into Canadian politics which soon resulted in Dief’s demise, “Pearson and other party leaders could not permit him [to] pose as [the] sole spokesman for Canadian nationalism; hence they had to protect their flanks and join chorus of protest at our ‘intrusion.’”[3] Butterworth continued with the following assessment of the quickly unfolding situation and what lay ahead with Pearson’s anticipated ascension to power:

“[W]e are forcing Pearson to go faster and further than he desires in the direction we favor. … [W]e are entering new phase in U.S.-Canadian relations. … We look forward to … greater Canadian realization of their need to cultivate good relations with us…. [W]e think we will wish [to] take more coolly appraising look at concessions we offer in return for their readiness to accommodate themselves to us…. [W]e do not want to buy same asset time and again as is now the case. We have reached point where our relations must be based on something more solid than accommodation to neurotic Canadian view of us and world. We should be less the accoucheur [midwife] of Canada’s illusions.”[4]

U.S. ambassador to Canada Walton Butterworth with JFK in the White House. [Source: Jfklibrary.org]

Within a few months after assuming power, Pearson’s government not only allowed the U.S. to arm Canada’s ground-launched Bomarc missiles, it announced Canada’s acquisition of “nuclear weapons for the Honest John missiles and CF-104 fighter aircraft in Europe and … the CF-101 (Voodoo) fighter aircraft in Canada.”[5]

Canada’s Bomarc missiles. [Source: legionmagazine.com]

So blatant was Pearson’s duplicity, that future prime minister Pierre Trudeau denounced him in 1963 as “a defrocked priest of peace.”  Trudeau revealed that Pearson reversed Liberal Party policy on nuclear weapons without consulting the national council,… its executive committee, … the parliamentary caucus or even with his principal advisors. The ‘Pope’ had spoken. It was up to the faithful to believe … [T]he Pentagon … obliged Mr. Pearson to betray his party’s platform … Power presented itself to Mr. Pearson; he had nothing to lose except honour. He lost it. And his whole party lost it with him.[6]

Coup in Brazil, 1964

When Brazil elected a left-wing party by a huge margin in 1960, the U.S. began coordinating a coup that ushered in years of military dictatorship.

The coup was justified by wild claims that Brazil’s elected officials might turn into communists. It was supported by Brazilian Admiral Carlos P. Botto who, having backed fascism during WWII, went on to work closely with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), and its leader Yaroslav Stetsko,[7] in creating the pro-fascist World Anti-Communist League.

Canadian officials, both Liberal and Tory, shared their rabid phobia about the rising popularity of communism in Latin America. After a 1961 government mission to South America, Progressive Conservative MP Pierre Sevigny told parliament that in Brazil, Canada had allies who want to cooperate with us and to prevent … the birth of subversive movements in that country where huge illiterate populations are living, which, if they were to be subjected to communist influence, could easily cause a social and economic revolution.[8]

The Liberals shared this right-wing mindset. “Canadian reaction to the military coup,” said historian Rosana Barbosa, “was careful, polite and allied with American rhetoric.”

Barbosa, a Brazilian-Canadian, says Pearson, who became prime minister the year before the coup, “did not publicly criticize the new regime. Pearson’s foreign policy … was supportive of the United States.”[9]

Pearson’s pro-coup stance was good for business, especially the Brazilian Power and Light Co. (Brascan), one of Canada’s biggest profiteers in Latin America. As revealed in Let Us Prey (1974), there was a revolving door between Brascan and the Liberal cabinets of St. Laurent, Pearson and Trudeau.

For example, Robert Winters, who held two cabinet posts under St. Laurent and was Pearson’s trade minister, became Brascan’s president. Winters praised Brazil’s coup regime, saying it “was dedicated to the principles of private enterprise” and “create[d] a climate friendly to foreign capital.”

Jack Nicholson, Brascan’s CEO in Brazil in the 1950s, held three cabinet posts under Pearson. Mitchell Sharp, whose career began under St. Laurent in 1947, held the trade and finance posts in Pearson’s cabinet.

After a stint as Brascan’s vice president, Sharp returned to politics and was appointed Trudeau’s foreign minister.[10] Another Brascan executive in Trudeau’s cabinet was Anthony Abbott,[11] who held three finance-related posts in the late 1970s.

[Source: coat.ncf.ca]

Invasion in the Dominican Republic, 1965

In February 1963, the Dominican Republic elected a pro-Castro government led by Juan Bosch, which lasted only seven months.

When a military junta seized power in a coup that September, expelling the elected president, Bosch’s supporters fought to regain control, and in April, led by Colonel Francisco Caamaño retook the National Palace. To prevent Caamaño’s forces from restoring a revolutionary government, the U.S. invaded with 20,000 Marines.

U.S. Marines in the Dominican Republic in 1965. [Source: pinterest.com]

Two weeks after the U.S Marine invasion, Canadian government representatives were approached by Caamaño, who asked for recognition. Pearson declined.

New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Tommy Douglas, the father of Canada’s free health-care system, asked Pearson what evidence he had from the U.S. “that the forces of Colonel Caamaño, which are seeking to re-establish the elected government … are indeed communist controlled and communist dominated.”

When Pearson replied that they “[c]ertainly … have communists in their … controlling group,” Douglas asked again for proof and Pearson said he could not assess the degree of their communist “infiltration.”[12]

It did not seem to occur to either that the legitimacy of pro-Bosch forces was its overwhelming popular support and that, if people wanted a communist government, they should be allowed to have one.

Pearson revealed his total bias in support of the U.S. invasion by saying that the coup regime was a legitimate “government” that had to protect “law and order” by stopping an “insurrection” by dangerous pro-Bosch forces.

In 2000, Liberals institutionalized this Pearsonian tradition of justifying U.S. invasions with humanitarian-sounding narratives by helping to create a deceptive UN doctrine called the “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P).

Chrétien’s foreign minister, Lloyd Axworthy, rallied support from mainstream peace, human rights and development activists for NATO’s illegal 1999 war against Yugoslavia.

In 2004, Prime Minister Paul Martin, Jr.’s, Liberal government used R2P memes to disguise Canadian ground troops used in the U.S.-led invasion, regime change and occupation of Haiti (the Dominican Republic’s neighbor), as if they were humanitarian “peacekeepers.”[13]

Supporting U.S. Nuclear War Policies

From the Cold War’s earliest days, Pearson was a strong voice for the idea that the moral forces of the “democratic West” had to amass a vast arsenal of weapons for a possible world war against “the totalitarian East.”

This, ironically, is why Pearson saw his key role in creating NATO as one of his most valuable gifts to global peace. From its inception in 1949, before the Soviets had tested a single atomic bomb, U.S. nuclear weapons have been a cornerstone of NATO’s “defense” policies. From the Soviet perspective, having been under attack by Western forces obsessed with its containment and annihilation since 1917, it responded to NATO’s creation by forming the Warsaw Pact in 1955.

By 1950, left-leaning peace groups around the world were busy supporting the Stockholm Peace Appeal. This petition campaign, promoted by the communist-led World Peace Congress, called for “the unconditional banning by all countries of the atomic weapon as an instrument of aggression and mass extermination of people.”

The appeal also asked governments to declare that they would “regard as a war criminal that government which first uses the atomic weapon against any country.” By February 1950, this “petition for peace,” bearing the signatures of 500,000 Canadians, was presented to government officials in Ottawa.

In a letter to a Vancouver newspaper to correct “a false report by an Ottawa reporter,” Rev. James Endicott, chairman of the Canadian Peace Congress, said “We are proud that this petition, which originated in Canada, was circulated to all countries in the world, gaining the endors[ment] of 450 million men and women.”[14]

Peace float built by Canadian Peace Congress in the 1950s. [Source: focusonsocialism.ca]

Not surprisingly, this successful campaign, which rallied widespread public opposition to NATO’s bellicose “first use,” nuclear-weapons policies, also enraged many Cold Warriors, including Lester Pearson.

In a March 1950 address to 500 civil servants about a week after Endicott’s letter was published, Pearson said Canada would “take every … measure to find and root out treason and sedition in our midst.”[15] (Sedition and treason carry penalties of 14 years and life imprisonment, respectively.)

Pearson’s speech, quoted in an Ottawa paper, singled out the Canadian Peace Congress for a moralizing rebuke:

“[B]e on guard against the more immediate menace of the individual who beneath the mask of loyal service to the country, or wearing the mantle of the Peace Congress has knowingly or unknowingly sold his soul to Moscow.”[16]

In response, Peace Congress activist Edith Holtom wrote to the paper, saying:

“If enough Canadians, including civil servants, would protest against selling the soul of Canada to American militarism, there would be no need for Mr. Pearson to refer to peacemakers as a menace…. [H]ow dare Mr. Pearson call a person a menace who joins … with thousands of others to warn our government of what might happen if changes are not made in policy-making?”[17]

Later, in a 1951 speech to the well-heeled Sudbury Chamber of Commerce and Kiwanis Club, Pearson branded the Canadian Peace Congress an agent of “foreign aggressive imperialism.”[18]

Besides the Liberals and Conservatives, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), forerunner of the NDP, also saw the Peace Congress as a menacing threat. The CCF executive forbade members from joining the Congress and threatened disciplinary action against CCFers who signed the Stockholm Appeal.[19]

Pearson had such contempt for the Congress that when 50 engineering students made a coup-like effort to destroy its University of Toronto chapter, he said in their support:

“If more Canadians were to show something of this high-spirited crusading zeal, we would very soon hear very little of the Canadian Peace Congress and its works. We would simply take it over.”[20]

Imperialist Pro-NATO Propaganda

Pearson was groomed for political power by another loyal Canadian servant of imperial interests—Mackenzie King, who had appointed him foreign minister in 1948.

King’s ascent to power had been aided by his work as “labor adviser” for billionaire John D. Rockefeller, Jr., America’s anti-union, robber baron who financed fascism and collaborated with the Nazis.[21]

From his unelected cabinet post, Pearson was well-placed to guide his gullible boss. An example of Pearson’s early, pro-U.S. advice occurred in 1946, when King was considering whether to take Canada along a middle path between the hardened Cold War extremes of the U.S. and the USSR. To convince King that he should hitch Canada securely to America’s anti-Soviet wagon, Pearson wrote a memo telling him that without some fundamental change in the Soviet state system and in the policies and views of its leaders, the USSR is bound to come into open conflict with western democracy.[22]

With this prediction, said historian Joe Levitt, “Pearson seemed to be asserting that a war with the Soviet Union was virtually inevitable.” Levitt noted that, “Pearson may have worded the memo … to play on … King’s fears of the Soviet Union” so that he would bow to U.S. demands for greater military access to Arctic regions claimed by Canada.[23]

[Source: coldwarteamprojectfall2014]

Pearson’s fear-mongering was clear from his very first speech to Parliament: “There is no doubt that fear has gripped the world again,” he said, “fear arising primarily out of … the brutal domination of revolutionary communism, based on the massive and expanding militarism of totalitarian Russia.”[24]

Pearson’s anti-Red hyperbole knew few bounds and smacked of ethnic hatred: “[T]he crusading and subversive power of communism,” he claimed, “has been harnessed by a cold-blooded, calculating, victoriously powerful Slav empire for its own political purposes.”[25] (Emphasis added.)

To Pearson and other Cold Warriors, the world was torn apart by a battle between pure good and utter evil. Describing these mortal foes in 1951, he said “there are two sides whose composition cuts across national and even community boundaries.” These forces, led by the U.S. and USSR, Pearson said, represented “freedom vs. slavery.”[26]

Anti-communist leaflet. [Source: pinbalking.blogspot.com]

Pearson also warned that a war between freedom and slavery would take place for one of only two reasons. World War III, he said, would result from an accident, or “a deliberate and controlled explosion brought about by the calculated policy of the hard-faced despots in the Kremlin, men hungry for power and world domination.”[27]

Hypocrisy and Doublethink: “Free Europe” vs. “Free Quebec”

Pearson’s bombast also exaggerated Soviet control over what he slurred as their “completely servile” “puppet regimes.”[28] When discussing nonaligned Yugoslavia, he referred to the “unquestioning and slavish obedience that the Kremlin demands.” With regard to Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and “the subjugation of states by soviet communism,” Pearson spoke of “communist pressure to liquidate every element of national independence and every trace of opinion or feeling which is not abjectly subordinate to Soviet Russia.”[29]

But Pearson was blind to the subservience of Canada and its NATO allies to the U.S. Pearson had such faith in Western morality that he declared in 1959 that “western democratic governments have no aggressive or imperialistic designs.” Similarly, he said “Americans … are perhaps the least imperialistically minded people that have ever achieved great power in the world.”[30]

As Canadian Dimension magazine founder, Cy Gonnick, explained in 1975, “Canada’s role, as devised by Pearson, was to assist the United States to achieve its goals, which were by definition the same as Canada’s.” Canadian servility to the U.S. was summed up by a top Pearson colleague: “We can tell our neighbour when we think he is wrong,” said John Holmes, Canada’s chargé d’affaires in Moscow in 1947-1948 and a top bureaucrat at external affairs (starting in 1953 into the 1960s), “but we know that in the end we will, in our own interest, side with our neighbour right or wrong.”[31]

In a speech in Vancouver in 1948, Pearson expressed faith that “democracy” in the U.S.-led “free world” had, by its treatment of the global poor, proven “its superiority as a form of government and a way of life.” Pearson then boiled everything down to the West’s existential struggle with evil. In one corner of the globe was America’s “free, expanding progressive democracy.” In the other, was the USSR’s “tyrannical and reactionary communism.”[32]

The so-called free world countries, said Pearson, being “strong, healthy and progressive,” had to “protect themselves from the threat of a sudden attack by an aggressor communist state.” Pearson also believed the U.S.-led free world must “remove the menace of aggressive communism, at home … [and] abroad.”[33]

To “remove” the Red Menace, Pearson said Canada and other “free” nations had to “pay tribute” to the U.S. by foregoing their own independent foreign policies. He outlined this strategy to the elitist Empire Club of Canada and Toronto’s equally affluent Canadian Club by saying:

“we must recognize and pay tribute to the leadership being given and the efforts being made by the United States in the conflict against Communist imperialism, and realize that if this leadership were not given we would have little chance of success in the common struggle. Secondly, we must never forget that our enemy gleefully welcomes every division in the free democratic ranks and that … there will be times when we should abandon our position if it is more important to maintain unity in the face of the common foe.”[34]

Vive le Ukraine Libre

The hypocrisy of Cold War “doublethink”[35] is illustrated by Pearson’s indignant reaction to Charles de Gaulle’s “Vive le Québec libre” speech in 1967. During his visit to Montréal for Canada’s centenary celebrations, the French president’s allusion to an independent Quebec outraged Prime Minister Pearson. De Gaulle’s reference to a “free Quebec” was nothing compared to the onslaught of “free Ukraine” propaganda that Canada had beamed at the USSR for the previous 15 years.

Under Pearson’s guidance, CBC International broadcasts had long provoked ethnonationalist schisms in the USSR. From its very first Ukrainian-language program, on Canada’s 85th birthday (July 1, 1952), the CBC’s Voice of Canada had collaborated with Canada’s far-right Ukrainian émigrés to drive a political wedge into the USSR.

Canada’s Cold War propaganda broadcasts were part of a U.S.-led political/psychological warfare campaign to exploit internal Soviet conflicts and to foment the break-up of that extremely multicultural country.

Canada’s mass media decried de Gaulle’s call for a free Quebec. In covering the French president’s speech, most newspapers across Canada quoted from Pearson’s speech at a huge July 31, 1967 rally of anti-Soviet Ukrainian youth on Parliament Hill.[36] (See photo.)

This rally of 1,500 uniformed, anti-communist Ukrainian youth marching in formation, was organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC).[37]

It had been created by King’s government in 1940 to unify Canada’s right-wing Ukrainian groups. While the UCC regularly meddled in Soviet politics by demanding a “free Ukraine,” it was happy to be used as a backdrop for Pearson to condemn de Gaulle’s meddling in Canadian politics.

In 1967, Pearson used 1,500 uniformed Ukrainian youth as a backdrop to decry de Gaulle’s “Vive le Québec libre” speech and to praise Canada’s “two founding races.”  Another speaker, Yuri Shymko, helped lead the Ukrainian youth movement which still glorifies Stepan Bandera as a hero. During WWII, Ukrainian scouting troops recruited for Bandera’s fascist army and for the Waffen SS Galicia. These formations took part in killing Poles and Jews, and collaborated in the Nazi invasion of the USSR which killed 27 million Soviet citizens. [Source – Ukraine: A Captive but Unconquerable Nation, Bulletin of the World AntiCommunist League, June 1969; diasporiana.org.au]

In Pearson’s speech, he acknowledged only “two founding races and languages and cultures in Canada, British and French.” Ignoring Canada’s genocide of First Nations, he also left out Britain’s conquest of New France in 1760. “In our country,” Pearson claimed, “we have required neither revolution nor civil war nor outside intervention to settle our differences.”[38]

These amnesic state myths were echoed by Yuri Shymko, who told the crowd:

“Canada is one of the few countries of the world that can proudly and justly say it has maintained throughout its young history the principle that men of all races and nationalities shall live and prosper in peace, liberty and equality.”[39]

Shymko was described in 1967 news stories as “a leader of the Ukrainian Youth Organization.” Then 26, he went on to become a member of parliament. Shymko continues to lead Ukrainian nationalists who glorify Stepan Bandera, a WWII fascist leader whose armed forces massacred Jews, Poles and communists.[40]

Pearson’s “Full-Spectrum” Anti-Red Crusade

Pearson believed that Western civilization’s global war against communism had to be fought on all fronts, using weapons from all fields of culture. To amass the arsenal needed for this full-spectrum war, Pearson tailored his rhetoric to suit his audience. To his allies in Canada’s old boys’ clubs, he said the anti-communist struggle has not yet become a shooting war, except in Korea, but … goes on in the field of economics, finance, and public opinion, and extends far beyond any military or even political operation.

“Strength,” he reminded this wealthy audience of corporate movers and shakers from the Empire Club of Canada and Toronto’s Canadian Club, should not “be interpreted in military terms alone, but has also its economic, financial and moral aspects.”[41]

In 1952, Pearson became chancellor of his alma mater, Victoria College. In his speech, he focused on the need to fight the Reds using “intellectual and spiritual weapons”:

“It would be a mistake to believe we can … defeat communism by force. Among other things, communism is an idea. No idea, however perilous or noxious, as communism is, can be killed by bayonets or even by an atomic bomb. As an idea, it must be resisted by intellectual and spiritual weapons….”[42]

To fight his Cold War crusade against communism, Pearson often wielded Christian rhetoric. For instance, when promoting the creation of NATO in early 1949, he said “Canada should not remain aloof” because aggressive forces outside Canada allied to subversive forces within it … [could] lead the world into war between totalitarian Communism and the Christian democratic way of life.[43]

Comic promoting alleged Soviet plot to take over Canada. [Source: pinbalking.blogspot.com]

Having absorbed a zeal for imperialism thanks to the influence of his family, church and literature, Pearson grew to equate anti-communism  with “spiritual faith” and “Christian morality.” These he saw as “the basis for the individual and for society.”[44]

Lester Pearson at a conference in San Francisco in 1945 held by what subsequently became the UN. [Source: thediscoverblog.com]

Within his black-and-white universe, the Cold War’s rivals were engaged in a mythic, existential battle between the evil darkness of totalitarian communism and the pure, radiance of civilized Western capitalism. This cartoon ethos left no room for grey areas in between. Canadians had to either embrace the enlightened “free world,” or be damned and condemned as diabolical Reds.

In one parliamentary polemic, Pearson contrasted the “dark practice of government through tyranny and ignorance” behind “the shadow of the iron curtain,” with the glowing “human spirit” that made Europe the “fountainhead of light and progress” for “a thousand years.” Pearson’s melodramatic tropes shone when he said Europe’s “light still burns, and that eventually it will help lift the darkness that now surrounds it.”[45]

Pearson and other Cold Warriors had zero-tolerance for communism. Their anti-Red phobia was akin to the “one-drop rule” that dominated the most racist societies. Apartheid regimes in South Africa and the U.S. institutionalized the hatred of their power elites in social systems that disempowered those alleged to have even a single drop of black African blood in their veins. Similarly, Cold Warriors like Pearson were intolerant of individuals, groups and foreign leaders said to be “tainted” by the dreaded “Red” political blood; “Pinkos” could not be tolerated. In the 1960s, it was known in Canada’s peace/anti-war movement that Pearson was a jingoistic Liberal war hawk, this is no longer the case. His image is now all but completely rehabilitated.

Despite his role in leading Canadian complicity in U.S./NATO-led wars and coups, Pearson is now heralded as an icon of peace by many Canadians who view themselves as progressives. This whitewashed invocation of Canada’s Pearsonian tradition is nowhere stronger than among the torchbearers of the Liberal Party.

For example, in 2017, when Canada’s current deputy prime minister, Chrystia Freeland, was foreign minister, she called Pearson a “Canadian icon” who promoted “peace, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law around the world.”[46]

Her statement was made at a media event staged to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Pearson’s Nobel Peace Prize. This commemoration was co-sponsored by Canada’s Department of Global Affairs and Pearson College in British Columbia.

Pearson College is a private, government-funded[47] boarding school for teens that is part of the prestigious United World College (UWC) movement. Alumni from its eighteen colleges on four continents have included youth who ended up becoming heads of state, CEOs, venture capitalists, religious and military leaders, celebrity artists, actors, powerful members of the Fifth Estate and Cold War Liberal hawks like Freeland herself.

As a precocious teen, Freeland’s Russophobic, anti-communist ideologies were strengthened by her two-year attendance at the UWC’s Adriatic College in Italy. She had already been ingrained in these belief systems by powerful influencers in her anti-Soviet Ukrainian-Canadian community and her family.[48] These included Freeland’s maternal grandfather, Mikhailo Khomiak, who was given safe haven in Canada after working as Nazi Germany’s leading Ukrainian-language news propagandist in WWII.[49]

Mikhailo Khomiak (to the right of the man smoking and immediately behind woman in headdress) with Nazi press administrator Emil Gassner, who is on the right, looking away. [Source: peoplesvoice.ca]

Canada’s Pearson College was the second of eighteen elite, international schools in the UWC network that was established by anti-communist admirers and military leaders of NATO’s Defense College in Paris.[50]

Statue of Lester Pearson on Parliament Hill in Ottawa. [Source: waymarking.com]

But the exaltation of Pearson as Canada’s most noble peace hero is not limited to the halls of government power or such elitist, pro-NATO institutions as Pearson College.

Remarkably, Pearson is now regarded with tremendous respect even by leading forces in Canada’s mainstream peace movement. For example, Canada’s largest and best-known peace organization, Project Ploughshares, has effectively buried Pearson’s role as a vociferous Cold War-monger and helped to construct the mythology that now surrounds and protects his name.

Although Ploughshares has for 45 years done much exemplary work, including the documentation of Canada’s military exports, it has also helped to reverse the much-deserved, negative reputation that Pearson once had in the peace movement.

Mandated by, and accountable to, the Canadian Council of Churches, Ploughshares has received considerable financial support from this country’s largest religious bodies and from Canadian governments, both Liberal and Conservative alike. (Since 1999, Ploughshares has received at least $2.4 million in grants and contracts from the federal government.[51])

Ploughshares’ obfuscation of Pearson’s imperialist, pro-war record is expressed in its internet presence. Of the 40 articles that reference Pearson within Ploughshares’ website,[52] none mention his promotion of U.S. coups and wars. Instead, the majority invoke his name in a positive light by mentioning the government-established Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, which trained military personnel from 1994 to 2013.

Only one article contains even a passing critique of Pearson’s prowar legacy by briefly mentioning his role in arming Canadian missiles with U.S. nuclear warheads.[53]

This 2009 article was written by then-retired Ploughshares co-founder Ernie Regehr who, two years later, accepted the UN Association of Canada’s “Pearson Peace Medal.” This award is given annually to a Canadian who has contributed to those causes to which Lester B. Pearson devoted his distinguished career: aid to the developing world; mediation between those confronting one another with arms; succour to refugees and others in need; equal rights and justice for all humanity; and peaceful change through world law and world organization.[54]

The Ploughshares website highlights Regehr’s receipt of this medal at the very top of a special webpage called “Milestones,” which lists the group’s greatest achievements. The only photo on this page shows Regehr receiving the medal from Canada’s Governor General during a pomp-filled ceremony at his palace-like mansion in Ottawa.[55] It also notes that the Pearson Peace Medal had been received by Ploughshares’ other co-founder, Murray Thomson, 21 years earlier from another governor general.

Ploughshares’ “Milestones” page also notes that Regehr accepted the World Peace Award from the World Federalists of Canada.[56] The first recipient of this award was Lester Pearson himself in 1972.

The World Peace Award (in 2001) and the Pearson Peace Medal (in 2017) were bestowed upon Lloyd Axworthy,[57] who was the Liberal’s Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Trade during Canada’s active participation in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. Axworthy, who—like Freeland—carries on the Pearsonian war-hawk tradition, oversaw the export of billions of dollars’ worth of Canadian weapons systems to the U.S. and dozens of other countries. He, like Pearson, has received considerable praise in the pages of Ploughshares’ website.

Despite Pearson’s long career of promoting the multifarious crimes of empire, his status as a Canadian peace-cult hero seems unlikely to be revoked anytime soon. Still glorified by the corporate media, politicians of all stripes, and even the peace movement, Pearson remains a seemingly irremovable fixture in the mythology of Canada, “the peaceable kingdom.”

However, as the foreign affairs bureaucrat, diplomat and political leader who spearheaded the warmongering, social phobia of extreme anti-communism in post-war Canada, Pearson will eventually be widely recognized as a godfather of the Cold War and an ideological patriarch of its hate-filled propaganda.

*

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Richard Sanders is an anti-war activist and writer in Canada. In 1984, he received an MA in cultural anthropology and began working to expose Canada’s complicity in U.S.-led wars. In 1989, he founded the Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT), which led to a 20-year municipal ban on Ottawa’s arms bazaars.

Notes

[1] Richard Sanders, “A Plot ‘Made in the U.S.,’” Press for Conversion! Issue 43, January 2001, pp. 23-25. http://bit.ly/Cda-Coup ; Richard Sanders, “1962-1963, Canada: ‘Knocking Over’ Dief the Chief”
https://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/articles/1962_1963_canada.htm; CIA Fingerprints: The Americans behind the Plot to Oust John Diefenbaker
https://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/articles/cia_fingerprints.htm; Key Quotations on the events of January 1963
https://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/issue43/articles/key_quotations_on_the_events.htm

[2] Ibid.

[3] Telegram from the Embassy in Canada to the Department of State, Ottawa, Feb. 3, 1963, 3 p.m., Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961-1963, Volume XIII, Western Europe and Canada.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1961-63v13/d445

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ernie Regehr, “Canada and the nuclear arsenal,” in Canada and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1983, p. 109.

[6] Pierre Trudeau, Cité Libre, April 1963, cited by Walter Gordon, “Liberal leadership and nuclear weapons,” in Regehr 1983, ibid.

[7] Richard Sanders, “Yaroslav Stetsko: Leader of pro-Nazi Ukraine, 1941,” Cold War Canada, op. cit., p. 49. https://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/70/70_49.htm

[8] Pierre Sevigny, Hansard, Sept. 7, 1961, p. 8083. http://bit.ly/Sevigny64

[9] Rosana Barbosa, Brazil and Canada: Economic, Political, and Migratory Ties, 1820s to 1970s, 2017, pp. 8-9. http://bit.ly/Cda-Brazil

[10] Robert Chodos (ed.), Let Us Prey, 1974, pp. 14-17. http://bit.ly/Brascan

[11] Barry Buys, Canadians in Brazil, Brascan and Brazilian Development, 1996, p. 67. http://bit.ly/BuysBrascan

[12] Hansard, May 11, 1965, p. 1152. https://parl.canadiana.ca/view/oop.debates_HOC2603_02/75?r=0&s=3

[13] Richard Sanders, “R2P: Typecasting Canada as Hero in Theatres of War,” Press for Conversion!, Mar. 2007, pp. 11-12. http://bit.ly/RS-r2p

[14] James G Endicott, “That Peace Appeal,” letter, Vancouver News-Herald, Mar. 21, 1951, p. 4. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/72058532/the-vancouver-news-herald/

[15] “Our Duty to Root Out Treason, L.B. Pearson tells CS Group,” Ottawa Journal, Mar. 27, 1950, p. 8. http://bit.ly/Pearson-CPC

[16] Ibid.

[17] Edith Holtom, “A Peace Congress View,” Ottawa Citizen, Apr. 4, 1950, p. 32. http://bit.ly/Holtom

[18] Lester Pearson, “Communism and the Peace Campaign,” April 20, 1951, in John Price, Orienting Canada: Race, Empire, and the Transpacific, 2011, p. 230. http://bit.ly/antiCPC

[19] Anthony Mardiros, William Irvine: Life of a Prairie Radical, 1979, p. 229. http://bit.ly/BanNukes

[20] Reginald Whitaker and Gary Marcuse, Cold War Canada: The Making of a National Insecurity State, 1945-1957, 1996, p. 375.

[21] Richard Sanders, “Rockefeller Assoc,” Press for Conversion! Mar. 2004. http://bit.ly/JDR-2

[22] Joseph Levitt, Pearson and Canada’s Role in Nuclear Disarmament & Arms Control Negotiations, 1945-1957, 1993, p. 46. http://bit.ly/Levitt

[23] Ibid.

[24] Lester Pearson, Words and Occasions: An Anthology of Speeches and Articles Selected from his Papers, 1970, p. 82. http://bit.ly/LBP-70

[25] Ibid., p. 70.

[26] Lester Pearson, “Canadian Foreign Policy in a Two Power World,” Apr. 10, 1951. http://bit.ly/lp51

[27] Ibid.

[28] Lester Pearson, Hansard, Nov. 16, 1949.

[29] Ibid.

[30] Lester Pearson, Diplomacy in a Nuclear Age, 1959, p. 53.

[31] Cy Gonick, Inflation or Depression, 1975, p.87.

[32] Pearson 1970, op. cit., p. 75.

[33] Ibid.

[34] Pearson, Apr. 10, 1951, op. cit.

[35] “The power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both…. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient.” George Orwell, 1984, 1949, p. 220. http://bit.ly/1984-DT

[36] Author’s collection of news articles, Jul. 31-Aug. 3, 1967. http://bit.ly/freeQuebec

[37] Aya Fujiwara, Ethnic Elites and Canadian Identity: Japanese, Ukrainians, and Scots, 1919-1971, 2012. http://bit.ly/UCC1967

[38] Gordon Pape, “Full Acceptance of French a Requirement says Pearson,” Montreal Gazette, Aug. 1, 1967, p. 2. http://bit.ly/Aug1-1967

[39] “PM Stresses Political Unity to Ukrainians,” Calgary Herald, Jul. 31, 1967, p. 9. http://bit.ly/ch-67

[40] Richard Sanders, “Yuri Shymko: From Bandera youth leader, MPP and MP, to elder statesman,” Cold War Canada, op. cit., pp. 60-61.
https://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/70/70_60-61.htm

[41] Pearson, Apr. 10, 1951, op. cit.

[42] Pearson 1970, op. cit., p. 112.

[43] “Pearson Hits Progressive Conservatives,” Winnipeg Free Press, Feb. 5, 1949, p. 6. http://bit.ly/Christ-vs-Reds

[44] Pearson 1970, op. cit., p. 113.

[45] Lester Pearson, cited by B.T.R., “Need We Fight the Russians?” Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 16, 1949, p. 30. http://bit.ly/OC11-16-49

[46] Chrystia Freeland statement on the 60th anniversary of Pearson receiving the Nobel Prize for Peace, Dec. 10, 2017. http://bit.ly/Pearson-Icon

[47] Pearson College has received at least $14.18 million in government grants since 1995. (This figure, adjusted for inflation, is the value of these grants in 2021 dollars.)

Public Accounts of Canada, https://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/201/301/public_accounts_can/pdf/index.html

$100,000 (2006-07) ($126,325 in 2021 dollars)

$4 million (1997-98) ($6.08 in 2021 dollars)

$5 million (1994-95) ($7.98 in 2021 dollars)

[48] Richard Sanders, “Getting them young: Instilling Ukrainian patriotism in children and youth,” Cold War Canada, op. cit., pp. 52-54. https://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/70/70_52-54.htm

[49] Richard Sanders, The Chomiak-Freeland Connection, March 2017.
https://coat.ncf.ca/research/Chomiak-Freeland/C-F1.htm

[50] Richard Sanders, “Pearson College and NATO’s United World Colleges,” Cold War Canada, op. cit., p. 8.  https://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/70/70_8.htm

[51] Richard Sanders, “Project Ploughshares and the myth of Canada’s noninvolvement in the Iraq War,” 2013. https://coat.ncf.ca/articles/Ploughshares-IraqMyth_Funding.htm

Richard Sanders, “Additional data on government funding of Project Ploughshares,” complied March 8, 2021. https://coat.ncf.ca/articles/Ploughshares-AddedFundingNotes.htm

[52] Google search of the Ploughshares website for the word “Pearson,” retrieved Mar. 6, 2021. https://www.google.com/search?q=site:https://ploughshares.ca+pearson

[53] Ernie Regehr, “Our Nuclear Ambivalence Must End,” Waterloo Region Record, 2009. https://ploughshares.ca/pl_publications/our-nuclear-ambivalence-must-end/

[54] Governor General David Johnston, “Presentation of the Pearson Peace Medal to the Honourable Lloyd Axworthy,” May 19, 2017. https://www.gg.ca/en/media/news/2017/pearson-peace-medal

[55] Milestones. https://ploughshares.ca/about-us/milestones/

[56] Murray Thomson, The Pearson Peace Medal Recipients http://www.unac.org/copy-6-of-new-page

[57] Lloyd Axworthy, The Pearson Peace Medal Recipients http://www.unac.org/copy-22-of-new-page

Featured image: Lester B. Pearson with John F. Kennedy. Pearson played a founding role in NATO (1949) and was former Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs from 1948 to 1957. As leader of Canada’s Liberal Party from 1958 to 1968, he was Prime Minister from 1963 to 1968. [Source: natoassociation.ca]

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Video: The Seeds of Vandana Shiva

April 4th, 2021 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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).

***

Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., is a physicist and activist who works tirelessly to defend the environment and protect biodiversity from multinational corporations. Her life’s work has culminated in the creation of seed banks that may one day save future generations’ food sovereignty, but how she got there is a fascinating story, chronicled in the documentary “The Seeds of Vandana Shiva.”

Shiva, “a brilliant scientist” who became “Monsanto’s worst nightmare and a rock star of the international organic food movement,”1 grew up in a Himalayan forest, where her father, a forest conservator, carried out inspections. She would travel up to 45 miles a day with her father as a young girl, and as they traversed the forest he taught her everything about the trees, plants and herbs therein.

“We had a classroom out in the forest,” Shiva said, but her formal studies were done in a convent which, at that time, didn’t regard science as a subject fit for girls. Shiva wanted to study physics, though, and she was especially intrigued by Einstein and his connections of intuition with science. “Everyone has their favorite person that they want to be,” she said. “Einstein was the shaper of the dream of my life.”

A Search for Knowledge as a Whole

Watch the video here.

The filmmakers of The Seeds of Vandana Shiva are allowing for a FREE special stream through April 8th, 2021. CLICK HERE TO SUPPORT  getting the film out into the world to build awareness around industrial agriculture vs regenerative farming and food.

Shiva got a scholarship to attend Chandigarh University in Punjab, India, and from there she went on to the Bhabha National Atomic Research Center in Mumbai, India, for training in atomic energy. Later, her sister, a medical doctor, asked her about the health and environmental effects of nuclear technology and radiation.

As Shiva grasped the devastation nuclear energy had caused, she said, “I realized that a science that only teaches you how to modify nature without the understanding of what that modification does to the larger world is not a complete science.”

She gave up her idea of being a nuclear physicist and instead went looking for knowledge as a whole. She studied on her own, finding quantum theory, and while pursuing a Ph.D. in Canada, went to visit some of her favorite spots, including an oak forest she held close to her heart.

When she arrived, the forest had been cut down to make room for apple orchards, changing the entire microclimate in the area. The loss of something that she felt was a part of her impacted her deeply and set the stage for her environmental activism.

The Tree Hugging Movement Is Born

Shiva states that her involvement in the contemporary ecology movement began with the Chipko movement in 1973.2 The timber mafia were cutting down trees throughout the Indian Himalayas, taking away this precious resource from the rural villagers who depended on the forest for subsistence.

The government denied villagers access to the land and the lumber, while the logging companies cleared out forests, leading to problems with erosion, depleted water resources and flooding.

The villagers, primarily women, fought back in the best way they could, by physically embracing the trees to stop the loggers. Chipko is a Hindi word that means “to hug” or “to cling to,”3 and the movement spread, creating what became widely known as the tree hugging movement.

The women of Chipko taught Shiva how much women who hadn’t been to school knew about the interconnectedness of nature, but it took a major flood to make the government realize that what the women were saying was right. The revenue that came in from the forest logging was little compared to what they had to pay for flood relief.

In 1981, the government listened to the women and ordered a ban on logging in the high-altitude Himalayas, while tree hugging became a worldwide practice of ecological activism.

1982: The Water Wars

The Ministry of Environment invited Shiva to conduct a study on the impact of limestone mining in the Mussoorie hills. There were “scars all along the mountains,” and she went straight to the women in the community and asked what the key issue was. It was water. The rainfall in limestone creates giant caves and cavities, which act as nature’s aquifers.

Up in those mountains, Shiva said, the mining was robbing the valley of its water source — billions of dollars’ worth of water resources — while the miners’ wastes were destroying stream flows, villages were being washed away and workers were being exploited.

When word of Shiva’s study got out, both her father and infant son were threatened, but she continued on with her research, following her father’s advice that “as long as you follow your conscience you have nothing to fear.” Ultimately, Shiva’s calculations showed that the limestone left in the mountain contributed more to the economy than the extraction of limestone from the mountain.

Just as in the case of the forest in the Himalayas, in which the government was forced to recognize that the forest left standing contributed more than their conversion into timber. Shiva’s study was the basis of a Supreme Court ruling that led to the mining being discontinued.4

The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology

Shiva went on to found the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, which she called the Institute for “Counter Expertise.” The goal was to counter the “expertise” of the destroyers and “bring to the front the knowledge of those who were defending the Earth and their lives.”

Shiva was able to carry out independent research because she didn’t rely on funding from outside sources. “You can have a billion-dollar grant and hire researchers to do the work, who don’t know about the issue,” she said, or you can have just a few thousand dollars and work with communities, where the people become the researchers. This is important, Shiva noted, as “When money is your master, then your conscience is no more your guide.”

During this time, she also challenged the standing law in India, which stated that the father would automatically become the natural guardian of the children in cases of divorce. She went directly to the Supreme Court and became the first case in which the court decided the mother should get custody of the child, setting precedent for all of India.

In 1985, she was invited to Nairobi for a U.N. conference on women, where she spoke about women and the environment, including the Chipko movement, stating that it was the first time the link was made between environmental degradation and its impact on women. In 1988, her book “Staying Alive: Women, Ecology, and Development” was published, marking the beginning of eco-feminism. Shiva went on to write more than 20 books.

The Violence of the Green Revolution

In 1984, Shiva was working for United Nations University on conflicts over resources when an eruption of extremist violence broke out in Punjab. Religion was blamed for the unrest, but it was more likely a battle over resources. That same year, a gas leak from a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, had devastating consequences, killing 3,000 people immediately and 30,000 more in the aftermath, with many still suffering health effects to this day.

“My head is in a spin,” Shiva said of her mindset at the time. “That’s when I realized Punjab is the home of the Green Revolution.” The Green Revolution is the name given to the introduction of chemical agriculture to the developing world, which was promised to bring more food, more prosperity and more peace.

The movement even earned a Nobel Peace Prize but, Shiva said, “death ensued.” It didn’t add up. “You’re supposed to give a Nobel Peace Prize for peace, but this is war,” she said.

When she turned her research efforts toward the Green Revolution, she found that, as a result of this new chemical-based agriculture, soils and rivers were dying and desertification was taking place, while 25% of small farmers were dispossessed.

“This was an agrarian crisis,” Shiva said, “not a religious conflict.” She uncovered that many of the people being killed were those in positions of bureaucratic power, “controlling the architecture that allowed the Green Revolution to happen.”

This led Shiva to write another book, “The Violence of the Green Revolution.” Once she understood that the promises of the Green Revolution were a lie, she moved her focus to truly sustainable agriculture.

Putting Patents on Life

In 1987, Shiva was invited to a biotechnology meeting in Geneva, Switzerland, which was attended by some independent scientists along with U.N. officials and the agro-chemical lobby, which would soon turn into the biotech lobby.

The focus was on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) that would allow them to patent seeds, securing the GMO seeds’ future growth and the ability to collect royalties from farmers.5 An international treaty was discussed to move GMOs and patented seeds globally. Shiva told IDR:6

“This is why the Intellectual Property Rights (IPR), World Trade Organisation (WTO), General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS), and others came into the picture. What was most horrifying was their ambition to limit this to a total of just five companies that would control food and health globally. Today, we have four — I call them the poison cartel.”

While the spin was to position GMOs as essential to feeding the world, Shiva said, “the reality was that they were the door to owning life on Earth.” The patented seeds also necessitated monocultures, so the same seeds could be sold everywhere, and people could be replaced with herbicides and machines. It ushered in industrialized farming while eliminating small farms.

On the flight home from Switzerland, she said, she began thinking about how to deal with this and by the time she got off the flight, “A seed was speaking to me … Farmers with their own seed, fighting for their seed freedom, are the biggest force in the world against seed monopoly.”

Navdanya: The Right to Save Seeds

In 1994, Shiva founded Navdanya, a nonprofit organization promoting biodiversity, organic farming and seed saving. She traveled to villages where women would give her seeds, and she started saving them and encouraging farmers to do the same. A training and research farm was created in order to have a seed bank where all the seeds were collected and to have research on how biodiversity and native seeds can feed the world.

But saving seeds and creating seed banks was only one aspect. The other was to create awareness, including translating the information into different languages to tell the world about the importance of saving seeds and protecting crops. There are now at least 127 seed banks in India, which will keep growing, along with a network of farmers and seed savers who have been trained in organic farming.

Shiva has also traveled the globe to warn other countries, including those in Africa, about plans to displace rural farmers so investors can turn the land into industrial farms to export the commodities. She said:

“A handful of multinational corporations … is driving species extinction. The poisons they have deployed are pushing the disappearance of bees, the disappearance of pollinators, the disappearance of insects, the disappearance of biodiversity.

Industrial agriculture is not only destroying biodiversity, it is destroying the soil and releasing large amounts of greenhouse gasses to the atmosphere … This is not a food system. It is not an ecological system. It is a recipe for destruction of the planet’s health and the destruction of our health.”

Regenerative agriculture and animal husbandry are the next and higher stage of organic food and farming. They’re not only free from toxic pesticides, GMOs, chemical fertilizers and concentrated animal feeding operations, but are also regenerative in terms of the health of the soil, the environment, the animals and rural farmers. As Shiva put it, “Regenerative agriculture provides answers to the soil crisis, the food crisis, the climate crisis and the crisis of democracy.”7

In short, regenerative agriculture practices aim to rebuild soil health, restore ecosystems and promote human health through the growing of nutrient-dense food, while providing farmers with economic and financial stability. Shiva is confident this can be done, as long as humans embrace their interconnectedness while acting on an individual level to be agents of change:

“Food can be grown in abundant, ecologically sustainable and just ways. But to do this we need a shift in our perception. We need a change in paradigm. We are part of nature. We must participate in her processes. We have to understand our interconnectedness, our oneness on this Earth. But this is not how Big Food and Big Agriculture works.”

*

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I’m [former] Senator Dick Black [Virginia State Senate] and I’m a retired colonel who served in uniform for thirty two years. I love my country. I flew two hundred and sixty nine combat missions in Vietnam as a Marine helicopter pilot and crash landed once after machine gun fire cut my flight controls. Afterwards, I made 70 combat patrols as a ground air controller for the 1st Marine Division. I was in intense, fierce combat during almost the entire time and I was wounded. My radio men were both killed beside me.

So with that background, let me say that I’m appalled by the indecency of American aggression towards Syria. Just the other day, Secretary of State Tony Blinken chastised his Chinese guest in Anchorage, Alaska, by saying that he thought that they failed to respect the rules based order, without which there would be much more violence in the world. But what is the the “rules based order” that we’re always touting? Seems that the rules are whatever the United States decides it wants at a given moment. By what right do we seize other nations ships on the high seas?

Now, the rule says that doing so is an act of war. We’re not at war. So the rules go on to say that if you’re not at war, then seizures of ships on the high seas are acts of piracy. Are these not acts of piracy when we seize these ships? What rules allow us to establish naval blockades on Syria, Iran and Venezuela? Are those not acts of war? What rules based order says that we can punish Germany for conducting a gas pipeline to Russia?

What rules in this rules based order allow us to dictate the trade of sovereign nations? The American march of conquest spans the globe. We’ve invaded sovereign nations like Serbia, Yemen and Syria, leaving them all in smoldering ruins. Does the rules based order not prohibit wars of aggression? Did we not prosecute Nazis at Nuremberg for just such actions? What rules make wars of aggression crimes for Nazis, but not for us? We’re told that we’re fighting a war on terror, but we’re not. 

We’re closely allied with terrorists like al-Qaida in an endless quest to destroy Arab civilizations throughout the Middle East. Few Americans can even name all of our wars Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Ukraine, none of them attacked us. We attacked all of them. Just look at the case of Syria. Remember what Syria once was. Before the war, Syria had a nicely balanced economy, produced most of its own industrial goods. Produced its fuel and agricultural products, had very little poverty and enjoyed thriving trade, and it was financially responsible. It enjoyed 40 years of peace with Israel.

And the Constitution drafted under President Assad guarantees equal rights for women. And importantly, it guarantees religious freedom in three different parts of the text. I read it. Syria is a model for other Arab states, especially ones like Saudi Arabia, which have no constitution at all. We call Syria’s president a dictator, but in twenty fourteen, he was overwhelmingly elected by the people of Syria, in a fair and free election. It was very heavily monitored. 

There were lots of observers, all agreed that it had been a true and valid election. So. Syria is a model of elective democracy, if you want to call it that, for the for the Arab world. But the Americans pretend that the election never happened, and yet many Syrians, who spent 15 hours in the blazing sun so that they could vote for President Assad, were targeted and killed by U.S. backed rebels who fired mortars into their midst and killed them.

Now, after 10 years of war, I think it’s important to recognize after 10 years of war, not a single rebel leader has ever emerged as a popular figure. The West, loves the terrorists that the people of Syria despise.

You know, we’re taught to hate President Assad because he cracked down on rioters in 2011 and they say that he gassed his people, but that’s not true because we decided to attack Syria 10 years before all of that. In 2001, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ordered the Pentagon to draft plans to overthrow seven countries in the Middle East, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and finishing off with Iran. Not one of them had harmed the United States. In twenty six or in two thousand six, the US embassy in Damascus drew up detailed plans to destabilize and overthrow Syria. 

Those were widely disseminated to the Pentagon, to various unified command. They went to NATO. They went widely across the world, the specific plans to destroy, stabilize and overthrow Syria. And that was long before any demonstrations had ever occurred in Syria. And yet we claim them as the reason that we oppose President Assad. In March of 2011, the United States, U.K. and France attacked and overthrew Libya. They brutally executed Colonel Gaddafi. The US then turned over control of a Libyan airfield to the Turks who used it to transport advanced weapons that had been plundered from Libya and send them eventually to supply the terrorists that were organizing in Syria.

In 2011, also during the Arab Spring, the highly secretive Central Intelligence Agency Special Activities Center sent paramilitary teams into the sovereign territory of Syria to identify, train, equip and lead terrorist to overthrow the Syrian government. In twenty thirteen, Barack Obama formalized, formalized this long-standing support for anti Syrian terrorists by secretly authorizing CIA program Timber Sycamore under program Timber Sycamore, the CIA Special Operations Division, trained, armed and paid thousands of terrorists to fight …. those armies totally under our control.

And in one case, a group in Aleppo. We had paid over a thousand of their people salaries, giving them arms, giving them training. And it wasn’t until they kidnaped a small Palestinian boy who was being treated in a hospital. They kidnapped him. They took him to the central square in Aleppo. And in order to terrorize the people into not fleeing Aleppo, which was being cordoned off by Syrian troops, they took him to the center in a pickup truck.

They grabbed a little boy by the hair. They took a knife and they slashed his head off. And then they paraded it. They held it up and waved it in front of the crowd as a warning. Don’t escape from Aleppo. We paid the salaries of every man who held that boy’s head aloft, we gave them their weapons, they gave them we gave them their truck, we gave them everything that they needed. And it was only after that very gruesome incident that we decided, well, that’s an embarrassment. We better not pay them. We have been paying terrorists like this throughout the war.

NATO and the United States have maintained an intense propaganda campaign against Syria from the outset. Sarin gas attacks that killed civilians were blamed on President Assad. But not one reporter ever asked why Assad would use gas against children, but not against armies of terrorists bearing down on the capital of Damascus. The reason is obvious, there is no answer for that. And the journalists are smart enough to know that if they ask that question, their career in journalism is finished.

Secretary of Defense James Mattis admitted in twenty eighteen that the US had no evidence that Assad had ever used sarin gas. Two courageous Turkish members of parliament were quickly accused of treason after they revealed an indictment, a criminal indictment, that showed how an al-Qaida cell had infiltrated two point two kilos of sarin gas across the border from Turkey for use in Syria, most likely going to Damascus for the initial attack. That was the red line attack that almost sent American troops into Syria.

So why do we attack Syria? Well, there are a number of reasons, part of it ties in with Israeli foreign policy. But the US also seeks to capture oil and gas routes serving South Asian to pipeline access as Saudi has an intense desire to impose harsh Wahhabi Islam on the religiously harmonious areas. The Turks cast a greedy eye on the industrial city of Aleppo. The Turks also want to capture the oil and the agricultural produce of the nation that is produced in northern Syria.

So there are many people who have these desires and and there are many reasons behind the war. Certainly, the American arms dealers profited immensely from the lucrative deals like the six hundred BMP-71 anti-tank missiles that the Central Intelligence Agency rushed to al-Qaida in 2014 to prepare them to attack across the Turkish border. It was only with those CIA provided anti-tank weapons that the al-Qaida terrorists were able to break through the Syrian armor and the Syrian lines and seize the beautiful town of Kessab and behead the Christians who were there and all of the churches and then smash ancient tombstones with  sledgehammers. 

That was done thanks to the CIA. Al-Qaida never could have broken the Syrian lines without those anti-tank missiles. Many of these terrorist groups have sworn to behead the Christians and the Alawites and to make sex slaves of their wives and daughters. One jihadist famously drove his American- made Humvee into battle with a naked slave girl, slashed, lashed to his windshield. And he knew that the soldiers would hesitate to shoot at his Humvee as long as there was an innocent girl lashed to the windshield.

And then that’s why he used it. That’s why he put this poor girl up there and drove her first into battle as a shield. In twenty fifteen, U.S. troops illegally invaded northern Syria and unlawfully seized Syria’s oil. We authorized an American oil company to build a refinery for one hundred and fifty million dollars and to drill for more oil on sovereign Syrian land. Before the war, Syria never needed oil or natural gas because it was so self-sufficient, it exported a little bit, but it was not a big oil producing country.

But what was important is that it provided all of the fuel, all of the gasoline, all of the heating fuel for the power plants and so forth and in Syria. But now. The legacy of the nation has been stolen by the United States, leaving Syrians to freeze to death in the winter as we steal their fuel. The same region, northern Syria is the breadbasket of the country. It grew enough wheat to feed the entire nation to export a little bit.

But this, too, has been stolen. We gave it to the Kurds who are shipping Syrian wheat to Turkish merchants while Syrian peasants starve. To tighten the noose on Syria, Secretary Mike Pompeo bragged about cutting Syria off from sources of currency and blockading oil tankers arriving from Iran. He’s right. We’ve caused immense death, disease and suffering for poor Syrians. Americans are routinely reminded that sanctions don’t affect the common people, only the leaders. Rubbish, that’s a total lie.

Sanctions do nothing but attack the innocent, the poor, the helpless. They are the most cruel and barbaric type of warfare that we can wage. We steal food, fuel and medicine from the poor. We blockade supplies for rebuilding so that Syrian man must fight for a living or starve. If we ended the blockade, they could work rebuilding the country. Syrians are tired of war, we’ve imposed 10 years of war on them. They want to rebuild. The young man,

the time that fighting wars was was exotic is over, they want to go home, they want to build families, they want to rebuild their homes and their businesses. But the United States blockades all materials necessary for rebuilding. So that young Syrian man must fight for a living or starve. As it is, the only work is fighting, which will go on as long as we continue funding it. The world must reject … ten years against the Syrians. But we’ve oppressed the Iraqi people for 30 years, we’ve dropped over a quarter of a million bombs on Iraq.

And we bombed them even while we sit in military base camps occupying the country. This madness must stop. I thank you for the opportunity to talk to you today.

Richard H. (Dick) Black served as a member of the Virginia State Senate, representing the 13th District, which encompasses parts of both Loudoun and Prince Williams Counties, from 2012 to 2020.

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Nicaragua and the Western Human Rights Industry

April 4th, 2021 by Stephen Sefton

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).

***

John Heartfield’s famous photomontage of a newspaper cabbagehead had the caption “Whoever Reads Bourgeois Newspapers Becomes Blind and Deaf!” The caption is even more true now as the 21st Century moves into its third decade.

Western reporting of all kinds is strained through the filters of corporate dominated intellectual managerial classes in every sphere: science, law, culture, medicine and finance, in foreign and domestic news media, in non governmental organizations and in multilateral international agencies. Directly or indirectly, every area of reporting has become increasingly shaped by corporate funding,

The Western intellectual managerial classes have generally abandoned fundamental reporting norms and standards. Western organizations and institutions claiming to be accountable and transparent are not – neither UN bodies nor regional institutions like the Organization of American States, nor any of the major international NGOs. Practically invariably, reporting by these kinds of agencies systematically omits facts inconvenient to their findings, denies relevant actors a fair chance to make their case, and systematically avoids corroboration of their findings by genuinely independent sources.

This chronic reporting crisis reflects the reality of class power relations in North America and Europe. As Henry Wallace wrote in the New York Times on April 9th 1944. “The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.” Wallace’s comments prefigured the fascist union of corporate and government power in North America and Europe which since the time of the Cold War has successfully manipulated Western public opinion on every issue of international importance.

Thus, people in the West generally continue to see themselves as morally superior to people in the majority world. They continue to talk about their countries in North America or the European Union as democracies whose leaders mean well, have the best interests of their peoples at heart and generally seek to do good in the world. Every few years, Western electorates vote for which flavor of fascism they prefer, apparently unaware that dictatorships too have elections and elite leadership struggles.

These three articles, one from early 2019 and two from last year, along with the accompanying references, treat the case of Nicaragua and the failed coup attempt of 2018 as one more example of the West’s chronic reporting crisis. It is a crisis which, in the most anti-democratic way, denies a true and fair account of events to people in North America and Europe.

Nicaragua’s experience very much reflects the systematic poisoning of information sources in the West in relation both to other countries and also to other contexts, of which the sadistic persecution of Julian Assange is perhaps the most emblematic.

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The UK Government’s reporting system for COVID vaccine adverse reactions from the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency released their latest report today, April 1, 2021.

The report covers data collected from December 9, 2020, through March 21, 2021, for the two experimental COVID vaccines currently in use in the U.K. from Pfizer and AstraZeneca.

They report a total of 713 deaths and 495,345 injuries recorded following the experimental vaccines.

That is an increase of 119 deaths and 90,820 injuries recorded since last week. 95 of the 119 recorded deaths this past week followed AstraZeneca COVID injections.

More than 20 countries had suspended injections of the AstraZeneca experimental COVID shots due to concerns over fatal blood clots, but the European Medicines Agency (EMA) concluded that there was no link between the AstraZeneca experimental COVID shots and the fatal blood clots, and urged countries to resume vaccinations because “the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Some nations resumed the shots, such as Germany, but now have halted them again due to more deaths resulting from blood clots. See: After 9 Deaths, Blood Clot Concerns over AstraZeneca Experimental COVID Shot Prompts Germany to Halt Injections Again

The UK, on the other hand, never suspended the shots, agreeing with the EMA’s assertion that the shots were not related to the fatal blood clots in a statement issued March 18th.

Following this statement, the UK’s “Yellow Card” reporting system for adverse vaccine reactions added 95 new deaths and 82,667 new injuries this past week following injections of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 injections.

Of these 713 recorded deaths following COVID-19 injections, 421 follow AstraZeneca injections, and 283 follow Pfizer injections, while 9 deaths are unspecified.

Of the 495,345 injuries reported following COVID-19 injections, 377,487 are following AstraZeneca injections, 116,627 are following Pfizer injections, and 1231 are unspecified.

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency report released today states that about 13 million doses of the Pfizer shots have been administered as of March 21, 2021, and about 15.8 million doses of the AstraZeneca shots have been administered.

As of 21 March 2021, for the UK, 40,883 Yellow Cards have been reported for the Pfizer/BioNTech, 99,817 have been reported for the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine, and 379 have been reported where the brand of the vaccine was not specified. (Source.)

Earlier today (April 1, 2021), a group that identifies themselves as “Doctors for Covid Ethics,” which reportedly consists of over 100 doctors and scientists from 25 countries, including Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and Former Chair, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, issued a Press Release and letter to the European Medicines Agency, criticizing them for not taking action regarding the reported adverse events following COVID injections, specifically the AstraZeneca shots.

Excerpts:

Regrettably, your reply of March 23 is unconvincing and unacceptable. We are dismayed that you choose to respond to our request for crucially important information in a dismissive and unscientific manner. Such a cavalier approach to vaccine safety creates the unwelcome impression that the EMA is serving the interests of the very pharmaceutical companies whose products it is your pledged duty to evaluate. The evidence is clear that there are some serious adverse event risks & that a number of people, not at risk from SARS-CoV-2, have died following vaccination.

1. You concede that the “vaccines”, which are more accurately described as investigational gene-based agents, enter the bloodstream but you can obviously provide no quantitative data. In the absence of the latter, any scientific assessment you purport to have undertaken lacks foundation.

2. Your statement that non-clinical studies do not indicate any detectable uptake of the vaccines into endothelial cells lacks credibility. We demand to see the scientific evidence. If not available, it must be assumed that endothelial cells are targeted.

3. Auto-attack could not have been excluded in animals unless they had been immunologically primed beforehand. We demand evidence that such experiments had been performed. Similar experiments have been undertaken before with previous, unsuccessful candidate vaccines, and fatal, antibody-dependent enhancement of disease was observed.

4. We requested scientific evidence, not a vague description of what was purportedly seen in non-valid animal experiments. Your cursory mention of laboratory findings in humans is cynical. In view of the plausible connection between production of spike protein and the emergence of thromboembolic serious adverse events (SAEs), we demand to see the results of D-dimer determinations. As you are aware, D-dimer is a very good test as an aid to diagnose thrombosis.

After delivery of our letter to you on March 1, events followed that debunk your response to our last three queries to an extent that can only be termed embarrassing. As we feared, severe and fatal coagulopathies occurred in young individuals following “vaccination”, leading 15 countries to suspend their AZ-“vaccination” program.

Read the full press release here.

The latest UK COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer- BioNTech vaccine analysis report:

  • 3204 Blood disorders including 1 death
  • 1462 Cardiac disorders including 39 deaths
  • 10 Congenital disorders
  • 1108 Ear disorders
  • 23 Endocrine disorders
  • 1758 Eye disorders
  • 12,682 Gastrointestinal disorders including 14 deaths
  • 34,688 General disorders including 126 deaths
  • 26 Hepatic disorders
  • 652 Immune system disorders including 1 death
  • 2653 Infections including 51 deaths
  • 669 Injuries including 2 deaths
  • 1339 Investigations including 1 death
  • 741 Metabolic disorders including 1 death
  • 15,714 Muscle & tissue disorders including
  • 43 Neoplasms
  • 22,156 Nervous system disorders including 19 deaths
  • 45 Pregnancy conditions including 2 deaths
  • 1796 Psychiatric disorders
  • 294 Renal & urinary disorders including 2 deaths
  • 605 Reproductive & breast disorders
  • 4932 Respiratory disorders including 19 deaths
  • 8425 Skin disorders including 1 death
  • 34 Social circumstances
  • 83 Surgical & medical procedures
  • 1462 Vascular disorders including 4 deaths

Total reactions for the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer- BioNTech vaccine283 deaths and 116,627 injuries

The latest UK COVID-19 vaccine Oxford University/AstraZeneca analysis report:

  • 2411 Blood disorders including 2 deaths
  • 3768 Cardiac disorders including 51 deaths
  • 29 Congenital disorders
  • 2574 Ear disorders
  • 60 Endocrine disorders
  • 4566 Eye disorders
  • 39,998 Gastrointestinal disorders including 6 deaths
  • 131,533 General disorders including 196 deaths
  • 87 Hepatic disorders
  • 1109 Immune system disorders including 1 death
  • 7375 Infections including 47 deaths
  • 2201 Injuries including 1 death
  • 4542 Investigations
  • 4679 Metabolic disorders including 2 deaths
  • 47,015 Muscle & tissue disorders including 1 death
  • 63 Neoplasms including 1 death
  • 81,702 Nervous system disorders including 49 deaths
  • 46 Pregnancy conditions
  • 6756 Psychiatric disorders
  • 1044 Renal & urinary disorders including 1 death
  • 839 Reproductive & breast disorders
  • 10,643 Respiratory disorders including 40 deaths
  • 20,379 Skin disorders
  • 88 Social circumstances
  • 279 Surgical & medical procedures including 1 death
  • 3662 Vascular disorders including 22 deaths

Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine Oxford University/AstraZenec vaccine: 421 deaths and 377,487 injuries.

For the COVID-19 vaccine brand unspecified analysis they report:

  • 5 Blood disorders
  • 7 Cardiac disorders including 2 deaths
  • 11 Ear disorders
  • 18 Eye disorders
  • 132 Gastrointestinal disorders
  • 418 General disorders including 4 deaths
  • 2 Hepatic disorders
  • 2 Immune system disorders
  • 22 Infections including 1 death
  • 11 Injuries
  • 18 Investigations
  • 32 Metabolic disorders
  • 128 Muscle & tissue disorders
  • 265 Nervous system disorders
  • 31 Psychiatric disorders
  • 8 Renal & urinary disorders
  • 4 Reproductive & breast disorders
  • 32 Respiratory disorders including 2 deaths
  • 73 Skin disorders
  • 1 Social circumstance
  • 11 Vascular disorders

Total reactions for the COVID-19 vaccine brand unspecified vaccines: 9 deaths and 1231 injuries.

The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency concludes:

The overall safety experience with both vaccines is so far as expected from the clinical trials.

Based on current experience, the expected benefits of both COVID-19 vaccines in preventing COVID-19 and its serious complications far outweigh any known side effects.

In the meantime, fully vaccinated people continue to get sick with COVID, prompting one to ask just what these “benefits” to COVID vaccination actually are?

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The current state of affairs in northeastern Syria is bordering on the absurd.

In an unexpected twist, US-backed militants seized a shipment of US-made missiles that were en route to other militants also supported by America. The shipment included 2 TOW anti-tank guided missiles, 24 AK-type assault rifles, a designated marksman’s rifle, two gun tubes and ammo.

On March 28th, the Syrian Task Force, a joint force of the Turkish Police, Counterterrorism Unit and the National Syrian Army (SNA) took the weapons shipment.

Most SNA factions were once backed by the US, which supplied them with TOW ATGMs until late 2017. They are also currently and continually supported by Turkey.

Turkey said that the weapons consignment was seized because it was heading towards the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).  The SDF is the most important US ally in Syria, but it is comprised of the PKK and YPG, whom Ankara deems as terrorist organizations.

US forces in Syria need all the support they can get, and as such they are delivering supplies to its presumed allies.

On March 27th, in addition to smuggling oil, a large US convoy smuggled 38 trucks of Syrian wheat from the Hasaka governorate into northern Iraq. Just days earlier, on March 25th, 18 more trucks with wheat were taken out of Syria.

In Hasaka, the SDF is carrying out its expansionist work, displacing home-owners in the vicinity of a helipad. The positions are to be used to counter the attacks and movements of Turkish-backed militants coming from Ras al-Ayn and Afrin.

And sure enough, Turkish forces, as well as militants backed by Ankara, renewed shelling on the Hasaka countryside. They shelled the two villages of al-Khashma and al-Dardara to the north of the town Tal Tamer on March 27th.

In response to Turkey’s shelling and attacks, the SDF carried out an operation towards Raqqa. As a result, eight Turkish-backed militants were either killed or wounded. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, SDF fighters blew up a militant position near the town of Umm al-Manajir in the northern outskirts of the town of Ain Issa.

Still, even without the SDF attacking any positions, in Afrin the Turkish-backed militants continue fighting even amongst themselves. On March 27th, militants of the Hamza Division clashed with a group which recently defected from the division and joined the al-Sham Corps. At least 11 were either killed or injured.

Northern Syria appears to be in a perpetual state of chaos, with several sides attempting to steal away resources to forward their own interests. Turkey, the US, and the militants that they back are taking the chance to do so, since the Damascus government and Russian support are more focused on Greater Idlib, and the ISIS-infested central region.

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Top German scientists have found that wearing certain types of face masks for long periods of time could result in potentially hazardous chemicals and harmful microplastics being inhaled deep into human lungs.

Professor Michael Braungart, director at the Hamburg Environmental Institute and co-founder of the world-renowned Cradle to Cradle environmental standard has told Ecotextile News that mask wearers unwittingly run the risk of breathing in carcinogens, allergens and tiny synthetic microfibres by wearing both textile and nonwoven surgical masks for long periods of time.

His recent findings have been backed up by another leading industry textile chemist Dr. Dieter Sedlak, managing director and co-founder of Modern Testing Services Augsburg, Germany in partnership with Modern Testing Services Global, Hong Kong who found elevated concentrations of hazardous fluorocarbons, formaldehyde and other potentially carcinogenic substances on surgical face masks: “I can only say 100 per cent that I have similar concerns to Prof. Braungart.”

With over 40 years in the business, Dr. Sedlak, who was also the former Global Product Safety Director at a major global Specialty Chemicals supplier is one of the most respected figures in the textile chemicals sector and helped to develop various leading EHS chemical management systems and RSL concepts used today by major global apparel and footwear brands.

Initial analytical tests by both of these experts have now thrown into doubt the wisdom of whether people should be wearing certain types of masks for hours on end. Particularly schoolchildren, factory workers and long-haul flyers who may be at a greater risk from the long-term damage to lungs through exposure to both restricted chemistry and microplastics – perhaps outweighing the short-term risk of any exposure to the coronavirus?

“What we are breathing through our mouth and nose is actually hazardous waste,” said Professor Braungart, who ran preliminary tests on used surgical masks that found traces of chemicals such as the known carcinogen aniline as well as formaldehyde and optical brighteners – both heavily restricted on consumer goods by European and US authorities to minute parts per million concentrations.

Separate studies by Dr. Sedlak have also shown the presence of compounds such as 2-butanone oxime (carcinogenic) blocked diisocyanates used as crosslinkers for perfluorocarbons (PFCs) on face masks. Used in the textile sector as oil and water repellents on fabrics, by-products of PFCs are known to be bio-persistent and their use is heavily restricted by authorities in Europe and the USA. Last year, a group of US scientists called for all per- and poly-fluorinated substances (PFAS) to be treated as one single class of chemistry and said they should be avoided for non-essential uses due to their hazardous toxicological and eco-toxicological profile.

“Honestly, I had not expected PFC’s would be found in a surgical mask, but we have special routine methods in our labs to detect these chemicals easily and can immediately identify them. This is a big issue,” explained Dr. Sedlak.

“It seems this had been deliberately applied as a fluid repellent – it would work to repel the virus in an aerosol droplet format – but PFC on your face, on your nose, on the mucus membranes, or on the eyes is not good.” Along with PFCs, he also detected – besides the PFC crosslinkers – compounds such as formaldehyde and acetaldehyde whereas a GCMS chromatogram showed “100s of peaks from other contaminants.”

Microfibre concern

Like Sedlak, Braungart noted that surgical masks have been designed to be worn for very specific purposes such as by clinicians or for a short period of time before being discarded. They are not designed to be crumpled up in people’s pockets where the “friction and damp environment promotes both fibre abrasion and encourages bacterial colonisation over time,” he said.

This abrasion can, he says, cause the release of tiny microplastics as the polypropylene fibres break down from mechanical wear and tear, finding in tests that some masks shed microfibres classed as hazardous ‘dust’ by the German Social Accident Insurance (DGUV). Fibres of this type of geometry that meet this dust standard are also referred to as ‘WHO fibres’ after earlier work by the World Health Organisation on asbestos.

Textiles preferable to nonwovens?

During the on-going pandemic most people are now also wearing masks and face coverings made from traditional textile materials that would normally be used to make our clothing.

Thankfully, the risks associated with harmful chemicals on clothing are lower than ever, but the risks aren’t zero. “The risks associated with clothing tend to be due to skin contact, apart from babies that tend to suck anything they can get near their mouth – and therefore it is normal to have tougher, more stringent chemical standards for babywear textiles,” according to textile chemical expert, Phil Patterson of Colour Connections, who also works with the highly respected ZDHC Foundation on chemical management.

“In my opinion, textile masks do not begin to pass this most basic hazard test for kids, for whom the risks of COVID have been categorically demonstrated to be miniscule,” he said.

Potential litigation risks?

One unforeseen problem for those mandating the continued and long-term wearing of face masks, such as governments and businesses, is the potential for future litigation if they are proven to have any long-term adverse impacts on human health – especially since long-term studies have yet to be undertaken.

Patterson, who has advised some of the world’s biggest clothing retailers and brands on chemical management agrees this could be an issue.

“I’d be very wary of mandating masks, as some chemicals and fibres may have long-term effects – and that possibly opens the floodgates of personal injury claims at some stage in the future.”

Big brands

Nate Sponsler, director at the AFIRM Group that represents over 30 well-known consumer brands, such as Amazon, Nike and Levi Strauss, in a bid to reduce the use of harmful substances in textiles says it’s early days when looking at face masks. “We have not yet done any formal data aggregation or studies specific to face masks, so I’m glad this issue is being highlighted,” he said.

He says textile face masks are a different issue to surgical face masks where he says he’s “not surprised” to see potential hazardous substances based on fluorine applied to these masks, given that they’re designed for use in the medical sector, “where all kinds of exemptions for chemistry on PPE exist,” he said.

He also noted that for kids face masks “the AFIRM best practice would be to use organic cotton, and for adults where more materials and chemistry are being used (such as prints for example), this does require more due diligence.”

Masks have been an integral part of the global response to the coronavirus and a necessary intervention – especially at the height of the pandemic. But as we start to emerge from this global health crisis, leading scientists are now questioning whether the real risk of exposure to potentially hazardous chemicals from long-term mask wearing is actually much higher than the risk of coming into contact with the Sars-CoV-2 virus – especially for children and young adults who are in the low-risk category when it comes to developing severe COVID-19.

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The Endless War: Afghanistan Goes on and on

April 3rd, 2021 by Philip Giraldi

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Given the present atmosphere in Washington in which there is no lie so outrageous as to keep it out of the mainstream media, a great deal of policy making takes place without even key players in the government knowing what is going on behind their backs. Of course, there is a long tradition of government lying in general but most politicians and officials have probably convinced themselves that they are avoiding the truth because complicating issues might lead to endless debate where nothing ever gets done. There may be some truth to that, but it is a self-serving notion at best.

The real damage comes when governments lie in order to start or continue a war. The Administration of George W. Bush did just that when it lied about Iraq’s secular leader Saddam Hussein seeking nuclear weapons, supporting terrorists and developing delivery systems that would enable Iraq to attack the U.S. with the nukes. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice knew she was not telling the truth when she warned that “the problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” She also was a key player in the Bush team approval of the CIA’s use of torture on captured al-Qaeda.

Rice is, by the way, not in jail and is currently a highly esteemed elder statesman serving as Director of the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Likewise for her friend and patron Madeleine Albright who famously declared that the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children due to U.S. imposed sanctions were worth it. In the United States the only ones who are ever punished are those who expose the crimes being committed by the government, to include a number of whistleblowers and journalists like Julian Assange.

The active American military role in lying probably started at Valley Forge but it came into prominence with the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, which was an alleged attack by the North Vietnamese on U.S. Navy ships that led to an escalation in Washington’s direct role in what was to become the Vietnam War, which produced 58,000 American dead as well as an estimated three million Vietnamese. No one was punished for faking the casus belli and today Vietnam is a communist state in spite of the martial valor of the U.S. Army.  Overall commander of US forces in Vietnam General William Westmoreland, who died in 2005, repeatedly advised the media and the White House that the American military was “winning” and there would be victory in six more months. General Westmoreland knew he was lying, as the Pentagon Papers subsequently revealed, and he also proved reluctant to share his plans with the White House. He even developed a contingency plan to use nuclear weapons in Vietnam without informing the president and Secretary of Defense.

Prize winning investigative reporter Gareth Porter has written an article “Trump Administration Insider Reveals How US Military Sabotaged Peace Agreement to Prolong Afghan War” that describes how the brass in the Pentagon currently are able to manipulate the bureaucracy in such a way as to circumvent policy coming out of the country’s civilian leadership. The article is based in part on an interview with retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, a decorated combat arms officer who served as an acting senior adviser to the Secretary of Defense during the last months of Donald Trump’s time in office.  He would have likely been confirmed in his position if Trump had won reelection.

Porter describes the negotiations between the Taliban and Trump’s Special Envoy Zalmay Khalilzad, which began in late 2018 and culminated in a peace agreement that was more-or-less agreed to by both sides in February 2019. The Pentagon, fearing that the war would be ending, quickly moved to sabotage a series of confidence building measures that included disengagement and cease fires. In short, US commanders supported by the Pentagon leadership under Secretary of Defense Mike Esper as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo continued to attack Taliban positions in spite of the agreements worked out by the diplomats, blaming all incidents on the Taliban. They also used their “perception management” media contacts to float fabricated stories about Taliban activity, which included the false account of Russians paying Taliban fighters bounties for every American they could kill.

After the 2020 election, which Donald Trump appeared to have lost, Esper, Central Command chief General Kenneth McKenzie and the senior field commander General Scott Miller took the offensive against any withdrawal by sending a memo to the president warning that no troops should be removed from the country until “certain conditions” had been met. An enraged Trump, who believed that the disengagement from Afghanistan was the right thing to do, then used his authority to order a withdrawal of all US troops by the end of the year. He also fired Esper, replacing him with Christopher Miller as SecDef and brought in Macgregor, who had openly expressed his belief that the war in Afghanistan should be ended immediately as well as the wars in the Middle East.

Macgregor and Miller reasoned that the only way to remove the remaining troops from Afghanistan by year’s end would be to do so by presidential order. Macgregor prepared the document and President Trump signed it immediately. On the next day November 12th, however, Colonel Macgregor learned that Trump had subsequently met with Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mark Milley, national security adviser Robert O’Brien and Acting Secretary Miller. Trump and Miller were told by Milley and O’Brien that the orders he placed in the memorandum could not be executed because a withdrawal would lead to a surge in violence and would damage chances for an eventual peace settlement. Trump was also told that an ongoing US presence in Afghanistan had “bipartisan support,” possibly a warning that he might be overruled by Congress if he sought to proceed. Trump later agreed to withdraw only half of the total, 2,500 troops, a number that has continued to remain in place under President Joe BidenA current agreement has the US withdrawing those last soldiers, together with allied NATO troops, by May 1st but it is under attack from Congress, think tanks, the mainstream media and the military leadership for the same reasons that have been cited for staying in Afghanistan over the past twenty years and predictably Biden has folded. Last week he announced that some American soldiers will remain in country to maintain stability after the deadline.

The story of Trump and Afghanistan is similar to what took place with Syria, where plans to withdraw were regularly reversed due to adroit maneuvering by the Pentagon and its allies. It remains to be seen what Joe Biden will do ultimately as he is being confronted by the same forces that compelled Trump to beat a retreat. The more serious issue is, of course, that the United States of America portrays itself as a nation that engages only in “just wars” and which has a military that is under control and responsive to an elected and accountable civilian government. As Afghanistan and Syria demonstrate, those conceits have been unsustainable since the US went on a global dominance spree when it launched its War on Terror in 2001. All indications are that the Pentagon will be able to maneuver more effectively in Washington than on the battlefield. It will continue to have its pointless wars, and its bloated “defense” budgets.

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Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.orgaddress is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

The costly rollout of screening for covid-19 among asymptomatic students at UK universities has found very few positive cases since its launch in December, an investigation by The BMJ has found.

Its research shows a mass testing system across UK campuses that is inconsistent and shrouded in secrecy. Almost two thirds of higher education institutions are not collecting data on numbers of students being tested, and a third are not logging how many test positive.

Experts have described campus testing as haphazard and messy, with an “outrageous” price tag. One said that the scheme was putting political ambitions above the goals of science or health.

Among 69 institutions that disclosed three months’ worth of data to The BMJ under the Freedom of Information Act, 1649 positive results were reported from 335 383 tests carried out, a rate of 0.5%.

The BMJ’s research found widespread reluctance among universities and colleges to share information about the costs of testing and its effect on containing the virus. More than three quarters of institutions refused to disclose how much money they had received from the government to set up mass testing. Some cited confidentiality agreements with the Department of Health and Social Care for England as the reason for the non-disclosure.

Experts said the findings—revealed as many universities are poised to welcome students back to campuses after the Easter holidays—cast major doubts on the cost effectiveness, the ethics, and the scientific rigour behind mass screening and called for the programme to be halted.

Allyson Pollock, professor of public health at Newcastle University, and a vocal critic of the testing programme, said, “The clear message from the data is that the mass testing is haphazard, fragmented, disjointed, and absolutely the antithesis of public health. What we have got is a very fine illustration of why we need this programme to go to the [national] screening committee and to be properly evaluated before any more rollouts of tests happen.”

Box 1

How does mass testing of students work?

After numerous outbreaks of covid-19 on UK university campuses last autumn, the government invited universities to test asymptomatic students from December 2020, with the aim of containing the virus before students returned home for Christmas. Most universities taught online only in January and February but continued to offer asymptomatic testing to students who were on campus.

Students are tested under supervised conditions with rapid lateral flow devices, which do not require laboratory processing, such as the Innova tests, which the UK government has spent over £1.3bn on purchasing.1

Two tests a week are recommended, followed by a PCR confirmatory test after a positive result. Government guidance says that twice weekly testing should continue indefinitely, although where this was not possible testing once a week “may be appropriate where students only visit campus once a week.”2

Read the full article on the BMJ.

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The WHO is promoting a new international pandemic treaty to be drawn up and signed by the world’s nations. In their announcement on March 30th 2021 entitled COVID-19 shows why united action is needed for more robust international health architecture, the WHO (World Health Organization) predictably appeals to vague general principles and noble-sounding values in an attempt to entice humanity to support its quest for globalism and more centralization of power.

While it doesn’t use the buzzword sustainable this time, it does use another of its favorite buzzwords equitable. The WHO claims that everyone must have “universal and equitable access” to “safe, efficacious and affordable vaccines, medicines and diagnostics” for the current and future pandemics, however it has already gone wrong, since as the facts have shown, COVID is not a pandemic but rather an operation, an agenda, a PCR casedemic and a scamdemic. Those skeptical of authorities asking for more collaboration as a ruse to grab more power should note that the current EU structure came about first via treaties. So let’s take a closer look at the words used to push this new international pandemic treaty.

Right on Cue, 23 World Leaders Plus WHO Boss Read Their Scripts to Promote International Pandemic Treaty

When the NWO (New World Order) wants to push their agenda forward, they roll out their devoted system-servers, bootlickers and gofers to get the public on board. In this case, the NWO controllers have used the 3 most powerful Western European leaders (UK prime minister Boris Johnson, German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Emmanuel Macron), 20 other world leaders plus WHO boss Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (24 signatories in all), to push the idea of an international pandemic treaty. This NWO move is very predictable since it follows their time-tested formula of creating a crisis then exploiting that crisis to consolidate power, as they always do with false flag operations. Here is the letter reproduced in full:

“The Covid-19 pandemic is the biggest challenge to the global community since the 1940s. At that time, following the devastation of two world wars, political leaders came together to forge the multilateral system. The aims were clear: to bring countries together, to dispel the temptations of isolationism and nationalism, and to address the challenges that could only be achieved together in the spirit of solidarity and cooperation: namely, peace, prosperity, health and security.

‘Today, we hold the same hope that as we fight to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic together, we can build a more robust international health architecture that will protect future generations. There will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies. No single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone. The question is not if, but when. Together, we must be better prepared to predict, prevent, detect, assess and effectively respond to pandemics in a highly coordinated fashion. The Covid-19 pandemic has been a stark and painful reminder that nobody is safe until everyone is safe.

‘We are, therefore, committed to ensuring universal and equitable access to safe, efficacious and affordable vaccines, medicines and diagnostics for this and future pandemics. Immunisation is a global public good and we will need to be able to develop, manufacture and deploy vaccines as quickly as possible. This is why the Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) was set up in order to promote equal access to tests, treatments and vaccines and support health systems across the globe. ACT-A has delivered on many aspects but equitable access is yet to be achieved. There is more we can do to promote global access.

‘To that end, we believe that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response. Such a renewed collective commitment would be a milestone in stepping up pandemic preparedness at the highest political level. It would be rooted in the constitution of the World Health Organisation, drawing in other relevant organisations key to this endeavour, in support of the principle of health for all. Existing global health instruments, especially the International Health Regulations, would underpin such a treaty, ensuring a firm and tested foundation on which we can build and improve.

‘The main goal of this treaty would be to foster an all-of-government and all-of-society approach, strengthening national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics. This includes greatly enhancing international cooperation to improve, for example, alert systems, data-sharing, research, and local, regional and global production and distribution of medical and public health countermeasures, such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.

‘It would also include recognition of a ‘One Health’ approach that connects the health of humans, animals and our planet. And such a treaty should lead to more mutual accountability and shared responsibility, transparency and cooperation within the international system and with its rules and norms.

‘To achieve this, we will work with heads of state and governments globally and all stakeholders, including civil society and the private sector. We are convinced that it is our responsibility, as leaders of nations and international institutions, to ensure that the world learns the lessons of the Covid-19 pandemic.

‘At a time when Covid-19 has exploited our weaknesses and divisions, we must seize this opportunity and come together as a global community for peaceful cooperation that extends beyond this crisis. Building our capacities and systems to do this will take time and require a sustained political, financial and societal commitment over many years.

‘Our solidarity in ensuring that the world is better prepared will be our legacy that protects our children and grandchildren and minimises the impact of future pandemics on our economies and our societies. Pandemic preparedness needs global leadership for a global health system fit for this millennium. To make this commitment a reality, we must be guided by solidarity, fairness, transparency, inclusiveness and equity.’”

An Analysis of the Call for an International Pandemic Treaty

It is useful to take a closer look at some of the language, themes and modes of persuasion employed in this letter.

Firstly, notice how the writers frame the COVID plandemic as similar to a war. That was always the idea: to orchestrate a disruption with the impact of a world war without having to actually conduct a hot war. Wars have always served the NWO, not only as a tremendous source of hate, murder and mayhem, not only for depopulation, but also as a massive force of chaos that allows for restructuring in the aftermath.

Secondly, note the appeal to protection and safety: “a more robust international health architecture that will protect future generations.” Whatever you think of COVID, its spread or not had little to do with how “robust” the world “health architecture” was. This is just a blatant cry for world government. As Plato once said, “This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears he is a protector.”

Thirdly, note the firm prediction that “there will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies … The question is not if, but when” which is exactly in alignment with Bill Gates’ warning of Pandemic 2 or Pandemic II. This is more fear and more predictive programming to entice you to surrender and acquiesce to the idea of an inevitable new normal with wholesale deprivation of freedom and rights.

Fourthly, notice how the writers appeal to humanity’s commonality (“nobody’s safe until everyone is safe”) which echoes another idea that has been used as nauseam by officials during this scamdemic (“we are all in this together”). The idea is based on pretending they care about the common welfare of society and humanity while systematically exploiting the average person’s compassion to gain power. It also blatantly ignores the obvious truth that each person, being bestowed with an immune system, is responsible for their own health. As an aside, since those exposing the COVID scamdemic are being labeled as COVID deniers, I wonder if all those pushing the COVID cult could justly be labeled immune system deniers?

Fifthly, such a treaty, if it ever became a reality, would pave the way for even more shared surveillance so that there is literally nowhere you can go in the world without some authority knowing everything about you: “… greatly enhancing international cooperation to improve, for example, alert systems, data-sharing …”

Sixthly, the idea of such a treaty is also to make vaccines mandatory worldwide and reduce or eliminate vaccine hesitancy: “research, and local, regional and global production and distribution of medical and public health counter measures, such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.”

In the sentence “The main goal of this treaty would be to foster an all-of-government and all-of-society approach, strengthening national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics” the underlying idea is to make sure everyone is forcibly included in the governmental remedy. It’s “all-of-society” which means mandatory rules for everyone (except the rulemakers who can break the rules with contempt). You don’t want to wear a mask, take a vaccine or stay under house arrest? Tough! We are all in this together, so do what you’re told, you filthy peon.

Lastly, the letter finishes by appealing to “solidarity, fairness, transparency, inclusiveness and equity”which just goes to show that the politically correct woke mentality is everywhere and that you must submit to the religion of inclusivity, even if you don’t want to be included.

Final Thoughts

We need to be hyper-aware of such attempts to make order out of chaos and to exploit people’s fear and ignorance to centralize power. This idea of an international pandemic treaty is yet another steppping stone on the way to a NWO One World Government. We would do well to remain vigilant in the face of any further calls for consolidation of decision-making, regardless of whether they are draped in peace, protection, prosperity, sustainability, solidarity, fairness, transparency, inclusiveness or equity – or whatever other sparkly and glittery garb the NWO manipuators use to disguise their nefarious agenda.

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Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles, author of the book Cancer: The Lies, the Truth and the Solutions and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com. Makia is on Steemit and LBRY.

Sources

https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/op-ed—covid-19-shows-why-united-action-is-needed-for-more-robust-international-health-architecture

https://thefreedomarticles.com/covid-cult-and-the-10-stages-of-genocide/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/operation-coronavirus-next-phases-resurgence-prediction-bioterror-attack/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/political-correctness-language-thought-control/

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At this hour, more Russian military forces are massed near Ukraine’s borders than we have ever seen before.  Western military leaders say that they are concerned that the troop movements that we have witnessed in recent days may be leading up to an invasion, and if an invasion does happen it will greatly test the resolve of the Biden administration, EU leaders and NATO brass.  In particular, the hawks in the Biden administration would almost certainly not be willing to just sit back and let the Russians conquer all of Ukraine.  There would likely be a major response by the United States, and that could set off a chain reaction that could ultimately spark World War 3.

So what made the Russians suddenly move a massive invasion force toward Ukraine?

Well, it turns out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky essentially signed a declaration of war against Russia on March 24th.  The document that he signed is known as Decree No. 117/2021, and you won’t read anything about it in the corporate media.

I really had to dig to find Decree No. 117/2021, but eventually I found it.  I took several of the paragraphs at the beginning of the document and I ran them through Google translate…

In accordance with Article 107 of the Constitution of Ukraine, I decree:

1. To put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of March 11, 2021 “On the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol” (attached).

2. To approve the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (attached).

3. Control over the implementation of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, enacted by this Decree, shall be vested in the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

4. This Decree shall enter into force on the day of its publication.

President of Ukraine V.ZELENSKY

March 24, 2021

Basically, this decree makes it the official policy of the government of Ukraine to retake Crimea from Russia.

Of course the Russians will never hand over Crimea willingly because they consider it to be Russian territory, and so Ukraine would have to take it by force.

This is essentially a declaration of war against Russia, and Zelensky would have never signed such a document without the approval of the Biden administration.

Following the signing of Decree No. 117/2021, we started to see Russian forces pour into Crimea and into separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine at a staggering rate.

For example, you can watch a column of Russian tanks being transported by rail right here.

And you can see a massive column of Russian forces on the Crimea bridge right here.

In addition, it is being reported that the 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade is on the move, and that is not a good sign at all.

The Russians are taking Zelensky’s declaration of war very seriously, but the corporate media in the western world is blaming “Russian aggression” for the increase in tensions in the region.

But the truth is that the Russians never would have made any of these moves if warmongers in the Biden administration had not given Zelensky the green light to sign Decree No. 117/2021.

And what most people in the western world don’t know is that fighting has already begun in Ukraine.  The ceasefire that was agreed to in July 2020 has been violated hundreds of times over the past week…

The OSCE’s civilian Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine has reported hundreds of cease-fire violations in recent days. On March 26, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two others injured in the eastern part of the country.

The Ukrainian military said its soldiers were hit by a mortar attack it blamed on Russian troops. Russia denies having a military presence in eastern Ukraine, where it backs separatist forces.

At this point, the ceasefire of July 2020 is completely dead.

In response to the renewed fighting, U.S. European Command “has raised its alert status to the highest level”

U.S. European Command has raised its alert status to the highest level after fighting resumed between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk Region of eastern Ukraine, marking the end of a June 2020 ceasefire, and Russian forces began building up military equipment along the border.

And we just learned that the chairman of the joint chiefs actually had a telephone call with his counterpart in Russia on Wednesday to address the escalating situation

In a statement on Facebook on Wednesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that at the initiative of the U.S., chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, had a telephone conversation with his counterpart. “Issues of mutual interest were discussed,” the statement said.

In the days ahead, the corporate media in the western world is going to continue talking about “Russian aggression”, and the Russians are going to continue to blame Zelensky and the Biden administration for the rise of tensions in the region.

Ultimately, we could spend countless hours debating who is in the right and who is in the wrong.

But what really matters is keeping this from escalating into a global conflict.  Because if someone does something really stupid and the Russians feel a need to send their invasion force into Ukraine, there will be no going back ever.

I have been warning about a future conflict between the United States and Russia for a very long time, and we have never been closer than we are right now.

With Trump in the White House, relations with Russia were relatively stable, but now Joe Biden is in charge.

Biden is a hothead that is showing signs of advanced cognitive decline, and he is surrounded by a team of warmongers that are determined to put Russian President Vladimir Putin in his place.

The inmates are running the asylum, and it won’t take much of a mistake at all for things to go horribly, horribly wrong.

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When you ask somebody why they are choosing to take the covid vaccine or why they are wearing a mask, they may respond, “because science.” The next question to ask is, how many of these people have actually gone through the science of vaccines and whether or not masks may be an effective tool for limiting the spread of COVID?

From what I see, the majority of people receive their information from mainstream media organizations, which are organizations that have strong ties to pharmaceutical corporations and governments, and are known for presenting one perspective that favours a particular agenda while completely ridiculing the other. They sometimes go as far as labelling another perspective as a “conspiracy theory” despite the fact that there is ample, credible evidence to support the claims of that perspective. Do people simply believe things because they feel that everybody else believes it too? What are the social and cultural implications of not being in alignment with the majority?

Due to reliance on a single media source, many people are not shown information and perspectives that tell a different or more complete story, especially when it comes to “controversial” topics. Often times, these topics are avoided using ridicule in place of addressing points brought up from other perspectives. We’ve seen a lot of this with COVID, an unprecedented amount of censorship of science has taken place with regards to all things COVID, and many academics have been speaking up about it for quite some time.

A quote I often like to use to demonstrate this, and one I’ve used many times before, comes from Dr. Kamran Abbasi, a recent executive editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal, editor of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, and a consultant editor for PLOS Medicine. He is editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and JRSM Open. He recently published a piece in the BMJ, titled “Covid-19: politicization, “corruption,” and suppression of science.”

Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.

I also recently wrote an article about Vinay Prasad MD MPH, an associate professor at the University of California San Francisco. He is one of many experts in the field during this pandemic who has been criticizing Facebook fact-checkers for their missteps in claiming content is false when it is not.

One of the best examples of suppression is “anti-lockdown” rhetoric. Multiple dozens of studies have shown and concluded that lockdowns do not reduce COVID infection, will kill more people than COVID due to lack of access to health care, starvation and more, and cause a wide range of other health and economical issues. Regardless, the experts who have been publishing and sharing this information have been heavily censored. And culturally, we’re pretending that there’s no science to oppose lockdowns.

I recently wrote an article by Dr. Sunetra Gupta, an Oxford professor who is regarded by many as the world’s pre-eminent infectious disease epidemiologist. She is one of many who explains that lockdowns have done nothing to protect people from COVID, and that they have caused a great deal of harm.

Why is it that such an alarming amount of respected experts who oppose the measures being taken to combat COVID, are being ridiculed, ignored, and unacknowledged, yet a political doctor, somebody like Anthony Fauci, can get all of the air time he pleases? Why aren’t all perspectives, science and data shared equally? Why have effective “alternative” treatments been ignored and the vaccine made out to be the only option?

Below are the top four reasons why COVID vaccine hesitancy is at an all time high among people of all backgrounds.

1. A Lack of Trust In Government & Pharmaceutical Companies.

First I’d like to draw your attention to a quote taken from a paper published in the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy by professor Paddy Rawlinson, from Western Sydney University.

Critical criminology repeatedly has drawn attention to the state-corporate nexus as a site of corruption and other forms of criminality, a scenario exacerbated by the intensification of neoliberalism in areas such as health. The state-pharmaceutical relationship, which increasingly influences health policy, is no exception. That is especially so when pharmaceutical products such as vaccines, a burgeoning sector of the industry, are mandated in direct violation of the principle of informed consent. Such policies have provoked suspicion and dissent as critics question the integrity of the state-pharma alliance and its impact on vaccine safety. However, rather than encouraging open debate, draconian modes of governance have been implemented to repress and silence any form of criticism, thereby protecting the activities of the state and pharmaceutical industry from independent scrutiny. The article examines this relationship in the context of recent legislation in Australia to intensify its mandatory regime around vaccines. It argues that attempts to undermine freedom of speech, and to systematically excoriate those who criticise or dissent from mandatory vaccine programs, function as a corrupting process and, by extension, serve to provoke the notion that corruption does indeed exist within the state-pharma alliance.

There are many examples that illustrate why so many people simply cannot trust these institutions when it comes to anything, let alone health. Another one comes from comes from a paper published in 2010 by Robert G. Evans, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Vancouver School of Economics, UBC.  The paper, titled “Tough on Crime? Pfizer and the CIHR”  is accessible through the National Library of Medicine (PubMed), and it outlines how Pfizer has been a “habitual offender” constantly engaging in illegal and criminal activities. This particular paper points out that from 2002 to 2010, Pfizer has been “assessed $3 billion in criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards” and has set records for both criminal fines and total penalties. Keep in mind we are now in 2021, that number is likely much higher.

A fairly recent article published in the New England Journal of Medicine focuses on outlining why those injured by the COVID-19 vaccine won’t be eligible for compensation from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) because COVID is still an “emergency.” It also brings up the topic of vaccine hesitancy.

It mentions that among African Americans, many are hesitant to get their COVID vaccine because of events like the Tuskegee syphilis study. The study used African Americans to see how syphilis progressed. The people with syphilis were told they were receiving free treatment, but they were really receiving nothing. This also happened after the discovery of a cure, the people were still not given the cure or any other known treatment. They were lied to.

It wasn’t until a whistleblower, Peter Buxtun, leaked information about the study to the New York Times and the paper published it on the front page on November 16th, 1972, that the Tuskegee study finally ended. By this time only 74 of the test subjects were still alive. 128 patients had died of syphilis or its complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had acquired congenital syphilis.

The study in the NEJM points out:

In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in August and September 2020, it was found that 49%of Black respondents would probably not or definitely not take a Covid-19 vaccine, as compared with 33% of White respondents. Similarly, a Pew Research Center poll from November found that although 71% of Black respondents knew someone who had been hospitalized or died from Covid-19, only 42% intended to get a Covid-19 vaccine when it became available. These findings indicate a need to provide strong safety nets and supports to encourage Covid-19 vaccine adoption in vulnerable communities, including adequate injury compensation.

One study estimates up to 31 percent of  surveyed Americans may not take the vaccine. That’s a lot of people if you extrapolate it out to the entire population. And it’s hard to really know how many people won’t. CNN has made it seem as if Donald Trump supporters will not be taking the shot, if this is the case that could be more than 50 percent of Americans, or at least all those who voted for Trump, which is a big number.

There are countless examples, it’s not just within the black community. Multiple polls in Canada and the United States have shown that what seem to be quite a large minority will not be getting the vaccine. This also includes medical professionals. For example 50 percent of healthcare workers and hospital staff in Riverside County are refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Keep in mind that Riverside County, California has a population of approximately 2.4 million. A survey conducted at Chicago’s Loretto Hospital shows that 40 percent of healthcare workers will not take the COVID-19 vaccine once it’s available to them.

Vaccine hesitancy among physicians and academics is nothing new. To illustrate this I often point to a conference held at the end of 2019 put on by the World Health Organization (WHO). At the conference, Dr. Heidi Larson a Professor of Anthropology and the Risk and Decision Scientist Director at the Vaccine Confidence Project Emphasized this point, having  stated,

The other thing that’s a trend, and an issue, is not just confidence in providers but confidence of health care providers. We have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. That’s a huge problem, because to this day any study I’ve seen…still, the most trusted person on any study I’ve seen globally is the health care provider.

2. The Virus Has A 99.95 Survival Rate.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, from the Stanford University School of Medicine recently shared that the survival rate for people under 70 years of age is about 99.95 percent. He also said that COVID is less dangerous than the flu for children.  This comes based on approximately 50 studies that have been published, and information showing that more children in the U.S. have died from the flu than COVID. This correlates with data from Sweden as well.

Jonas F Ludvigsson a paediatrician at Örebro University Hospital and professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute has published research showing that out of nearly 2 million school children, zero died from covid despite no lockdowns, school closings or mask mandates during the first wave of the pandemic.

There is a perception out there that COVID is no more dangerous that other severe respiratory illnesses, which are the second leading cause of death worldwide, and that covid is similar to already existing coronaviruses that have circled the global for decades affecting hundreds of millions of people a year and killing tens of millions.

Another issue raised by many, which is a matter of public record now, is the fact that it’s very unclear as to how many deaths marked as COVID are, and were, actually a result of COVID.

These are reasons why people view the vaccine as unnecessary. In some cases, people feel that the risk of vaccine injury is greater than the risk of dying from COVID, which may actually be quite true. This is a completely separate debate, but here is data from the (US) Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS):

This system (VAERS) has been known to only capture about 1 percent of vaccine injuries. A 2010 HHS pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) in the United States found that 1 in every 39 vaccines causes injury, a shocking comparison to the claims from the CDC of 1 in every million. For example, From 1990 to 2007 there were about 80,000 US cases of Kawasaki disease; during the same period just 56 US cases were reported to VAERS–0.07%. (Hua et al, Pediatr Inf Dis J 2009: 28:943-947) The cause of KD is unknown; it is rare, it is very serious, and it is prevalent among young and frequently vaccinated children. If any event deserves prompt reporting to VAERS it is Kawasaki disease, but this does not happen.

Keep in mind that approximately 100 million people in the U.S. have had at least one shot.

On top of this you have reports of deaths all over social media. There seem to be hundreds of examples but at the end of the day, there is not a proper system in place to properly track adverse reactions and deaths. The mainstream is not at all interested in that conversation either.

3. Some People Don’t Know How Safe And Effective The Vaccine Is

Dr. Peter Doshi, an associate editor at the British Medical Journal published a piece in the journal issuing a word of caution about the supposed “95% Effective” COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. It outlines multiple reasons why the effectiveness claimed by the pharmaceutical companies is called into question.

You can also read a piece that dives deeper into this question that we recently published, here.

The vaccine is being heavily marketed as a saviour, which is the case with almost all vaccines despite many concerns being raised over the years. One great example is with regards to aluminum containing vaccines. Scientists have discovered that injected aluminum is very different from ingested aluminum. Injected aluminum doesn’t exit the body, and can be detected within the brain years after injection. Is this “anti-vax”? No, it’s just science, these are legitimate concerns.

When it comes to the COVID vaccine, there are concerns, especially since the mRNA technology used in many of the vaccines is new.

A few other papers have raised concerns, for example. A study published in October of 2020 in the International Journal of Clinical Practice states:

COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated. Vaccines for SARS, MERS and RSV have never been approved, and the data generated in the development and testing of these vaccines suggest a serious mechanistic concern: that vaccines designed empirically using the traditional approach (consisting of the unmodified or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralising antibodies), be they composed of protein, viral vector, DNA or RNA and irrespective of delivery method, may worsen COVID-19 disease via antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). This risk is sufficiently obscured in clinical trial protocols and consent forms for ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials that adequate patient comprehension of this risk is unlikely to occur, obviating truly informed consent by subjects in these trials.

In a new research article published in Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, veteran immunologist J. Bart Classen expresses similar concerns and writes that “RNA-based COVID vaccines have the potential to cause more disease than the epidemic of COVID-19.”

For decades, Classen has published papers exploring how vaccination can give rise to chronic conditions such as Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes — not right away, but three or four years down the road. In this latest paper, Classen warns that the RNA-based vaccine technology could create “new potential mechanisms” of vaccine adverse events that may take years to come to light.

A few years ago, a team of Scandinavian scientists conducted a study and found that African children inoculated with the DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) vaccine, during the early 1980s had a 5-10 times greater mortality than their unvaccinated peers.

They state:

It should be of concern that the effect of routine vaccinations on all-cause mortality was not tested in randomized trials. All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis.Though a vaccine protects children against the target disease it may simultaneously increase susceptibility to unrelated infections.

I’m placing this study here to show that some vaccines may have unknown long term health consequences, even if they do offer some protection to the targeted disease.

4. There May Be Protection From Infection

As with most viruses, the host gains immunity from infection. Take the measles virus. A child has a 0.01 chance of dying from the measles, yet if they survive the virus, they have lifetime protection against the virus, a strengthened and more evolved immune system, and may even have more possible protection from a select few cancers.

Furthermore, it’s very questionable whether the MMR vaccine is effective. There is a long history of measles outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations. Children are required to get one shot, then the antibodies run out so they are required to get a second. A third one seems to be in the works. It’s not even clear if the vaccine is more dangerous than the measles or not.

Martin Kulldorff, a medical professor at Harvard university and vaccine safety expert recently tweeted,

After having protecting themselves while working class were exposed to the virus, the vaccinated #Zoomers now want #VaccinePassports where immunity from prior infection does not count, despite stronger evidence for protection. One more assault on working people. 

He also recently tweeted:

Trust in #vaccines is declining, but don’t blame the tiny group of anti-vaxxers. It is those pushing #VaccinePassports, arguing that all must be vaccinated, and those censoring vaccine discussions that are undermining trust in vaccines.

There are multiple studies hinting at the point the professor makes, that those who have been infected with covid may have immunity for years, and possibly even decades. For example, according to a new study authored by respected scientists at leading labs, individuals who recovered from the coronavirus developed “robust” levels of B cells and T cells (necessary for fighting off the virus) and “these cells may persist in the body for a very, very long time.” This is just one of many examples. There are studies that suggest infection to prior coronaviruses, which prior to COVID-19 circled the globe infecting hundreds of millions of people every single year, can also provide protection from COVID-19.

The Takeaway

At the end of the day, there are ample concerns about the COVID vaccine, its effectiveness, the safety of it in the short term and in the long term. Despite these concerns, the vaccine is heavily marketed as unquestionably safe and effective. A fifth category could have been added to this article, and that’s the ridicule and acknowledgments of other, cheap effective treatments that have shown to have a tremendous amount of success. It seems these treatments would have rendered the vaccine useless and unnecessary, but the vaccine is a multiple billion dollar product.

We have to consider these things in this day and age. Would the “powers that be” really prevent and ridicule treatments that could have saved many lives, and can save many lives and render it useless and dangerous, despite so much evidence that says otherwise, to make the vaccine perceived as the only solution.

Do we really want to live in a world where we give a small group of people the ability to mandate vaccines in order to have access to certain freedoms we enjoyed prior to COVID? Is this right? Is this ethical? If we allow them to do this, what else will we allow them to do in the future?

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Fifteen million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J’s) vaccine failed quality control after workers at a Baltimore manufacturing plant negligently combined ingredients from AstraZeneca and J&J’s COVID vaccine.

The mix-up forced regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines and prompted an investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

According to The New York Times, the plant is run by Emergent BioSolutions, a manufacturing partner with J&J and AstraZeneca, whose vaccine has yet to be authorized for use in the U.S.

Emergent has been cited repeatedly by the FDA for problems such as poorly trained employees, cracked vials and mold around one of its facilities, according to records obtained by the Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act.

AstraZeneca and J&J’s COVID vaccines employ the same technology which uses a version of a virus — known as a vector — that is transmitted into cells to make a protein that then stimulates the immune system to produce antibodies.

However, J&J’s and AstraZeneca’s vectors are biologically different and not interchangeable.

Federal officials said Emergent’s mistake was human error that went undiscovered for days until J&J’s quality control checks uncovered it, according to people familiar with the situation. By then, up to 15 million doses had been contaminated, reported The Indian Express.

The error does not affect any J&J doses currently being distributed and administered in the U.S., as those were produced in the Netherlands where operations have been fully approved by federal regulators.

“As with the manufacturing of any complex biologic medication or vaccine, the start-up for a new process includes test runs and quality checks to ensure manufacturing is validated and the end product meets our high-quality standards,” J&J said in a statement Wednesday. “This approach includes having dedicated specialists on the ground at the companies that are part of our global manufacturing network to support safety and quality.”

Details of the issue were identified and addressed with Emergent and the FDA, J&J said.

An FDA spokesperson told news outlets:

“FDA is aware of the situation, but we are unable to comment further. Questions about a firm’s manufacturing facilities should be directed to that firm.”

As reported by The Defender, J&J has never made a vaccine, but since entering the pharmaceutical market in 1959, the company has made a lot of headlines and has been fined billions of dollars for bad, including some illegal, behavior.

Developing a vaccine requires many years and necessitates the establishment of an R&D infrastructure vastly different than the structure required for conventional drug development. Yet the company was able to rush to market its first vaccine for a viral strain identified just 14 months ago.

J&J has a relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations and has a $1 billion deal with the U.S. government to provide 100 million doses of its Emergency Use Authorization experimental vaccine.

According to the FDA, J&J’s vaccine consists of a “replication-incompetent recombinant adenovirus type 26, a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and contains the following inactive ingredients: citric acid monohydrate, trisodium citrate dihydrate, ethanol, 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HBCD), polysorbate 80, sodium chloride, sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. The adenovirus is also grown in the PER.C6® aborted fetal cell line.

Polysorbate 80, an ingredient in J&J’s vaccine, is a suspected underlying cause of anaphylactic COVID vaccine adverse reactions. Studies show that polysorbate 80 disrupts the normally protective blood-brain barrier.

As The Defender Reported, the FDA authorized J&J’s single-dose COVID vaccine in late February with a reported overall efficacy rating of 66% for preventing “moderate to severe COVID-19.” The vaccine was only 42.3% effective about a month after getting the shot in people 60 or older who had comorbidities.

Although the FDA identified no safety concerns with J&J’s COVID vaccine, suspected vaccine injuries associated with the vaccine have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System since March 2 — the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

Violence Escalates on the Border Between Venezuela and Colombia

April 3rd, 2021 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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Once again, tensions are rising on the border between Venezuela and Colombia. Colombian paramilitary groups continue to use force to provoke, intimidate and encircle the Venezuelan government, serving the interests not only of Bogota, but of NATO – of which Colombia is an international partner.

On Thursday, two Venezuelan soldiers died after being hit by a landmine explosion during an operation near the border with Colombia. On the same occasion, nine Venezuelan combatants were injured and are being treated at a military hospital. The Venezuelan government has classified the case as a terrorist attack. Interestingly, the incident comes just after the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense announced the death and arrest of several Colombian paramilitaries in the border region, last Saturday.

These paramilitaries were members of irregular armed militias supported and financed both by the Colombian government and by its international partners (US and NATO) and since the beginning of the American crusade against the Maduro government, they have acted strongly on the border, carrying out attacks on soldiers of the Venezuelan armed forces and rehearsing a major invasion against the Bolivarian country. In response to Colombian provocations, the Maduro government launched the so-called “Operación Escudo Bolivariano 2021” (Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021), in March this year. According to official government data, the Operation has been successful in controlling the advance of the militias, but says it has difficulty mainly due to the ample aid received by these groups, which are financially and logistically supported by Bogota and Washington.

The Operation’s activities began on March 21 and have already killed 13 Colombians and four Venezuelans. Maduro says Bogotá has an interest in raising the confrontation to a conflict between the regular forces of both countries, which would be supported by the US Southern Command. Although these allegations are speculative, it is a statement that is consistent with the concrete data, considering the high degree of violence in the attacks by Colombian militias and the multifaceted military nature of Colombia.

It is necessary to understand that Colombia is a great military pluriverse, where regular and irregular armed forces coexist. Irregular forces are divided into paramilitary groups, guerrillas, criminal factions, drug cartels, mercenaries, political parties’ militias, among others. All of these organizations operate in parallel, controlling different regions and sometimes collaborating or fighting each other or the regular forces. With all this diversity of armed groups, the Colombian government does not immediately use its regular armed forces to serve its interests but calls the militias to carry out activities in an irregular manner, disguising the real intentions of the government.

These militias have ample firepower and receive abundant material aid, so that they manage to provoke their enemies strongly, however, they maintain an atmosphere of instability and uncertainties about the government’s plans, considering that it is not the regular armed forces that are in action. And this can be interpreted as a form of rehearsal for the future use of the armed forces. The mercenaries provoke Venezuela expecting responses at the same level of violence, so that Bogota then hardens the measures and can “justify” the use of its armed forces. Maduro, in denouncing this, demonstrates great strategic expertise and precisely for that reason the Venezuelan president has asked extreme caution to the forces of his country, so that they do not act with intensity beyond what is necessary and do not encourage a direct confrontation.

The fact that these tensions have been rising steadily in recent months shows that analysts who predicted a relief in anti-Venezuela policies (which were one of the marks of the Trump administration) with Biden’s election were wrong. The Democrat changed his speech in relation to the South American country and remains inert in the face of the unmeasured and unnecessary violence with which NATO-supported Colombian mercenaries have been working in the border areas, invading villages, and attacking Venezuelan military bases. Biden previously promised to try to negotiate a deal with Maduro so that new elections could be called in exchange for easing sanctions, however, after his election, the new president said he would not talk with Maduro in the short term, breaking his previous promise.

On American action in Colombia and support for irregular groups, Washington remains silent, when it should be held responsible internationally for stimulating conflicts and violating national sovereignty – which would be even more serious if investigations on the relations between groups supported by Bogota and Washington and the drug trafficking in South America were carried out, but it is something Washington tries to ignore in order to keep its accusation against Maduro of being a drug trafficker coherent.

Finally, as long as there is support from Washington and Bogota for mercenary groups, the violence will continue to escalate. Tensions are likely to reach an almost irreversible point in the near future, but it is too early to talk about a direct confrontation with regular forces.

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

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Selected Articles: The PCR False Positive Pseudo-Epidemic

April 2nd, 2021 by Global Research News

“Defender Europe 21”: The US Militarization of the Balkans. A Threat Against Russia and Serbia?

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, April 02 2021

24 March 2021 marks the commemoration of the illegal US-NATO war of aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In a bitter irony, a few days prior to March 24th, reports confirmed that the US army and NATO are once again beating the drums of war near the Russian border as well as in and around Serbia.

The Pending Collapse of the ‘Rules-based International Order’ Is an Existential Threat to the United States

By Scott Ritter, April 01 2021

For decades, America styled itself the ‘indispensable nation’ that led the world & it’s now seeking to sustain that role by emphasizing a new Cold War-style battle against ‘authoritarianism’. But it’s a dangerous fantasy.

By Dr. Mike Yeadon, April 02 2021

In Spring 2020 a novel coronavirus swept across the world: novel, but related to other viruses. In the UK, unknown at the time, around 50% of the population were already immune.

Tanzania’s Late President Magufuli: ‘Science Denier’ or Threat to Empire?

By Jeremy Loffredo and Whitney Webb, April 02 2021

While his COVID-19 policies have dominated media coverage regarding his disappearance and suspicious death, Tanzania’s John Magufuli was hated by the Western elites for much more than his rebuke of lockdowns and mask mandates.

Doctors and Scientists Accuse Medical Regulator of Downplaying COVID-19 Vaccine Dangers

By Doctors for COVID Ethics, April 01 2021

A group of scientists and doctors has today issued an open letter calling on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to answer urgent safety questions regarding COVID-19 vaccines, or withdraw the vaccines’ authorisation.

Belgium Must Lift ‘All COVID-19 Measures’ within 30 Days, Brussels Court Rules

By Maïthé Chini and Lauren Walker, April 02 2021

The Belgian State has been ordered to lift “all coronavirus measures” within 30 days, as the legal basis for them is insufficient, a Brussels court ruled on Wednesday.

Human Rights for Children: Beyond a Crime, Worldwide: The Immoral, Destructive Impacts of the Covid Measures on Our Children

By Peter Koenig, April 02 2021

What the absurd COVID measures do to the world is a crime but what they are doing to children is beyond a crime; it is totally immoral, destructive for our powerless children, and for the future of these children, as well as for society as a whole, as children are our societies’ future.

Syndrome of Thrombosis and Thrombocytopenia Occurring after Coronavirus Vaccination

By British Society for Haematology, April 02 2021

An expert team of our peers have recently been involved in diagnosing and managing a rare syndrome of thrombosis associated with low platelets which have been reported in a few cases.

‘What Other Country Would Do this to Its People?’ Cambodian Land Grab Victims Seek International Justice

By Gerald Flynn and Phoung Vantha, April 02 2021

“It started when some people from the government came around the community telling us that we were illegally occupying the land,” Chhae Kimsrour said in June 2020. “I’ve lived here since 1995, but six months later they came back and started filling in my lake. They said it was their land now”

GM Waxy Maize: The Gene-Edited Trojan Horse Is Moving Through the Gates

By Grain, April 02 2021

At least five countries– Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile and the US– have approved a variety of maize genetically modified (GM) with a genome editing technique called CRISPR, without subjecting the crop to the risk assessments and regulations for GM crops. Other countries could soon follow.

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At least five countries– Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile and the US– have approved a variety of maize genetically modified (GM) with a genome editing technique called CRISPR, without subjecting the crop to the risk assessments and regulations for GM crops. Other countries could soon follow.

The GM maize is produced by US-based Corteva, the world’s second largest seed company and fourth largest pesticides company. Corteva describes the variety as a “waxy corn” which, like conventional waxy corn varieties, produces a starch high in amylopectin and low in amylose. In this case, Corteva used genetic engineering to knock out the genes responsible for producing amylose from its non-waxy hybrid maize varieties.

A detailed profile of Corteva’s GM waxy corn was published this week by the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN).

Sign from field trial of Corteva’s GM waxy maize in Johnston, Indiana, US, 2017

Although Corteva uses transgenes and particle bombardment to develop its GM waxy maize, it claims that the crop should not be regulated as a GMO since the transgenic material is, according to the company, no longer present in the seeds that are sold. So far the relevant authorities in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile and the US have cleared the crop for commercial release on this basis, without subjecting it to safety assessments required of other GM crops. On the other hand, as noted by CBAN, “Corteva appears not to have applied for approval in the European Union where a 2018 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union requires genome edited crops to be subjected to the same stringent regulations as all genetically modified (GM) organisms.”

Corteva, which was created through the merger of Dow and DuPont’s agricultural divisions, has openly stated that it is using GM waxy corn to clear the way for the introduction of more GM crops produced with genome editing techniques (also known as “gene editing”). The CBAN profile highlights multiple documents and quotes from company executives that show that it deliberately chose a crop that it could bring to market without much attention or risks of liability.

“The reason we are working on waxy corn is to have this conversation, because [we needed] to come forward with something that had a long history of safe use as a trait, [that] has important industrial uses both in food […], and in [other] industrial application, as well as ethanol,” Robert Meeley, Senior Research Scientist at Corteva, told delegates of the OECD Conference on Genome Editing in 2018. “We needed to make something quick and have this conversation now, in order to get it out on the market.”

In the US, where Corteva intends to start commercial cultivation, waxy maize is a minor crop grown almost entirely for food starch and some industrial products under identity preservation contracts with buyers. For the company, therefore, there is minimal risk that the introduction of its GM waxy maize will generate a public backlash or result in lawsuits from contamination. A successful introduction in the US will set the stage for commercial cultivation and imports in other countries where regulations on GM crops and the new genome edited GM crops are still in flux. This includes neighbouring Mexico where it is not clear if the government’s ambiguous decree on glyphosate and GM maize will put any restrictions on genome edited maize varieties. Corteva currently sells conventional waxy maize hybrid seeds in Mexico through its Pioneer Hi-Bred subsidiary.

Another major reason why Corteva chose to start its genome edited crop rollout with “waxy corn” is because it is a maize, and maize is by far the most lucrative crop for seed sales in the world. Even the market for waxy maize seeds is significant and growing, especially in China and other parts of East and Southeast Asia where waxy maize, also known as sticky maize, is a major food crop, and the main type of maize that people consume directly. Last year, Chinese researchers used a similar technique to develop their own CRISPR waxy maize hybrids.

Farmers in China developed waxy maize hundreds of years ago and today there are thousands of farmer seed varieties of waxy maize grown across Asia. But seed companies like Corteva are not interested in these open-pollinated farmer varieties. Their only interest is in selling hybrid maize seeds that cannot be saved by farmers. The problem for seed companies, however, is that waxy maize is not easy to breed as a hybrid. The process is complicated, time consuming and tends to result in a “yield drag” when compared with their non-waxy counterparts.

Corteva’s only innovation with its GM waxy maize is that it used genome editing to avoid a “yield drag” and to shave a year off of the time it would have taken to achieve the same results through conventional hybrid breeding. This is hardly a big game changer for farmers. But it’s huge for seed companies, particularly those that control the patent rights over the technology. It means that they can churn out new hybrid varieties of maize and other crops more quickly and at less cost than their competitors, especially if they can avoid the regulations and segregation requirements that exist for the first wave of GM crops. In this way, Corteva and other corporations investing heavily in genome editing are banking on another round of consolidation, similar to what happened with the first wave of GM crops, that will give them even greater control over global seed markets.

But waxy maize is unlikely to convince a sceptical public of the benefits of genome editing. For this, Corteva has another PR trick up its sleeve. Over the past five years it has been partnering with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico to develop hybrid maize varieties for Africa through genome editing. The programme is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and there is a revolving door tightly integrating all three institutions.1 Corteva and CIMMYT claim genome editing can cut the time required to breed hybrids in half and they plan to release a first batch of GM hybrids resistant to maize lethal necrosis in Kenya by 2025. Kenya is currently drafting legislation to regulate genome edited crops “using procedures in Argentina as a model”.

For a technology that’s being sold by the seed giants as non-GMO, it’s hard to see any difference from their old GMO playbook.

The CBAN profile on Corteva’s GM waxy corn is here and CBAN’s July 2020 report on the risks and unexpected consequences from genome edited crops is here. For more on the particular risks for Africa, see African Centre for Biodiversity, “Genome editing — The next GM techno fix doomed to fail“.

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Notes

1 Neal Gutterson, Corteva’s Chief Technology Officer until last year, was on CIMMYT’s board from 2013 until 2019, when he became a board member of CIMMYT’s larger international structure, the CGIAR System. Another of the lead Crispr researchers at Corteva, Renee Lafitte, used to work at CIMMYT and the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) and is now the Deputy Director for Crop R&D in the Agricultural Development program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

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The UK’s prestigious Keele University is suddenly shutting down the work of world-renowned aluminum expert, Christopher Exley, Ph.D. Keele is aggressively blocking donations for aluminum research and suppressing any science that exposes the toxic side of the vaccine industry.

University officials shut down Exley’s website and are actively blocking any charitable funds to his research team. These philanthropic funds have been used for nearly four decades to support Exley’s research on the bio-inorganic chemistry of aluminum and to better understand aluminum’s role in neurodegenerative diseases. Exley’s passion is “to understand aluminum in all living things” and to show how aluminum’s impact on human health represents “the greatest untold story of science.” Exley’s work has been cited in Alzheimer’s research, among other important public health issues. His research group has published important scientific insights in more than 200 peer-reviewed publications.

Brave researcher is targeted and suppressed for work on aluminum toxicity and vaccines

Aluminum is Christopher Exley’s life work, and Keele University has supported it for multiple decades, but something has been changing over the past five years. According to a chapter in Exley’s 2020 book, “Imagine You Are an Aluminum Atom: Discussions with Mr. Aluminum,” the institutional environment at Keele University shifted “abruptly” about five years ago. Along with a major overhaul in the senior management, the University began to accept major donations from new sources and gave the pharmaceutical industry power over the science department.

In 2021, Keele University’s dean of natural sciences wrote to Exley and explained that “the university will no longer provide facilities to solicit or enable restricted charitable donations” to Exley’s research group, effectively banning any research on “the bio-inorganic chemistry of aluminum and its links to neurodegenerative disease.” The ban includes a stoppage of all “donations from individuals, groups, charities and foundations.” The University most recently refused a $15,000 donation from Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

For years, Exley has studied various routes of aluminum exposure in humans, from dietary intake to topical application to inhalation and most notably, injected aluminum (from vaccines). Children’s Health Defense supports Exley’s research efforts, for this science can be used to improve consumer products, cosmetics, vaccines, and help protect children from aluminum toxicity.

The University rejected Robert F. Kennedy’s Jr.’s donation because “prominent public figures or foundations could place the institution in an ethical and reputational predicament.” The University’s vice chancellor for research and enterprise wrote that this “could generate potentially negative media coverage and may also jeopardize the strong relationships it holds with its existing major funders and partners.”

Bill Gate’s money and influence is infiltrating university research, shutting down scientific progress on vaccine safety

After Keele University shut down Exley’s research and confessed it was done to appease their major funders; it became clear who was pulling the strings at the University. Over the past five years, the university adopted new priorities and “strategic research areas” that support “Global Health.” The major funder behind this new push is none other than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As the Gates priorities kicked in, Keele University partnered up with UK’s largest pharmacy company (Well Pharmacy), and gave them a special place on campus.

The University’s Pharmacy School was radically transformed in 2019 as well, and was reconfigured as the School of Pharmacy and Bioengineering. The pharmaceutical and biotech industries were given precedence and exclusive influence over the science and technology department at Keele.

Exley’s research was quickly targeted by the growing pharmaceutical influence at the university because Exley’s research team was brave enough to study the health impacts of aluminum adjuvants in vaccines. A 2021 hit-piece published in the Guardian labeled Exley as “anti-vaccine” for wanting more research on the safety of aluminum in vaccines. No stranger to these Big Pharma attacks, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote to Keele in 2020: “Allowing industry to quash science for fear that it might expose profitable practices as harmful to public health is offensive to every tenet of academic freedom, scientific integrity, ethics and morality.”

Exley’s brave research team is currently set to be disbanded and disposed by Aug. 31, 2021, as powerful pharmaceutical interests and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continue to bully scientists and shut down scientific progress on vaccine safety.

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The Belgian State has been ordered to lift “all coronavirus measures” within 30 days, as the legal basis for them is insufficient, a Brussels court ruled on Wednesday.

The League for Human Rights had filed the lawsuit several weeks ago and challenged Belgium’s system of implementing the measures using Ministerial Decrees, which means it is done without any input from parliament.

The judge gave the Belgian State 30 days to provide a sound legal basis, or face a penalty of €5,000 per day that this period is exceeded, with a maximum limit of €200,000, reports Le Soir.

The current coronavirus measures are based on the Civil Safety Act of 2007, which enable the State to react quickly in “exceptional circumstances,” but the judge has now ruled that these laws cannot serve as a basis for the Ministerial Decrees.

“The judge ruled that the principle of legality has been violated because the current way of working is not foreseeable enough,” Kati Verstrepen of the Human Rights League confirmed to VRT, adding the consequences are “not so dramatic” that from one day to the next, the measures would no longer be valid.

For the time being, the current coronavirus measures will not change, and the verdict is currently being studied by the office of Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden, reports De Standaard.

Appealing against the court ruling is still possible, but as it concerns a summary judgment, an appeal would not suspend the execution of the judgment.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Chamber will debate Belgium’s upcoming pandemic law, which is supposed to provide “a permanent legal basis, for taking this kind of restrictive measures during a pandemic.”

Several legal experts already pressed the Belgian State to bring forward the law as soon as possible to avoid judges cancelling fines written out for violations of the measures, and this ruling only increases the pressure to quickly adopt it.

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Official data from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that so far in 2021, 1,755 people died from the Chinese virus vaccine, a figure that well exceeds the 994 people who died in the last 10 years as a result of vaccination.

The data was released by the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a database that contains “information on unverified reports of adverse events (illnesses, health problems, and/or symptoms) following immunization with vaccines licensed in the U.S.”

Of the 1,755 deaths, 1,431 were reported in persons older than 65 years of age.

The Moderna vaccine was responsible for 938 deaths and 822 deaths were attributed to the Johnson & Johnson laboratory.

According to the CDC, more than 55 million people in the United States have received the CCP Virus vaccine.

Although the number of deaths represents only 0.003% of the total number of people vaccinated, it is 71 times more compared to the number of deaths in the last 10 years.

The European Medicines Agency reported more than 2,700 deaths from the vaccine.

In addition to direct deaths caused by vaccines, thousands of other adverse effects are also periodically reported.

Earlier this month, Richard Terrel, a man from Goochland County, Virginia, showed a local media outlet how a few days after getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, he had a severe allergic reaction.

“It all just happened so fast. My skin peeled off,” Terrell said. “It’s still coming off on my hands now.”

“I began to feel a little discomfort in my armpit and then a few days later I began to get an itchy rash, and then after that I began to swell and my skin turned red,” Terrell explained.

The images are truly frightening.

“It was stinging, burning and itching,” Terrell said as he described the pain. “Whenever I bent my arms or legs, like the inside of my knee, it was very painful where the skin was swollen and was rubbing against itself.”

Despite these genuine concerns about the adverse effects of the CCP Virus vaccines, governments around the world continue to insist on making vaccination mandatory, with the most recent proposal for a vaccine passport that will force people to be vaccinated in order to lead a normal life.

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We bring to the attention of our readers an important article by CNBC, with link to the complete article.

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Key Points

  • Mutations of the coronavirus could render current vaccines ineffective within a year, according to a survey of experts in 28 countries.
  • Of those surveyed, almost a third gave a time frame of nine months or less.
  • Fewer than 1 in 8 said they believed that mutations would never render the current vaccines ineffective.

Mutations of the coronavirus could render current vaccines ineffective within a year, according to a majority of epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists surveyed by the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

The survey of 77 experts from some of the world’s leading academic institutions across 28 countries found that almost a third gave a time frame of nine months or less. Fewer than 1 in 8 said they believed that mutations would never render the current vaccines ineffective.

Continue reading the CNBC article here.

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An expert team of our peers have recently been involved in diagnosing and managing a rare syndrome of thrombosis associated with low platelets which have been reported in a few cases. At the moment, any causal association with coronavirus vaccination has not been established. However, if you identify patients with this syndrome in proximity to coronavirus vaccination, it is very important that you complete the online yellow card – this will trigger a request from MHRA for further details.

The cases are unusual because, despite the thrombocytopenia, there is progressive thrombosis, primarily venous, with a high preponderance of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. Some arterial thrombotic events have also been noted. Testing typically reveals low fibrinogen and very raised D-Dimer levels above the level typically expected in venous thromboembolism. Antibodies to platelet factor 4 (PF4) have been identified, hence there are similarities to heparin-induced thrombocytopenia despite the absence of prior exposure to heparin treatment. The anti PF4 antibodies can be detected by the ELISA HIT assay but not always by the AccuStar assay.

It is important that the correct management is applied to prevent the progression of thrombosis. Of critical note, platelet transfusions should be avoided. Interim guidance on diagnosis and management can be found here, as can contact details for advice from the Expert Haematology Panel.

As this is an emerging area of practice, please continue to check back for updates and to monitor the literature for publications.

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While his COVID-19 policies have dominated media coverage regarding his disappearance and suspicious death, Tanzania’s John Magufuli was hated by the Western elites for much more than his rebuke of lockdowns and mask mandates. In particular, his efforts towards nationalizing the country’s mineral wealth threatened to deprive the West of control over resources deemed essential to the new green economy.

Less than 2 weeks ago, Tanzanian Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan delivered the news that her country’s president, John Pombe Magufuli, had died of heart failure. President Magufuli had been described as missing since the end of February, with several anti-government parties circulating stories that he had fallen ill with COVID-19. During his presidency, Magufuli had consistently challenged neocolonialism in Tanzania, whether it manifested through the exploitation of his country’s natural resources by predatory multinationals or the West’s influence over his country’s food supply.

In the months leading up to his death, Magufuli had become better known and particularly demonized in the West for opposing the authority of international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) in determining his government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. However, Magufuli had spurned many of the same interests and organizations angered by his response to COVID for years, having kicked out Bill Gates-funded trials of genetically-modified crops and more recently angering some of the most powerful mining companies in the West, companies with ties to the World Economic Forum and the Forum’s efforts to guide the course of the 4th industrial revolution.

Indeed, more threatening than his recent COVID controversies was the threat Magufuli posed to foreign control over the world’s largest, ready-to-develop nickel deposit, a metal essential to electric car batteries and thus the current effort to usher in an electric, autonomous vehicle revolution. For instance, just a month before he disappeared, Magufuli had signed an agreement to begin developing that nickel deposit, a deposit that had been previously co-owned by Barrick Gold and Glencore, the commodity giant deeply tied to Israel’s Mossad, until Magufuli revoked their licenses for the project in 2018.

Running afoul of the most powerful corporate and banking cartels followed then by the mysterious onset of sudden regime change would normally garner considerable coverage from anti-imperialist independent media outlets, which recently covered similar events in Bolivia that led to the removal of Evo Morales from power. However, the very outlets that have extensively covered Western-backed regime change efforts for years have been entirely silent on the very convenient death of Magufuli. Presumably, their silence is related to Magufuli’s flouting of COVID-19 narrative orthodoxy, as these same outlets have largely promoted the official narrative of the pandemic.

Yet, regardless of whether one agrees with Magufuli’s response to COVID, his sudden departure and Tanzania’s new leadership is a defeat for a widely popular domestic movement that sought to mitigate and reverse the centuries-long exploitation of Tanzania by the West. Now, with Magufuli’s lengthy disappearance followed by his apparent sudden death from heart failure, the country’s future is now set to be determined by Tanzanian politicians with deep ties to the oligarch-beholden United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

In contrast to Magufuli, who routinely stood up to predatory corporations and imperialist designs on his country, Samia Suhulhu and Tanzanian opposition politician Tundu Lissu are poised to offer up their country’s resources, and their population, on the altar of the Western elite-driven 4th industrial revolution.

Magufuli’s celebrated rise and his clashes with the West

Magufuli was first elected with his running mate and now president of Tanzania, Samia Suhulu, back in 2015 with 58% of the vote. At first, the president was met with lavish praise from the same Western media outlets that would later seek to demonize him. For instance, a BBC report from 2016 reflected on Magufuli’s first year in office and noted his 96% approval rating. The report also quoted political analyst Kitila Mumbo, who remarked, “there is no doubt that President Magufuli is very popular among many ordinary Tanzanians” and added that “the president’s main promise of extending free education to secondary school, which came into effect in January, has been well received.”

Image on the right: Running mates John Magufuli and Samia Suhulu on a 2015 campaign flier. Source: 2015 FILE PHOTO

Also in 2016, CNN had reported that “the Tanzanian public has gone wild for its new President John Magufuli” and that “after sweeping to victory in October 2015, Magufuli has embarked on a remorseless purge of corruption.” The article reported that Magufuli had inspired a new term, as seen in Tanzanians’ social media posts:

“ … ‘Magufulify’ – defined as: ‘To render or declare an action faster or cheaper; 2. to deprive [public officials] of their capacity to enjoy life at taxpayers’ expense; 3. to terrorize lazy and corrupt individuals in society.’”

Indeed, Magufuli’s term was characterized by making decisions that benefited the majority of Tanzanians, largely at the expense of foreign corporations but also by overhauling a government known for its entrenched corruption and absenteeism prior to Magufuli’s rise. His administration cut the salaries of the executives at state-owned companies, as well as his own salary, from $15,000 to $4,000 USD. Some State parades and celebrations were reduced or cancelled to cover the expenses of public hospitals.

Healthcare had long been one of Magufuli’s priorities, and the life expectancy of the country significantly increased every year he was in office. In addition, in the previous 50 years of Tanzanian independence, only 77 district hospitals were constructed, whereas during the past 4 years alone, 101 such hospitals were constructed and equipped with local funds. By July 2020, the country had grown from a so-called lower income country to a middle income country, per the World Bank.

A recent report by the hawkish, US establishment think tank, the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), was highly critical of Magufuli, but noted the following about his political philosophy:

“Magufuli, who subscribes to his own homegrown “Tanzania first” philosophy, believes that Tanzania has been cheated out of profit and wealth by exploitative mabeberu (“imperialists”) since independence. To secure populist support, Magufuli has fashioned his agenda as a continuation of the socialist vision of Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who advocated self-reliance, an intolerance to corruption, and a strong nationalist character.”

Magufuli’s various conflicts with the mabeberu transpired throughout his presidency, targeting various projects and business ventures of corporations and oligarchs that have worked to exploit much of the Global South for decades. For example, in late 2018, Tanzania’s government ordered a stop to all ongoing field trials on genetically modified (GM) crops and the destruction of all plants grown as part of those trials. Those trials were being conducted by a partnership called the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project, which was a collaboration between Monsanto and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, a non-profit funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, GM seed/agrochemical giant Syngenta, PepsiCo and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), long known to be a cut-out for the CIA. Then, in January of 2021, a month before Magufuli’s disappearance, Tanzania’s agriculture ministry not only announced a cancellation of all “research trials involving genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country” for the second time, it also announced plans to institute new biosafety regulations aimed at protecting Tanzania’s food sovereignty by scrutinizing western GM seed imports.

Historically, the US has been particularly harsh to countries that resist the integration of GM biotech into their food systems. According to a State Department cable from 2007 published by Wikileaks, Craig Stapleton, then-US Ambassador to France, advised the US to prepare for economic war with countries unwilling to introduce Monsanto’s GM corn seeds into their agricultural sectors. He recommended the US “calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the E.U.” for the bloc’s resistance to approving some GM products. In another cable from 2009, a US diplomat stationed in Germany relayed intelligence on Bavarian political parties to several US federal agencies and the US Secretary of Defense, telling them which parties opposed Monsanto’s M810 corn seed and spoke of “tactics that the US could impose to resolve the opposition.”

The US government’s use of food as a weapon for imperialist agendas became de factopolicy when Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State during the Nixon administration. During that period, a classified report was produced by the State Department that argued that the population of the developing world threatened US national security and posited that food aid be used as an “instrument of national power” to advance US empire.

A roadblock for the Ruling Class’ “green” future

Magufuli’s role in robbing Big Ag of a foothold in Tanzania a month before his disappearance and death certainly casts suspicion on the circumstances surrounding his demise. Yet, if that weren’t enough, Magufuli, during the exact same time frame, greatly angered the most powerful commodity corporations in the world across the sectors of mining, oil and natural gas.

Particularly damaging to foreign corporate interests and agendas was Magufuli’s targeting of the foreign-dominated mining sector in Tanzania, which contains some of the world’s largest deposits of minerals essential to 4th industrial revolution-related technologies. With 500,000 tonnes of nickel, 75,000 tonnes of copper, and 45,000 tonnes of cobalt, Tanzania sits on a mountain of mineral wealth and, more specifically, minerals needed for next-generation batteries and hardware that are themselves essential to the effort to rapidly implement “smart” infrastructure and automation globally. Within Africa, Tanzania has the continent’s second largest mining sector, second only to South Africa.

In the years prior to Magufuli’s rise, Tanzania had offered relatively low tax rates and little regulatory oversight for mining companies. Yet, in 2017, Magufuli declaredeconomic warfare” on foreign mining companies and his administration followed through on the declaration, passing two laws that provided the government with a much greater share of the revenue from the exploitation of Tanzania’s natural resources. This, of course, came at the expense of foreign mining conglomerates. The new legislation also gave the government the right to renegotiate and/or revoke existing mining licenses that had been awarded prior to Magufuli’s presidency.

Soon after, Tanzania’s government took aim at Acacia Mining, which is now owned by Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold, and slapped them with $190 billion in fines for unpaid taxes and penalties. “It shouldn’t happen that we have all this wealth, sit on it, while others come and benefit from it by cheating us,” Magufuli said of the decision. “We needinvestors, but not this kind of exploitation. We are supposed to share profits.” In 2018, the administration went after Acacia again, fining them $2.4 million for contaminating local water supplies in residential areas.

The signing of the Kabanga Nickel Framework Agreement in January 2021. Source: https://www.kabanganickel.com/

2018 was also the year that Magufuli’s biggest rift with powerful mining corporations took place, one that potentially influenced his disappearance and subsequent death. The Kabanga nickel project, the largest, development-ready nickel deposit in the world, had been owned jointly by Canada’s Barrick Gold and commodities giant Glencore. In May 2018, Magufuli’s administration revoked the Barrick-Glencore license for the project, along with several others that included other nickel, gold, silver, copper and rare earth mining projects.

Angering Glencore in particular is a risky business. The commodities giant was originally founded by Marc Rich, an infamous asset for Israel’s Mossad who allowed Glencore profits to be used to finance covert intelligence activities. Rich and Glencore’s intelligence ties are discussed in greater detail in Part IV of Whitney Webb’s series on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Today, Glencore is closely linked with Nat Rothschild, the son and heir of the scion of the British-based branch of the elite banking family, who purchased a $40 million stake in the company and was largely responsible for orchestrating Simon Murray’s appointment as Glencore’s chairman as well as his close relationship with Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg.

Then, in January 2021, a month before Magufuli disappeared, the Kabanga Nickel project went forward without Glencore and Barrick Gold, with Tanzania successfully negotiating joint ownership of the mine with a company set up by Norwegian millionaire Peter Smedvig and two of his associates. Unlike the Barrick-Glencore project, in which Tanzania’s government had no financial stake, the new project gave Tanzania a 16% ownership stake in the mine, which is now required by law following Magufuli’s reform of the country’s mining sector.

The loss of Kabanga was clearly a grave one for Barrick Gold and Glencore given the central role nickel and this specific deposit in Tanzania are set to play in the production and implementation of “smart” technologies. Nickel, among other uses, is a key component of the next-generation batteries used in “smart” technologies, specifically in electric vehicles. As a result, the demand for nickel is projected to rise dramatically in the next few years, in part due to the current effort to phase out most motor vehicles and replace them with ones that are both electric and self-driving. The importance of nickel to the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution has been underscored by the World Economic Forum, which estimates that demand for high-purity nickel for EV battery production “will increase by a factor of 24 in 2030 compared to 2018 levels.” In addition, last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that “nickel is the biggest concern for electric car batteries.”

In addition to Tanzania’s valuable nickel reserves, it can be argued that Tanzania’s other most significant mineral wealth lies in its graphite reserves, which rank as the 5th largest in the world. In 2018, Oxford Business Group estimated that Tanzania would become one of the top three graphite producers on the planet. With the World Bank estimating that graphite demand will increase 500% in the next 30 years, Tanzania now holds a strong bargaining position in the global market. The global lithium-ion battery market is “expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.0% from 2020 to 2027,” and these batteries usually require both nickel and graphite, both of which are plentiful under Tanzania. As Elon Musk has put it, “lithium-ion batteries should be called nickel graphite batteries.”

Last year, Musk had tweeted that “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it,” in response to accusations that the US government had backed the 2019 coup in Bolivia so that Musk’s Tesla could acquire rights to the world’s largest lithium reserves, another mineral critical to electric vehicle battery production. A few months before Musk’s infamous tweet, the foreign minister of Bolivia’s coup government had written a letter to Musk that stated that “any corporation that you or your company can provide to our country will be gratefully welcomed” in relation to the country’s mining sector. These incidents underscore US empire’s current willingness to engage in regime change to ensure control of mineral deposits considered essential to emerging technologies and the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Image below: Logo for the latest iteration of the Kabanga Nickel mining project. Source: https://www.kabanganickel.com/

In the case of Tanzania, it is worth noting that Glencore, which had its ownership of the Kabanga nickel deposit revoked by Magufuli, is closely tied to the World Economic Forum and is part of the Forum’s Global Battery Alliance as well as its Mining and Metals Blockchain Initiative, both of which focus on supply chains for minerals deemed essential to the 4th Industrial Revolution. Also of interest is the fact that Tundu Lissu, the Magufuli government’s most vocal critic and a main source for all mainstream media Tanzania reporting, was formerly employed by the World Resources Institute (WRI), a US-based non-profit and “strategic partner” of the World Economic Forum. The WRI aims to build “clean energy markets” and “value supply chains,” supply chains which will inevitably depend on cheaply sourced raw materials like nickel, graphite, and cobalt.

The World Resource Institute has received no less than $7.1 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and, according to the WRI donor page, they’ve received no less than $750,000 from the West’s most powerful corporate actors including Shell, Citibank, The Rockefeller Foundation, Google, Microsoft, The Open Society Foundation, USAID, and the World Bank. Lissu praised news of Magufuli’s sudden death as a “relief” and an “opportunity for a new beginning” in Tanzania. Tellingly, he also spoke very positively of the country’s future under Magufuli’s Vice President and current President Samia Suhulu, suggesting that she will take the country in a direction very different than that of her predecessor.

Thabit Jacob, a Tanzanian academic at Denmark’s Roskilde University was quoted in UpStream as saying that Rostam Aziz — one of Tanzania’s wealthiest businessmen and ex-parliament member who had a major falling out with Magufuli over tax policy— could soon become a key player in the new government, “meaning big business will play a bigger role” in the country’s future. Rostam owns Caspian Mining, the single largest Tanzanian mining firm and a frequent contractor for Barrick Gold.

COVID-19 response met with foreign hostility 

Under the Magufuli administration, Tanzania’s COVID-19 response policies ran counter to the international consensus, with the country declining to implement any major lockdowns or mask mandates. It should be noted that even the CFR relayed that these decisions had the democratic support of the masses, writing that “on-the-street sentiment suggests many Tanzanians agree with the government’s light-touch approach.”

Magufuli was also skeptical of adopting COVID-19 vaccines before they could be investigated and certified by Tanzania’s own experts, warning that they could pose safety concerns due to their rushed development. “The Ministry of Health should be careful, they should not hurry to try these vaccines without doing research … We should not be used as ‘guinea pigs’”, Magufuli had stated in January. “We are not yet satisfied that those vaccines have been clinically proven safe,” Tanzanian Health Minister Dr. Dorothy Gwajima later remarked at a news conference.

Magufuli refused to immediately agree to receive COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX, a public-private partnership between Gates’ GAVI and the World Health Organization which aims to deliver 270 million COVID vaccines – with 269 million of them being the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – to the world “as soon as they’re available.” In recent weeks, major safety issues with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine have been identified by national regulatory bodies across Europe and Asia and numerous countries have suspended its use.

However, such nuance regarding the safety of “vaccine aid” was absent from the now ubiquitous mainstream narrative of Magufuli being “anti-science.” That narrative was first established as early as May 2020, when Magufuli exposed the inaccuracy of imported PCR testing kits after a goat, a piece of fruit, and motor oil all received ‘positive’ test results from the supplied kits. “There is something happening … we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this nation,” he proclaimed in a national address.

After this address, Bloomberg called Magufuli the “COVID-denying president.” Foreign Policy went as far as to dub the President as “Denialist in Chief” and asked if he was even “more dangerous than COVID-19.” Magufuli became the Western press’s poster boy for “COVID denial” while Tanzania became “the country that’s rejecting the vaccine.

However, in the months that followed May 2020, the accuracy of PCR testing kits have been called into question, not only by mainstream media, but also “authoritative” global health bodies like the World Health Organization, thereby validating Magufuli’s initial critique. In a story titled “Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be”, the New York Times reported that the “standard [PCR] tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus. . . and are not likely contagious.”

In November 2020, a landmark court case in Portugal ruled that the PCR test used to diagnose COVID-19 was not fit for that purpose, ruling that “a single positive PCR test cannot be used as an effective diagnosis of infection.” In their ruling, judges Margarida Ramos de Almeida and Ana Paramés referred to a study by Jaafar et al., which found that the accuracy of some PCR tests was only about 3%, meaning up to 97% of positive results could be false positives.

By December 2020, the World Health Organization had confirmed that the PCR test was ripe for false positives, warning that they could easily lead to COVID-free individuals receiving positive test results. The position that PCR testing kits are unreliable is not new science, as a 2007 New York Times article titled “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic that Wasn’t” wrote that the sensitivity of PCR testing kits “makes false positives likely, and when hundreds or thousands of people are tested, false positives can make it seem like there is an epidemic.” In addition, large batches of PCR test kits in the early phase of the COVID-19 crisis were contaminated with COVID-19 prior to their use, which was later found to have significantly skewed the number of cases reported in the early phases of the pandemic in the US and beyond.

Numerous examples of vaccines with severe adverse effects being pushed onto the Tanzanian people, combined with the widely reported safety issues surrounding the AstraZeneca/ Oxford vaccine that Tanzania would receive through COVAX, make the Western media’s “anti-science” characterization of Magufuli particularly inappropriate.

For example, as far back as 1977, studies published in The Lancet established that the risks of the diphtheria tetanus pertussis (DTP) vaccine are greater than the risks associated with contracting wild pertussis. After mounting evidence linking the drug to braindamage, seizures, and even death, the U.S. phased it out in the 1990s and replaced it with a safer version called DTaP.  A 2017 study funded by the Danish government concluded that more African children were dying at the hands of the deadly DTP vaccinethan by the diseases it prevented. Researchers examined data from Guinea Bissau and concluded that boys were dying at 3.9 times the rate of those who had not received the shot, while girls suffered almost 10 times (9.98) the death rate. GAVI, subsidized by USAID and the Gates Foundation, has dumped over $27 million worth of the dangerously outdated DTP vaccine onto the Tanzanian health system as of today.

Furthermore, as detailed by Unlimited Hangout in December, the developers of the Oxford vaccine (the vaccine Tanzania would receive under COVAX), are deeply entangled with the eugenics movement and engage in ethically questionable activities regarding the intersection of race and science to this day. In 2020, The Wellcome Trust, the research institute where both of the lead developers of the Oxford vaccine work, was accused by the University of Cape Town of illegally exploiting hundreds of Africans by stealing their DNA without consent.

Also concerning is the fact that more than 20 European countries have halted use of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine due to a possible link to blood clot disorders and strokes. Even the New York Times has questioned if the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is a viable candidate, particularly for Africa. According to a Times article from February, South Africa halted use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford coronavirus vaccine after evidence emerged that the vaccine did not protect clinical trial volunteers from mild or moderate illness.”

A recent election victory “amid claims of fraud” 

In October 2020, Magufuli was reelected to a second, five year term, this time gaining a resounding 84.39% of vote. At the time, the US government-funded outlet Voice of America (VOA) quoted one Tanzanian, Edward Mbise, who told the outlet that “[they] all expected [Magufuli] to win due to what he has done … he has accomplished so many things that you can’t even finish listing all of them.”

However, Tundu Lissu, the leader of Magufuli’s main opposition party, alleged that the election had been fraudulent, but provided no evidence. According to the same VOA article, Lissu called for “citizens [to] take action to ensure all election results are changed.”

Lissu’s accusations of fraud were widely reprinted by Western media despite the lack of evidence. A BBC article was titled “President Magufuli Wins Election Amid Fraud Claims.The Guardian, funded heavily by the Gates Foundation, similarly claimed that “Tanzania’s President wins re-election Amid Claims of Fraud.” In the US, the New York Timespublished a story called, “As Tanzania’s President Wins a Second Term, Opposition Calls for Protests.”

Neither mention of Magufuli’s approval ratings nor quotes from actual Tanzanian people were anywhere to be found in these articles, details which had been plentiful in Western mainstream media coverage of his first election victory. Quotes that did appear were usually from Lissu, now exiled in Belgium, or other members of his party.

Not long after Lissu’s claims had been uncritically repeated by major Western media outlets, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced sanctions on his last day in charge of the State Department that targeted Tanzanian officials who had allegedly been “responsible for or complicit in undermining the 2020 Tanzanian general election”. It is worth pointing out that the similarities between the election fraud accusations in Tanzania and those made in Bolivia just prior to the US-backed November 2019 coup are considerable.

Two weeks later, on February 5th, 2021, the Center for Strategic & International Studiessuggested that the US might, as it often does, fund Magufuli’s political opposition, openly suggesting that the “the Biden administration has an opportunity to increase direct engagement with Tanzanian opposition politicians and civil society groups,”  using Magufuli’s “dangerous” approach to COVID-19 as public justification.

That same week, the Guardian’s Global Development section (made possible through a partnership with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) published an article titled, “It’s time for Africa to rein in Tanzania’s anti-vaxxer president.” Predictably, this article, and others like it, sought to paint the African leader as a crazy conspiracy theorist, but left out the fact that Magufuli had earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in Chemistry before being elected president in 2015.

On March 9th, Tundu Lissu, the opposition leader formerly employed by the Washington-based and Wall Street-funded World Resource Institute, contended that Magufuli was critically ill with COVID-19. In a series of tweets, Lissu asserted that the then-president had been flown first to Kenya and then India to be treated for the virus. “We urge the government to come out publicly and say where is the president and what is his condition,” John Mnyika, another opposition leader, also publicly stated similar claims. The very first paper to run the story that Magufuli had COVID-19 was The Nation, a relatively new Kenyan newspaper that has received $4 million from the US-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Meanwhile, the Magufuli government repeatedly dismissed these claims as fake news. “He is fine and doing his responsibilities,” insisted Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa on March 12. “A head of state is not a head of a jogging club who should always be around taking selfies,” Constitutional Affairs Minister Mwigulu Nchemba had said at the time.

On March 11, just days before the announcement of Magufuli’s death and Suhulu’s appointment to the post of President, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the influential think tank closely tied to the Rockefeller family and the US political elite, suggested that a “bold figure within the ruling party [i.e. Magufuli’s party] could capitalize on the current episode to gain popularity and begin to reverse course …”

While a swift leadership transition in Tanzania might seem like an unexpected surprise to western financial interests, groups in the US who specialize in foreign meddling and regime change operations had been at work in Tanzania ever since Magufuli’s initial election victory.  The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government think/do tank which aims to “support freedom around the world,” pumped $1.1 million into different Tanzanian opposition groups and causes over the last few years. One co-founder of NED, Allen Weinstein, once disclosed to the Washington Post that “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Carl Gershman, NED’s other co-founder, once told the New York Times that “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA . . .and that’s why the endowment was created.”

NED’s recent operations in Tanzania included projects to “organize young people to promote reform, and introduce them to new media tools that can assist in their efforts”, “recruit and train young artists to convey stories about governance”, financially support an opposition-friendly “satirical” news production that provides humorous commentary on current events to “encourage conversations”, as well as financially supporting the production of a “comprehensive televised civic education campaign” aimed at both COVID-related public awareness and “voter education.” The grantee for the funds, the Tanzania Bora Initiative, whose slogan is “transforming mindsets, influencing cultures” boasts of “empowering over 50 young Tanzanian political candidates.” The Tanzania Bora Initiative was also heavily supported by USAID while Magufuli was in office.

One wonders what effects these NED and USAID-funded efforts would have had on the country if Magufuli had not died in office. In January, the CIA-filled Jamestown Foundation began reporting on Tanzania’s “creeping radicalization issue” and eerily put forward the idea that “Tanzania could be primed to experience an increase in violence directed inward…” Though this thankfully never came to fruition, in other cases of Western-backed regime change, opposition groups funded by these same organizations have been known to stoke or create violence in order to justify Western intervention.

The Magufuli Administration wasn’t oblivious to the West’s regime change efforts. In the years following his election victory, Tanzanian police forces had raided meetingsorganized by the Open Society Foundations, a group infamous for their meddling initiatives in states targeted by the US’ foreign policy establishment.

Yet, despite his strong stands against the West, something about Magufuli’s approach had changed the day of his last public appearance on February 24th, 2021. That morning, the Tanzanian President had begun urging his countrymen to wear masks, something he had resisted doing for nearly a year after the WHO declared a pandemic, and urged them to begin taking health precautions.

A new President, to Western applause 

Convenient for the powers that Magufuli had angered, his successor and VP, Samia Suluhu, hails from the United Nations’ World Food Programme and has a profile listed on the website of the World Economic Forum, suggesting a closeness with the circles her predecessor had rebuked. It still remains unclear if she has already reversed any of Magufuli’s policies, either economic or COVID-related, but some shifts seem likely given that her appointment has been met with pure celebration by the same institutional actors that actively worked to undermine President Magufuli.

Another potential indicator is the dubious discovery of a new COVID variant in Tanzania that reportedly has more mutations than any other variant. That variant’s discovery was announced just over a week following the announcement of Magufuli’s death and seems tailor-made to provide a public justification of a reversal of Tanzania’s government approach to COVID. Notably, the Tanzania variant was discovered by Krisp, “a scientific institute that carries out genetic testing for 10 African nations” that is funded by the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the governments of the US, the UK and South Africa.

Regarding a potentially imminent reversal of Tanzania’s COVID policy, the reaction of the top official at the World Health Organization may offer a clue. WHO General Director Tedros Ghebreyesus had no time to comment after receiving word of Magufuli’s sudden death, but quickly took to Twitter minutes after Suluhu’s swearing-in ceremony to congratulate the country’s first female president, telling her that he’s “looking forward to working with her to keep people safe from COVID-19, and end the pandemic.” Ghebreyesus was previously on the board of two organizations that Bill Gates had founded, provided seed money for, and continues to fund to this day: GAVI and the Global Fund, where Tedros was chair of the board.

Samia Suluhu Hassan’s WEF profile. Source: https://www.weforum.org/people/samia-suluhu-hassan

A few days before Ghebreyesus’ tweet, the State Department released a statement reaffirming the US’ commitment to supporting Tanzanians as they advocate for respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and work to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that “We hope that Tanzania can move forward on a democratic and prosperous path.” Vice President Kamala Harris had nothing to say in regards to the popular East African president suddenly dying, yet – like Ghebreyesus, she managed to send her best wishes to the newly sworn in Suluhu Samia on Twitter.

Billionaire-backed Human Rights Watch, whose revolving door with the US government is well documented, welcomed Magufuli’s death, publishing a piece entitled “Tanzania: President Magufuli’s Death Should Open New Chapter,” writing that the African leader’s sudden passing “provides an opportunity.” Notably, the same organization had supported the US-backed military coup in Bolivia as well as the Trump Administration’s regime change efforts in Nicaragua and had called for an increase of deadly U.S. sanctions on Venezeula’s Chavista government, even after the publication of a report by The Center for Economic and Policy Research which found that at least 40,000 Venezuelan civilians had already died due to the such sanctions.

Earlier this month, Judd Devermont, a former CIA senior political analyst on sub-Saharan Africa, in a CSIS piece titled “Will Magufuli’s Death Bring Real Change to Tanzania?,” wrote that, prior to Magufuli’s death, it was “believed that Suluhu was growing increasingly wary of Magufuli’s authoritarian policies. . .” Later in the article, the former CIA analyst accidentally disclosed his working definition of “authoritarianism” when he wrote:  “Magufuli steered Tanzania toward authoritarianism by implementing a nationalist economic agenda characterized by stifled regional and international trade and a blow to foreign direct investment (FDI).”

However, the claim that Magufuli was against all foreign investment is misleading. Perhaps Devermont should have written that Magufuli’s policies were a blow to FDI from the West, as Magufuli, in the last months of his presidency and his life, was directly courting foreign investment from China.

In mid-December 2020, Tanzania Invests reported on a Magufuli meeting with Chinese leadership, after which Magufuli announced that Tanzania “welcomes traders and investors from China in various areas like manufacturing, tourism, construction, and trade for the benefit of both parties.” The report also noted that “Magufuli asked China to cooperate with Tanzania in investing in large projects by providing cheap loans” and that “Tanzania will further develop and enhance its long-standing relationship with China and will continue to support China on various international issues.” China is currently Tanzania’s top trading partner and Tanzania is the largest recipient of Chinese government aid in Africa. It is worth considering that this China pivot, particularly at a time when the US’ new Cold War with China is reaching new heights, played a role in Western-backed regime change efforts targeting Tanzania.

Looking beyond Tanzania

The fate suffered by President John Magufuli and Tanzania is similar to what happened in a neighboring country, Burundi, just six months ago. The president of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, publicly refused to enact top-down mitigation measures in response to COVID-19, and was similarly vilified by US aligned press and think tanks. In May 2020, Nkurunziza expelled the World Health Organization from Burundi and, three weeks later, it was reported that he had died after suddenly going into cardiac arrest.

More recently, Zambia, which borders Tanzania and is set to hold elections this August, is currently angering some of the same actors that Magufuli had challenged in its government’s efforts to nationalize its copper mines and potentially other mining projects. In December, Zambian President Edgar Lungu announced that his government would acquire “a significant stake in some selected mine assets” in order to “create sufficient wealth for the nation.” Echoing Magufuli, Lungu had stated “We shall no longer tolerate mining investors who seek to [profit] from our God-given natural resources, leaving us with empty hands.”

In January, Lungu took a step towards nationalizing the copper mining sector after a protracted dispute with none other than Glencore. Copper, like nickel, graphite and lithium, is a metal critical to the success of the 4th Industrial Revolution. Western media reports on Lungu’s recent move quoted experts who urged Zambia’s government “to tread carefully” in its efforts to increase the role of the public sector in the nation’s mining industry.

Then, a week after Magufuli’s death was announced, Lungu’s main competitor in the upcoming election publicly accused Lungu of trying to have him murdered while some English language, pro-Western media outlets have already claimed that Lungu plans to rigthe upcoming election in his favor and that the country “may burn” if the election has the “wrong” outcome.

Such examples reveal that the situation that has recently unfolded in Tanzania is hardly unique in today’s Africa. However, the domination of the media landscape with constant COVID coverage has made Western audiences largely unaware of the various regime change efforts that have taken place or are underway in the region. Unlike regime change efforts of the recent past, those targeting Africa, and also Bolivia, seem laser focused on mining assets deemed essential to establishing the supply chains needed to power the 4th Industrial Revolution.

With many of these countries having recently cozied up to China, it seems the regime change projects and proxy wars of the future are set to revolve, not around fossil fuels and pipelines, but over whether the East or the West will dominate the supplies of minerals needed to produce and maintain next-generation technology.

Not only has COVID kept reporting on these coups for minerals to a minimum, it has also lent a convenient cover for the demonization of leaders and the advancement of regime change in countries that are being targeted for other reasons that have everything to do with resources and little to do with a virus.

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Jeremy Loffredo is a journalist and researcher based in Washington, DC. He is formerly a segment producer for RT AMERICA and is currently an investigative reporter for Children’s Health Defense.

Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.

Featured image is from Unlimited Hangout

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Dear Mr. Nils Melzer,

My name is Peter Koenig, former economist at World Bank (30 yrs) – now geopolitical analyst – writing regularly on Global Research and other online journals.

My quest today is to call on you, as Human Rights Representative to defend the human rights of children.

What the absurd COVID measures do to the world is a crime but what they are doing to children is beyond a crime; it is totally immoral, destructive for our powerless children, and for the future of these children, as well as for society as a whole, as children are our societies’ future.

Children behind masks, social distancing, lockdown, remote schooling – deprived from meeting, talking and playing with their peers, friends – instead scaring them into losing their personalities, their self-assurance and self-esteem, it’s not only a physical health problem, but also a psychological health issue, which over time has untold, uncountable collateral damage, including total submissiveness for today’s children.

Our children are vulnerable – they are our future.

They need their human rights defended.

Dear Mr. Melzer, please speak up for them, in the UN, in UNICEF, in front of the 193 UN member governments, which follow all more or less the same COVID narrative, the same COVID human rights abuse, and especially the same human rights abuse on children.

Looking forward hearing from you,

thank you,

best regards,

and Happy Easter,

Peter Koenig

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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.

This Week’s Most Popular Articles

April 2nd, 2021 by Global Research News

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Twenty two Years Ago. 24 March 2021 marks the commemoration of the illegal US-NATO war of aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which started in March 1999,

In a bitter irony, a few days prior to March 24th, reports confirmed that the US army and NATO are once again beating the drums of war near the Russian border as well as in and around Serbia (1).

One of the goals of the large-scale military manoeuvre  entitled “Defender Europe 21” is to move an entire US military division from the USA “to a potential battlefield in Europe” in peacetime.

The military training sites which are envisaged will be located in several NATO countries including Romania and Bulgaria, as well as in the US KFOR base Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. In turn, Germany which is NATO member state will form a “central hub”.

“Defender-Europe 21 brings together some 30,000 soldiers from 27 states who are performing manoeuvres over a large territory. Most of the troops are from the US,” according to the Balkan Security Network.

“One of the goals of the exercise is to move squadron-sized units from stations in the US to a potential battlefield site in Europe. All of the countries in the region, except for Serbia, are taking part in the exercise, including the Kosovo Security Force,” it added.

The Balkans are the main area where the exercise is taking place, while training centres in the Baltic states and Germany will also be used.

Nearly all of the biggest military training centres in the region will be used such as Slunj in Croatia, Manjaca and Glamoc in Bosnia (Republika Srpska), Krivolak in North Macedonia and Bondsteel near Urosevac in Kosovo. A total of 30 military training centres across Europe will be utilised as well. (EURACTIV.rs | betabriefing.com)

Instead of apologising to the victims of the war crimes committed in 1999 and of the genocide knowingly and willingly brought about with uranium weapons, and instead of compensating them materially and providing them with medical support, a murderous military threat is once again being  built up and deployed against the two “‘brother countries” Russia and Serbia.

After the economy and infrastructure of Serbia were destroyed to a large extent in this 78-day war in 1999 and whole swathes of land were contaminated by the use of highly toxic and radioactive uranium weapons, years later multiple cancers, deformities in newborns and aggressive leukaemia in children increased by leaps and bounds.

In 2020, according to the medical platform “Izis”, there were tens of thousands of new malignant cases in Serbia.

However, due to the transformation of many hospitals into pure “corona outpatient clinics”, these cancer patients only come for urgently needed medical treatment in the final stage. There, they can then only be offered supportive therapy.

In this context, the question also arises as to what the Serbian government has done in the past decades to assist the citizens who have been permanently affected by the US-NATO war and to support the medical doctors, scientific experts and institutions who are sacrificially providing them with help in their time of need?

It is hoped that independent international experts will take up the issue without delay.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

1. https://www.lr-online.de/nachrichten/brandenburg/defender-europe…-manoever-der-usa-_-was-kommt-auf-die-lausitz-zu_-54880745.html; https://pravda.rs/201/3/19/nato-i-amerika-zveckaju-oruzjem-oko-srbije-trajace-sve-do-leta/; www.pravda.rs, 19.03.2021: “Nato and America let weapons clang around Serbia”

Featured image: Consul General Meghan Gregonis, U.S. Consulate Munich welcomes Col. Patrick Disney, 1st Cavalry Division as he arrives at the Nuremberg Airport, Germany, March 5, 2020. Disney and his fellow Soldiers are the first to arrive to Germany for exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20. Exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20 is the deployment of a division-size combat-credible force from the United States to Europe, the drawing of equipment and the movement of personnel and equipment across the theater to various training areas. (U.S. Army photo by Capt. Ellen C. Brabo, 7th Army Training Command)(U.S. Army photo by Capt. Ellen C. Brabo, 7th Army Training Command)

Selected Articles: “Defender-Europe”: US Army Arrives

April 1st, 2021 by Global Research News

The “Defender-Europe”. US Army Arrives.

By Manlio Dinucci, April 01 2021

Not everything in Europe is paralyzed by the anti-Covid lockdown: in fact, the mammoth annual exercise of the US Army, Defender-Europe, which until June mobilized on European territory, and beyond this, dozens of thousands of soldiers with thousands of tanks and other means, has been set in motion.

Video: The PCR Test Fraud

By BBC Panorama, April 01 2021

BBC Panorama sent an undercover reporter inside one of the biggest UK COVID testing labs. Secret filming uncovered evidence of potential contamination and pressure to hit targets.

Let’s End the Insanity of Colossal Military Spending During a Global Health Emergency

By Sonja Scherndl and Adam Parsons, April 01 2021

If nations had a referendum, asking the public if they want their taxes to go to military weapons that are more efficient in killing than the ones we currently have, or if they would prefer the money to be invested in medical care, social services, education and other critical public needs, what would the response be?

Fallout: US Suppression of Russian Vaccine in Brazil Becomes Diplomatic Incident

By Brasil Wire, April 01 2021

On Sunday March 14 2021, Brasil Wire published an exclusive story on how the United States pressured its ally, Brazil’s Bolsonaro regime, into rejecting Sputnik V, the world’s first approved Covid-19 vaccine, developed by Russia’s Gamaleya institute.

Myanmar, Libya, and Syria: Dangerous Parallels

By Brian Berletic, April 01 2021

When protesters in the streets of Myanmar began waving signs around in English demanding “R2P” or the “responsibility to protect,” the initial reaction should have been for many – a flashback to the last time R2P was invoked – in 2011 by the West regarding Libya.

Indonesia Will Not Join QUAD as It Delicately Balances Relations with All Regional Players

By Paul Antonopoulos, April 01 2021

After Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi met with his Indonesian counterpart Prabowo Subianto earlier this week, he stated that their two countries agreed to expand defense cooperation and conduct joint military exercises in the South China Sea.

The Great Vaccine Scam: Even Establishment Experts and Scientists Admit the Jabs Are Ineffective

By Vasko Kohlmayer, April 01 2021

“New Covid vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists,” reads the headline of a recent piece in the UK Guardian. The article is based on a survey of pro-vaccine scientists in nearly thirty countries across the globe. Two thirds of these scientists thought that the time frame within which you will need a new shot is less than nine months.

‘Breaking Through’ — States Report Growing Number of COVID Cases Among Fully Vaccinated

By Megan Redshaw, April 01 2021

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) announced Tuesday it is investigating reports of people who tested positive for COVID more than two weeks after being fully vaccinated against the disease.

6000% Increase in Reported Vaccine Deaths 1st Quarter 2021 Compared to 1st Quarter 2020

By Brian Shilhavy, April 01 2021

Reported deaths following the injections of these shots have now skyrocketed in the U.S. population by over 6000% here at the end of the first quarter of 2021, as compared to recorded deaths following FDA-approved vaccines at the end of the first quarter of 2020.

Thousands of Migrant Workers Still Being Held in Detention on the Southern Border

By Abayomi Azikiwe, April 01 2021

Since the advent of the new administration which took office on January 20, the numbers of people seeking admission to the U.S. has continued to increase exponentially.

US-NATO Planned Invasion and Proxy War Against Syria

By Shane Quinn, April 01 2021

The Syrian president Bashar al-Assad must have looked on with some concern, as US-NATO began their attack on Libya in mid-March 2011. There was good reason for Assad to be worried, considering Libya’s close enough proximity to Syria, coupled with the fact that the Americans had designated him for removal years before.

Urgent Open Letter from Doctors and Scientists to the European Medicines Agency regarding COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Concerns

By Doctors for COVID Ethics, April 01 2021

We note that a wide range of side effects is being reported following vaccination of previously healthy younger individuals with the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, there have been numerous media reports from around the world of care homes being struck by COVID-19 within days of vaccination of residents.

Video: A Spring Promise of War Dawns in Eastern Ukraine

By South Front, April 01 2021

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are increasing their grouping of troops in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, as well as in the direction of Crimea, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Ruslan Khomchak announced.

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War Policy and Banking

April 1st, 2021 by Megan Sherman

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Surprisingly, with the financial crisis, the ascendancy of Occupy and the Wikileaks revolution that’s increasingly weakening imperial power, critical thought on the relationship between banking and war policy has never been more absent. You can’t forget, after the repressed information becomes lucid, that banks fund both sides of modern wars – except Palestine- a fact that has been deliberately suppressed.

In the apocalyptic atmosphere of ever triumphalist imperialism, the ruling class fends off revolution by means of the vast resources they possess for social control. All the secretive national security agencies, beneath the mystique, share a surprisingly simple aim: to protect banks, and therefore wars, from threats to their hegemony. The national security agencies are propaganda organs for corporate rule and systematically spread disinformation about socialism, the maligned, revolutionary philosophy associated with Marx that speaks to aspirations to organise society to meet social needs, share public solidarity and stoke international peace.

The malevolent nature of these ideological nerve centres is such that the state grants them the unique, dubious privilege of being exempt from the social contract, as they perpetrate vast crimes against humanity that they aren’t held accountable for.

CIA history:

This impenetrable impunity that the intelligence cartel has, deriving from violations of the constitution, is evident most in their favourite game: ruthless, systematic coups against non-aligned powers, coups that repress indigenous democracy.

Since its foundation, at a time a strong American left were breaking up monopolies, the CIA has sleeplessly bombarded socialists with sanctions, disinformation and murder. The rise of socialist China during the era of military adventurism for US venture capital in the Middle East has dispelled the myth of a unipolar world where America writes the rules, leaving the CIA in existential crisis, with a credible rival and without full spectrum dominance of ideology globally.

As John Lennon and the civil rights movement knew, the CIA exploit vast asymmetries in capabilities with protest movements to organise sophisticated, targeted campaigns of harassment against powerful anti imperialists. They subvert any threats to the centralised capitalist command over political and cultural narrative. All the figures of integrity and virtue from the 60s counterculture were neutralised through COINTELPRO.

A comparable program was Project MKULTRA, a study into hypnotic states of consciousness that probably sought to inaugurate the rule of the status symbol oriented society, and definitely sought to reform people’s thought and behaviour along pro-capitalist lines. If speculation on the web is to be believed there are numerous handlers and victims in politics, academia and the media, and the rumour is that the program harnessed ancient magical techniques known only to those with degrees of initiation into the mysteries.

The public mind is the systematic target of MKULTRA. It’s fed a junk diet of corporate symbols it’s manipulated into forging an affinity with, and the symbols are transmitted through hypnotic institutions like media and telly. The journalist Julian Assange commendably ruptured this matrix with Wikileaks, his experiment in whistleblowing systems engineering. The response from the establishment and imperialist media was to frame Assange for rape entirely without evidence and repress public acknowledgement of his asylum status.

The war machine is an avatar of grand corruption and great secrecy amongst global financial elites, whose fortunes thrive off public disorientation, confusion and apathy. Imperialist media conjures illusions of immoral cultural deviance in targeted nations, as lies are rehearsed and repeated till they’re believed. This is a media that completely inverts reality. The effect on political consciousness is perverse, making a far right fundamentalist agenda of privatisation of foreign infrastructure to ameliorate it into the US economy look normal and rational policy extreme.

The CIA have protected banking monopolies that invest in war, terrorism and global warming from the threat of international human brotherhood. Without the inception of the CIA a strong American left would have broken up banking cartels and brought an end to war. No doubt that this is what 1984 hinted at, the myth it was about Stalin was CIA anti communist strategy. The only hope for freedom today is to remember, and preach, that banks fund both sides of wars.

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Poland is poised to become a regional economic powerhouse upon the successful completion of six megaprojects: the Baltic Ring rail corridor, Świnoujście deepwater port, Vistula Spit Canal, E40 waterway, Central Communication Port, and Via Carpathia highway network.

Poland’s Six Megaprojects

Poland already enjoys the proud distinction of being the largest economy among the post-communist EU-member states, but it’s poised to become an even more pivotal regional powerhouse upon the successful completion of six megaprojects. These are the

  • Baltic Ring rail corridor,
  • Świnoujście deepwater port,
  • Vistula Spit Canal,
  • E40 waterway,
  • Central Communication Port, and
  • Via Carpathia highway network.

Altogether, they aim to enhance Poland’s transregional connectivity potential as the leader of the “Three Seas Initiative” (3SI), an economic bloc of states that it co-founded together with Croatia in 2015.

The “Three Seas Initiative”

The 3SI’s purpose is to comprehensively improve linkages between the Adriatic, Baltic, and Black Seas. It’s American-backed but could also function as a means of facilitating China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) access into EU via the Beijing-owned Greek port of Piraeus, which the East Asian country wants to turn into the biggest in the bloc. The 3SI is an enormous undertaking that might very well take many years to bear fruit, but it’s still arguably among the main grand strategic ambitions of the Third Polish Republic. Its success is dependent on the completion of the six earlier identified megaprojects, which will now be concisely summarized.

Baltic Ring

The Baltic Ring rail corridor envisions circling its eponymous sea by bringing together Poland, the Baltic Republics, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. It would represent the modern-day manifestation of the Medieval Hanseatic League trade bloc. The Mediterranean will always remain the most important body of water in the EU, but the Baltic could quickly become the next most significant one from an economic perspective if these plans come to fruition. Taken to its maximum extent, it could even help create a new center of geopolitical gravity in the bloc.

Świnoujście Deepwater Port

As for the Świnoujście deepwater port, it’s expected to complement the Baltic Ring by enabling the Scandinavian countries and also those in the Western Hemisphere like the US and Brazil to directly connect their freight containers with Poland’s rail network, thus easing transshipment between their regions and the Central & Eastern European (CEE) space. With Poland as the centerpiece of this transregional route, it’s well-placed to handsomely profit as the CEE becomes more important for global trade and investment. It’s noteworthy to mention that Świnoujście also hosts a recently constructed LNG terminal too.

Vistula Spit Canal & “Viking Silk Road”

Moving eastward along Poland’s Baltic coast, its Vistula Spit Canal project will enable the country’s economic partners to directly access the Vistula Bay without having to pass through Russia‘s Baltiysk. This is significant since it improves the viability of its E40 waterway (also known as the “Viking Silk Road”) plans to pioneer a riparian corridor through Belarus and Ukraine en route to the Black Sea. The latter project has some serious environmental concerns, however, because it passes through the Chernobyl exclusion zone. This is the riskiest of all six of Poland’s 3SI megaprojects, but perhaps the most geopolitically exciting if Warsaw can pull it off.

Central Communication Port

Reorienting more towards the center of the country, the Central Communication Port (also called the Hub by some) was recently included alongside the Vistula Spit Canal as an important part of Poland’s National Recovery Plan. The Hub envisions the creation of an integrated air, rail, and road junction to serve as the one of the CEE region’s main connectivity points. It’s absolutely indispensable for actualizing Poland’s 3SI vision, which is why it’s being prioritized. This project will also integrate all parts of the domestic economic more closely, further improving Poland’s attractiveness vis-a-vis its regional peers.

Via Carpathia

Finally, the last of the six megaprojects is the Via Carpathia highway network which intends to connect Poland to the Eastern Balkans. In practice, its pairing with the Baltic Ring will enable the creation of an Arctic-Mediterranean Corridor, which perfectly complements China’s BRI plans. It’ll also result in Poland becoming a leading economic player in this comparatively destitute corner of the continent. Over time, the cumulative influence that the country acquires there could help position the 3SI as a more confident political player in the event that its members more closely integrate with one another in all respects.

Concluding Thoughts

In view of the six examined megaprojects, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Poland’s economic future.

The country is rapidly rising to the fore of European transregional connectivity processes, which makes it triply attractive for the EU, US, and China. With economic weight comes political influence, so it’s taken for granted that Warsaw will attempt to wield more power within the highly strategic 3SI space. It remains to be seen what the strategic impact of this will be, but one can only hope that it’ll increase stability in this part of Western Eurasia and not provoke geopolitical competition with other players such as Russia.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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Bolsonaro Government in Crisis. Pro-American or Pro-Chinese?

April 1st, 2021 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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***

Many changes are about to happen in the Brazilian political scenario, mainly in foreign policy. On Monday, the Bolsonaro government announced a large ministerial reform, with changes in six ministries. Among the main changes are the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, which must mean deep reforms in Brazilian international praxis.

At the Ministry of Defense, Luiz Eduardo Ramos was replaced by General Walter Souza Braga Netto, former Army commander in Eastern Brazil and federal interventionist in Rio de Janeiro between 2018 and 2019, where he stood out in the fight against drug trafficking in one of the most difficult moments of the Brazilian history of the war on drugs. It is difficult to know what Netto’s stance will be in relation to the main topics of his new office, however, he will certainly seek greater investments for the Armed Forces (despite being supported by the military, Bolsonaro’s government has one of the smallest investments in defense in Brazilian history) and it is unlikely that he will follow a policy of automatic alignment with the US, considering the anti-strategic and uninteresting content for Brazil of this orientation adopted by the government until then.

However, the main changes are with regard to the new Brazilian chancellor, Carlos Alberto Franco França, a career diplomat who was working on special advisory to the Presidency of the Republic before and now replaces Ernesto Araújo. The legacy of the last foreign minister is the worst possible: total subservience to Washington and rivalry with China (Brazil’s main trading partner). Carlos França seems ready to face this challenge and certainly has the necessary potential for this, being a highly respected diplomat who has held especially important positions abroad. His specialty is bilateral relations between Brazil and Bolivia (where he has been an ambassador twice). In addition, Carlos has a moderate and neutral stance on political and ideological issues, which is an important posture for Brazil in the current international context.

In order to recover fraternal relations with China, Carlos França will have a great work in the diplomatic sphere, but this will only be feasible if, at the same time, changes occur in the general postures of the federal government in relation to Beijing. Advised by Araújo, who acted in accordance with the interests of the Trump administration, Bolsonaro adopted several measures that hampered Chinese investments in Brazil, such as Huawei’s ban on the Brazilian 5G and reprisals against Coronavac.

It is important to emphasize that China was responsible for saving Brazil from the complete financial collapse in the last two years with its exports of several Brazilian products, mainly in the agribusiness sector. But, with the various anti-China offenses made by Araújo, this policy of cooperation decreased significantly and today the bilateral partnership is severely threatened. However, with the change in the American presidency, Brazil lost diplomatic support from Washington and now Brasilia is alone, without the US or China – something that Carlos França will try to change acting in order to recover ties with China, but that will only be possible if the government, among other measures, revise its decision on 5G and accept medical cooperation with Beijing (which is currently one of the main points of Chinese diplomacy).

Another point that should be highlighted is the possible improvement in regional relations in South America, mainly the bilateral partnership with Bolivia. This country is the center of attention of the new chancellor, who is an expert in Brazilian-Bolivian relations, having written the book “Brazil-Bolivian Electric Integration”. In a context of profound changes in Bolivian political scenario, with the return of MAS, Brazil has a great chance to mediate Bolivia’s dialogue with the rest of the world in a friendly manner and focused on regional interests – it remains to be seen, however, whether the Brazilian authorities will respond positively to the new minister’s projects for Bolivia or whether the extremist right-wing and pro-American stance will remain firm in the government.

In his first attitude as new minister, Carlos França has already demonstrated his willingness to improve the image of Brazil abroad by naming as Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the diplomat Fernando Simas Magalhães, whose moderate postures and unblemished career reveal himself to be an extremely zealous professional for his country’s international relations. In fact, despite the new minister’s enthusiasm to radically change the foreign policy of the Araújo administration, the changes will only be effective if the government abandons the pro-American policy it has been adopting, but Bolsonaro seems far from wanting this.

The ministerial changes did not occur exactly at the will of the Brazilian president but were the result of strong pressure from several sectors of the Brazilian society. Bolsonaro accepted to change his team because the situation with the former Ministers was terrible and demanded urgent attitudes, but this was not his real aspiration. In other words, despite the changes, Bolsonaro still keeps his ideological stance intact. This, however, will certainly lead him to strong internal isolation, without any ministerial support, which may weaken his government.

Brazil is at a turning point. Without American support, it is time to resume old alliances and seek new partnerships. Bolsonaro has strained relations with Biden, but he does not change his subservience to Washington and that strongly hinders Brazil. Now, with a chancellor focused on improving relations with China and South American countries, Brazil has the main means necessary to overcome the crisis and regain its status of privilege and respect among nations, however, Bolsonaro remains inert in his pro-American zealotry.

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

Featured image: Araújo (left) meets with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in April 2019 (Public Domain)

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On Sunday March 14 2021, Brasil Wire published an exclusive story on how the United States pressured its ally, Brazil’s Bolsonaro regime, into rejecting Sputnik V, the world’s first approved Covid-19 vaccine, developed by Russia’s Gamaleya institute.

The story, by investigative journalist John McEvoy, was based on discovery of a report from the US Department of Health and Human Services, in which they boasted of combatting “malign Russian, Cuban and Venezuelan influence in Latin America”, through persuading governments to refuse offers of medical help, cooperation and technology transfer.

One of the success stories HHS referred to in the 2020 report, was that they had convinced Brazil not to purchase Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Another point of US pride was discouraging Panama, which has one of the region’s worst Covid-19 rates, from allowing Cuban doctors into the country to alleviate its own crisis.

US efforts to prevent Brazil deploying Sputnik V in its fight against the world’s second worst Covid-19 outbreak fit into a wider campaign of western propaganda against the vaccine, in which it was depicted as untested, unsafe and ineffective, due to its emergency rollout before the publication of stage 3 trial data.

Sputnik V

Sputnik V was approved for use in August 2020, and began to be offered globally, with Argentina, Venezuela, Palestine, Hungary, UAE, and Iran among the early takers of both the vaccine, and the technology to manufacture it. Medical journal the Lancet later reported that Sputnik V was safe, and had 92% efficacy against the virus.

Dr Julian Tang, clinical virologist, told the BBC:

“Despite the earlier misgivings about the way this Russian Sputnik V vaccine was rolled out more widely – ahead of sufficient Phase 3 trial data – this approach has been justified to some extent now. Such pandemic-related vaccine rollout compromises have, to be fair, been adopted in the UK vaccination programme also – with the extended intervals between the first and second doses. So we should be more careful about being overly critical about other countries’ vaccine designs.”

With Brazil’s death toll approaching 280,000, the new revelations triggered fresh public outrage that Brazil had wasted a golden opportunity to begin its vaccination campaign months earlier, and worse, that it was under duress from the Donald Trump administration.

It was a dead-eyed calculation by the US that denying Brazilians access to Sputnik V was a price worth paying for preventing a Russian soft power victory in the region. It is a decision which could well have caused the deaths of thousands of Brazilians.

Media furore

The day after publication, our story began to filter through to Brazilian and international media.

Independent platforms Brasil 247 and Revista Forum, and Russia’s RT, were followed by Brazil’s largest and most influential newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, which ran the story under the headline: “Trump Government pressured Brazil to reject Russian vaccine Sputnik V”. Folha was followed by Globo’s G1, and then, later that evening, TV Globo’s Jornal Nacional, the country’s flagship news bulletin ran its own segment based on the earlier Brasil Wire revelations:

“A report by the American government from the time when Donald Trump was president shows that the United States tried to persuade Brazil not to buy the Sputnik vaccine, developed by Russia. The document states that the Department of Health used diplomatic relations to combat what it called “the malign influences of countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Russia in Latin America.” Last week, the Brazilian government announced the purchase of ten million doses of the Russian vaccine, after governors in the Northeast negotiated another 37 million doses. Sought out by Jornal Nacional, the American Embassy declared that both it and United States consulates in the country never discouraged Brazil from accepting vaccines against Covid that were authorized by Brazilian regulatory bodies.”

Central to the US Embassy’s flimsy rebuttal of a story based on an official US Health and Human Services document, was that it specified that they never discouraged purchase of Anvisa approved vaccines. In the timeframe covered by the HHS report, there were no approved vaccines in Brazil at all.

Russia responds

By the following morning, the story began to appear across a range of international media platforms, and sparked a response from the Russian government.

Reuters reported:

“The Kremlin said on Tuesday that pressure on some countries to refuse to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 was at unprecedented levels, but that said such efforts had no chances of success. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the remarks when asked to comment on a U.S. government report which appeared to show that the United States had attempted to dissuade Brazil from buying Sputnik V. He said Russia was against politicising the situation around vaccines.”

As the story spread it was also revealed that Russian Premier Vladimir Putin had been in direct contact with former Brazilian President Lula, who held a remote meeting with the Russian Direct Investment Fund, in a personal effort to secure more vaccine doses for the country. Russia later agreed to send 37 million doses of Sputnik V, targeted for the north eastern region of Brazil, whose governors had fought a long legal battle with the federal government for the right to deploy such vaccines.

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Myanmar, Libya, and Syria: Dangerous Parallels

April 1st, 2021 by Brian Berletic

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When protesters in the streets of Myanmar began waving signs around in English demanding “R2P” or the “responsibility to protect,” the initial reaction should have been for many – a flashback to the last time R2P was invoked – in 2011 by the West regarding Libya.

The violence in Libya in 2011 was part of the wider US-engineered “Arab Spring” with opposition groups, fronts posing as nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and even armed factions all backed by the US and prepared years in advance to carry out a region-wide campaign of destabilization, regime change, military intervention, and occupation.

At the time, many – including US Senator John McCain – promised the “Arab Spring” would spread – deliberately and as part of Washington’s desire to encircle, contain, and eventually overthrow the political and economic orders of Iran, Russia, and China.

The Atlantic in a 2011 article titled, “The Arab Spring: ‘A Virus That Will Attack Moscow and Beijing’,” would even note:

…McCain dropped a pretty big zinger on the crowd.

He said, “A year ago, Ben-Ali and Gaddafi were not in power.  Assad won’t be in power this time next year.  This Arab Spring is a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing.” McCain then walked off the stage.

Despite the ultimate failure of the US-engineered Arab Spring to achieve sweeping regime change beyond Libya – it still managed to destabilize or otherwise destroy the regions of North Africa and the Middle East – create a pretext for a permanent US military presence there, including an enduring occupation of Syria’s eastern region, and the creation of a ongoing conflict that could easily be described as a proxy war against Iran – one of the nations the 2011 Arab Spring was ultimately aimed at.

McCain was a stalwart supporter of US military intervention amid the opening phases of the Arab Spring. He met with US-armed and backed terrorists both in Libya and Syria until his death in 2018.

When he declared US-engineered conflict would eventually reach Moscow and Beijing – it was clear even at the time that it would – by necessity – first need to arrive in and erode the stability of nations along the peripheries of both Russia and China.

And this is a process that has continued ever since – with US-backed “color revolution” attacking Ukraine in 2013-2014, Belarus more recently – and both within China and along its peripheries – deadly separatism in China’s Xinjiang region, violent riots in Hong Kong, opposition groups in Thailand openly opposed to close relations between Bangkok and Beijing – and now the crisis in Myanmar.

Myanmar, Libya, and Syria: Dangerous Parallels 

The protests in Myanmar in response to the ousting of the US-backed government of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) earlier this year – began violently. These were the same political groups that had stormed Rohingya communities years earlier – killing residents and burning homes and businesses to the ground. It is unlikely that since then, they’ve adopted “peaceful” methods.

To help spin the violent nature of the protests – the Western media has depended heavily on faux-human rights groups like Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) who provides baseless “tallies” of dead and detained. The Western media never mentions that AAPP is funded by the US government via the National Endowment for Democracy and that the AAPP’s founder and and joint secretary – Ko Bo Kyi – is also an NED “fellow.

Similar fronts were used by the West in Libya and Syria – including the Libyan League for Human Rights and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights respectively.

Videos of protesters with machetes, swords, bows and arrows, Molotov cocktails, and other weapons fighting with police and soldiers were even broadcasted by the Western media – and occasional mention of police and soldiers dying in the violence was also made. But overall – the Western media maintained a narrative of a one-sided “massacre” of “peaceful protesters” by Myanmar’s security forces.

We remember similar narratives told regarding the opening phases of the conflicts in Libya and Syria in 2011.

Western media outlets like the BBC and Reuters attempted to portray the opposition in Libya and Syria as “peaceful” up to and including when footage of opposition groups with war weapons – including tanks – began emerging. Once it became public knowledge of just how heavily armed and organized the opposition was – and when it came time for the US and its allies to openly arm and support them – the Western media began “explaining” why “peaceful protesters” had “no choice” but to take up arms.

The exact same narrative now plays out in Myanmar.

Myanmar Now – funded by the US government via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as revealed in a Columbia Journalism Review article – in a recent pieces titled, “As slaughter of civilians continues, some decide it’s time to take up arms,” would attempt to sell a similar narrative today.

The article claims:

Armed only with slingshots, makeshift shields, and Molotov cocktails, Ko Saung and his comrades could see that they were no match for armed forces equipped with lethal weapons and a license to murder without mercy.

That’s why they decided it was time for them to get real weapons of their own, and to learn how to use them. And to do that, they knew they would have to go to border areas, where ethnic armed groups have fought the Tatmadaw for decades.

The article then explains how – only two months into the crisis – a parallel government has already been formed and a “federal army” is already prepared to fight Myanmar’s military for control of the country.

The article explains:

The Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), formed by MPs from Myanmar’s ousted civilian government, has offered an alternative: a federal army that includes all forces opposed to the regime.

According to the CRPH, the idea is to set up defence plans from the ward/village level to the township level. After it released a statement outlining the proposal, a number of security committees were established in various parts of the country. 

These “forces opposed to the regime” include armed ethnic groups that have for decades received funding, equipment, and weapons from the United States through fronts posing as NGOs – many of them listed on the US government’s own National Endowment for Democracy website.

Just like in Libya and Syria – the Western media and US-funded propaganda outlets like Myanmar Now are attempting to sell the idea of a “pro-democracy” force of “freedom fighters” – that in reality – is clearly composed of armed extremists driven by ethnic identity, used by the US for decades to divide Myanmar – and bound to burn the nation to the ground in deadly, protracted conflict during its fight with Myanmar’s government – and if successful – with each other in the aftermath.

The CRPH – in the days and weeks to come – will undoubtedly be recognized by the US and its allies as the “legitimate” government of Myanmar – making it then possible for the US and others to arm, fund, and otherwise aid them in their bid to seize total power over the country.

There will also likely be the opportunity for the US to propose limited military intervention – citing the use of Myanmar’s air force against opposition groups armed with war weapons – just as the US did in Libya and attempted (and partially did) in Syria.

The proxy regime will be able to “invite” the US military into Myanmar’s territory – a dream scenario for a US desperate to encircle China with its military – especially by placing its troops in a nation that directly borders China as Myanmar does.

The US promised its Arab Spring would spread – like a virus – to the doorsteps of Moscow and Beijing. For China – with Myanmar clearly infected and slowly dying on its border – that day has now come.

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Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine New Eastern Outlook”.

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

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For decades, America styled itself the ‘indispensable nation’ that led the world & it’s now seeking to sustain that role by emphasizing a new Cold War-style battle against ‘authoritarianism’. But it’s a dangerous fantasy.

It seems a week cannot go by without US Secretary of State Antony Blinken bringing up the specter of the ‘rules-based international order’ as an excuse for meddling in the affairs of another state or region.

The most recent crisis revolves around allegations that China has dispatched a fleet of more than 200 ships, part of a so-called ‘maritime militia’, into waters of the South China Sea claimed by the Philippines. China says that these vessels are simply fishing boats seeking shelter from a storm. The Philippines has responded by dispatching military ships and aircraft to investigate. Enter Antony Blinken, stage right:

“The United States stands with our ally, the Philippines, in the face of the PRC’s maritime militia amassing at Whitsun Reef,” Blinken tweeted. “We will always stand by our allies and stand up for the rules-based international order.”

Blinken’s message came a mere 18 hours after he tweeted about his meeting in Brussels with NATO.

“Our alliances were created to defend shared values,” he wrote. “Renewing our commitment requires reaffirming those values and the foundation of international relations we vow to protect: a free and open rules-based order.”

Our rules, our order

What this actually means, of course, is that the order is rules-based so long as it is the nation called America that sets these rules and is accepted as the world’s undisputed leader.

Blinken’s fervent embrace of the ‘rules-based international order’ puts action behind the words set forth in the recently published ‘Interim National Security Strategy Guidance’, a White House document which outlines President Joe Biden’s vision “for how America will engage with the world.” 

While the specific term ‘rules-based international order’ does not appear in the body of the document, the precepts it represents are spelled out in considerable detail, and conform with the five pillars of the “liberal international order” as set forth by the noted international relations scholars, Daniel Duedney and G. John Ikenberry, in their ground-breaking essay, ‘The nature and sources of liberal international order’, published by the Review of International Studies in 1999.

The origins of this “liberal international order” can be traced back to the end of the Second World War and the onset of a Cold War between Western liberal democracies, helmed by the United States, and the communist bloc nations, led by the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China. The purpose of this order was simple – to maintain a balance of power between the US-led liberal democracies and their communist adversaries, and to maintain and sustain US hegemony over its liberal democratic allies.  This was accomplished through five basic policy ‘pillars’: Security co-binding; the embrace of US hegemony; self-limitation on the part of US allies; the politicization of global economic institutions for the gain of liberal democracies; and Western “civil identity.”

All five are emphasized in Biden’s interim guidance, in which the president openly advocates for “a stable and open international system.” It notes that “the alliances, institutions, agreements, and norms underwriting the international order the United States helped to establish are being tested.” 

The faltering empire’s flaws and inequities

Biden also observed that the restoration of this international order “rests on a core strategic proposition: The United States must renew its enduring advantages so that we can meet today’s challenges from a position of strength. We will build back better our economic foundations; reclaim our place in international institutions; lift up our values at home and speak out to defend them around the world; modernize our military capabilities, while leading first with diplomacy; and revitalize America’s unmatched network of alliances and partnerships.”

All five of Duedney’s and Ikenberry’s policy ‘pillars’ can be found embedded in these – and other – statements contained in the guidance.

There is a defensive tone to Biden’s guidance, which notes that “rapid change and mounting crisis” have exposed “flaws and inequities” in the US-dominated international system which “have caused many around the world – including many Americans – to question its continued relevance.” 

Here Biden runs into the fundamental problem of trying to justify and sustain a model of economic-based global hegemony which was founded at a time when the existence of a Western liberal democratic “order” could be justified as a counter to the Soviet-led communist bloc. The Cold War ended in 1990. The ‘international rules-based order’ that was created at the behest of the US to prevail in this conflict continued, however. It seems that the US wasn’t simply satisfied with preventing the spread of communism; its raison d’être instead transitioned from being the leader of an alliance of liberal democracies, to being the global hegemon, using the very system devised to confront communism to instead install and sustain the US as the undisputed dominant power in the world.

This trend began in the immediate aftermath of the end of the Cold War, where the US had the opportunity to pass the baton of global leadership to the United Nations, an act that would have given legitimacy to the notion of an ‘international order’.

This, however, proved a bridge too far for the neo-liberal tendencies of the administration of President Bill Clinton, who continued the Cold War-era practice of using the UN as a vehicle to promote US policy prerogatives at the expense of the international ‘order’. Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright helped coin the term “indispensable nation” when defining America’s post-Cold War role in the world (it is notable that Blinken recently praised Albright in a tweet, noting that “her tenacity & effectiveness left the US stronger & more respected globally,” and adding “she’s a role model for me & so many of our diplomats.”)

The arrogance and hubris contained in any notion of a single nation being “indispensable” to the global order is mind-boggling and is reflective of a disconnect with both reality and history on the part of those embracing it.

The myth of indispensability

The unsustainability of the premise of American ‘indispensability’ was demonstrated by both the events of September 11, 2001, and the inability of the US to deal with its aftermath. Had the US embraced and acted on President George H. W. Bush’s notion of a “new world order” in the aftermath of the Cold War, it would have found itself as a vital world leader working in concert with a global community of nations to confront the scourge of Islamic fundamentalist-based terrorism. But this was not to be.

Instead, the ‘indispensable nation’ was exposed as a fraud, with many in the world recognizing the US not as a power worthy of emulation, but rather as the source of global angst. This rejection of America’s self-anointed role as global savior extended to many Americans too, who were tired of the costs associated with serving as the world’s police force.

Indeed, this exhaustion with global intervention, and the costs accrued, helped create the foundation of electoral support for Donald Trump’s rejection of the “rules-based international order” in favor of a more distinct “America first” approach to global governance. What gave Trump’s policy so much “punch” was the fact that not only did many American citizens reject the “rules-based international order,” but so did much of the rest of the world.

Repairing the damage done by four years of Trump has become the number one priority of the Biden administration. To do this, both Biden and Blinken recognize that they simply cannot return to the policy formulations that existed before Trump took office; that ship has sailed, and trying to sell the American people and the rest of the world on what many viewed as a failed policy construct (i.e., unilateral, uncontested American hegemony) was seen as an impossible task.

Instead, the Biden administration is seeking to reinvent the original premise of the ‘rules-based international order’ by substituting Russian and Chinese ‘authoritarianism’ in place of Soviet-led communism as a threat which liberal democracies around the world willingly and enthusiastically rally around the US to confront.

“Authoritarianism is on the global march,” Biden’s guidance observed, “and we must join with like minded allies and partners to revitalize democracy the world over. We will work alongside fellow democracies across the globe to deter and defend against aggression from hostile adversaries. We will stand with our allies and partners to combat new threats aimed at our democracies” and which “undermine the rules and values at the heart of an open and stable international system.”

Biden concluded his essay in dramatic fashion. “This moment is an inflection point,” he noted. “We are in the midst of a fundamental debate about the future direction of our world. No nation is better positioned to navigate this future than America. Doing so requires us to embrace and reclaim our enduring advantages, and to approach the world from a position of confidence and strength. If we do this, working with our democratic partners, we will meet every challenge and outpace every challenger. Together, we can and will build back better.”

No longer the world’s undisputed No.1

While postulated as a statement of American strength, Biden’s concluding remarks actually project not only the inherent insecurity of the US today, but also its root causes. The fact that the US needs to “reclaim our enduring advantages”implies that we lost them, and illustrates that these so-called advantages are not nearly as enduring as Biden would like to think. “Building back better” is an admission of weakness, a recognition that the notion of an ‘indispensable nation’ is an artificial construct; most nations no longer accept America as the world leader.

The reality is that the US is one of the most powerful nations in the world. That position, however, is no longer uncontested; China has emerged as the equal of the US in many metrics used to measure global power and influence, and superior in some. Moreover, China operates effectively in a multi-polar global reality, recognizing that the era of the American singularity is over. Russia, India, Brazil, and the European collective all represent polar realities whose existence and influence exists independent of the US.

The US, however, cannot function in such a world. While there is a growing recognition among American politicians that the post-Cold War notion of the US being the sole-remaining superpower has run its course, the only alternative these politicians can offer is the attempt to return to a bi-polar world which has the US at the head of its liberal democratic ‘partners’, facing off against the forces of ‘authoritarianism’. This vision, however, is unrealistic, if for no other reason that the world no longer views Western liberal democracy as ‘good’, and authoritarianism as ‘evil’.

This reality is evident to much of the rest of the world. Why, then, would US policy makers embrace a formulation doomed to fail? The answer is simple – the US, as it exists today, needs the ‘rules-based international order’ to remain relevant. Relevant, as used here, means globally dominant.

US politicians who operate on the national level cannot get elected on platforms that reject the ‘indispensable’ role of the country, even if many Americans and most of the world have. US economic dominance is in large part sustained by the very systems that underpin the ‘rules-based international order’ – the World Trade Organization and the World Bank. US geopolitical relevance is sustained by Cold War-era military alliances.

An unviable, unsustainable future

An American retreat from being the ‘indispensable’ power, and a corresponding embrace of a leadership role based upon a more collegial notion of shared authorities, would not mean the physical demise of the US – the nation would continue to exist as a sovereign entity. But it would mean an end to the psychological reality of America as we know it today – a quasi-imperial power whose relevance is founded on compelled global hegemony. This model is no longer viable. The fact that the Biden administration has chosen to define its administration through an ardent embrace of this failed system is proof positive that the survival of post-Cold War American is existentially connected to its ability to function as the world’s ‘indispensable nation’.

American exceptionalism is a narcotic that fuels the country’s domestic politics more than global geo-political reality. The ‘rules-based international order’ that underpins this fantasy is unsustainable in the modern era and makes the collapse of the “exceptional” United States inevitable.

Watching the Biden administration throw its weight behind a US-dominated ‘rules-based international order’ is like watching the Titanic set sail; it is big, bold, and beautiful, and its fate pre-ordained.

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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

Featured image: Tony Blinken At His Confirmation Hearing, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jan. 19, 2021. Screenshot.
via Mondoweiss

Video: The PCR Test Fraud

April 1st, 2021 by BBC Panorama

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BBC Panorama sent an undercover reporter inside one of the biggest UK COVID testing labs.

Secret filming uncovered evidence of potential contamination and pressure to hit targets.

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Last Month’s (March) Most Popular Articles

April 1st, 2021 by Global Research News

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The “Defender-Europe”. US Army Arrives.

April 1st, 2021 by Manlio Dinucci

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Not everything in Europe is paralyzed by the anti-Covid lockdown: in fact, the mammoth annual exercise of the US Army, Defender-Europe, which until June mobilized on European territory, and beyond this, dozens of thousands of soldiers with thousands of tanks and other means, has been set in motion. The Defender-Europe 21 not only resumes the 2020 program, resized due to Covid, but amplifies it.

Why does the “Europe Defender” come from the other side of the Atlantic? The 30 NATO Foreign Ministers (Luigi Di Maio for Italy), who physically gathered in Brussels on March 23-24 explained: “Russia, with its aggressive behavior undermines and destabilizes its neighbors, and tries to interfere in the Balkan region.” A scenario constructed with the reality overturning technique: for example, by accusing Russia of trying to interfere in the Balkan region, where NATO “interfered” in 1999 by dropping, with 1,100 aircraft, 23,000 bombs, and missiles on Yugoslavia.

Faced with the Allies’ cry for help, the US Army comes to “defend Europe.” Defender-Europe 21, under the US Army Europe and Africa command, mobilizes 28,000 troops from the United States and 25 NATO allies and partners: they will conduct operations in over 30 training areas in 12 countries, including fire and missile exercises. The US Air Force and Navy will also participate.

In March, the transfer of thousands of soldiers and 1,200 armored vehicles and other heavy equipment from the United States to Europe began. They are landing in 13 airports and 4 European ports, including in Italy. In April, over 1,000 heavy equipment pieces will be transferred from three pre-positioned US Army depots – in Italy (probably Camp Darby), Germany, and the Netherlands – to various training areas in Europe, they will be transported by trucks, trains, and ships. In May, four major exercises will take place in 12 countries, including Italy. In one of the war games, more than 5,000 soldiers from 11 countries will spread across Europe for fire exercises.

While Italian and European citizens will still be prohibited to freely move for “security” reasons, this prohibition does not apply to the thousands of soldiers who will move from one European country to another freely. They will have the “Covid passport,” provided not by the EU but by the US Army, which guarantees that they are subjected to “strict Covid prevention and mitigation measures.”

 The United States is not only coming to “defend Europe.” The large exercise – explained the US Army Europe and Africa in its statement – demonstrates our ability to serve as a strategic security partner in the western Balkans and the Black Sea regions while sustaining our abilities in northern Europe, the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Africa For this reason, Defender-Europe 21 “utilizes key ground and maritime routes bridging Europe, Asia, and Africa“.

The generous “Defender” does not forget Africa. In June, again within the framework of Defender-Europe 21, it will “defend” Tunisia, Morocco, and Senegal with a vast military operation from North Africa to West Africa, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. It will be directed by the US Army through the Southern Europe Task Force with its headquarters in Vicenza  (North Italy). The official statement explains: “African Lion exercise is designed to counter malign activity in North Africa and Southern Europe and to defend the theater from adversary military aggression”. It does not specify who the “maleficents” are, but the reference to Russia and China is evident.

The “Defender of Europe” is not passing through here. The US Army V Corps participates in Defender-Europe 21. The V Corps, after being reactivated at Fort Knox  (Kentucky), has established its advanced headquarters in Poznan (Poland), from where it will command operations along NATO’s Eastern flank. The new Security Forces assistance Brigades, US Army special units  that train and lead NATO partner countries’ forces (such as Ukraine and Georgia) in military operations participate in the exercise.

Even if it is not known how much Defender-Europe 21 will cost, we citizens of the participating countries know we will pay the cost with our public money, while our resources to face the pandemic crisis are scarce. Italian military spending rose this year to 27.5 billion euros, that is 75 million euros a day. However, Italy has the satisfaction of participating in Defender-Europe 21 not only with its own armed forces but as a host country. It will therefore have the honor of hosting the final exercise of the US Command in June, with the participation of the US Army V Corps from Fort Knox.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: Consul General Meghan Gregonis, U.S. Consulate Munich welcomes Col. Patrick Disney, 1st Cavalry Division as he arrives at the Nuremberg Airport, Germany, March 5, 2020. Disney and his fellow Soldiers are the first to arrive to Germany for exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20. Exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20 is the deployment of a division-size combat-credible force from the United States to Europe, the drawing of equipment and the movement of personnel and equipment across the theater to various training areas. (U.S. Army photo by Capt. Ellen C. Brabo, 7th Army Training Command)(U.S. Army photo by Capt. Ellen C. Brabo, 7th Army Training Command)

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If nations had a referendum, asking the public if they want their taxes to go to military weapons that are more efficient in killing than the ones we currently have, or if they would prefer the money to be invested in medical care, social services, education and other critical public needs, what would the response be? 

Probably the majority of people would not have to think long and hard, since for many life has become an endless struggle. Even in wealthy countries, the most basic social rights can no longer be taken for granted. Social services are increasingly being turned into commodities, and instead of helping ordinary people they must serve shareholders by providing a healthy profit margin.

The United States is a prime example, where seeing a dentist or any medical doctor is only possible if one has health insurance. Around 46 million Americans cannot afford to pay for quality healthcare—and that is in the richest country of the world.

In less developed nations, a large proportion of people find it hard to access even the most basic resources to ensure a healthy and dignified life. One in nine of the world’s population go hungry. And the Covid-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this crisis of poverty amid plenty, with the number of people facing acute hunger more than doubling.

There are now 240 million people requiring emergency humanitarian assistance, while over 34 million people are already on the brink of starvation.

But the United Nations’ funding appeals are far from being met, condemning thousands to unnecessary deaths from hunger this year. With aid funding falling as humanitarian needs rise, aid agencies are being forced to cut back on life-saving services.

Does it make any sense for our governments to spend billions on defence while fragile health systems are being overwhelmed, and the world is facing its worst humanitarian crisis in generations?

Outrageously misplaced priorities

Global military spending continued to reach record levels in 2020, rising almost 4 percent in real terms to US$1.83 trillion, even despite the severe economic contractions caused by the pandemic. The United States spends two-fifths of the world’s total, more than the next ten countries combined, and still cannot afford to prevent 50 million of its own citizens suffering from food insecurity. Most shamefully, the United Kingdom is massively boosting its arms budget—the largest rise in almost 70 years, including a vast increase to its nuclear weapons stockpile—while cutting aid to the world’s poorest by 30 percent.

Consider what a fraction of military budgets could achieve if that public money was diverted to real human needs, instead of sustaining the corrupt and profitable industry of war:

  • Meeting Goals 1 and 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals— ‘End poverty in all its forms everywhere’ and ‘Zero hunger’—would barely exceed 3 percent of global annual military spending, according to the UN’s Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.
  • With the U.S. military budget of $750 billion in 2020, it could feed the world’s hungry and still spend twice as much on its military than China, writes peace activist Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK.
  • The annual nuclear weapon budget worldwide is 1,000 percent—or 10 times—the combined budget of both the UN and the World Health Organisation (WHO), according to the Global Campaign on Military Spending.
  • Just 0.04 percent of global military spending would have funded the WHO’s initial Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund, according to Tipping Point North South in its Transform Defence report.
  • It would cost only 0.7 percent of global military spending (an estimated $141.2 billion) to vaccinate all the world’s 7.8 billion inhabitants against Covid-19, according to figures from Oxfam International.

These opportunity costs highlight our outrageously misplaced priorities during an unprecedented global health emergency. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed just how ill-prepared we are to deal with real threats to our societies, and how our ‘national security’ involves a lot more than armies, tanks and bombs. This crisis cannot be addressed by weapons of mass destruction or personnel prepared for war, but only through properly funded healthcare and other public services that protect our collective human security.

It’s time to reallocate bloated defence budgets to basic economic and social needs, as long enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human rights. Article 25 points the way forward, underscoring the necessity of guaranteeing adequate food, shelter, healthcare and social security for all.

There is an imperative need for global cooperation to support all nations in recovering and rebuilding from the pandemic. The United Nations and its frontline agencies are critically placed to avert a growing ‘hunger pandemic’, and yet are struggling to receive even minimal funding from governments.

Imagine what could be achieved if just a portion of the money spent on military expenditures were pooled into a global fund, and redirected towards ending hunger and massively investing in public health systems, especially in the most impoverished and war-torn regions.

The common sense of funding ‘peace and development, not arms!’ has long been proclaimed by campaigners, church groups and engaged citizens the world over. But it will never happen unless countless people in every country unify around such an obvious cause, and together press our public representatives to prioritise human life over pointless wars.

In the words of arms trade campaigner Andrew Feinstein:

“Perhaps this is an opportunity. Let’s embrace our global humanity, which is how we’re going to get through this crisis. Let’s put aside our obsession with enemies, with conflict. This is an opportunity for peace. This is an opportunity to promote our common humanity.”

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This article was originally published on Share the World’s Resources

Sonja Scherndl is the campaigns coordinator at Share The World’s Resources (STWR), a civil society organisation based in London, UK, with consultative status at the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

Adam Parsons is STWR’s editor. 

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A group of scientists and doctors has today issued an open letter calling on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to answer urgent safety questions regarding COVID-19 vaccines, or withdraw the vaccines’ authorisation.

The letter describes serious potential consequences of COVID-19 vaccine technology, warning of possible autoimmune reactions, blood clotting abnormalities, stroke and internal bleeding, “including in the brain, spinal cord and heart”. The authors request evidence that each medical danger outlined “was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.”

“Should all such evidence not be available”, the authors write, “we demand that approval for use of the gene-based vaccines be withdrawn until all the above issues have been properly addressed by the exercise of due diligence by the EMA.”

The letter is addressed to Emer Cooke, Executive Director of the EMA, and was sent on Monday 1 March 2021. The letter was copied to the President of the Council of Europe and the President of the European Commission.

It states:

“We are supportive in principle of the use of new medical interventions.” However, “there are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute ‘human experimentation’, which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.”

Read the letter here.

Video statement by Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and Former Chair, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene. Click screen to view.

 

For comment contact Professor Sucharit Bhakdi MD: [email protected], or Associate Professor Michael Palmer MD: [email protected]

In a public statement the group said…

“No sooner did we deliver our letter than the Norwegian Medicines Agency warned that COVID-19 vaccines may be too risky for use in the frail elderly, the very group these vaccines are designed to protect. We would add that, by virtue of the mechanisms of action of the vaccines, to stimulate the production of spike protein, which has adverse pathophysiological properties, there may also be vulnerable people who are not old and already ill. New data shows that vaccine side effects are three times as common in those who have previously been infected with coronavirus, for example. None of the vaccines have undergone clinical testing for more than a few months, which is simply too short for establishing safety and efficacy.

“Therefore, as a starting point, we believe it is important to enumerate and evaluate all deaths which have occurred within 28 days of vaccination, and to compare the clinical pictures with those who have not been vaccinated.

“More broadly, with respect to the development of COVID-19 vaccines, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has stated in their Resolution 2361, on 27th January 2021, that member states must ensure all COVID-19 vaccines are supported by high quality trials that are sound and conducted in an ethical manner. EMA officials, and other regulatory bodies in EU countries, are bound by these criteria. They should be made aware that they may be violating Resolution 2361 by applying medical products still in phase 3 studies.

“Under Resolution 2361, member states must also inform citizens that vaccination is NOT mandatory and ensure that no one is politically, socially, or otherwise pressured to become vaccinated. States are further required to ensure that no one is discriminated against for not receiving the vaccine.”

The letter comes as a petition against UK Government plans for vaccine passports passed 270,000 signatures, more than double that required to compel consideration for debate by MPs. The petition will be debated in the UK Parliament on 15th March 2021.

Doctors and scientists can sign the open letter by sending their name, qualifications, areas of expertise and country of practice to: [email protected].

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“New Covid vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists,” reads the headline of a recent piece in the UK Guardian.

The article is based on a survey of pro-vaccine scientists in nearly thirty countries across the globe. Two thirds of these scientists thought that the time frame within which you will need a new shot is less than nine months.

Observes the Guardian:

“The grim forecast of a year or less comes from two-thirds of respondents, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of organisations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and UNAIDS, who carried out the survey of 77 scientists from 28 countries.”

If you are concerned about the vaccines, please pay close attention.

The Guardian’s report is an important one, because it indirectly reveals the truth about the current crop of the Covid-19 vaccines. Here is the hidden message: the vaccines being administered in millions of doses every day fail to confer adequate protection against Covid-19.

The obvious implication of these scientists’ statements is that the vaccines on offer are ineffective. About this there can now be no doubt, for if the vaccines were effective, these experts would not go around saying that people will have to be re-vaccinated within mere months of receiving their Covid shots. Only a few weeks ago these shots – you may remember – were being promoted as the answer to the pandemic and a ticket back to normality.

To compound the travesty, these scientists fail to tell us that there is every reason to believe that the new vaccines will be as ineffective as those that are being peddled at present.

The reason why the current vaccines are ineffective is because the virus that causes Covid-19 has mutated into a multitude of new variants. Some of these variants are sufficiently removed from the original strain to render the vaccines – which were aimed at that earlier version of the virus – useless. There have already been a number of cases where people came down with Covid even though they had been vaccinated against it. In a number of places around the world, the new variants have already become the dominant strains which makes the current batch of vaccines on the market largely obsolete.

That this type of virus mutates rapidly has always been known, which is why honest scientists have always warned that it is impossible to end this epidemic by vaccinations. Trying to beat this disease with inoculations is like playing cat and mouse, where we can never catch up with ever-new variants of the rapidly morphing virus. In other words, because of its nature, the virus will always be one step ahead in the vaccination game.

But this well-known fact did not dissuade the pharma companies and their allies in the scientific community and government from pursuing this predictably futile course of action. The reason for this is not difficult to see: money. The whole vaccination enterprise has proved to be tremendously profitable for those involved. The Pfizer vaccine, for example, is already the second highest revenue-generating drug in the world. According to an earlier piece in the Guardian, Covid-19 vaccines have “created a global market worth tens of billions of dollars in annual sales for some pharmaceutical companies.”

The effort has produced a bevy of billionaires and we are still only in the relatively early stages. Even though not everyone involved becomes a billionaire, great amounts of money and funding from this enterprise have been flowing to countless so-called experts, scientists and politicians who take part in the racket.

Desirous of keeping their scheme going, the profiteers blame the failure of the vaccines on the slow and uneven progress of the roll-out process. But what they say is just not true.

Rather than being slow, this has been the fastest vaccination development, production and roll-out in history. It normally takes several years to develop and test a vaccine and then it takes a long time to administer it to the population at large. According to Business Insider, “vaccines often take years, and sometimes even decades, to develop, test, and approve for public use.” The first Covid vaccines were being administered barely nine months after the disease was first detected in the West. The speed of the development and administration has been wholly unprecedented.

By claiming that the lack of speed is to blame and that we have to carry out the whole process much faster, the vaccine profiteers are proposing a course of action that is completely unrealizable.

Just think about it. According to Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University, “new mutations arise every day. Sometimes they find a niche that makes them more fit than their predecessors. These lucky variants could transmit more efficiently and potentially evade immune responses to previous strains.”

To beat the mutations in the way the manufacturers suggest, we would have to develop, test, produce and roll out the vaccines for the strains in circulation in a very small window of time. As this is a quickly mutating virus, we are talking about a matter of weeks at the most. In this time frame we would not only have to develop an effective vaccine also but to inoculate the majority of the world’s population. This is clearly unachievable. Only a person detached from reality could think such a thing possible.

But even if you could somehow miraculously manage to do all of that within a month, there still would be no guarantee that within this time period new vaccine-eluding strains would not arise.

What the vaccines manufacturers and the experts and scientists on their payrolls publicly advocate is obviously absurd, and they know it. But this does not stop them from pushing this course of action on the frightened public, because of the tremendous profits they will rake up in the process. With each new round of the unwinnable game of cat and mouse being played with the virus, they will increase their wealth to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

Due to the mutating nature of this virus, it is impossible to defeat this pandemic by vaccinations. In fact, vaccinations are likely to make things worse, because not only are they ineffective in conferring protection, but they apparently also have serious side effects. There have already been thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of vaccine injuries reported in the relatively short time since the mass administration began. The true number is likely far larger, and we still know nothing of the potential long-terms effects of these hastily created pharmaceuticals. According to analysis of data from Israel, one of the world’s most vaccinated countries, “Pfizer’s vaccine killed about 40 times more (elderly) people and 260 times more of the young than what the COVID-19 virus would have claimed in the given time frame.”

By continuing to administer these untested and ineffective concoctions to millions of people on a daily basis the pharma companies and their accomplices in government and the scientific community may be creating the largest health calamity in human history.

We must call upon our elected officials to put an end to this travesty.

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Vasko Kohlmayer [email] was born and grew up in former communist Czechoslovakia. He is the author of The West in Crisis: Civilizations and Their Death Drives.

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The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) announced Tuesday it is investigating reports of people who tested positive for COVID more than two weeks after being fully vaccinated against the disease.

According to Kiro 7 News, a CBS affiliate in Washington, the DOH is investigating reports of the so-called “breakthrough cases,” which it said are expected with any vaccine. Each case was confirmed with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test or a positive antigen test more than two weeks after the person had been fully vaccinated.

A majority of people with confirmed vaccine breakthrough experienced mild symptoms, if any. However, since Feb. 1, eight people with vaccine breakthrough cases were hospitalized and the DOH “is investigating two potential vaccine breakthrough cases where the patients died. Both patients were more than 80 years old and suffered underlying health issues,” officials said in a press release.

Washington isn’t the only state reporting breakthrough cases. Florida, South Carolina, Texas, New York, California and Minnesota have also reported cases of fully vaccinated people testing positive and becoming ill with COVID.

The Florida Department of Health in Volusia County had six documented breakthrough cases, Sumter County had six and Lake County had 26 cases, according to emails from each county spokespersons.

Dr. Sunil Joshi, president of the Duval County Medical Foundation, compared the COVID vaccine to the flu vaccine. “It’s like the flu shot, for instance, right. We know, we encourage people to get the flu vaccine. That doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get the flu. But the disease is significantly lessened,” Joshi said. “So remember, the whole goal for this, from the very beginning, has been to keep people out of the hospital. And so anything positive after the vaccine is not unusual, it can happen.”

In Charleston, South Carolina, the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) identified 134 breakthrough cases in those fully vaccinated across the state. In the past month alone, Roper St. Francis Healthcare treated four patients in the hospital and were aware of 10 other “breakthrough” cases that did not need hospitalization.

The Medical University of South Carolina reported seven COVID cases in fully vaccinated people. Roper Hospital is working with DHEC to analyze positive test results to see if variants may play a role.

“All of these individuals we identify who get infected or even hospitalized despite receiving two doses, that virus will be sent on to DHEC for further analysis,” infectious disease physician Dr. Kent Stock said. “The question is, is that phenomenon influencing these numbers?”

In Wichita Falls, Texas, seven vaccine breakthrough cases were reported Monday in those fully vaccinated against COVID. Of the seven cases, six had the Pfizer vaccine and one had Moderna.

“We’ve been watching that since the very beginning, since vaccinations started and so we started noticing it was just maybe one per week, two per week, now we are currently at seven,” Amy Fagan, assistant health director of the Wichita Falls Wichita County Public Health District, said.

As of March 24, Minnesota had identified 89 “breakthrough” COVID infections with a small number resulting in hospitalization, according to Star Tribune.

Out of caution, the state is reviewing the cases to see if they have anything in common, state infectious disease director Kris Ehresmann said. “A cluster of cases vaccinated at the same site could suggest a handling problem with the vaccine, or that a lot was tainted,” she said.

When asked about Minnesota’s vaccine breakthrough cases during a White House press briefing on March 26, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor, said: “This is something we take seriously and follow closely. You will see breakthrough infections in any vaccination when you’re vaccinating literally tens and tens and tens of millions of people. So in some respects, that’s not surprising.”

According to Fox News, a Long Island, New York woman tested positive for COVID Tuesday — more than a month after receiving her second dose of the Moderna vaccine meant to protect against the virus. “I was shocked,” Rosen said. “I’m the 4.9% that got Moderna and actually got COVID.”

In a March 23 letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, eight physicians reported on a study they conducted on breakthrough cases at the University of California, San Diego and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) health systems.

According to the letter, UCLA instituted an optional testing program on Dec. 26, 2020, for asymptomatic healthcare workers using PCR nasal testing in an effort to detect asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections after vaccination.

From Dec. 16, 2020, through Feb.9, 2021, a total of 36,659 healthcare workers received the first dose of a COVID vaccine, and 28,184 of these persons (77%) received the second dose. Among those vaccinated, 379 people tested positive for COVID at least one day after vaccination, and the majority (71%) tested positive within the first two weeks after the first dose. After receiving both vaccinations, 37 healthcare workers tested positive.

According to the study, the risk of testing positive for COVID after vaccination was between 0.97% and 1.19% –– rates higher than the risks reported in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine trials.

As The Defender reported in December 2020, one explanation for “breakthrough cases” in the fully vaccinated may be the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in mRNA COVID vaccines like Moderna and Pfizer.

Studies have found approximately 72% of people may have PEG antibodies. In those people, the antibodies may cause an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine. Or, the antibodies may break down and degrade the PEG-coated mRNA in the vaccine before it gets a chance to get into the cell and start programming the production of spike proteins, resulting in the vaccine being less effective.

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

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Why Canada Should Leave NATO

April 1st, 2021 by Yves Engler

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NATO is a bad influence. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization strengthens the worst tendencies of our political culture.

Ricochet recently reported on internal government documents regarding a discussion about selling sensors for armed drones to Turkey. Last spring the Trudeau government approved an exemption to an arms export ban to Turkey, allowing Ontario-based L3Harris Wescam to sell its thermal surveillance and laser missile targeting technology. It was subsequently employed in the deadly conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

In providing the exemption, government officials demonstrated concern about corporate interests and Canadian relations with a NATO ally.

The need for cooperation among NATO partners was a major element of the justification for the carve-out that allowed Canadian tech to be transferred despite the stated ban,” reported Jon Horler.

This is not the first time NATO has been invoked to justify arms sales that fueled a war. In 1967 Prime Minister Lester Pearson responded to calls by opponents of the war in Vietnam to end the Defence Production Sharing Agreement, the arrangement under which Canada sold the US weapons, with the claim that to do so would imperil NATO. Lester Pearson claimed this “would be interpreted as a notice of withdrawal on our part from continental defence and even from the collective defence arrangements of the Atlantic alliance.”

NATO has also had a deleterious impact on nuclear weapons policy. In 2017 the government “hid behind Canada’s NATO membership”, according to NDP foreign critic Hélène Laverdière, when it voted against holding and then boycotted the 2017 UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination. In the lead-up to the resulting Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entering into force, the nuclear armed alliance publicly criticized the TPNW. “As the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or ban treaty, nears entry into force, we collectively reiterate our opposition to this treaty,” noted a NATO statement. Despite 86 countries signing the treaty, Ottawa continues to refuse to adopt the UN Nuclear Ban.

The alliance also heightens pressure on the federal government to boost socially and ecologically damaging military spending. In 2006 NATO countries adopted a pledge to put 2% of economic output into their military. Militarists regularly cite this arbitrary figure when pushing for greater military spending. Donald Trump and other US officials have repeatedly demanded Canada and other NATO countries spend 2% of GDP on the military. “NATO Members Ramp Up Defense Spending After Pressure From Trump”, noted a recent Bloomberg headline.

NATO has also been used to push weapons procurement. Calling for expanding the jet fleet, senior military officials told the Globe and Mail in 2017 that “Canada’s fighter fleet is not big enough to meet its NORAD and NATO obligations at the same time.” The federal government’s website justifies purchasing 15 Canadian Surface Combatants (CSC) ships – at a cost of $77 billion to acquire and $286 billion over its life-cycle – on the grounds they “will be able to a perform a broad range of missions with” NATO and other alliances. On Lockheed Martin’s site it says the “CSC will be fully interoperable with 5-eyes and NATO nations” and that its ship building “is based on 30+ years’ experience and knowledge of Canadian and NATO naval operations.”

In a history of the first century of the navy Marc Milner describes a series of reports in the mid-1960s concluding that the Royal Canadian Navy was “too small to meet Canada’s NATO obligations” and should be expanded “to meet NATO and North American commitments.”

NATO also draws Canada into foreign expeditions. A Canadian vessel currently leads Standing NATO Maritime Group One that is patrolling approximately 2,000 km from Canadian territory. It operates in the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Norwegian Sea while three other NATO Standing Naval Forces operate in the Black Sea, Mediterranean and elsewhere. Canada provides logistical support to NATO’s Kosovo Force and Canadian soldiers are part of NATO Mission Iraq, which Canada led until recently. About 600 Canadians are part of a Canadian-led NATO mission on Russia’s doorstep in Latvia.

Over the past two decades the alliance has drawn Canada into a number of violent conflicts. A Canadian general lead NATO’s 2011 attack on Libya in which seven CF-18 fighter jets and two Canadian naval vessels participated. Hundreds of civilians were killed by NATO bombers and to this day the country remains divided.

During the 2000s 40,000 Canadian troops fought in a NATO war that left thousands dead in Afghanistan. While the stated rationale of the war was to neutralize al-Qaeda members and topple the Taliban regime, the Taliban remains a major actor in the country and Jihadist groups’ influence has increased.

In 1999 Canadian fighter jets dropped 530 bombs in NATO’s illegal 78-day bombing of Serbia. Over 500 civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in bombing that destroyed critical infrastructure.

Sometimes it is necessary to stop hanging around with people who lead you astray. Get rid of the bad influences in your life. It’s time Canada left the belligerent, militaristic, North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

On the eve of NATO’s 72nd anniversary the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute will be hosting a discussion on “Why Canada should leave NATO”

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After months of preliminary talks, attempts at provocation and political preparations it would appears that the crisis in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea is coming to a head.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are increasing their grouping of troops in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, as well as in the direction of Crimea, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Ruslan Khomchak announced.

The reason given for this is the purported deployment of Russian forces to Crimea, and it is allegedly a “defensive move”.

This is clearly a pretext, indeed Moscow has repeatedly warned that Ukraine is preparing for an escalation in Eastern Ukraine and likely towards Crimea too.

On the Russian side, quite a bit of heavy equipment is being deployed in order to stop any potential critical escalation.

Social media is filled with footage of various trains and convoys moving forces towards Krasnodar and, especially via the Crimean Bridge, to Crimea.

The pieces of equipment include notably a 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzer, some BMP-3 IFVs, T-72 battle tanks and more.

In total, as of March 30th, reports claim that Russia has deployed up to twenty-eight battalion tactical groups. Around twenty-five more such formations are expected to arrive in the coming days.

In Eastern Ukraine, the stage has been set for an escalation. For weeks now, Kiev’s forces have carried out one violation after the other, shelling the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic’s (DPR/LPR) military positions, but also their residential areas.

The two Republics responded in kind, and Ukraine has reported almost daily casualties. In most days over the course of March, Kiev lost 1 soldier, and on March 26th, it even lost 4.

In MSM, the portrait of an aggressor, renewing their activities is now being painted. This is reinforced by the fact that there is military equipment primed for attack. All that was left was to remove any political obstacles that stood in the way.

On March 29th, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a bill removing any need for Kiev to fulfill its obligations under the Minsk Agreements.

The document has some typical clauses, that Kiev has adopted numerous times in the past. It, however, calls the situation in Eastern Ukraine an “international armed conflict” – a war, and not “aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.” All of these contravene the Minsk Agreements.

Ukraine also adopted a new Military Strategy, which is mostly aimed at repelling and deterring armed aggression against Kiev, preventing or restraining the enemy from full-scale use of military force against Ukraine, termination of the temporary occupation by the Russian Federation of part of the territory of Ukraine and more.

The stage is set, and it is likely that impromptu NATO exercises will begin in the Black Sea in the coming weeks. Some observers claim that the “ideal period” to begin a war in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea would be between April 15th and 25th as the humidity would be low and the roads easier to navigate.

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Media accounts in the United States have shown that thousands of migrant workers and their families are being held in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention facilities in the state of Texas.

Since the advent of the new administration which took office on January 20, the numbers of people seeking admission to the U.S. has continued to increase exponentially.

Although President Joe Biden has appointed his Vice President Kamala Harris to address and contain the burgeoning crisis, it is quite obvious that the federal government does not have the organizational capacity or the political will to effectively resolve the issue. The question of immigration into the U.S. is closely linked to the imperialist foreign policy of Washington and Wall Street which has systematically exploited and oppressed the masses of people within the Central America region and Mexico.

For several weeks, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its affiliates within the immigration and border services concealed the actual conditions prevailing inside the detention facilities. However, Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar (Democrat) traveled to one of the CBP centers and released photographs and videos of the overcrowded and unsanitary situation facing children and adults.

Migrants held in CBP detention with guards overlooking (Abayomi Azikiwe)

On March 30, several members of the corporate press were allowed to enter the CBP detention facility in Donna, Texas where the images were taken and published during the previous week. The release of the initial photographs earlier in March, sparked sharp criticisms of the Biden administration from Democrats, Republicans and independent political forces. Immediately, Biden deployed a delegation to Texas while announcing that two military bases would be opened to house unaccompanied children seeking to enter the U.S. Nonetheless, the president has refused to declare the situation on the southern border and within the migrant detention facilities as a national crisis requiring immediate executive and legislative measures.

Many thousands are continuing to move throughout the Central America and Mexico region with the aim of entering the U.S. often in efforts to reconnect with family members. A recent British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report filmed in Mexico, illustrates the human trafficking operations taking place from Central America. Couriers are paid large sums of money to smuggle people across dangerous waterways and rural areas until they reach the border between Mexico and Guatemala. People are fleeing from poverty, the tyranny of drug lords and the impact of drought largely stemming from climate change.

An article published by the Associated Press on the media delegation which visited the Texas facility says that:

“The Biden administration for the first time Tuesday (March 30) allowed journalists inside its main border detention facility for migrant children, revealing a severely overcrowded tent structure where more than 4,000 people, including children and families, were crammed into a space intended for 250 and the youngest were kept in a large play pen with mats on the floor for sleeping. With thousands of children and families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent weeks and packing facilities, President Joe Biden has been under pressure to bring more transparency to the process. U.S. Customs and Border Protection allowed two journalists from The Associated Press and a crew from CBS to tour the facility in Donna, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, the nation’s busiest corridor for illegal crossings.”

Concurrently, the Biden administration is continuing the same immigration policy of expelling entire families with children along with adults traveling on their own under the Trump-era public health regulations enacted during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contrastingly, the Biden White House says that it will not expel unaccompanied minors and children while seeking to house these juveniles in better facilities. (See this)

Criminalization of the Plight of Migrant Workers and Their Families 

When the migrants are detained and moved into the CBP detention facilities they are given medical examinations and psychological evaluations, according to the officials. The children are checked for lice and if they show symptoms of coronavirus they are supposed to be placed in some form of isolation.

Nevertheless, in viewing the photographs released by both Congressman Cuellar and the media delegation from March 30, it becomes quite obvious that these facilities where migrant workers and children are being detained are incubators for infectious diseases. After the detainees are processed through examinations, photographs and psychological evaluations, they are given notices of when to appear before an immigration court.

U.S. immigration officials claim that if the children have contact information for relatives living in the country, they are allowed to inform them of their status. However, many of these relatives themselves maybe living as undocumented persons and are reluctant to come forward. The detainees are fingerprinted as well placing them within the federal law-enforcement system for future monitoring.

In the same report quoted earlier in this article, it says of the flow of migrants into the U.S.:

“The Border Patrol is apprehending far more children daily than Health and Human Services is placing with U.S. sponsors, leading to a severe backlog in the system. The Border Patrol generally is not supposed to detain children for more than three days, but Health and Human Services lacks space. More than 2,000 kids have been at the Donna facility for more than 72 hours, including 39 for more than 15 days. HHS is housing children at convention centers in Dallas and San Diego and is opening large-scale sites in San Antonio, El Paso and elsewhere.”

Consequently, these families will remain separated for the unforeseeable future. The living circumstances in the CBP and HHS facilities will make the migrant workers and children susceptible to contracting coronavirus and other illnesses at a time when the number of COVID-19 cases are surging in more than half of the states threatening the advent of a fourth wave in the U.S., the country with the most infections internationally. The trauma of residing in these detention centers could scar the psychological make-up of both the adults and children held in custody along with their families living both outside and inside the U.S.

Federal Government Must Take Immediate Action on Immigration Reform 

The Biden administration can no longer ignore the escalating numbers of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. Policy initiatives to provide vaccinations and economic relief to millions of people, cannot be utilized as an excuse for inaction on the border crisis.

New legislation and executive orders are required to address the needs of the migrants seeking asylum. The aggressive military and economic policies of the government and corporations should be curtailed in order to provide relief to people living in Mexico and Central America.

This crisis has its origins within domestic and foreign policy imperatives of the U.S. which are designed to maintain white supremacy, enhance capitalist exploitation and the imperialist plunder of Latin America and the Caribbean. The influx of migrants into the U.S. is a manifestation of the more than three decades of wars waged against the peoples of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

Tens of millions of people living in these geo-political regions targeted by Washington, the European Union, NATO and their allies are being forced from their homes. The economies under which they live have been destroyed through wars of occupation and the enactment of globalization which stifles the capacity of people to build an independent existence.

Imperialist war and the unquenchable demand by the capitalist states for the land, resources, waterways and labor of the majority of the world’s population has prompted the large-scale displacement of an estimated 75 million people worldwide. The problems of migration from the oppressed nations can only be resolved by a radical transformation of the industrialized countries of Western Europe and North America.

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

Featured image: Migrants held on the Southern US border (Abayomi Azikiwe)

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Emer Cooke, Executive Director, European Medicines Agency, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

28 February 2021

Dear Sirs/Mesdames,

FOR THE URGENT PERSONAL ATTENTION OF: EMER COOKE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE EUROPEAN MEDICINES AGENCY

As physicians and scientists, we are supportive in principle of the use of new medical interventions which are appropriately developed and deployed, having obtained informed consent from the patient. This stance encompasses vaccines in the same way as therapeutics.

We note that a wide range of side effects is being reported following vaccination of previously healthy younger individuals with the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, there have been numerous media reports from around the world of care homes being struck by COVID-19 within days of vaccination of residents. While we recognise that these occurrences might, every one of them, have been unfortunate coincidences, we are concerned that there has been and there continues to be inadequate scrutiny of the possible causes of illness or death under these circumstances, and especially so in the absence of post-mortems examinations.

In particular, we question whether cardinal issues regarding the safety of the vaccines were adequately addressed prior to their approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

As a matter of great urgency, we herewith request that the EMA provide us with responses to the following issues:

1. Following intramuscular injection, it must be expected that the gene-based vaccines will reach the bloodstream and disseminate throughout the body [1]. We request evidence that this possibility was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

2. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that the vaccines will remain entrapped in the circulation and be taken up by endothelial cells. There is reason to assume that this will happen particularly at sites of slow blood flow, i.e. in small vessels and capillaries [2]. We request evidence that this probability was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

3. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that during expression of the vaccines’ nucleic acids, peptides derived from the spike protein will be presented via the MHC I — pathway at the luminal surface of the cells. Many healthy individuals have CD8-lymphocytes that recognize such peptides, which may be due to prior COVID infection, but also to cross-reactions with other types of Coronavirus [3; 4] [5]. We must assume that these lymphocytes will mount an attack on the respective cells. We request evidence that this probability was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

4. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that endothelial damage with subsequent triggering of blood coagulation via platelet activation will ensue at countless sites throughout the body. We request evidence that this probability was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

5. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that this will lead to a drop in platelet counts, appearance of D-dimers in the blood, and to myriad ischaemic lesions throughout the body including in the brain, spinal cord and heart. Bleeding disorders might occur in the wake of this novel type of DIC-syndrome including, amongst other possibilities, profuse bleedings and haemorrhagic stroke. We request evidence that all these possibilities were excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

6. The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor on platelets, which results in their activation [6]. Thrombocytopenia has been reported in severe cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection [7]. Thrombocytopenia has also been reported in vaccinated individuals [8]. We request evidence that the potential danger of platelet activation that would also lead to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) was excluded with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

7. The sweeping across the globe of SARS-CoV-2 created a pandemic of illness associated with many deaths. However, by the time of consideration for approval of the vaccines, the health systems of most countries were no longer under imminent threat of being overwhelmed because a growing proportion of the world had already been infected and the worst of the pandemic had already abated. Consequently, we demand conclusive evidence that an actual emergency existed at the time of the EMA granting Conditional Marketing Authorisation to the manufacturers of all three vaccines, to justify their approval for use in humans by the EMA, purportedly because of such an emergency.

Should all such evidence not be available, we demand that approval for use of the gene-based vaccines be withdrawn until all the above issues have been properly addressed by the exercise of due diligence by the EMA.

There are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute “human experimentation”, which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.

In view of the urgency of the situation, we request that you reply to this email within seven days and address all our concerns substantively. Should you choose not to comply with this reasonable request, we will make this letter public.

This email is copied to:

Charles Michel, President of the Council of Europe

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.

Doctors and scientists can sign the open letter by emailing their name, qualifications, areas of expertise, country and any affiliations they would like to cite, to [email protected]

Yours faithfully,

Professsor Sucharit Bhakdi MD, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Former Chair, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany and Thailand)

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

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

Dr Margareta Griesz-Brisson MD PhD, Consultant Neurologist and Neurophysiologist (studied Medicine in Freiburg, Germany, speciality training for Neurology at New York University, Fellowship in Neurophysiology at Mount Sinai Medical Centre, New York City; PhD in Pharmacology with special interest in chronic low level neurotoxicology and effects of environmental factors on brain health), Medical Director, The London Neurology and Pain Clinic (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany and United Kingdom)

Professor Martin Haditsch MD PhD, Specialist (Austria) in Hygiene and Microbiology, Specialist (Germany) in Microbiology, Virology, Epidemiology/Infectious Diseases, Specialist (Austria) in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Medical Director, TravelMedCenter, Leonding, Austria, Medical Director, Labor Hannover MVZ GmbH (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Austria and Germany)

Professor Stefan Hockertz, Professor of Toxicology and Pharmacologym, European registered Toxicologist, Specialist in Immunology and Immunotoxicology, CEO tpi consult GmbH. (Scientist) (Germany)

Dr Lissa Johnson, BSc BA(Media) MPsych(Clin) PhD, Clinical Psychologist and Behavioural Psychologist, Expertise in the social psychology of torture, atrocity, collective violence and fear propaganda, Former member Australian Psychological Society Public Interest Advisory Group (Clinical Psychologist and Behavioural Scientist) (Australia)

Professor Ulrike Kämmerer PhD, Associate Professor of Experimental Reproductive Immunology and Tumor Biology at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University Hospital of Würzburg, Germany, Trained molecular virologist (Diploma, PhD-Thesis) and Immunologist (Habilitation), Remains engaged in active laboratory research (Molecular Biology, Cell Biology (Scientist) (Germany)

Associate Professor Michael Palmer MD, Department of Chemistry (studied Medicine and Medical Microbiology in Germany, has taught Biochemistry since 2001 in present university in Canada; focus on Pharmacology, metabolism, biological membranes, computer programming; experimental research focus on bacterial toxins and antibiotics (Daptomycin); has written a textbook on Biochemical Pharmacology, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Canada and Germany)

Professor Karina Reiss PhD, Professor of Biochemistry, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Expertise in Cell Biology, Biochemistry (Scientist) (Germany)

Professor Andreas Sönnichsen MD, Professor of General Practice and Family Medicine, Department of General Practice and Family Medicine, Center of Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna (Medical Doctor) (Austria)

Dr Michael Yeadon BSc (Joint Honours in Biochemistry and Toxicology) PhD (Pharmacology), Formerly Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer Allergy & Respiratory, Pfizer Global R&D; Co-founder & CEO, Ziarco Pharma Ltd.; Independent Consultant (Scientist) (United Kingdom)

References

[1] Hassett, K. J.; Benenato, K. E.; Jacquinet, E.; Lee, A.; Woods, A.; Yuzhakov, O.; Himansu, S.; Deterling, J.; Geilich, B. M.; Ketova, T.; Mihai, C.; Lynn, A.; McFadyen, I.; Moore, M. J.; Senn, J. J.; Stanton, M. G.; Almarsson, Ö.; Ciaramella, G. and Brito, L. A.(2019).Optimization of Lipid Nanoparticles for Intramuscular Administration of mRNA Vaccines, Molecular therapy. Nucleic acids 15 : 1–11.

[2] Chen, Y. Y.; Syed, A. M.; MacMillan, P.; Rocheleau, J. V. and Chan, W. C. W.(2020). Flow Rate Affects Nanoparticle Uptake into Endothelial Cells, Advanced materials 32 : 1906274.

[3] Grifoni, A.; Weiskopf, D.; Ramirez, S. I.; Mateus, J.; Dan, J. M.; Moderbacher, C. R.; Rawlings, S. A.; Sutherland, A.; Premkumar, L.; Jadi, R. S. and et al.(2020). Targets of T Cell Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus in Humans with COVID-19 Disease and Unexposed Individuals, Cell 181 : 1489–1501.e15.

[4] Nelde, A.; Bilich, T.; Heitmann, J. S.; Maringer, Y.; Salih, H. R.; Roerden, M.; Lübke, M.; Bauer, J.; Rieth, J.; Wacker, M.; Peter, A.; Hörber, S.; Traenkle, B.; Kaiser, P. D.; Rothbauer, U.; Becker, M.; Junker, D.; Krause, G.; Strengert, M.; Schneiderhan-Marra, N.; Templin, M. F.; Joos, T. O.; Kowalewski, D. J.; Stos-Zweifel, V.; Fehr, M.; Rabsteyn, A.; Mirakaj, V.; Karbach, J.; Jäger, E.; Graf, M.; Gruber, L.-C.; Rachfalski, D.; Preuß, B.; Hagelstein, I.; Märklin, M.; Bakchoul, T.; Gouttefangeas, C.; Kohlbacher, O.; Klein, R.; Stevanović, S.; Rammensee, H.-G. and Walz, J. S.(2020). SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides define heterologous and COVID-19-induced T cell recognition, Nature immunology.

[5] Sekine, T.; Perez-Potti, A.; Rivera-Ballesteros, O.; Strålin, K.; Gorin, J.-B.; Olsson, A.; Llewellyn-Lacey, S.; Kamal, H.; Bogdanovic, G.; Muschiol, S. and et al.(2020). Robust T Cell Immunity in Convalescent Individuals with Asymptomatic or Mild COVID-19, Cell 183 : 158–168.e14.

[6] Zhang, S.; Liu, Y.; Wang, X.; Yang, L.; Li, H.; Wang, Y.; Liu, M.; Zhao, X.; Xie, Y.; Yang, Y.; Zhang, S.; Fan, Z.; Dong, J.; Yuan, Z.; Ding, Z.; Zhang, Y. and Hu, L.(2020). SARS-CoV-2 binds platelet ACE2 to enhance thrombosis in COVID-19, Journal of hematology & oncology 13 : 120.

[7] Lippi, G.; Plebani, M. and Henry, B. M.(2020).Thrombocytopenia is associated with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections: A meta-analysis, Clin. Chim. Acta 506 : 145–148.

[8] Grady, D. (2021). A Few Covid Vaccine Recipients Developed a Rare Blood Disorder, The New York Times, Feb. 8, 2021.

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Selected Articles: The Vaccine Passport Propaganda Template

March 31st, 2021 by Global Research News

The Vaccine Passport Propaganda Template

By Adam Dick, March 31 2021

With reports that President Joe Biden’s administration is planning for imposing a vaccine passport mandate in America, expect to see in the media a deluge of vaccine passport propaganda. What will that propaganda look like?

Biden’s Ukrainian “Putin Push” Could Lead to World War III

By Bruce Wilds, March 31 2021

Biden was in charge of much of the “Ukraine project” during Obama’s time in office. In recent weeks President Biden has been saying some rather mean-spirited things about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

One of the Great Ironies: As China Grows Richer, It Is Growing Further Apart from the US

By Tom Clifford, March 31 2021

In calmer times, when there is less talk of trade disputes, tariffs, human rights abuses, it will be noted as one of history’s great ironies that as the economic gap between the United States and China narrowed the ideological chasm widened.

COVID-19 Vaccines Likened to ‘Software Updates’ for Your Body

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 31 2021

Despite being a recognized form of gene therapy since its inception, vaccine makers are now frantically trying to deny that this mRNA technology is gene therapy. One reason for this, suggested by David Martin, Ph.D.,1 might be because as long as they’re considered “vaccines,” they will be shielded from liability.

Bill Gates and His Empires. “Ushering In the Great Reset”

By Dr. Vandana Shiva and Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 31 2021

We’re currently facing enormously powerful technocrats who are hell-bent on ushering in the Great Reset, which will complete the ongoing transfer of wealth and resource ownership from the poor and middle classes to the ultra-rich.

68-Year-Old Dies After Anaphylactic Reaction to COVID Vaccine as CDC Continues to Ignore Inquiry Into Increasing Number of Deaths

By Megan Redshaw, March 29 2021

Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccines showed that between Dec. 14, 2020 and March 19, 2021, there were 44,606 reports of adverse events, including 2,050 deaths and 7,095 serious injuries.

Canada Ties to the U.S. Empire: Lester Pearson and the Myth of Canada as “Peaceable Kingdom”

By Richard Sanders, March 31 2021

For centuries, self-righteous state myths have depicted the imperial Canadian project as a victory for democracy and human rights. Despite Canada’s long record of genocide, land plunder, and war profiteering, official narratives about noble “Canadian values” still reign in this imagined “peaceable kingdom.”

Canada Suspends AstraZeneca COVID Shot – 2,530 Injuries and 24 Dead Following Mostly Pfizer and Moderna Shots

By Brian Shilhavy, March 31 2021

Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) has joined other nations in recommending that Canadian Provinces halt injections of the experimental AstraZeneca COVID “vaccines” following concerns about blood clots and vaccine-induced thrombocytopenia (VIPIT).

Who Owns Facebook?

By Emanuel Pastreich, March 31 2021

There has been much chatter in the media about the unbridled power of social media tech giants and how they unfairly decide to censor certain voices, or, on the other hand, they fail to delete or block those spreading information that is judged to be false or misleading.

#YemenCantWait. Hands Off Yemen!

By Azza Rojbi, March 31 2021

February 15, 2021, marks one year since the Saudi-led coalition’s horrific air raid on a residential area in Yemen’s northern province of al-Jawf. The bombing killed 35 people, including 25 children, and 18 children were amongst the 23 injured.

Defeating the Global Elite’s Coup d’État: The Great Reset

By Robert J. Burrowes, March 31 2021

Worldwide, international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), governments and the corporate media, acting as agents of the global elite, continue their efforts to preoccupy the human population with measures supposedly being taken to address the non-existent virus labeled SARS-CoV-2.

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They’re called COVID-19 breakthrough cases — people who have been fully vaccinated yet still contract the virus more than 14 days after their second shot.

The cases are popping up around the country, including in Central Florida.

Hanna Rewerts, 27, is a physical therapist and has been tested for COVID-19 at least once a week since the pandemic started.

She says she got her first positive test just days ago.

Click here to watch the video.

“I was shocked, you know,” Rewerts told News 6. “Immediately I’m like, ‘This has to be a false-positive. This can’t be right.’”

But multiple tests confirmed it.

She said she was shocked because she is also fully vaccinated.

As a health care worker, Rewerts had her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in December 2020, according to her vaccine card. Her second dose was three weeks later in January.

More than two months after the second shot, she contracted the virus.

“So it’s just, it’s very odd,” Rewerts said.

Rewerts is among a growing number of people.

Earlier this month, the Minnesota Department of Health released a health advisory stating that along with the CDC, it is investigating COVID-19 infections among people who are “appropriately vaccinated,” also called vaccine breakthrough cases, according to the advisory.

News 6 checked and the Florida Department of Health in Volusia County has six documented breakthrough cases while Sumter County has six and Lake County has 26 cases, according to emails from each county’s spokesperson.

Dr. Timothy Hendrix is with Advent Health and said it is possible for someone who is fully vaccinated to still contract the virus.

However, the vaccine can prevent more severe cases, including hospitalization and death. It is still important to get vaccinated from COVID-19.

“It is possible because no vaccine is perfect,” Hendrix said.

Hendrix stressed that both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 95% effective, though.

“The good news is for that very small amount of people that might become infected, that less than 5%, the chances of severe disease is next to zero,” Hendrix said.

Breakthrough cases are not specific to COVID-19 and can happen with any vaccine, according to experts.

Rewerts said three of her family members who were also fully vaccinated contracted it as well.

“One of my family members actually went to the hospital,” Rewerts said. “I mean, that’s pretty severe enough to be concerned about the vaccine.”

Rewerts said the Florida Department of Health is testing to see whether she may have been infected by one of the COVID-19 variants that has made it to Florida.

She said for now, she and her family will continue social distancing and wearing masks.

“I don’t think the public is aware that it doesn’t mean you’re not getting the virus, and it doesn’t mean you’re not getting sick. There is still a chance,” Rewerts said.

Hendrix put it this way.

“The one thing you should know is every vaccine that’s been approved at this point, is highly effective at preventing the one major endpoint: hospitalization and death,” Hendrix said.

Researchers are still trying to figure out if people who are fully vaccinated and contract the virus can also spread it to other people, which is why they recommend still wearing masks even after you’re vaccinated.

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Emmy Award-winning reporter Louis Bolden joined the News 6 team in September of 2001 and hasn’t gotten a moment’s rest since. Louis has been a General Assignment Reporter for News 6 and Weekend Morning Anchor. He joined the Special Projects/Investigative Unit in 2014.

Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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In the past few months, Grayzone journalist Aaron Mate has interviewed two former ambassadors to Syria: former UK Ambassador Peter Ford and former U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Ford.

The two ambassadors have a common surname but dramatically different perspectives. This article will compare the statements and viewpoints of the two diplomats.

UK Ambassador Peter Ford (PF)

Peter Ford trained as an Arabist and served in the British foreign service in numerous cities including Beirut, Riyadh, and Cairo. He was Ambassador to Bahrein from 1999 to 2003, then Syria from 2003 to 2006. From 2006 until 2014 he was a senior officer with the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

The interview with UK Amb. Peter Ford (PF) shows why he is exceptional former diplomat. He analyzes and criticizes western aggression against Syria.

PF describes the current situation:

“The Syrian government forces control about 70% of the country. There’s that pocket of jihadi fighters controlling Idlib province and a couple of patches of neighboring provinces, and then you’ve got the big – what I call the wild east of Syria – the big triangle of land up all the way along the thousand miles along the Turkish border and then down the Iraqi border, and that is effectively a US protectorate. There are US forces there being helped on the ground by basically Kurdish militia, the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces.”

PF describes the crushing economic sanctions:

“It’s utterly shocking…The policy has been effective in the sense that Syrian people are suffering every day. There are long queues for bread, long queues for gasoline. The policy of sanctions and denial of assistance for reconstruction has been effective, but what kind of policy is it that tries to immiserate a whole country? It’s delusional because it’s not even going to work….

“The experience of 10 years of this conflict is that the Syrian government is amazingly resilient. They’ve been on the ropes many times in this conflict and pulled through largely because they have the support of great swaths of the Syrian populace. Assad is not going to buckle under this new increased economic pressure. It is utterly delusional to believe that this cynical, callous policy could work.”

PF analyzes the US troops in north eastern Syria.

“By their mere presence, they’re preventing the advance of the Syrian government forces. The result is that the Syrian people are denied the great oil and grain wealth of that triangle, the territory. And, so the war over the last year has been more an economic war than a military war…

“The troops are there basically as a tripwire, a deterrent, so that if the Syrian government forces advanced, they would trip over a few American soldiers and that would incur the massive intervention of the US Air Force. This is what it comes down to. They don’t even need big numbers of troops to create the tripwire.

“Even so, it’s interesting that the architects of this policy in the permanent government of the US found it necessary to deceive the head of the executive, the President, keep him in the dark about the numbers…. So, the deceit that has gone on – on every level – is jaw-dropping to me as a former ambassador and an insider in the British system. I find it absolutely incredible.”

PF describes what the war is and is NOT about.

“US policy is NOT about installing in Syria a democratic government, because there is no prospect of that while the US is effectively supporting Islamist fanatics, and while it’s supporting elsewhere in the Middle East regimes like the feudal regime of Saudi Arabia. No, it’s not about democracy. It’s about helping Israel on the one hand and scoring points against Russia on the other. And when it comes down to it, that is what this whole war is really about, from the US standpoint.”

PF analyzes accusations Syrian government used chemical weapons.

“The world has amnesia over Iraq, the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the Colin Powell dossier proof presented to the UN. It’s like Groundhog Day when you hear the claims made about Assad, the use of chemical weapons.

“In the first place, it would make no practical sense for Assad to use chemical weapons; it could only ever have been an own goal. If he wanted to invite heavy Western intervention, he would not have gone about it any other way. You’d have to be incredibly either twisted or delusional to believe that Assad could have been so stupid as to do the one thing – use chemical weapons – which would bring about, or possibly bring about, his obliteration.

“I’m quite convinced this is an elaborate hoax. A series of hoaxes. It’s very revealing that not one of the alleged instances of use of chemical weapons was investigated on the ground by any UN or other international investigations, with the sole exception of Douma. And why Douma? Because that was a piece of territory that the government forces managed to recover immediately after the alleged incident, so that the US and its allies were unable to keep away the international investigators…. That ultimately is the purpose of the chemical weapon hoaxes – to justify the occupation of northeast Syria and the continuing cruel economic pressure.”

PF comments on the senior staff from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons who say they did NOT find evidence of chemical weapons attackand their findings were changed by management.

“These gentlemen [from OPCW]) drafted a report stating that they found evidence that was consistent with staging of an incident, rather than an authentic incident. And ever since, they have been vilified, condemned, undermined. And the campaign against the truth goes on and on and on….”

PF comments on the role of the “White Helmets”.

“The White Helmets’ role is absolutely crucial, pivotal to the Western effort to undermine Syria through these accusations of use of chemical weapons. I think, basically, what happened is that Western governments realized that after the Iraq debacle, that if they were going to use claims about WMD, chemical weapons, whatever, again, they were going to have to produce some kind of smoking gun.

“And this is the role of the White Helmets. They produced the phony pictures of phony incidents which constitute the smoking gun. And that is absolutely pivotal to the propaganda to justify the bombing and the relentless economic and military pressure on Syria…. Western governments [have] been funding the White Helmets to the tune of about $50 million a year. That’s peanuts compared to what they see as the advantages of bringing Syria to its knees.”

PF predicts what may happen ahead.

“I think things are likely to get worse, rather than better.

“What we’ll probably see is simply a continuation of the status quo. The current policies will simply be extended…. to prolong the conflict, to prevent Assad gaining military victory, the continuation of economic warfare to try to bring Assad to his knees and force him to sign a suicide note, which would be acceptance of elections on US terms. I’m sure these policies will be continued.

“But there’s a question mark over whether policy might not become even more adventurous and interventionist with a beachhead of a few thousand soldiers already occupying part of Syria. I greatly fear that Biden might be tempted to increase those numbers, put some military pressure on the Syrian government forces, create more no-fly zones. Already, there’s effectively a no-fly zone over that big triangle of territory that’s occupied by the US forces and Kurdish allies. An attempt might be made to create the no-fly zone of Idlib, which would be ironic. It would mean that the US Air Force was the air wing of al-Qaeda…

“I’m definitely not optimistic. And I fear things could get even worse.”

US Ambassador Robert S. Ford (RSF)

Robert Stephen Ford - Wikipedia

Robert S. Ford was a US diplomat in numerous cities including Algiers and Cairo. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Bahrein from 2001 to 2004, then Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006. As an Arabic speaker, he may have helped Ambassador John Negroponte launch the “El Salvador option” (death squads) in Iraq. Robert S. Ford was Ambassador to Syria from the end of 2010 until 2014 when the US terminated diplomatic relations with Syria. He has continued as an unofficial advisor on Syria policy.

In contrast with the Peter Ford interview, the interview with US Ambassador Robert S. Ford (RSF) is a case study in public relations. Interviewer Aaron Mate asks important questions but RSF deflects the questions, claims ignorance of new revelations, and repeats standard talking points on Syria.

RSF acknowledges there has been “mission creep” for US troops in Syria.

“American troops were sent into Syria originally to fight ISIS. Now that that job is more-or-less finished, we have a sort of mission creep where now the American forces are there not to defeat ISIS – ISIS is already defeated… But now, so what are the Americans doing? Well, now they sort of changed the mission to putting pressure on Damascus, the Assad government, trying to get the Iranians out, trying to limit the Russian influence.”

RSF implies the sanctions on Syria are just.

“Sanctions is a different question, Aaron. I think a lot of it is emotional here in the United States. There’s a desperate desire for justice after all the war crimes committed in Syria. And I think getting rid of the sanctions is going to be a much harder battle to fight in the Congress. So, the sanctions have very strong approval in Congress…”

RSF maintains the initial protests were “almost entirely peaceful”

“In March and April, May into June, the protests were almost entirely peaceful. That’s not to say there was no violence. In the first protest, for example, in Daraa, in which we’re now coming up on the 10-year anniversary, yeah, the protesters did attack the telephone office [Syriatel] that’s owned by Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf. They did attack a court building…”

[Fact check: RSF neglects to mention seven police were killed in the “almost entirely peaceful” Daraa protest.]

RSF acknowledges US allies were sending weapons early but claims the US began sending weapons in 2013.

“Those countries [Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey] did send in weapons before the Americans…

“I supported arming factions of the Free Syrian Army as early as the summer of 2012. And it took the president a year to get to a decision.”

[Fact check: US Central Intelligence Agency was sending weapons from Benghazi Libya to Syria in Oct 2011.]

RSF compares the Free Syrian Army to the anti-Nazi resistance in WW2.

“The United States never gave anti-tank weapons to al-Qaeda…. the number might be half a dozen.

“I want you to think about this in historical context. Do you think when the Americans airdropped weapons into the French resistance against the Nazis in France, do you think the Nazis never got their hands on any of those air drops?…

“The leakage to the al-Qaeda elements, there was a small amount of leakage, but much, much, much more of their weaponry came from the Assad government, either, because the Assad soldiers were corrupt, as we said, we talked at the start about corruption. They sold them, or in some cases, they surrendered, and with that, huge caches of weaponry made their way into al-Nusra hands. The amount of material that al-Nusra got from the United States wouldn’t have lasted them for a day of combat.”

Fact check: This claim is preposterous. As reported by Janes Defense, the US supplied nearly one thousand TONS of weapons in December 2015, much of which ended up in Nusra (Al Qaeda) hands. Nusra obtained weapons when they over-ran Syrian military bases, but otherwise they were amply supplied with weapons by the Gulf monarchies, Israel, Turkey, the US and UK.

RSF claims the Syrian government has primary responsibility for the war and are the “bad guys”.

“What I hope your listeners will take away from this is that it is not an equal combat on both sides; is not an equal responsibility on both sides. One side from the beginning was using torture and shooting at innocent people, thousands of arrests. And one side was trying peacefully, for a very large part, to bring about change. And, unfortunately, in this instance, the bad guys won.”

Fact check: The campaign against Syria has been waged by a coalition of western powers, Turkey, Israel and the Gulf monarchies. About 121 thousand Syrians in the Syrian army and militias have died defending their country.

RSF claims that Syria is responsible for the war refugees and destabilizing its neighbors.

“Even had Turkey, Qatar and the United States, Saudi Arabia, stayed out of it, there still would have been huge refugee flows trying to escape from those same brutal Syrian security forces, and they still would have flooded the borders of Lebanon and Jordan and of Turkey, which is itself destabilizing, particularly in Lebanon, but some places like Jordan, Turkey. Therefore, you can’t just say that all these other countries intervened in sovereign Syrian territory. The Syrian government itself was taking actions which were destabilizing to its neighbors.”

Fact check: Most refugees fled when their neighborhoods were taken over by militants and became battle zones, NOT because they were afraid of Syrian security.

RSF criticizes Turkey but thinks Syrian government bears primary responsibility.

“I’m never going to justify the Turks allowing Salafi jihadists to go into Syria. I think that I’ve already said that that was a bad mistake. And we criticized them at the time of playing with snakes. I’m never going to justify it. But I have to say, Aaron, that in the end, they came in response to what the Assad government was already doing. And so, the principal responsibility … do the Americans have a share of responsibility? Of course, we do. Yeah. It was our antitank missiles blowing up Syrian government tanks, and not just a few; I mean, hundreds of them.

“I think we have to go back to where it started in 2011. And that’s with the Syrian government…”

RSF says he is not aware of the huge scandal at the OPCW but believes Syria has used chemical weapons.

“I’m not familiar with that controversy within the OPCW….

“But I guess I would just say this, Aaron. There’s plenty of documentation by the UN’s joint investigative group with the OPCW that looked at incidents in Syria chemical weapons use, from 2013 onwards. They’ve issued several reports…. So, the 2018 incident, I don’t know about that report, but I have no doubt whatsoever that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons on multiple instances, the same government that bombs hospitals, the same government that bombs bakeries, the same government that kills people in detention routinely. Look at the photos that were brought up by the military defector. You know, why would you think they wouldn’t use chemical weapons? Why would you think they would suddenly have moral scruples against these? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

[Fact check: the OPCW scandal has confirmed manipulation of that organization by the US and west. The “military photographer” refers to the ‘Caesar torture photos’ propaganda stunt.]

RSF wants to increase humanitarian aid to Syria refugees.

“Something the Americans could do that would be hugely helpful is to increase humanitarian aid to the Syrian refugees that number some five million, particularly in Lebanon, where their living circumstances are precarious, very precarious, but also in Jordan and Turkey… I’d like to spend less on the military operation and much more on humanitarian aid.

“And then there is the issue of Northwest Syria, Idlib, where the UN is in charge of an operation getting humanitarian aid to some two million displaced Syrian civilians.”

[Fact check and observation: Idlib province is dominated by Nusra (Al Qaeda). Robert Ford seems to want to perpetuate the AQ stronghold and refugee crisis by supplying aid to Idlib and foreign countries while preventing return of refugees and rebuilding war torn Syria.]

Conclusion

Both ambassadors speak Arabic and have intimate knowledge of Syria.

Robert S. Ford criticizes some past decisions and tactics, but not the assumptions or right of the US to violate the UN Charter and commit aggression against Syria.

Meanwhile, Peter Ford is doing his best to expose the reality of the situation, contrary to government and media bias and falsehoods. Like Daniel Ellsberg, Scott Ritter and Katharine Gun, he is using his special knowledge to publicly challenge the claims and assumptions of western policy. With Ellsberg it was about Vietnam. With Ritter and Gun, it was about Iraq. With Peter Ford, it is about Syria.

The full interview with UK Ambassador Peter Ford is well worth watching or reading.

*

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Rick Sterling is a journalist base in the SF Bay Area of California. He can be contacted at [email protected].

Featured image is from Syria News


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