The Economic and Social Development of the African Continent. A Russian Perspective

April 15th, 2021 by Prof. Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova

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After the Soviet collapse, Russia has maintained strong and time-tested relations with African countries, and of course, the Soviet Union had played an important role during the decolonization of Africa. The African continent comprises a diverse collection of countries, each with its own set of development setbacks and challenges. The political culture and investment climate are, in fact, diverse but are also important forces in the economy.

According to several development reports, Africa is one of the fastest growing regions in the world: the average annual GDP growth rate estimated at 3.5% to 5% on the continent. The reports have strongly encouraged African leaders to initiate development-oriented policies, prioritize sustainable development as a practical step towards raising the living standards of millions of impoverished population and further guide against the revival of neo-colonialism, the destructive attitude towards the resources in Africa.

In this interview, Associate Professor Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova, Ural Federal University, Department of International Relations and Assistant Professor Alexei Antoshin share their views and opinions about Africa today, the current economic cooperation between Africa and Russia. As widely known, Russia plans to hold the Second Russia-Africa summit in 2022.

Here are the interview excerpts:

Kester Kenn Klomegah: How do researchers (during academic discussions) of the Department of International Relations at Urals State University generally look at Africa today? What are the popular perceptions and so forth about Africa?

Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova: Unfortunately, this region is not actively studied directly by teachers and students of the Department of International Relations at the Urals State University. It is most often explored when examining issues such as human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Alexei Antoshin: For many years, I have been a member of the RAS Scientific Council on African problems, interacting with the RAS Institute for African Studies and the Center for African Studies of the RAS Institute of General History, publishing in scientific journals and collective monographs on this topic. For 20 years now, at the Faculty (Department) of International Relations, I have been teaching the course “Russia and Africa”, dedicated to various spheres of interaction between our country and African states. In addition, for the last five years I have been teaching the course “Culture of Modern Africa” which is also of great interest to the students of the Department of Oriental Studies.

The problem of the influence of African culture on contemporary global art (music, street art, etc.) is of particular interest to students. In addition, annually under my leadership, term papers and graduate qualifications are written on various aspects of China’s policy in Africa, the expansion of Chinese capital, and the activities of Confucius Institutes on the Black Continent.

KKK: What comes to mind when we talk about sustainable development, and its interpretation, in Africa?

Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova: When writing an article on the Red Cross and the SDGs, I came to the conclusion that the main problems are related to the environment (lack of drinking water), the complexity of health care, the problems of realizing the rights of vulnerable groups of the population.

Alexei Antoshin: Unfortunately, Africa firmly holds the first place among continents in terms of poverty, the number of hungry and refugees, and the spread of AIDS. A colossal problem is the conflict potential of the region, political instability, and the failure of democratic transition. True, in comparison with the 1990s, which were extremely unfortunate for the continent, the situation has improved somehow, but many experts attribute this to fluctuations in world oil prices.

KKK: What, in your opinion, are the main challenges hindering the realization of expected development there?

Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova: In my opinion, this is due to historical and geographical factors: the colonial past – there was no desire to develop “economic independence” of the region; consumer attitude to territories and resources; isolation of the region from world production chains. During the Cold War, the USSR and the USA, competing for influence on the continent, were forced to develop industry and infrastructure. After the end of the Cold War, this was no longer necessary. Many states have lost their statehood, centralized power and territorial integrity (Somalia, Libya).

Alexei Antoshin: Yes, unfortunately, paradoxically, Africa is “lost” from the end of the Cold War. Now both the United States and Russia are losing the “battle for Africa” ​​to China: its investments in Africa are several times greater than those of Russia and the United States. The problem is that the Chinese expansion is already causing an ambiguous reaction from the local population: the PRC’s consumer attitude towards the richest resources of the region, underestimation of environmental problems lead to public discontent. An additional factor is activation.

Islamist extremist groups in many countries of the region. The fall of apartheid in South Africa also led to a surge in extremism, the problem of “black racism”, a drop in the level of education in South African universities, which traditionally occupy high places in world rankings.

KKK: Do you think much depends on African leaders and its people (African solutions to African problems) to work toward long-term sustainable development?

Alexei Antoshin: Most experts were skeptical and still refer to the economic programs developed by African leaders and Africans themselves. This applies to integration within the framework of the African Union (copying the European Union is unproductive), and to its economic program NEPAD – New Partnership for Africa’s Development. In the world rankings of bureaucratic corruption, African countries are in the first place.

KKK: How do you interpret current engagement of foreign players (countries) in Africa? Do you also think there is geopolitical competition and rivalry among them there?

Alexei Antoshin: As I have already noted, this competition is underway, since Africa’s resources are colossal. The potential winner is likely to be China.

KKK: Is it appropriate when we use the term “neo-colonialism” referring to activities of foreign players in Africa? What countries are the neo-colonizers in your view?

Alexei Antoshin: Difficult question. Colonialism was a controversial phenomenon: it was the colonialists who created the infrastructure that modern Africa uses. A number of experts call the current policy of the PRC “neo-colonial”, but it is also ambiguous.

KKK: Do you think, with the adoption of African Continental Free Trade (AfCFTA), it offers a window of hope for attaining economic independence for Africa? What role Russia can play in this or of what significance is it for potential Russian investors?

Ksenia Tabarintseva-Romanova: The free trade zone is the most important modern tool for the economic development of regions, but it is not a panacea. Successful implementation requires a sufficiently high level of economic development of the participating countries, logistical accessibility, developed industry with the prospect of introducing new technologies. This means that in order for AfCFTA to effectively fulfill its tasks, it is necessary to enlist the provision of sustainable investment flows from outside. These investments should be directed towards the construction of industrial plants and transport corridors.

President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, has stated for several years that Africa is a strategic region for Russia, which has a large number of long-standing economic partners. For example, the construction of a new naval base in Sudan (the creation of service industries, the supply of new equipment, the renewal of the army is envisaged); cancellation of debts to Angola, preparation for the Russia-Africa summit 2022. Russia already has vast experience with the African continent, which now makes it possible to make investments as efficiently as possible, both for the Russian Federation and for African countries.

If we talk about the interaction of the Sverdlovsk Region and Africa, then according to the Ministry of International and Foreign Economic Relations, at the end of 2018, among the trading partner countries of the Sverdlovsk Region, Algeria ranked 22nd among the 159 trading partners of the region. The trade turnover amounted to almost US$ 138 million.

On February 6, 2020, during the visit of the delegation of the Sverdlovsk region to the province of Mpumalanga of South Africa, an Action Plan was signed to implement the Agreement between the Government of the Sverdlovsk Region and the Government of the Mpumalanga Province on the implementation of international and foreign economic relations in trade, economic, scientific, technical, cultural and humanitarian spheres for 2020 – 2022. The following enterprises of the Sverdlovsk Region cooperate with South Africa – OJSC Uralasbest, LLC Viz Steel, PJSC Uralmashzavod.

Alexei Antoshin: Russian state corporations are participating in the “Battle for Africa” and the main significant problem is the high risks associated with investing in Africa. In addition, unfortunately, in Russia there is a shortage of qualified personnel who know African markets, the specifics of the business culture of Africans and so forth. Although there is also an underestimation of the continent’s potential associated with the image of Africa as a “black hole” which is also due to the fact that the bulk of the Soviet debts of African countries had to be written off. These are the realities of the situation with Africa.

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The Fukushima-Daiichi Disaster, Ten Years ago, March 11, 2011. 

While commemorating the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima tragedy, the evidence amply confirms that this disaster has by no means been resolved. 

“Unimaginable” levels of radiation still prevail. In the words of Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”.  

The Fukushima disaster in March 2011 resulted in 16,000 deaths, causing some 165,000 people to flee their homes in the Fukushima area.

Both the Japanese and Western media tend to downplay the impacts of nuclear radiation which has spread to vast areas in Northern Japan, not to mention the contamination of the food chain.

The continued dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination.

Amply documented the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) was involved in a coverup. And so was the Japanese government. 

The Abe government casually pointed to “harmful rumors”. The present government’s stance remains ambiguous. 

TEPCO has acknowledged that the decommissioning of the Fukushima facility could last until 2051.

In recent developments, the Japan government of Prime Minster Yoshihide has confirmed that

“it will release treated radioactive water [tritium] from Fukushima nuclear plant into sea”. The PM met with is Cabinet to formalise this decision on April 13, 2021.” (SCMP).

The Worldwide public health impacts which includes the contamination of the Pacific Ocean extending to the Western Hemisphere are incalculable.

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Originally published in  January 2012, this study by Michel Chossudovsky confirms what is now unfolding: a Worldwide process of nuclear radiation.

Note to Readers: Remember to bookmark this page for future reference.

Please Forward the GR I-Book far and wide. Post it on Facebook.

[scroll down for I-BOOK Table of Contents]

Originally published in January 2012. The introduction of the I-Book is contained as a chapter in Michel Chossudovsky’s 2015 bestseller:  The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity, Global Research, Montreal 2015

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GLOBAL RESEARCH ONLINE INTERACTIVE READER SERIES

Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War

The Unspoken Crisis of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

Michel Chossudovsky (Editor)

I-Book No. 3, January 25  2012

Global Research’s Online Interactive I-Book Reader brings together, in the form of chapters, a collection of Global Research feature articles and videos, including debate and analysis, on a broad theme or subject matter. 

In this Interactive Online I-Book we bring to the attention of our readers an important collection of articles, reports and video material on the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe and its impacts (scroll down for the Table of Contents).

To consult our Online Interactive I-Book Reader Series, click here.

INTRODUCTION

The World is at a critical crossroads. The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation.

The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami:

“This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.”

Nuclear radiation –which threatens life on planet earth– is not front page news in comparison to the most insignificant issues of public concern, including the local level crime scene or the tabloid gossip reports on Hollywood celebrities.

While the long-term repercussions of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster are yet to be fully assessed, they are far more serious than those pertaining to the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in the Ukraine, which resulted in almost one million deaths (New Book Concludes – Chernobyl death toll: 985,000, mostly from cancer Global Research, September 10, 2010, See also Matthew Penney and Mark Selden  The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima, Global Research, May 25, 2011)

Moreover, while all eyes were riveted on the Fukushima Daiichi plant, news coverage both in Japan and internationally failed to fully acknowledge the impacts of a second catastrophe at TEPCO’s (Tokyo Electric Power Co  Inc) Fukushima Daini nuclear power plant.

The shaky political consensus both in Japan, the U.S. and Western Europe is that the crisis at Fukushima has been contained.

The realties, however, are otherwise. Fukushima 3 was leaking unconfirmed amounts of plutonium. According to Dr. Helen Caldicott, “one millionth of a gram of plutonium, if inhaled can cause cancer”.  

An opinion poll in May 2011 confirmed that more than 80 per cent of the Japanese population do not believe the government’s information regarding the nuclear crisis. (quoted in Sherwood Ross, Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster, Global Research, November 10, 2011)

The Impacts in Japan

The Japanese government has been obliged to acknowledge that “the severity rating of its nuclear crisis … matches that of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster”. In a bitter irony, however, this tacit admission by the Japanese authorities has proven to been part of  the cover-up of a significantly larger catastrophe, resulting in a process of global nuclear radiation and contamination:

“While Chernobyl was an enormous unprecedented disaster, it only occurred at one reactor and rapidly melted down. Once cooled, it was able to be covered with a concrete sarcophagus that was constructed with 100,000 workers. There are a staggering 4400 tons of nuclear fuel rods at Fukushima, which greatly dwarfs the total size of radiation sources at Chernobyl.” ( Extremely High Radiation Levels in Japan: University Researchers Challenge Official Data, Global Research, April 11, 2011)

Fukushima in the wake of the Tsunami, March 2011

Worldwide Contamination

The dumping of highly radioactive water into the Pacific Ocean constitutes a potential trigger to a process of global radioactive contamination. Radioactive elements have not only been detected in the food chain in Japan, radioactive rain water has been recorded in California:

“Hazardous radioactive elements being released in the sea and air around Fukushima accumulate at each step of various food chains (for example, into algae, crustaceans, small fish, bigger fish, then humans; or soil, grass, cow’s meat and milk, then humans). Entering the body, these elements – called internal emitters – migrate to specific organs such as the thyroid, liver, bone, and brain, continuously irradiating small volumes of cells with high doses of alpha, beta and/or gamma radiation, and over many years often induce cancer”. (Helen Caldicott, Fukushima: Nuclear Apologists Play Shoot the Messenger on Radiation, The Age,  April 26, 2011)

While the spread of radiation to the West Coast of North America was casually acknowledged, the early press reports (AP and Reuters) “quoting diplomatic sources” stated that only “tiny amounts of radioactive particles have arrived in California but do not pose a threat to human health.”

“According to the news agencies, the unnamed sources have access to data from a network of measuring stations run by the United Nations’ Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization. …

… Greg Jaczko, chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission, told White House reporters on Thursday (March 17) that his experts “don’t see any concern from radiation levels that could be harmful here in the United States or any of the U.S. territories”.

 

 

The spread of radiation. March 2011

Public Health Disaster. Economic Impacts

What prevails is a well organized camouflage. The public health disaster in Japan, the contamination of water, agricultural land and the food chain, not to mention the broader economic and social implications, have neither been fully acknowledged nor addressed in a comprehensive and meaningful fashion by the Japanese authorities.

Japan as a nation state has been destroyed. Its landmass and territorial waters are contaminated. Part of the country is uninhabitable. High levels of radiation have been recorded in the Tokyo metropolitan area, which has a population of  39 million (2010) (more than the population of Canada, circa 34 million (2010)) There are indications that the food chain is contaminated throughout Japan:

Radioactive cesium exceeding the legal limit was detected in tea made in a factory in Shizuoka City, more than 300 kilometers away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Shizuoka Prefecture is one of the most famous tea producing areas in Japan.

A tea distributor in Tokyo reported to the prefecture that it detected high levels of radioactivity in the tea shipped from the city. The prefecture ordered the factory to refrain from shipping out the product. After the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, radioactive contamination of tea leaves and processed tea has been found over a wide area around Tokyo. (See 5 More Companies Detect Radiation In Their Tea Above Legal Limits Over 300 KM From Fukushima, June 15, 2011)

Japan’s industrial and manufacturing base is prostrate. Japan is no longer a leading industrial power. The country’s exports have plummeted. The Tokyo government has announced its first trade deficit since 1980.

While the business media has narrowly centered on the impacts of power outages and energy shortages on the pace of productive activity, the broader issue pertaining to the outright radioactive contamination of the country’s infrastructure and industrial base is a “scientific taboo” (i.e the radiation of industrial plants, machinery and equipment, buildings, roads, etc). A report released in January 2012 points to the nuclear contamination of building materials used in the construction industry, in cluding roads and residential buildings throughout Japan.(See  FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies, January 2012)

A “coverup report” by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (May 2011), entitled Economic Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery  presents “Economic Recovery” as a fait accompli. It also brushes aside the issue of radiation. The impacts of nuclear radiation on the work force and the country’s industrial base are not mentioned. The report states that the distance between Tokyo -Fukushima Dai-ichi  is of the order of 230 km (about 144 miles) and that the levels of radiation in Tokyo are lower than in Hong Kong and New York City.(Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, Impact of the Great East Japan Earthquake and Current Status of Recovery, p.15). This statement is made without corroborating evidence and in overt contradiction with independent radiation readings in Tokyo (se map below). In recent developments, Sohgo Security Services Co. is launching a lucrative “radiation measurement service targeting households in Tokyo and four surrounding prefectures”.

A map of citizens’ measured radiation levels shows radioactivity is distributed in a complex pattern reflecting the mountainous terrain and the shifting winds across a broad area of Japan north of Tokyo which is in the center of the of bottom of the map.”

SOURCE: Science Magazine

“Radiation limits begin to be exceeded at just above 0.1 microsieverts/ hour blue. Red is about fifty times the civilian radiation limit at 5.0 microsieverts/hour. Because children are much more sensitive than adults, these results are a great concern for parents of young children in potentially affected areas.”

The fundamental question is whether the vast array of industrial goods and components “Made in Japan” — including hi tech components, machinery, electronics, motor vehicles, etc — and exported Worldwide are contaminated? Were this to be the case, the entire East and Southeast Asian industrial base –which depends heavily on Japanese components and industrial technology– would be affected. The potential impacts on international trade would be farreaching. In this regard, in January, Russian officials confiscated irradiated Japanese automobiles and autoparts in the port of Vladivostok for sale in the Russian Federation. Needless to say, incidents of this nature in a global competitive environment, could lead to the demise of the Japanese automobile industry which is already in crisis.

While most of the automotive industry is in central Japan, Nissan’s engine factory in Iwaki city is 42 km from the Fukushima Daiichi plant. Is the Nissan work force affected? Is the engine plant contaminated? The plant is within about 10 to 20 km of the government’s “evacuation zone” from which some 200,000 people were evacuated (see map below).

Nuclear Energy and Nuclear War

The crisis in Japan has also brought into the open the unspoken relationship between nuclear energy and nuclear war.

Nuclear energy is not a civilian economic activity. It is an appendage of the nuclear weapons industry which is controlled by the so-called defense contractors. The powerful corporate interests behind nuclear energy and nuclear weapons overlap.

In Japan at the height of the disaster, “the nuclear industry and government agencies [were] scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan’s civilian nuclear power plants”.1  (See Yoichi Shimatsu, Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant? Global Research,  April 12, 2011)

It should be noted that the complacency of both the media and the governments to the hazards of nuclear radiation pertains to the nuclear energy industry as well as to to use of nuclear weapons. In both cases, the devastating health impacts of nuclear radiation are casually denied. Tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity of up to six times a Hiroshima bomb are labelled by the Pentagon as “safe for the surrounding civilian population”.

No concern has been expressed at the political level as to the likely consequences of a US-NATO-Israel attack on Iran, using “safe for civilians” tactical nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state.

Such an action would result in “the unthinkable”: a nuclear holocaust over a large part of the Middle East and Central Asia. A nuclear nightmare, however, would occur even if nuclear weapons were not used. The bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities using conventional weapons would contribute to unleashing another Fukushima type disaster with extensive radioactive fallout. (For further details See Michel Chossudovsky, Towards a World War III Scenario, The Dangers of Nuclear War, Global Research, Montreal, 2011)

The Online Interactive I-Book Reader on Fukushima: A Nuclear War without a War

In view of the official cover-up and media disinformation campaign, the contents of the articles and video reports in this Online Interactive Reader have not trickled down to to the broader public. (See Table of contents below)

This Online Interactive Reader on Fukushima contains a combination of analytical and scientific articles, video reports as well as shorter news reports and corroborating data.

Part I focusses on The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened? Part II  pertains to The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan. Part III  centers on the “Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe”, namely the cover-up by the Japanese government and the corporate media. Part IV focusses on the issue of  Worlwide Nuclear Radiation and Part V reviews the Implications of the Fukushima disaster for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry.

In the face of ceaseless media disinformation, this Global Research Online I-Book on the dangers of global nuclear radiation is intended to break the media vacuum and raise public awareness, while also pointing to the complicity of  the governments, the media and the nuclear industry.

We call upon our readers to spread the word.

We invite university, college and high school teachers to make this Interactive Reader on Fukushima available to their students.

Michel Chossudovsky, January 25, 2012


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

Michel Chossudovsky

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

Following the highly acclaimed 2012 release of the latest book by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, “Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War“.  

Click here to order directly from Global Research.

List Price: $15.95

Special Price: $10.25

Click here to order.

This title is also available for purchase through the Amazon Kindle program


TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: How it Happened

The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster: What Happened on “Day One”?
– by Yoichi Shimatsu – 2011-04-16
Fukushima is the greatest nuclear and environmental disaster in human history
– by Steven C. Jones – 2011-06-20

Nuclear Apocalypse in Japan
Lifting the Veil of Nuclear Catastrophe and cover-up
– by Keith Harmon Snow – 2011-03-18

Humanity now faces a deadly serious challenge coming out of Japan — the epicenter of radiation.

VIDEO: Full Meltdown? Japan Maximum Nuclear Alert
Watch now on GRTV
-by Christopher Busby- 2011-03-30

Fukushima: Japan’s Second Nuclear Disaster

– by Sherwood Ross – 2011-11-10

Secret Weapons Program Inside Fukushima Nuclear Plant?
U.S.-Japan security treaty fatally delayed nuclear workers’ fight against meltdown
– by Yoichi Shimatsu – 2011-04-12

The specter of self-destruction can be ended only with the abrogation of the U.S.-Japan security treaty, the root cause of the secrecy that fatally delayed the nuclear workers’ fight against meltdown.

Fukushima: “China Syndrome Is Inevitable” … “Huge Steam Explosions”
“Massive Hydrovolcanic Explosion” or a “Nuclear Bomb-Type Explosion” May Occur
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-22

Accident at Second Japanese Nuclear Complex: The Nuclear Accident You Never Heard About

– by Washington’s Blog – 2012-01-12

VIDEO: New TEPCO Photographs Substantiate Significant Damage to Fukushima Unit 3
Latest report now on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-10-20

PART II

The Devastating Health and Social Impacts in Japan

VIDEO: Surviving Japan: A Critical Look at the Nuclear Crisis
Learn more about this important new documentary on GRTV
– by Chris Noland – 2012-01-23

Fukushima and the Battle for Truth
Large sectors of the Japanese population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination
– by Paul Zimmerman – 2011-09-27

FUKUSHIMA: Public health Fallout from Japanese Quake
“Culture of cover-up” and inadequate cleanup. Japanese people exposed to “unconscionable” health risks
– by Canadian Medical Association Journal – 2011-12-30

FUKUSHIMA: Radioactive Houses and Roads in Japan. Radioactive Building Materials Sold to over 200 Construction Companies

– 2012-01-16

VIDEO: Cancer Risk To Young Children Near Fukushima Daiichi Underestimated
Watch this important new report on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2012-01-19

VIDEO: The Results Are In: Japan Received Enormous Exposures of Radiation from Fukushima
Important new video now on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen, Marco Kaltofen – 2011-11-07

The Tears of Sanriku (三陸の涙). The Death Toll for the Great East Japan Earthquake Nuclear Disaster

– by Jim Bartel – 2011-10-31

The Severity of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster: Comparing Chernobyl and Fukushima

– by Prof. Matthew Penney, Prof. Mark Selden – 2011-05-24

Uncertainty about the long-term health effects of radiation

Radioactivity in Food: “There is no safe level of radionuclide exposure, whether from food, water or other sources. Period,” – by Physicians For Social Responsibility – 2011-03-23

71,000 people in the city next to the Fukushima nuclear plant “We’ve Been Left to Die” – 2011-03-19

Tokyo Water Unsafe For Babies, Food Bans Imposed – by Karyn Poupee – 2011-03-23

 

PART III

Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe: Cover-up by the Japanese Government and the Corporate Media

VIDEO: Japanese Government Insiders Reveal Fukushima Secrets
GRTV Behind the Headlines now online
– by James Corbett – 2011-10-06

Fukushima and the Mass Media Meltdown
The Repercussions of a Pro-Nuclear Corporate Press
– by Keith Harmon Snow – 2011-06-20

Scandal: Japan Forces Top Official To Retract Prime Minister’s Revelation Fukushima Permanently Uninhabitable

– by Alexander Higgins – 2011-04-18

Emergency Special Report: Japan’s Earthquake, Hidden Nuclear Catastrophe
– by Yoichi Shimatsu – 2011-03-13

The tendency to deny systemic errors – “in order to avoid public panic” – is rooted in the determination of an entrenched Japanese bureaucracy to protect itself…

VIDEO: Fukushima: TEPCO Believes Mission Accomplished & Regulators Allow Radioactive Dumping in Tokyo Bay
Learn more on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2012-01-11

The Dangers of Radiation: Deconstructing Nuclear Experts
– by Chris Busby – 2011-03-31

“The nuclear industry is waging a war against humanity.” This war has now entered an endgame which will decide the survival of the human race.

Engineers Knew Fukushima Might Be Unsafe, But Covered It Up …
And Now the Extreme Vulnerabilty of NEW U.S. Plants Is Being Covered Up
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-12

COVERUP: Are Fukushima Reactors 5 and 6 In Trouble Also?
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-14

Fukushima’s Owner Adds Insult to Injury – Claims Radioactive Fallout Isn’t Theirs

– by John LaForge – 2012-01-17

PART IV

The Process of Worldwide Nuclear Radiation

VIDEO: Japan’s Nuclear Crisis: The Dangers of Worldwide Radiation

– by Dr. Helen Caldicott – 2012-01-25

An Unexpected Mortality Increase in the US Follows Arrival of Radioactive Plume from Fukushima, Is there a Correlation?
– by Dr. Joseph J. Mangano, Dr. Janette Sherman – 2011-12-20

In the US, Following the Fukushima fallout, samples of radioactivity in precipitation, air, water, and milk, taken by the U.S. government, showed levels hundreds of times above normal…

Radioactive Dust From Japan Hit North America 3 Days After Meltdown
But Governments “Lied” About Meltdowns and Radiation
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-06-24

VIDEO: Fukushima Will Be Radiating Everyone for Centuries
New report now on GRTV
– by Michio Kaku, Liz Hayes – 2011-08-23

Fukushima: Diseased Seals in Alaska tested for Radiation

– 2011-12-29

Radiation Spreads to France

– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-11-15

Radioactive rain causes 130 schools in Korea to close — Yet rain in California had 10 TIMES more radioactivity

PART V

Implications for the Global Nuclear Energy Industry

 

Science with a Skew: The Nuclear Power Industry After Chernobyl and Fukushima
– by Gayle Greene – 2012-01-26

After Fukushima: Enough Is Enough

– by Helen Caldicott – 2011-12-05

VIDEO: Radiation Coverups Confirmed: Los Alamos, Fort Calhoun, Fukushima, TSA
New Sunday Report now on GRTV
– by James Corbett – 2011-07-04

VIDEO: Why Fukushima Can Happen Here: What the NRC and Nuclear Industry Don’t Want You to Know
Watch now on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen, David Lochbaum – 2011-07-12

VIDEO: Safety Problems in all Reactors Designed Like Fukushima
Learn more on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-09-26

VIDEO: Proper Regulation of Nuclear Power has been Coopted Worldwide
Explore the issues on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-10-05

VIDEO: New Nuclear Reactors Do Not Consider Fukushima Design Flaws
Find out more on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-11-24

Nuclear Energy: Profit Driven Industry
“Nuclear Can Be Safe Or It Can Be Cheap … But It Can’t Be Both”
– by Washington’s Blog – 2011-12-23

VIDEO: Fukushima and the Fall of the Nuclear Priesthood
Watch the new GRTV Feature Interview
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-10-22

Why is there a Media Blackout on Nuclear Incident at Fort Calhoun in Nebraska?

– by Patrick Henningsen – 2011-06-23

Startling Revelations about Three Mile Island Disaster Raise Doubts Over Nuke Safety

– by Sue Sturgis – 2011-07-24

Radioactive Leak at Fort Calhoun Nuclear Power Station

– by Rady Ananda – 2011-07-01

VIDEO: US vs Japan: The Threat of Radiation Speculation
Dangerous double standards examined on GRTV
– by Arnie Gundersen – 2011-06-25

Additional articles and videos on Fukushima and Nuclear Radiation are available at Global Research’s Dossier on The Environment


TEXT BOX

 Nuclear Radiation: Categorization

At Fukushima, reports confirm that alpha, beta, gamma particles and neutrons have been released:

“While non-ionizing radiation and x-rays are a result of electron transitions in atoms or molecules, there are three forms of ionizing radiation that are a result of activity within the nucleus of an atom.  These forms of nuclear radiation are alpha particles (α-particles), beta particles (β-particles) and gamma rays (γ-rays).

Alpha particles are heavy positively charged particles made up of two protons and two neutrons.  They are essentially a helium nucleus and are thus represented in a nuclear equation by either α or .  See the Alpha Decay page for more information on alpha particles.

Beta particles come in two forms:  and  particles are just electrons that have been ejected from the nucleus.  This is a result of sub-nuclear reactions that result in a neutron decaying to a proton.  The electron is needed to conserve charge and comes from the nucleus.  It is not an orbital electron.  particles are positrons ejected from the nucleus when a proton decays to a neutron.  A positron is an anti-particle that is similar in nearly all respects to an electron, but has a positive charge.  See the Beta Decay page for more information on beta particles.

Gamma rays are photons of high energy electromagnetic radiation (light).  Gamma rays generally have the highest frequency and shortest wavelengths in the electromagnetic spectrum.  There is some overlap in the frequencies of gamma rays and x-rays; however, x-rays are formed from electron transitions while gamma rays are formed from nuclear transitions. See the Gamma Rays  for more” (SOURCE: Canadian Nuclear Association)

A neutron is a particle that is found in the nucleus, or center, of atoms. It has a mass very close to protons, which also reside in the nucleus of atoms. Together, they make up almost all of the mass of individual atoms. Each has a mass of about 1 amu, which is roughly 1.6×10-27kg. Protons have a positive charge and neutrons have no charge, which is why they were more difficult to discover.” (SOURCE: Neutron Radiation)


“Many different radioactive isotopes are used in or are produced by nuclear reactors. The most important of these are described below:

1. Uranium 235 (U-235) is the active component of most nuclear reactor fuel.

2. Plutonium (Pu-239) is a key nuclear material used in modern nuclear weapons and is also present as a by-product in certain reprocessed fuels used in some nuclear reactors. Pu-239 is also produced in uranium reactors as a byproduct of fission of U-235.

3. Cesium (Cs-137 ) is a fission product of U-235. It emits beta and gamma radiation and can cause radiation sickness and death if exposures are high enough. …

4. Iodine 131 (I-131), also a fission product of U-235, emits beta and gamma radiation. After inhalation or ingestion, it is absorbed by and concentrated in the thyroid gland, where its beta radiation damages nearby thyroid tissue  (SOURCE: Amesh A. Adalja, MD, Eric S. Toner, MD, Anita Cicero, JD, Joseph Fitzgerald, MS, MPH, and Thomas V. Inglesby MD, Radiation at Fukushima: Basic Issues and Concepts, March 31, 2011)


Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa. He is the Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal and Editor of the globalresearch.ca website. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America’s “War on Terrorism”(2005). His most recent book is entitled Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011). He has taught as Visiting Professor at universities in Western Europe, South East Asia, Latin America and The Pacific, acted as adviser to governments of developing countries and as a consultant to several international organizations.

Prof. Chossudovsky is a signatory of the Kuala Lumpur declaration to criminalize war and recipient of the Human Rights Prize of the Society for the Protection of Civil Rights and Human Dignity (GBM), Berlin, Germany. He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

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The Indiana legislature debated the issue, but Democrats blocked a vote on it.

South Carolina’s Senate unanimously voted to ban employers from mandating Covid vaccinations for employees.

And from the airlines organization, IATA, comes a hopeful sign:  “These are measures that may be necessary as temporary arrangements while we go through this crisis, but once we’re through it, we want to see these restrictions permanently removed so people can get back to traveling as they experienced back in 2019,” Willie Walsh, former CEO of British Airways’ parent International Consolidated Airlines Group, said in his first press briefing as IATA’s director general.

The WHO came out against the passports in February, issuing a note of caution–since most humans have no current access to vaccines, many lack smartphones, and the privacy issues are huge.  Many say the systems now being used can be easily hacked.

WHO position

At the present time, it is WHO’s position that national authorities and conveyance operators should not introduce requirements of proof of COVID-19 vaccination for international travel as a condition for departure or entry, given that there are still critical unknowns regarding the efficacy of vaccination in reducing transmission. In addition, considering that there is limited availability of vaccines, preferential vaccination of travellers could result in inadequate supplies of vaccines for priority populations considered at high risk of severe COVID-19 disease. WHO also recommends that people who are vaccinated should not be exempt from complying with other travel risk-reduction measures.

This is a great issue to work on with your own governors and legislatures–it is a great opportunity to throw a “spanner in the works” of the Great Reset.

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Australia’s Self-Inflicted Economic Woes Continue

April 15th, 2021 by Joseph Thomas

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***

This was first published in March 2020.

In this expose, the WHO vaccine experts admit that:

  • Vaccines can be fatal.
  • The design of safety studies makes it difficult to spot problems.
  • Safety monitoring is inadequate.
  • Vaccine adjuvants increase risk.

“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry.

The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including Pharma and its allied foundations.

And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr 

1) An admission that adjuvants can multiply the toxicity of vaccines:

“Adjuvants multiply the immunogenicity of the antigens that they are added to, and that is their intention.  It seems to me they multiply the reactogenicity in many instances, and therefore it seems to me that it is not unexpected if they multiply the incidence of adverse reactions that are associated with the antigen, but may not have been detected through lack of statistical power in the original studies.”Stephen Evans, BA, MSc, Professor of Pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) 

2) Warnings about long-term systemic toxicity from vaccine adjuvants:

“You are correct. As we add adjuvants, especially some of the more recent adjuvants, such as the ASO1, saponin-derived adjuvants, we do see increased local reactogenicity. The primary concern, though, usually is systemic adverse events rather than local adverse events. And we tend to get in the Phase II and the Phase III studies quite good data on the local reactogenicity. Those of us in this room that are beyond the age of 50 who have had the pleasure of having the recent shingles vaccine, will know that this does have quite significant local reactogenicity. If you got the vaccine, you know that you got the vaccine. But this is not the major health concern. The major health concern which we are seeing are accusations of long term, long term effects. So, to come back to this, I’m going to once again point to the regulators. It comes down to ensuring that we conduct Phase II and the Phase III studies with adequate size and with the appropriate measurement.”Martin Howell Friede, PhD (Biochemistry) – WHO coordinator for the Initiative for Vaccine Research

3) An admission that the WHO and Big Pharma are panicking because some doctors and cover-up of vaccine injuries:

“There’s a lot of safety science that’s needed, and without the good science, we can’t have good communication. Although I’m talking about all these other contextual issues and communication issues it absolutely needs the science as the backbone. You can’t repurpose the same old science to make it sound better if you don’t have the science that’s relevant to the new problem. So, we need much more investment in safety science…The other thing that’s a trend and an issue is not just confidence in patients but confidence of health care providers. We have a very wobbly health professional front line that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. When the front-line professionals are starting to question (the safety of vaccines) or they don’t feel like they have enough confidence about the safety to stand up to it to the person asking them the questions.  I mean, most medical school curriculums, even nursing curriculums, I mean in medical school you’re lucky if you have a half-day on vaccines. Never mind keeping up to date with all this.”Heidi Larson, PhD (in Anthropology – and therefore likely to be vaccinology-illiterate!) and Director of the Big Pharma-funded Vaccine Confidence Project

4) An admission that vaccine clinical safety trials are flawed and that vaccines damage children far more than they damage adults:

“One of the additional issues that complicates safety evaluation is that if you look at, and you struggle with the length of follow-up that should be adequate in a, let’s say a pre-licensure or even post-marketing study if that’s even possible. And again, as you mentioned pre-licensure clinical trials may not be powered enough. It’s also the subject population that you administer the adjuvant to because we’ve seen data presented to us where an adjuvant, a particular adjuvant added to a vaccine antigen did really nothing when administered to a certain population and usually the elderly, you know, compared to administering the same formulation to younger age strata.  So, these are things which need to be considered as well and further complicate safety and effectiveness evaluation of adjuvants combined with vaccine antigens.”  Marion Gruber, PhD – Director, FDA Office of Vaccines Research and Review (OVRR) and the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER)

5) A warning about the lack of vaccine safety monitoring systems:

“I think we cannot over-emphasize the fact that we really don’t have very good safety monitoring systems in many countries, and this adds to the miscommunication and the misapprehensions because we’re not able to give clear-cut answers when people ask questions about the deaths that have occurred due to a particular vaccine, and this always gets blown up in the media. One should be able to give a very factual account of what exactly has happened and what the causes of the deaths are, but in most cases there is some obfuscation at that level and therefore, there’s less and less trust then in the system.” Soumya Swaminathan, MD, WHO Chief Scientist and non-practicing Pediatrician (involved in academics and research ever since her medical training)

6) An admission that viral fragments don’t work and that adjuvants are responsible for the toxic inflammatory responses to vaccines.

“Every time that there is an association, be it temporal or not temporal, the first accusation is it is the adjuvant. And yet, without adjuvants, we are not going to have the next generation of vaccines.  And many of the vaccines that we do have, ranging from tetanus through to HPV require adjuvants in order for them to work.  So, the challenge that we have in front of us is:  How do we build confidence in this? And the confidence first of all comes from the regulatory agencies (I look to Marion). When we add an adjuvant it’s because it is essential.  We do not add adjuvants to vaccines because we want to do so.  But when we add them, it adds to the complexity. I give courses every year on “How do you develop vaccines?”, “How do you make vaccines?” And the first lesson is, while you’re making your vaccine, if you can avoid using an adjuvant, please do so.  Lesson two is, if you’re going to use an adjuvant, use one that has a history of safety. And lesson three is, if you’re not going to do that, think very carefully.” Martin Howell Friede, WHO Coordinator for the Initiative for Vaccine Research and member of the Strategic Advisory Committee for Hilleman Labs – a vaccine research company co-owned by US drug maker Merck  and Britain’s Wellcome Trust.

7) An admission that vaccine safety tracking systems don’t exist.

“Now the only way to tease that out is if you have a large population database like the vaccine safety datalink as well as some of the other national databases that are coming to being worthy. Actual vaccine exposure is trapped down to that level of specificity of who is the manufacturer? What is the lot number? Etc, etc. And there’s an initiative to try to make the vaccine label information bar-coded so that it includes that level of information. So that in the future when we do these type of studies, we are able to tease that out. And in order to be – each time you subdivide them, the sample size gets becoming more and more challenging and that’s what I said earlier today about that we’re really only in the beginning of the era of large data sets where hopefully you could start to kind of harmonize the databases for multiple studies. And there’s actually an initiative underway… Marion (Gruber) may want to comment on it to try to get more national vaccine safety database linked together so we could start to answer these types of questions that you just raised.”Robert Chen, MD – Scientific Director, Brighton Collaboration The motto of the Brighton  Collaboration was “We build trust in the safety of vaccines through rigorous science”

8) An admission that the WHO doesn’t understand the mechanisms of vaccine toxicity.

“So in our clinical trials, we are actually using relatively small sample sizes, and when we do that we’re at risk of tyranny of small numbers, which is, you just need a single case of Wegener’s Granulomatosis, and your vaccine has to, solve Walt’s, How do you prove a Null Hypothesis? …And it takes years and years to try to figure that out. It’s a real conundrum, right? Getting the right size, dealing with the tyranny of small numbers, making sure that you can really do it. And so I think one of the things that we really need to invest in are kind of better biomarkers, better mechanistic understanding of how these things work so we can better understand adverse events as they come up.” David Kaslow, MD, VP of Essential Medicines, Drug Development program PATH Center for Vaccine Innovation and Access (CVIA) Dr Kaslow has been a non-clinical researcher for decades with past relationships with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Merck.

9) A naïve question directed to WHO experts (and not answered by them) that points out the reality that Big Vaccine corporations have NEVER done studies on the synergistic damage vaccine toxicities that happen when more than two vaccines are injected at the same office visit.

“I cast back my mind to our situation in Nigeria where at six weeks, ten weeks, fourteen weeks, a child is being given different antigens from different companies, and these vaccines have different adjuvants and different preservatives and so on. Something crosses my mind… is there possibility of these adjuvants, preservatives, cross-reacting amongst themselves? Have there ever been a study on the possibility of cross-reactions on from the past that you can share the experience with us?”Bassey Okposen – Program Manager, National Emergency Routine Immunization Coordination Centre (NERICC). Abuja, Nigeria

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Dr Kohls practiced holistic mental health care in Duluth for the last decade of his family practice career prior to his retirement in 2008, primarily helping patients who had become addicted to cocktails of psychiatric drugs to safely go through the complex withdrawal process. His column often deals with various unappreciated health issues, including those caused by Big Pharma’s over-drugging, Big Vaccine’s over-vaccinating, Big Medicine’s over-screening, over-diagnosing and over-treating agendas and Big Food’s malnourishing food industry. Those four sociopathic entities can combine to even more adversely affect the physical, mental, spiritual and economic health of the recipients of the vaccines, drugs, medical treatments and the eaters of the tasty and ubiquitous “Franken Foods” – particularly when they are consumed in combinations, doses and potencies that have never been tested for safety or long-term effectiveness.

Dr Kohls’ Duty to Warn columns are archived at: http://duluthreader.com/search?search_term=Duty+to+Warn&p=2;

http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/gary-g-kohls;

http://freepress.org/geographic-scope/national; https://www.lewrockwell.com/author/gary-g-kohls/; and 

https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

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***

According to the Business Standard:

Later on Wednesday the President of the European Commission said the EU was in talks with Pfizer and BionTech for a new contract for 1.8 billion doses, confirming a Reuters report from last week. “We need to focus on technologies that have proven their worth. mRNA vaccines are a clear case in point,” she added.

There are 448 million humans in the EU.  Why in heaven’s name would each one of them, regardless of age, need 4 shots in 2022 after they are fully vaccinated this year?

Here in the US, as we approach herd immunity, it looks like approximately half the population does not want these experimental shots, at least not at this time.  If the same holds true in Europe, are they planning for 8 shots per person?  Or forced vaccinations?

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One patient died, two suffered anaphylactic reactions, three have ongoing disabling dizziness, muscle weakness, and chronic pain, and “numerous” patients developed allergic reactions after they received a first dose of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine given to 900 mostly Indigenous people, according to a local doctor who works in the tiny Fraser Valley village of Lytton, British Columbia.

“I have been quite alarmed at the high rate of serious side effects from this novel treatment,” family doctor Charles Hoffe wrote in an April 5 letter to British Columbia Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry.

A 72-year-old patient with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) but no underlying cardiovascular disease complained of being continually more short of breath after receiving a first dose of Moderna’s experimental COVID vaccine, and 24 days after the injection, died “very suddenly and unexpectedly,” the letter said.

Three of Hoffe’s patients have “ongoing and disabling neurological deficits,” including continuing “disabling dizziness,” “neuromuscular weakness, with or without sensory loss” and “chronic pain,” with or without headaches. These ailments persisted for 10 weeks after their shots of the  Moderna’s vaccine.

“It must be emphasized, that these people were not sick people, being treated for some devastating disease,” Hoffe wrote. “These were previously healthy people, who were offered an experimental therapy, with unknown long-term side effects, to protect them against an illness that has the same mortality rate as the flu. Sadly, their lives have now been ruined.”

Hoffe said two patients had anaphylactic reactions – life-threatening allergic reactions that can cause swelling of the throat, hives internally and externally, and dangerously low blood pressure – to the Moderna vaccine and “numerous” others have had milder allergic reactions.

Lytton is a village municipality with a population of 249 at last count in 2016, with another 1,700 living in the vicinity and on reserves of the neighboring six Nlaka’pamux communities. Hoffe is one of three doctors who works at the Lytton Medical Clinic and at St. Bartholomew’s Emergency Department.

“Are these considered normal and acceptable long-term side effects for gene modification therapy?” Hoffe asked the provincial health officer.

“Do you have any idea what disease processes may have been initiated, to be producing these ongoing neurological symptoms,” the doctor asked in his letter to the government health officer.

To date, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 2,342 deaths, including 1,170 linked to Moderna’s vaccine. There are 304 reported anaphylactic shock events with Moderna’s vaccine.

A total of 941 permanent disabilities after COVID vaccination have been reported to VAERS, including 450 after Moderna shots.
Reports from VAERS include a 35-year-old Oklahoma man who developed nerve pain in both legs four hours after an injection of the first dose of Moderna vaccine and became progressively paralyzed and was diagnosed with Guillain Barre Syndrome five days after the shot.

A 33-year-old woman from Nevada’s report said her breathing became difficult within three hours of receiving a shot of Moderna’s vaccine in January and she experienced paralysis, was hospitalized for five days, and is still unable to use her left arm three months later.

While public health officials have stated that only “one or two in a million” people are expected to have anaphylactic reactions to vaccines, a study published in March in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported an overall allergic reaction rate of 2 percent in the vaccinated health care workers it sampled. Anaphylactic allergic reactions to mRNA-based COVID vaccines occurred at a rate of 2.47 per 10,000, which is 247 in a million. The JAMA study found that the allergic reactions were more frequent among those who received Moderna’s COVID vaccine compared with Pfizer’s.

Hoffe’s letter to the provincial health officer said that he had noticed that “vaccine-induced side effects are going almost entirely unreported” and that the provincial vaccine injury reporting form “does not even have any place to report vaccine injuries of the nature and severity that we are seeing from this new mRNA therapy.”

“I am aware that this is often a problem, with vaccines in general, and that delayed side effects after vaccines are sometimes labeled as being ‘coincidences,’ as causality is often hard to prove. However, in view of the fact that this is an experimental treatment, with no long-term safety data, I think that perhaps this issue should be addressed too,” Hoffe wrote.

During the public health pandemic, the Lytton doctors have not treated any patients with COVID-19, Hoffe said. “So in our limited experience, this vaccine is quite clearly more dangerous than COVID-19.”

Given that the recovery rate from COVID-19 is similar to that of seasonal flu for every age category, and given that this was only the first dose and Moderna’s second-dose of the vaccine is known to have worse side effects, Hoffe asked the provincial health officer: “Is it medically ethical to continue this vaccine rollout, in view of the severity of these life altering side effects, after just the first shot?”

LifeSiteNews contacted B.C Provincial Health Officer Henry’s office to ask what her responses had been to Dr. Hoffe’s questions in his public letter. Her media relations officer asked for the request to be sent by e-mail but did not reply to it on Wednesday.

Dr. Hoffe’s office said he was out of the clinic until next week.

Moderna’s vaccine has been granted Emergency Use Authorization only. Clinical trials are not expected to be completed until at least October 2022.

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Denmark has become the first country to permanently halt the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine following its possible link to very rare cases of blood clots.

The Danish health authority said on Wednesday that, following its own review, the country’s vaccine rollout would continue without the AstraZeneca shot, as it warned of a “real risk of severe side effects.”

“Based on the scientific findings, our overall assessment is there is a real risk of severe side effects associated with using the COVID-19 vaccine from AstraZeneca,” said DHA director general Søren Brostrøm. “We have, therefore, decided to remove the vaccine from our vaccination program,” he added.

The health agency said it agreed with the European Union drug regulator’s assessment that the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks, but noted that the watchdog urged individual countries to consider their own situations and vaccine availability when making a judgment.

Brostrøm said the epidemic was currently under control in Denmark, with a large proportion of the older population vaccinated and those yet to be inoculated at less of a risk.

“We must weigh this against the fact that we now have a known risk of severe adverse effects from vaccination with AstraZeneca, even if the risk in absolute terms is slight,” he added.

Those who have already received the first dose of AstraZeneca AZN, 2.73% AZN, 1.95% will be invited to have a different vaccine second time around, the health authority said.

It added that Denmark could reintroduce use of the U.K.-Swedish drug company’s vaccine at a later date if the country’s situation changes.

Last week, the U.K. government’s vaccination advisory committee said people under the age of 30 would be offered an alternative vaccine. It came after the U.K.’s drug regulator — the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) — said the benefits outweighed the risks for most people, but MHRA Chief Executive Dr. June Raine said for young people it was more “finely balanced.”

Denmark’s move is another set back to the EU’s already sluggish vaccination campaign, which was exacerbated on Tuesday after U.S. pharmaceutical Johnson & Johnson JNJ, 0.77% said it would delay the planned rollout of its COVID-19 shot across the 27-member bloc due to reports of blood clotting.

J&J made the decision after U.S. health agencies called for an immediate pause of the vaccine’s use while they examine six severe cases of rare blood clots that have been reported in people who have received the shot. J&J was due to supply 55 million doses of its single-shot vaccine to the EU in the second quarter.

The J&J vaccine has currently only been delayed, but analytics company Airfinity warned the EU’s vaccination rollout would take two months longer than expected if the bloc was unable to use the shot at all.

However, there was some good news for Europe as the EU reached an agreement to speed up delivery of 50 million more doses of the vaccine developed jointly by German biotech BioNTech BNTX, 1.63% and U.S. drug company Pfizer PFE, 0.78% to boost the rollout program.

Denmark’s decision could delay the country’s vaccine rollout by up to four weeks, based on previous statements by health bodies, a report by Reuters noted.

The country was the first to initially suspend use of the AstraZeneca vaccine in March, over safety concerns. Last week, the EU drug regulator said that “unusual blood clots” should be listed as a “very rare” side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine, but insisted the benefits of the shot still outweighed the risks.

The majority of EU countries have since restarted using the AstraZeneca vaccine, but some countries, including Spain and Italy, have limited the use of the shot to people aged over 60. Last month, French and German health officials restricted the use of the AstraZeneca shot for the over-55s and over-60s, respectively, following concerns over unusual blood clotting in some recipients.

Shares in AstraZeneca were trading 1.31% higher in London on Wednesday.

AstraZeneca has acknowledged the findings from the EMA, as well as a separate review from the U.K.’s MHRA, noting that they “reaffirmed the vaccine offers a high-level of protection against all severities of COVID-19 and that these benefits continue to far outweigh the risks.”

The drug company said it was working with global regulators to better understand the individual cases, epidemiology and possible mechanisms that could explain these extremely rare events.

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Lina Saigol is the London-based head of corporate news in the Europe, Middle East and Africa regions for MarketWatch and Barron’s Group.

Callum Keown is a Barron’s Group reporter for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region. He writes for MarketWatch, Barron’s, Penta and Financial News. Follow him on Twitter: @CallumKeown1.

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***

The Eisenhower presidency would see Washington taken over by business executives, Wall Street lawyers, and investment bankers—and by a closely aligned warrior caste that had emerged into public prominence during World War II.

As discussed in part two of this series, the war in Vietnam did not start on its official date, November 1st, 1955, but rather 1945 when American clandestine operations were launched in Vietnam to “prepare the ground”.

Fletcher Prouty, who served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy and was a former Col. in the U.S. Air Force, goes over in his book The CIA, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, how the CIA was used to instigate psy-ops and paramilitary (terrorist) activities in Vietnam to create the pretext required for an open declaration of war and for the entry of the U.S. military into a twenty-year-long meat grinder.

This was a strategy reserved not just for Vietnam, but had become the general U.S. foreign policy in all regions that were considered threats to the Cold War Grand Strategy, as seen under the directorship of the Dulles brothers (See Part 1 and Part 2 of this series).

Any country that was observed to hold views that were not aligned with U.S. foreign policy could not simply be invaded in most scenarios, but rather, the ground would need to be prepared to create the justification for a direct military invasion.

This is one of the roles of the CIA which abides by the motto “fake it till you make it.

Don’t have an actual ‘enemy’ to fight and justify your meddling into another country’s affairs? Not a problem. Just split your paramilitary team into “good guys” and “bad guys” and have them pretend fight. Go village to village repeating this action-drama and you will see how quickly the word will spread that there are “dangerous extremists” in the area that exist in “great numbers.”

Prouty described this paramilitary activity, which is called “Fun and Games,” and how this tactic was also used in the Philippines, resulting in the election of Ramon Magsaysay who was declared a hero against a non-existing enemy. In fact, the Filipino elite units that were trained by the CIA during this period were then brought into Vietnam to enact the very same tactic.

Prouty writes:

I have been to such training programs at U.S. military bases where identical tactics are taught to Americans as well as foreigners. It is all the same…these are the same tactics that were exploited by CIA superagent Edward G. Lansdale [the man in charge of the CIA Saigon Military Mission] and his men in the Philippines and Indochina.

This is an example of the intelligence service’s ‘Fun and Games.’ Actually, it is as old as history; but lately it has been refined, out of necessity, into a major tool of clandestine warfare.

Lest anyone think that this is an isolated case, be assured that it was not. Such ‘mock battles’ and ‘mock attacks on native villages’ were staged countless times in Indochina for the benefit of, or the operation of, visiting dignitaries, such as John McCone when he first visited Vietnam as the Kennedy appointed director of central intelligence [after Kennedy fired Allen Dulles].

What Prouty is stating here, is that the mock battles that occurred for these dignitaries were CIA trained agents “play-acting” as the Vietcong… to make it appear that the Vietcong were not only numerous but extremely hostile.

If even dignitaries can be fooled by such things unfolding before their own eyes, is it really a wonder that a western audience watching or reading about these affairs going on in the world through its mainstream media interpreter could possibly differentiate between “reality” vs a “staged reality”?

Not only were the lines between military and paramilitary operations becoming blurred, but as Prouty states in his book, the highest ranking officers who were operating and overseeing the Vietnam situation were all CIA operatives, not only within the U.S. military but including the U.S. Ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge.

Prouty writes:

US Ambassador Lodge – had since 1945 been one of the most important agents of the OSS and later the CIA in the Far East. His orders came from that agency.”

Prouty goes further to state in his book that Lodge was brought into the role as Ambassador on August 26th, 1963 specifically to remove Ngo Dinh Diem President of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), who was seeking a peaceful resolution to the conflict at that point.

Ngo Dinh Diem was killed two months after Lodge’s arrival in Vietnam, on November 1st, 1963. Twenty-one days later John F. Kennedy who was in the process of pulling out American troops from Vietnam, was assassinated. The Vietnam War continued for 12 years more, with the Americans having nothing to show for it. And in 1976, the city of Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam, was renamed Ho Chi Minh city.

A “legacy of ashes”

The militarization of government began to return power to the corporate elite, as captains of industry and finance moved into key government posts. The Eisenhower presidency would see Washington taken over by business executives, Wall Street lawyers, and investment bankers—and by a closely aligned warrior caste that had emerged into public prominence during World War II.

Eisenhower wished to establish U.S. supremacy while avoiding another large-scale shooting war as well as the imperial burdens that had bankrupted Great Britain (to which the U.S. now did its bidding under NSC-75). By leveraging the U.S. military’s near monopoly on nuclear firepower, the president hoped to make war an unthinkable proposition for all American adversaries.

The problem with Eisenhower’s strategy was that by keeping Washington in a constant state of high alert, he empowered the most militant voices in his administration. Eisenhower had made the grave error of choosing Foster Dulles as one of his close if not closest advisers, and thus whether he liked it or not, Allen Dulles – I doubt Eisenhower ever had a free moment from the poisoned honey that was constantly being dripped into his ear.

The line between CIA and military became increasingly blurred, as military officers were assigned to intelligence agency missions, and then sent back to their military posts as “ardent disciples of Allen Dulles,” in the words of Prouty, who served as a liaison officer between the Pentagon and the CIA between 1955 and 1963.

Approaching the end of his presidency, in May 1960, President Eisenhower had planned to culminate a “Crusade for Peace” with the ultimate summit conference with USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Paris. It was Eisenhower’s clear attempt to finally push forward an initiative that was his own and which did not receive its “blessing” by Foster. If Eisenhower were to succeed in this, it would move to dissolve the Cold War Grand Strategy and remove the justification for a military-industrial complex.

In preparation for the summit, the White House had directed all overflight activity over communist territory to cease until further notice. Yet on May 1st, 1960, a high flying U-2 spy plane flown by Francis Gary Powers left Pakistan on a straight-line overflight of the Soviet Union en route to Bodo, Norway, contrary to the Eisenhower orders.

The U-2 crash-landed in Sverdlovsk, Russia. Amongst the possessions found in the plane, were of all things, identification of Powers being a CIA agent, something highly suspect for an intelligence officer to be carrying during a supposed covert mission.

The incident was enough to cancel the peace summit, and the “Crusade for Peace” was bludgeoned in its cradle.

Rumours abounded quickly thereafter that it was the Soviets who shot down the plane, however, it was Allen Dulles himself, who gave testimony before a closed-door session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the U-2 spy plane had not been shot down but had descended because of “engine trouble.”[1] This important statement by Dulles was largely ignored by the press.

Later, Eisenhower confirmed in his memoirs that the spy plane had not been shot down by the Soviets and had indeed lost engine power and crash-landed in Russia.

Prouty suspected that the “engine failure” may have been induced by a pre-planned shortage of auxiliary hydrogen fuel and that Powers’ identification items were likely planted in his parachute pack. With only a certain amount of fuel and a straight line trajectory, it would have been easy to calculate exactly where Powers would be forced to make a landing.

Prouty suspected that the CIA had intentionally provoked the incident in order to ruin the peace conference and ensure the continued reign of Dulles dogmatism.

Interestingly, the man who was in charge of the Cuban exile program, Richard Bissell (deputy director of plans for the CIA), was the same man who ran the U-2 program and who, according to Prouty ostensibly sent the Powers flight over the Soviet Union on May 1st, 1960.

Richard Bissell, who was most certainly acting upon the orders of Dulles, was among the three (Allen Dulles, Director of the CIA and Charles Cabell, Deputy Director of the CIA) who were fired by Kennedy as a result of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, or more aptly put for their act of treason.

On Jan. 5th, 1961, during a meeting of the National Security Council, a frustrated and worn down President Eisenhower, put on public record just weeks before Kennedy was to assume office, that the CIA under Dulles, had robbed him of his place in history as a peacemaker and left nothing but “a legacy of ashes for his successor.”

All Eisenhower had left of his own was his farewell address, which he made on Jan. 17th, 1961, where he famously warned the American people of what had been festering during his eight-year presidential term:

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex… The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.“

A phoenix rising

Eisenhower may have left a legacy of ashes for his predecessor, but out of those ashes would emerge a force that would come to directly challenge the rule of the “power elite”.[2]

In April 1954, Kennedy stood up on the Senate floor to challenge the Eisenhower administration’s support for the doomed French imperial war in Vietnam, foreseeing that this would not be a short-lived war.[3]

In July 1957, Kennedy once more took a strong stand against French colonialism, this time France’s bloody war against Algeria’s independence movement, which again found the Eisenhower administration on the wrong side of history. Rising on the Senate floor, two days before America’s own Independence Day, Kennedy declared:

The most powerful single force in the world today is neither communism nor capitalism, neither the H-bomb nor the guided missile – it is man’s eternal desire to be free and independent.

The great enemy of that tremendous force of freedom is called, for want of a more precise term, imperialism – and today that means Soviet imperialism and, whether we like it or not, and though they are not to be equated, Western imperialism.

Thus, the single most important test of American foreign policy today is how we meet the challenge of imperialism, what we do to further man’s desire to be free.

On this test more than any other, this nation shall be critically judged by the uncommitted millions in Asia and Africa, and anxiously watched by the still hopeful lovers of freedom behind the Iron Curtain.

If we fail to meet the challenge of either Soviet or Western imperialism, then no amount of foreign aid, no aggrandizement of armaments, no new pacts or doctrines or high-level conferences can prevent further setbacks to our course and to our security.” [4]

In September 1960, the annual United Nations General Assembly was being held in New York. Castro and a fifty member delegation were among the attendees and had made a splash in the headlines when he decided to stay at the Hotel Theresa in Harlem after the midtown Shelburne Hotel demanded a $20,000 security deposit. He made an even bigger splash in the headlines when he made a speech at this hotel, discussing the issue of equality in the United States while in Harlem, one of the poorest boroughs in the country.

Kennedy would visit this very same hotel a short while later, and also made a speech:

Behind the fact of Castro coming to this hotel, [and] Khrushchev…there is another great traveler in the world, and that is the travel of a world revolution, a world in turmoil…We should be glad [that Castro and Khrushchev] came to the United States. We should not fear the twentieth century, for the worldwide revolution which we see all around us is part of the original American Revolution.”[5]

What did Kennedy mean by this? The American Revolution was fought for freedom, freedom from the rule of monarchy and imperialism in favour of national sovereignty. What Kennedy was stating, was that this was the very oppression that the rest of the world wished to shake the yoke off, and that the United States had an opportunity to be a leader in the cause for the independence of all nations.

On June 30th, 1960, marking the independence of the Republic of Congo from the colonial rule of Belgium, Patrice Lumumba, the first Congolese Prime Minister gave a speech that has become famous for its outspoken criticism of colonialism.

Lumumba spoke of his people’s struggle against “the humiliating bondage that was forced upon us… [years that were] filled with tears, fire and blood,” and concluded vowing “We shall show the world what the black man can do when working in liberty, and we shall make the Congo the pride of Africa.”

Shortly after, Lumumba also made clear:

We want no part of the Cold War[…]We want Africa to remain African with a policy of neutralism.”[6]

As a result, Lumumba was labeled a communist for his refusal to be a Cold War satellite for the western sphere. Rather, Lumumba was part of the Pan-African movement that was led by Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah (who later Kennedy would also work with), which sought national sovereignty and an end to colonialism in Africa.

Lumumba “would remain a grave danger,” Dulles said at an NSC meeting on September 21, 1960, “as long as he was not yet disposed of.” [7] Three days later, Dulles made it clear that he wanted Lumumba permanently removed, cabling the CIA’s Leopoldville station:

We wish give [sic] every possible support in eliminating Lumumba from any possibility resuming governmental position.”[8]

Lumumba was assassinated on Jan. 17th, 1961, just three days before Kennedy’s inauguration, during the fog of the transition period between presidents, when the CIA is most free to tie its loose ends, confident that they will not be reprimanded by a new administration that wants to avoid scandal on its first days in office.

Kennedy, who clearly meant to put a stop to the Murder Inc. that Dulles had created and was running, would declare to the world in his inaugural address on Jan. 20th, 1961, “The torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans.”

And so Kennedy’s battle with the Leviathan had begun.

La resistance

Along with inheriting the responsibility of the welfare of the country and its people, Kennedy was to also inherit a secret war with communist Cuba run by the CIA.

The Bay of Pigs set-up would occur three months later. Prouty compares the Bay of Pigs incident to that of the Crusade for Peace, both events were orchestrated by the CIA to ruin the U.S. president’s ability to form a peaceful dialogue with Khrushchev and decrease Cold War tensions. Both presidents’ took onus for the events respectively, despite the responsibility resting with the CIA. However, Eisenhower and Kennedy understood, if they did not take onus, it would be a public declaration that they did not have any control over their government agencies and military.

Further, the Bay of Pigs operation was in fact meant to fail. It was meant to stir up a public outcry for a direct military invasion of Cuba. On public record is a meeting (or more aptly described as an intervention) with CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell, Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, and Navy Chief Admiral Burke basically trying to strong-arm President Kennedy into approving a direct military attack on Cuba.

Admiral Burke had already taken the liberty of positioning two battalions of Marines on Navy destroyers off the coast of Cuba “anticipating that U.S. forces might be ordered into Cuba to salvage a botched invasion.”[9] (This incident is what inspired the Frankenheimer movie “Seven Days in May.”)

Kennedy stood his ground.

“They were sure I’d give in to them,” Kennedy later told Special Assistant to the President Dave Powers. “They couldn’t believe that a new president like me wouldn’t panic and try to save his own face. Well they had me figured all wrong.”[10]

Incredibly, not only did the young president stand his ground against the Washington war hawks just three months into his presidential term, but he also launched the Cuba Study Group which found the CIA to be responsible for the fiasco, leading to the humiliating forced resignation of Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell and Charles Cabell. (For more on this refer to my report.)

Unfortunately, it would not be that easy to dethrone Dulles, who continued to act as head of the CIA, and key members of the intelligence community such as Helms and Angleton regularly bypassed McCone and briefed Dulles directly.[11] But Kennedy was also serious about seeing it all the way through, and vowed to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”

There is another rather significant incident that had occurred just days after the Bay of Pigs, and which has largely been overshadowed by the Cuban fiasco.

From April 21-26th, 1961, the Algiers putsch or Generals’ putsch, was a failed coup d’état intended to force President de Gaulle (1959-1969) not to abandon the colonial French Algeria. The organisers of the putsch were opposed to the secret negotiations that French Prime Minister Michel Debré had started with the anti-colonial National Liberation Front (FLN).

On January 26th, 1961, just three months before the attempted coup d’état, Dulles sent a report to Kennedy on the French situation that seemed to be hinting that de Gaulle would no longer be around:

A pre-revolutionary atmosphere reigns in France…The Army and the Air Force are staunchly opposed to de Gaulle…At least 80 percent of the officers are violently against him. They haven’t forgotten that in 1958, he had given his word of honor that he would never abandon Algeria. He is now reneging on his promise, and they hate him for that. de Gaulle surely won’t last if he tries to let go of Algeria. Everything will probably be over for him by the end of the year — he will be either deposed or assassinated.”[12]

The attempted coup was led by Maurice Challe, whom de Gaulle had reason to conclude was working with the support of US intelligence, and Élysée officials began spreading this word to the press, which reported the CIA as a “reactionary state-within-a-state” that operated outside of Kennedy’s control.[13]

Shortly before Challe’s resignation from the French military, he had served as NATO commander in chief and had developed close relations with a number of high-ranking US officers stationed in the military alliance’s Fontainebleau headquarters.[14]

In August 1962 the OAS (Secret Army Organization) made an assassination attempt against de Gaulle, believing he had betrayed France by giving up Algeria to Algerian nationalists. This would be the most notorious assassination attempt on de Gaulle (who would remarkably survive over thirty assassination attempts while President of France) when a dozen OAS snipers opened fire on the president’s car, which managed to escape the ambush despite all four tires being shot out.

After the failed coup d’état, de Gaulle launched a purge of his security forces and ousted General Paul Grossin, the chief of SDECE (the French secret service). Grossin was closely aligned with the CIA, and had told Frank Wisner over lunch that the return of de Gaulle to power was equivalent to the Communists taking over in Paris.[15]

In 1967, after a five-year enquête by the French Intelligence Bureau, it released its findings concerning the 1962 assassination attempt on de Gaulle. The report found that the 1962 assassination plot could be traced back to the NATO Brussels headquarters, and the remnants of the old Nazi intelligence apparatus. The report also found that Permindex had transferred $200,000 into an OAS bank account to finance the project.

As a result of the de Gaulle exposé, Permindex was forced to shut down its public operations in Western Europe and relocated its headquarters from Bern, Switzerland to Johannesburg, South Africa, it also had/has a base in Montreal, Canada where its founder Maj. Gen. Louis M. Bloomfield (former OSS) proudly had his name amongst its board members until the damning de Gaulle report. The relevance of this to Kennedy will be discussed shortly.

As a result of the SDECE’s ongoing investigation, de Gaulle made a vehement denunciation of the Anglo-American violation of the Atlantic Charter, followed by France’s withdrawal from the NATO military command in 1966. France would not return to NATO until April 2009 at the Strasbourg-Kehl Summit.

In addition to all of this, on Jan. 14th, 1963, de Gaulle declared at a press conference that he had vetoed British entry into the Common Market. This would be the first move towards France and West Germany’s formation of the European Monetary System, which excluded Great Britain, likely due to its imperialist tendencies and its infamous sin City of London.

Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson telegrammed West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer directly, appealing to him to try to persuade de Gaulle to backtrack on the veto, stating “if anyone can affect Gen. de Gaulle’s decision, you are surely that person.”

Little did Acheson know that Adenauer was just days away from singing the Franco-German Treaty of Jan 22nd, 1963 (also known as the ÉlyséeTreaty), which had enormous implications. Franco-German relations, which had long been dominated by centuries of rivalry, had now agreed that their fates were aligned.

(This close relationship was continued to a climactic point in the late 1970s, with the formation of the EMS, and France and West Germany’s willingness in 1977 to work with OPEC countries trading oil for nuclear technology, which was sabotaged by the US-Britain alliance. For more on this refer to my paper.)

The Élysée Treaty was a clear denunciation of the Anglo-American forceful overseeing that had overtaken Western Europe since the end of WWII.

On June 28th, 1961, Kennedy wrote NSAM #55. This document changed the responsibility of defense during the Cold War from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and would have (if seen through) drastically changed the course of the war in Vietnam. It would also have effectively removed the CIA from Cold War operations and limited the CIA to its sole lawful responsibility, the coordination of intelligence.

By Oct 11th, 1963, NSAM #263, closely overseen by Kennedy[16], was released and outlined a policy decision “to withdraw 1,000 military personnel [from Vietnam] by the end of 1963” and further stated that “It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel [including the CIA and military] by 1965.” The Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had the headline U.S. TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY ’65.

With the assassination of Ngo Dinh Diem, likely ordained by the CIA, on Nov. 2nd, 1963 and Kennedy just a few weeks later on Nov. 22nd, 1963, de facto President Johnson signed NSAM #273 on Nov. 26th, 1963 to begin the reversal of Kennedy’s policy under #263. And on March 17th, 1964, Johnson signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War and involved 2,709,918 Americans directly serving in Vietnam, with 9,087,000 serving with the U.S. Armed Forces during this period.

The Vietnam War would continue for another 12 years after Kennedy’s death, lasting a total of 20 years for Americans, and 30 years if you count American covert action in Vietnam.

The last days of Kennedy

By Germany supporting de Gaulle’s exposure of the international assassination ring, his adamant opposition to western imperialism and the role of NATO, and with a young Kennedy building his own resistance against the Federal Reserve and the imperialist war of Vietnam, it was clear that the power elite were in big trouble.

There is a lot of spurious effort to try to ridicule anyone who challenges the Warren Commission’s official report as nothing but fringe conspiracy theory. And that we should not find it highly suspect that Allen Dulles, of all people, was a member of this commission. The reader should keep in mind that much of this frothing opposition stems from the very agency that perpetrated crime after crime on the American people, as well as abroad. When has the CIA ever admitted guilt, unless caught red-handed? Even after the Church committee hearings, when the CIA was found guilty of planning out foreign assassinations, they claimed that they had failed in every single plot or that someone had beaten them to the punch.

The American people need to realise that the CIA is not a respectable agency; we are not dealing with honorable men. It is a rogue force that believes that the ends justify the means, that they are the hands of the king so to speak, above government and above law. Those at the top such as Allen Dulles were just as adamant as Churchill about protecting the interests of the power elite, or as Churchill termed it, the “High Cabal.”

Interestingly, on Dec. 22nd, 1963, just one month after Kennedy’s assassination, Harry Truman published a scathing critique of the CIA in The Washington Post, even going so far as to state “There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position [as a] free and open society, and I feel that we need to correct it.”[17]

The timing of this is everything.

As Prouty has stated, anyone with a little bit of free time during an afternoon could discover for themselves that the Warren Commission was an embarrassingly incompetent hodge-podge, that conducted itself as if it were a done deal that Oswald killed Kennedy and was disinterested in hearing anything contrary to that narrative.

Not only did the record of Oswald’s interrogation at the Dallas Police Department go up in smoke, likely because he was making the inconvenient claim that he was a “patsy,” but his nitrate test which proved that he never shot a rifle the day of Nov. 22nd, 1963, was kept secret for 10 months and was only revealed in the final report,[18] which inexplicably did not change the report’s conclusion that Oswald shot Kennedy.

During Garrison’s trial on the Kennedy assassination (1967-1969) he subpoenaed the Zapruder film that had been locked up in some vault owned by Life magazine (whose founder Henry Luce was known to work closely with the CIA[19]). This was the first time in more than five years that the Zapruder film was made public. It turns out the FBI’s copy that was sent to the Warren Commission had two critical frames reversed to create a false impression that the rifle shot was from behind.

When Garrison got a hold of the original film it was discovered that the head shot had actually come from the front. In fact, what the whole film showed was that the President had been shot from multiple angles meaning there was more than one gunman.

This was not the only piece of evidence to be tampered with, and includes Kennedy’s autopsy reports.

There is also the matter of the original autopsy papers being destroyed by the chief autopsy physician, James Humes, to which he even testified to during the Warren Commission, apparently nobody bothered to ask why…

In addition, Jim Garrison, New Orleans District Attorney at the time who was charging Clay Shaw as a member of the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, besides uncovering his ties to David Ferrie who was found dead in his apartment days before he was scheduled to testify, also made a case that the New Orleans International Trade Mart (to which Clay Shaw was director), the U.S. subsidiary of Permindex, was linked to Kennedy’s murder.

Garrison did a remarkable job with the odds he was up against, and for the number of witnesses that turned up dead before the trial…

This Permindex link would not look so damning if we did not have the French intelligence SDECE report, but we do. And recall, in that report Permindex was caught transferring $200,000 directly to the bankroll of the OAS which attempted the 1962 assassination on de Gaulle.

Thus, Permindex’s implication in an international assassination ring is not up for debate. In addition, the CIA was found heavily involved in these assassination attempts against de Gaulle, thus we should not simply dismiss the possibility that Permindex was indeed a CIA front for an international hit crew.

In fact, among the strange and murderous characters who converged on Dallas in Nov. 1963 was a notorious French OAS commando named Jean Souetre, who was connected to the plots against President de Gaulle. Souetre was arrested in Dallas after the Kennedy assassination and expelled to Mexico.[20]

Col. Clay Shaw was an OSS officer during WWII, which provides a direct link to his knowing Allen Dulles, and thus we come around full circle.

After returning from Kennedy’s Nov. 24th funeral in Washington, de Gaulle and his information minister Alain Peyrefitte had a candid discussion that was recorded in Peyrefitte’s memoire “C’était de Gaulle,” the great General was quoted saying:

What happened to Kennedy is what nearly happened to me… His story is the same as mine. … It looks like a cowboy story, but it’s only an OAS [Secret Army Organization] story. The security forces were in cahoots with the extremists.

…Security forces are all the same when they do this kind of dirty work. As soon as they succeed in wiping out the false assassin, they declare the justice system no longer need be concerned, that no further public action was needed now that the guilty perpetrator was dead. Better to assassinate an innocent man than to let a civil war break out. Better an injustice than disorder.

America is in danger of upheavals. But you’ll see. All of them together will observe the law of silence. They will close ranks. They’ll do everything to stifle any scandal. They will throw Noah’s cloak over these shameful deeds. In order to not lose face in front of the whole world. In order to not risk unleashing riots in the United States. In order to preserve the union and to avoid a new civil war. In order to not ask themselves questions. They don’t want to know. They don’t want to find out. They won’t allow themselves to find out.

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Cynthia Chung is a lecturer, writer and co-founder and editor of the Rising Tide Foundation (Montreal, Canada). The author can be reached at [email protected]

Notes

(1) L. Fletcher Prouty, “The Cia, Vietnam and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy, ” pg 147

(2) C. Wright Mills, “The Power Elite”

(3) David Talbot, “The Devil’s Chessboard,” pg 304

(4) Ibid, pg 305

(5) Ibid, pg 295

(6) Ibid, pg 319

(7) Ibid, pg 319

(8) Ibid, pg 319

(9) Ibid, pg 337

(10) Ibid, pg 337

(11) Ibid, pg 359

(12) Ibid, pg 350

(13) Ibid, pg 353

(14) Ibid, pg 347

(15) Ibid, pg 354

(16) L. Fletcher Prouty, “The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy,” pg xxxiv

(17) David Talbot, “The Devil’s Chessboard,” pg 201

(18) Jim Garrison, “On the Trail of the Assassins,” pg 116-117

(19) David Talbot, “The Devil’s Chessboard,” pg 72, 128

(20) Ibid, pg 422

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With tensions simmering in eastern Ukraine, US media outlets are happy to push the narrative that Russia is the aggressor and is preparing to invade its neighbor. These reports ignore the fact that the Donetsk and Lugansk republics in the eastern Donbas region declared independence from Ukraine back in 2014 in response to a US-backed coup.

Since 2014, the US has provided Ukraine with about $2 billion in military equipment and supported its fight against the Donetsk and Lugansk separatists. Supporting a war on Russia’s border is an incredible provocation, but these facts are lost on the Western press, and some outlets seem eager to see the situation escalate. On Monday, Politico published a report that asked if it was time for Ukraine to deploy weapons provided by the US to face Moscow.

The Politico report reads:

“As Russia amasses the highest number of troops on Ukraine’s border since 2014, the question for Kyiv now becomes: Is it time to start putting US-made weapons in the field?”

The report explains how President Trump took a step his predecessor was unwilling to take and sold hundreds of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. President Obama chose not to give Kyiv offensive weapons for fear of provoking Moscow. This fact contradicts the conspiracy theory that Trump was beholden to Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was pushed hard by Politico. One of the co-authors of the Ukraine report, Natasha Bertrand, built her career on pushing the Steele Dossier, a now-discredited document that made unverified claims about the Russian government and the Trump campaign in 2016.

The Javelin missiles were sold under the condition that they would be stored in western Ukraine, far from the front lines of the Donbas war. But the weapons can be deployed anywhere in the country and can be used as long as Kyiv can frame their use as “defensive” in nature.

Two unnamed former US military officials told Politico that the current situation with Russia is “exactly the kind of scenario the Javelin sale was designed to counter.”

The Biden administration has already approved a $125 million military aid package for Ukraine that includes armed patrol boats, and another $150 million is expected to be provided sometime this year. Over the past few weeks, the US has delivered multiple military shipments to Ukraine as it hypes the movement of Russian troops inside Russia.

On top of the military support from the US, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing for a NATO membership. Even though Ukraine being a NATO member could lead to the US and Russia going to war, which should be an unthinkable scenario, Zelensky’s request is receiving favorable coverage in the Western media.

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Personal Tribute to Ramsey Clark: Iraq and Rwanda

April 15th, 2021 by John Philpot

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Our friend in struggle, Attorney Ramsey Clark, passed away on April 9, 2021. Ramsey affected many of our lives. We followed closely his opposition to the American invasion of Grenada in October 1983. We got to know him best from his Commission of Inquiry into the US war on Iraq in beginning 17 January 1991.

The Crime of aggression highlighted in the Nuremberg judgment was the underlying theme in the War Crimes Tribunal which held hearings on 28, 29 January 1992 in New York. This Tribunal which I sat on condemned the USA for the crimes against Peace, War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity. He published a book, The Fire This Time, U.S War Crimes in the Gulf. This book available on Amazon.com is an anti-war textbook in international law comprehensible to all and can inspire us to join in the peace movement which is more important than ever.

Ramsey’s wisdom helped inspire many of us to join the fight against the Rwandan Patriotic Front/USA war on Rwanda.

Ramsey understood that the war of aggression on Rwanda by the RPF proxy was the cause of the so-called “genocide”. He joined the defence at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and defended Pastor Elizaphan Ntakirutimana who was living in Laredo, Texas. He succeeded in blocking his extradition to Arusha in local courts on the first attempt by his hard work and legal genius.

Ramsey Clark combined principle, justice, and legal genius in his defence of the Pastor after he was unfairly sent to Arusha for trial.

The wrongly accused ICTR accused and our defence bar were honoured to have his contribution to the ICTR defence. He inspired all of us. We had some success in avoiding convictions and ICTR lies about the war on Rwanda. The truth is coming out about the illegitimacy of the biased ICTR prosecutions, and we will not rest until the world understands.

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Featured image: Ramsey Clark was renowned for being a strong advocate in defense of people at disadvantage against the U.S. establishment at home and abroad. | Photo: Twitter/@NehandaRadio

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False Perception Fabrication Inc.

April 15th, 2021 by Mark Taliano

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Mainstream Everything can create a pandemic out of anything, even out of a Low Infection Fatality Rate (1) virus that arguably has not been properly isolated, purified, or replicated.

And that is exactly what they did.

The process of turning the truth on its head did not happen overnight. It involved changing words and nomenclature to align with pre-planned existing agendas.

Prior to the H1N1 Swine Flu “pandemic” of 2009, for example, the WHO deleted “severity of illness” from the definition of a high level, “level 6” contagion. How convenient. (2) Whereas the word “pandemic” usually conjures up images of devastating, high mortality-rate plagues, in reality, thanks to the changed nomenclature, the term is now used to define COVID-19 which has Low Infection Fatality Rates.

Coding changes to Death Certificates, for COVID-19 only, also continue to distort reality. Had coding changes not been altered in March 2020, the COVID death rates would be substantially lower. (3) When people see high numbers of deaths falsely attributed to COVID, they become fearful — which is part of the plan– but the fear is not reasonable. It is not based on real mortality rates.

It doesn’t end there. Some argue that mRNA experimental injections are not vaccines because they basically alter a person’s DNA using synthetic RNA. Typical vaccines do not do that. Problem solved. Merriam -Webster recently changed its definition of “vaccine” to cover the mRNA experimental jabs as well.

The WHO also changed its definition of “herd immunity” by negating natural herd immunity from the definition and by attributing it exclusively to vaccines.

The astute observer will see the very transparent beneficiaries of these changes in nomenclature.

Financial interests, Big Pharma, and globalists imposing lockdowns would be some of the front-line beneficiaries.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) “Facts about Covid-19.” Swiss Policy Research, June, 2020,
(https://swprs.org/a-swiss-doctor-on-covid-19/), Accessed 27 June, 2020.

(2) Joel Day, “WHO exposed: How health body changed pandemic criteria to push agenda” EXPRESS, 12 May, 2020. (WHO exposed: How health body changed pandemic criteria to push agenda | World | News | Express.co.uk) Accessed 24 March, 2021.

(3) GreenMedInfoResearchGroup, “COVID-19 Fatalities 16.7 Times Too High Due to ‘Illegal’ Inflation” 1 February, 2021. (COVID-19 Fatalities 16.7 Times Too High Due to ‘Illegal’ Inflation (greenmedinfo.com) ) Accessed 24 March, 2021.


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***

On April 11, the Natanz uranium enrichment site was attacked. An explosion destroyed the internal power system for thousands of underground centrifuges, which form the main Iranian nuclear enrichment program. Israeli media attributed the attack to Israel’s spy agency, Mossad, which is capable of cyber-sabotage. 

The blast had created a crater so large that Behrouz Kamalvandi, spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, had injured his head, back, leg and arm after falling into it.

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said the attack “could have led to a catastrophe that is a crime against humanity.” Tehran called the incident a terrorist attack.

The Biden administration is worried the Israeli act of sabotage may escalate tensions in the region and could be responsible for sabotaging the Iran nuclear talks in Vienna between the US and Iran.

Natanz is the latest in a long history of Israeli attacks on nuclear facilities through cyber means.  The Stuxnet attack was conducted by Israel with the US and Dutch intelligence agencies and was the first cyberattack known to use a digital weapon.

Iran’s Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, threatened revenge for the attack and referenced the progress in talks toward lifting the US sanctions against Iran as the reason behind the Israeli attack.

Iran has always stressed the need for domestic energy development as the reason behind its peaceful nuclear program.  Tehran denounces the use of nuclear weapons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is aware that US President Biden’s primary foreign policy objective is to bring Iran back into compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly referred to as the Iran nuclear deal of 2015.

The Natanz attack is a reminder of the diametrically opposing differences between Netanyahu and Biden and risks increasing the tension between Israel and the US, while Israel exaggerates the threat from Iran.

 “We both agree that Iran must never possess nuclear weapons,” Mr. Netanyahu said Monday. “My policy as prime minister of Israel is clear. I will never allow Iran to obtain the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel, and Israel will continue to defend itself against Iran’s aggression, and terrorism.”

In November, Israel assassinated a leading Iranian nuclear scientist in an ambush using a gun smuggled into the country and has assassinated others previously.

Over the past two years, Israel began attacking ships carrying Iranian fuel, and Iran retaliated by targeting several Israeli-owned cargo ships.

Israeli officials expressed concern that the ship Hyperion Ray could be targeted by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps following last week’s apparent mine attack by Israel on an Iranian military vessel in the Red Sea.

Israel has in recent weeks sabotaged Iranian ships at sea. Syria has accused Israel of airstrikes on its territory which are ongoing to the point of becoming routine.

In 2018, Mossad carried out a raid to steal nuclear secrets from a nuclear facility in Tehran in ongoing operations designed to oppose Iran’s progress.

US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he traveled to Israel to advance US interests and further Biden’s goals for the region. At the same time, Israel attacked Iran, disregarding US goals in the region.

Austin was in Israel for meetings with Netanyahu and Defense Minister Benny Gantz.  Monday’s joint press conference projected an image of friendship, even though behind the scenes the countries were following opposing agendas.

An Israeli official said that Austin and Gantz discussed Israel’s opposition to returning to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

“Our bilateral relationship with Israel, in particular, is central to regional stability and security in the Middle East,” said Austin, while adding the US is committed to “Israeli military edge” and advancing “strategic partnership” efforts with Tel Aviv.

Maamoun Abu Nawwar, retired Jordanian air force general, said that the goal of the visit is to ensure that Israel does not escalate the situation in the Gulf.

“The fact that the first senior official from the Biden administration to visit Israel is a military man is a clear sign that they are hoping he will address the potential of a dangerous escalation … between Israel and Iran,” he said.

“Israel views the United States as a full partner across all operational theatres, not the least Iran,” Benny Gantz said after meeting with Austin, but the partnership seemed fragile in light of the Natanz attack.

Israeli commentators have questioned whether the attack served a domestic purpose for Netanyahu, rather than just a foreign policy objective.

Netanyahu is facing a corruption trial and is struggling to form a new coalition government after a general election last month that gave no party a majority. Analysts say they believe that a very public confrontation with Iran might help Netanyahu persuade critics that now is the time for an experienced prime minister.

Talks in Vienna are aimed at persuading Iran to impose limits on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of US sanctions. The Natanz attack could damage efforts by the Biden administration to encourage Iran to return to the 2015 agreement negotiated by the Obama administration, where Tehran promised to limit its enrichment program.

In 2018, President Trump broke the deal and re-imposed US sanctions on Iran, while Iran later broke its commitments to limit its nuclear program.

Israel opposes returning to the 2015 deal, which it sees as not strong enough, or long enough in scope. Netanyahu has said Israel will not be bound by a new deal, which he describes as a temporary cap on Iranian nuclear capabilities.

Heiko Maas, the German Foreign Minister, feared the Natanz attack would affect the Vienna negotiations for a new nuclear deal with Iran.

“What we are hearing currently out of Tehran is not a positive contribution, particularly the development in Natanz,” said Maas.

Lamis Andoni, an analyst based in Amman, said that the Austin visit is aimed at helping the US return to the JCPOA.

“President Joe Biden is worried that Netanyahu would like to escalate the situation in the Gulf, with the aim of torpedoing the eventual return to the Iran nuclear deal,” she said.

Recent talks in Vienna between the US, Iran, and the other signatories got off to a slow start, with an apparent diplomatic stalemate.  Outside influences such as the Natanz attack and retaliation may negatively affect later negotiations.

Since the 1960s, US foreign policy on the Middle East has been rumored to be written in Tel Aviv. However, the Biden administration is flying in the face of tradition, and putting US interests ahead of Israeli interests by attempting to renew the Iran nuclear deal.  Biden has the support of western US allies, but Israel will try to thwart Biden’s success at every turn and may call on Israel’s new allies in the Arab Gulf monarchies to disrupt the US process.

Former President Trump is still seen as the leader of the Republican party, which is determined to stand in the way of Democratic President Biden achieving breakthroughs in the Iran nuclear deal renewal.  Trump reneged on the deal to appease Israel and AIPAC, the US Zionist lobby.  US party politics are influencing the Middle East region and may thwart the Biden goal of a new Iran nuclear deal.

Israeli officials have long threatened military action against Iran, and the Republican party has its war-hawks who would support an attack on Iran.

Martin Indyk, an American diplomat who has served as Ambassador to Israel, tweeted the day after the Natanz attack,

“BUT…the attack will also drive Iran’s nuclear program further underground which will then require anywhere/anytime inspections to detect and prevent it. And for that, there will need to be a nuclear agreement.”

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear programme at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on 30 April 2018 (Source: MEE)

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***

The Doctrine of Discovery, created in a series of Papal Bulls in the Fifteenth Century, has served as the basis of most of European colonialism’s destructive rampage across most regions of the world.  It was most successfully applied in the Western Hemisphere where Spanish, Portuguese, and British colonies decimated much of the indigenous population and proceeded to ‘own’ the land by way of the Crown.  In the truly British colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States, the indigenous populations have suffered from ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide.

What is most surprising is that these Papal Bulls, written by Roman Catholic popes over 500 years ago, still serve as legal documents used to argue against indigenous possession of land and any rights to it.  Canada’s legal system does not use the Bulls directly, but refers to their use in the U.S. The Sparrow case in British Columbia in 1990 used the 1823 Johnson v M’Intosh decision of the U.S. Supreme Court:

“The  M’Intosh verdict held that a discovering sovereign has the exclusive right to extinguish Indians’ interest in their lands, either by purchase or by just war.”

The result in the Sparrow case “confirms that these rights [Aboriginal rights] are not absolute, and can be infringed upon providing the government can legally justify it.” [1]

Christian Justification for slavery, racism, and white supremacy (pardon the tautology)

Think about it.  Some racist white Christian man five hundred years ago made a supremely racist pronouncement accepting genocide, ethnic cleansing, and slavery that is still used by both the Canadian and U.S. governments in legal decisions against indigenous people.

Beyond that, it promoted slavery, and combined with the ethnic cleansing and genocide of indigenous people, set Canada and the U.S. on their current course of attempting to uphold western hegemony over – essentially – the rest of the world.  It is a broad brush to sweep with based on a piece of paper that should have been denied legality, if not generations ago, at least now that common international humanitarian law and war law would not accept such a doctrine.

In Unsettling Truths – The Ongoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, the authors, Mark Charles, and Soon-Chan Rah, both Christian pastors, explore the history and ramifications of the pronouncement of these Papal Bulls.  Interestingly enough the book does not provide the texts of the Bulls even though they are quite short and easy to understand.  They do however provide a precis:

“The Doctrine of Discovery is a set of legal principles that governed the European colonizing powers, particularly regarding the administration of indigenous land.  It is the “primary legal precedent that still controls native affairs and rights…an international law formulated in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries..””

Other than the fact that it is accepted as international law, it is entirely bogus, a sham, a pretence – it is a racist religious doctrine which should not have any legal authority.

That it does have ongoing legal authority only serves to define Canadian and U.S. societies as legally racist, supportive of wars of genocide and ethnic cleansing in order to obtain the wealth of the world.  This idea will return in a moment, but first, the book.

“Unsettling Truths”  is a series of short essays set out in historical order describing how it has been abused for centuries and served as a major component of the establishment of the British Colonies in North America and their subsequent changes into independent states.  The authors excoriate the Puritan settlers as the prime promoters of this racist ideology, and apply the same severe criticism to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, following on with a deconstruction of Abraham Lincoln’s.

Abraham Lincoln

Lincoln receives two chapters in judgement.  The second covers his application of sovereign rights as determined by the Doctrine of Discovery towards removing the indigenous populations, permanently, one way or another.  The first discusses his arguments during his tenure in office and shows that he was not against slavery per se, but was concerned about holding the union together under the control of the economic power of the northern states.

Well beyond that, and having a considerable impact on U.S. society today, is the Thirteenth Amendment, of 1865, used

“to keep white supremacy alive beond the grotesque institution of slavery, by creating a second-tier level of citizenship, specifically for people of color:  “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime wherof the party shall have been duly convicted….”

Fast forward to today’s incarceration rate, both in absolute numbers  – the largest in the world – and in percentages – still the largest in the world but also dominated by people of colour.  Discriminatory laws and institutionalized racism have kept slavery alive.

The U.S. is not a Christian nation.

As well as deconstructing the secular, the authors also present arguments about the lack of Christianity in the U.S.    Under the descriptions and definitions of the authors, they present the U.S. as an attempt at “Christendom” arguing that it “cannot exist with the teachings of Jesus.”  They see Christendom – the American nation, the physical entity encompassing Christianity in the U.S. – has “prostituted itself to empire….the need to address corporate sins like stolen lands, broken treaties, genocide, slavery, sexism, systematic injustice, white supremacy, and Christendom itself is ignored or outright rejected” by U.S. churches.  Confronted with the Doctrine of Discovery, “the church has no meaningful theological response….the dysfunctional narrative of American exceptionalism has no basis in Scripture.”

The author’s final argument summarizes succinctly that “the Church in America has nothing to offer.”

Ramifications

Whether the theological arguments of the authors are accepted by the reader or not, the legal arguments and the current state of global affairs needs to be examined using the ideas promulgated under the Doctrine of Discovery.  To reiterate:  That the Doctrine fo Discovery does have ongoing legal authority only serves to define Canadian and U.S. societies as legally racist, supportive of wars of genocide and ethnic cleansing in order to obtain the wealth of the world.

That an ancient church document has legal power today – in particular in light of modern international humanitarian and war law, and the western theoretical separation of church and state – should not be at all acceptable.  It survives in law only because of racism and white supremacy, a convenient circular support system.

The United States attempts at global hegemony are derivatives of this doctrine, with the major emphasis – as demonstrated by the Indian Wars, and all their imperial wars since then – on using force.  Many arguments have been made for “just wars” under the guise of Christianity (and other religions) but no war can be “just” in the true sense of justice being served – all people lose in wars except for the corporate war profiteers of the winning side, and if Germany is the example, the same group on the losing side.

Examples of U.S. white supremacy are spread throughout modern current events and locations, and while the ideals of white supremacy are downplayed, they still provide the undercurrents supporting wars based on “the right to protect”, “freedom and democracy,” and currently with the media hype against Russia and China, it is “democracy versus autocracy.”  The authors include Israel/Palestine within this mix:

“…when Netanyahu publicly ordained both the United States of America and the modern nation state of Israel as having “promised lands” he revealed the very dysfunctional and codependent relationship that exists between the two countries.  The U.S. needs Israel’s Old Testament legacy of promised lands to justify [its] history….The modern state of Israel needs the continuing flourishing of the United States as a shining light upon  hill to justify their current unjust actions against the Palestinains and Bedouin people.”

The idea of a “flourishing” U.S. may be a noble idea, but the reality, especially as exposed by the four years under Trump and the continuing open and obvious racism within the U.S. denies any flourishing.  The only segments of the U.S. that are flourishing are the corporate military industries, the financialized one percenters, and many of the politicians involved with both.  Unfortunately, until the U.S. can accept and identify its underlying racist, sexist, supremacist, white patriarchal structures, it will continue to decline in the pursuit of hegemony in the face of a global community slowly attempting to extricate itself from U.S. dominance financially and militarily.

Finally

But to return to the author’s main argument, the church in the U.S. continues to support the politicians, the aggressive foreign policy, the abnormal ties to Israel, and appears incapable of doing anything about it.   Unsettling Truths – TheOngoing, Dehumanizing Legacy of the Doctrine of Discovery, by   Mark Charles, and Soon-Chan Rah is an interesting and instructive read on how the church and its beliefs within the overall parameters of ‘western’ or European racism created a country that will have great difficulty accepting the idea and then dealing with the practicality of its historical trauma.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Denis Halliday: A Voice of Reason in an Insane World

April 15th, 2021 by Denis Halliday

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***

Denis Halliday is an exceptional figure in the world of diplomacy. In 1998, after a 34-year career with the United Nations—including as an Assistant Secretary-General and the UN Humanitarian Coordinator in Iraq—he resigned when the UN Security Council refused to lift sanctions against Iraq. 

Halliday saw at first hand the devastating impact of this policy that had led to the deaths of over 500,000 children under the age of five and hundreds of thousands more older children and adults, and he called the sanctions a genocide against the people of Iraq.

Since 1998, Denis has been a powerful voice for peace and for human rights around the world. He sailed in the Freedom Flotilla to Gaza in 2010, when 10 of his companions on a Turkish ship were shot and killed in an attack by the Israeli armed forces.

I interviewed Denis Halliday from his home in Ireland.

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Nicolas Davies:   So, Denis, twenty years after you resigned from the UN over the sanctions on Iraq, the United States is now imposing similar “maximum pressure” sanctions against Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and North Korea, denying their people access to food and medicines in the midst of a pandemic. What would you like to say to Americans about the real-world impact of these policies?

Denis Halliday:   I’d like to begin with explaining that the sanctions imposed by the Security Council against Iraq, led very much by the United States and Britain, were unique in the sense that they were comprehensive. They were open-ended, meaning that they required a Security Council decision to end them, which of course never actually happened – and they followed immediately upon the Gulf War.

The Gulf War, led primarily by the United States but supported by Britain and some others, undertook the bombing of Iraq and targeted civilian infrastructure, which is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and they took out all electric power networks in the country.

This completely undermined the water treatment and distribution system of Iraq, which depended upon electricity to drive it, and drove people to use contaminated water from the Tigris and the Euphrates. That was the beginning of the death-knell for young children, because mothers were not breast-feeding, they were feeding their children with child formula, but mixing it with foul water from the Tigris and the Euphrates.

That bombing of infrastructure, including communications systems and electric power, wiped out the production of food, horticulture, and all of the other basic necessities of life. They also closed down exports and imports, and they made sure that Iraq was unable to export its oil, which was the main source of its revenue at the time.

In addition to that, they introduced a new weapon called depleted uranium, which was used by the U.S. forces driving the Iraqi Army out of Kuwait. That was used again in southern Iraq in the Basra area, and led to a massive accumulation of nuclear debris which led to leukemia in children, and that took three, four or five years to become evident.

So when I got to Iraq in 1998, the hospitals in Baghdad, and also of course in Basra and other cities, were full of children suffering from leukemia. Meantime adults had gotten their own cancer, mainly not a blood cancer diagnosis. Those children, we reckon perhaps 200,000 children, died of leukemia. At the same time, Washington and London withheld some of the treatment components that leukemia requires, again, it seemed, in a genocidal manner, denying Iraqi children the right to remain alive.

And as you quoted 500,000, that was a statement made by Madeleine Albright, the then American Ambassador to the United Nations who, live on CBS, was asked the question about the loss of 500,000 children, and she said that the loss of 500,000 children was “worth it,” in terms of bringing down Saddam Hussein, which did not happen until the military invasion of 2003.

So the point is that the Iraqi sanctions were uniquely punitive and cruel and prolonged and comprehensive. They remained in place no matter how people like myself or others, and not just me alone, but UNICEF and the agencies of the UN system – many states including France, China and Russia – complained bitterly about the consequences on human life and the lives of Iraqi children and adults.

My desire in resigning was to go public, which I did. Within one month, I was in Washington doing my first Congressional briefing on the consequences of these sanctions, driven by Washington and London.

So I think the United States and its populus, who vote these governments in, need to understand that the children and the people of Iraq are just like the children of the United States and England and their people. They have the same dreams, same ambitions of education and employment and housing and vacations and all the things that good people care about. We’re all the same people and we cannot sit back and think somehow, “We don’t know who they are, they’re Afghans, they’re Iranians, they’re Iraqis. So what? They’re dying. Well, we don’t know, it’s not our problem, this happens in war.” I mean, all that sort of rationale as to why this is unimportant.

And I think that aspect of life in the sanctions world continues, whether it’s Venezuela, whether it’s Cuba, which has been ongoing now for 60 years. People are not aware or don’t think in terms of the lives of other human beings identical to ourselves here in Europe or in the United States.

It’s a frightening problem, and I don’t know how it can be resolved. We now have sanctions on Iran and North Korea. So the difficulty is to bring alive that we kill people with sanctions. They’re not a substitute for war – they are a form of warfare.

Nicolas Davies:   Thank you, Denis. I think that brings us to another question, because whereas the sanctions on Iraq were approved by the UN Security Council, what we’re looking at today in the world is, for the most part, the U.S. using the power of its financial system to impose unilateral sieges on these countries, even as the U.S. is also still waging war in at least half a dozen countries, mostly in the Greater Middle East. Medea Benjamin and I recently documented that the U.S. and its allies have dropped 326,000 bombs and missiles on other countries in all these wars, just since 2001 – that’s not counting the First Gulf War.

You worked for the UN and UNDP for 34 years, and the UN was conceived of as a forum and an institution for peace and to confront violations of peace by any countries around the world. But how can the UN address the problem of a powerful, aggressive country like the United States that systematically violates international law and then abuses its veto and diplomatic power to avoid accountability?

Denis Halliday:   Yes, when I talk to students, I try to explain that there are two United Nations: there’s a United Nations of the Secretariat, led by the Secretary-General and staffed by people like myself and 20,000 or 30,000 more worldwide, through UNDP and the agencies. We operate in every country, and most of it is developmental or humanitarian. It’s good work, it has real impact, whether it’s feeding Palestinians or it’s UNICEF work in Ethiopia. This continues.

Where the UN collapses is in the Security Council, in my view, and that is because, in Yalta in 1945, Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill, having noted the failure of the League of Nations, decided to set up a United Nations that would have a controlling entity, which they then called the Security Council. And to make sure that worked, in their interests I would say, they established this five-power veto group, and they added France and they added China. And that five is still in place.

That’s 1945 and this is 2021, and they’re still in power and they’re still manipulating the United Nations. And as long as they stay there and they manipulate, I think the UN is doomed. The tragedy is that the five veto powers are the very member states that violate the Charter, violate human rights conventions, and will not allow the application of the ICC to their war crimes and other abuses.

On top of that, they are the countries that manufacture and sell weapons, and we know that weapons of war are possibly the most profitable product you can produce. So their vested interest is control, is the military capacity, is interference. It’s a neocolonial endeavor, an empire in reality, to control the world as the way they want to see it. Until that is changed and those five member states agree to dilute their power and play an honest role, I think we’re doomed. The UN has no capacity to stop the difficulties we’re faced with around the world.

Nicolas Davies:   That’s a pretty damning prognosis. In this century, we’re facing such incredible problems, between climate change and the threat of nuclear war still hanging over all of us, possibly more dangerous than ever before, because of the lack of treaties and the lack of cooperation between the nuclear powers, notably the U.S. and Russia. This is really an existential crisis for humanity.

Now there is also, of course, the UN General Assembly, and they did step up on nuclear weapons with the new Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which has now officially entered into force. And every year when it meets, the General Assembly regularly and almost unanimously condemns the U.S. sanctions regime against Cuba.

When I wrote my book about the war in Iraq, my final recommendations were that the senior American and British war criminals responsible for the war should be held criminally accountable, and that the U.S. and the U.K. should pay reparations to Iraq for the war. Could the General Assembly possibly be a venue to build support for Iraq to claim reparations from the U.S. and the U.K., or is there another venue where that would be more appropriate?

Denis Halliday:   I think you’re right on target. The tragedy is that the decisions of the Security Council are binding decisions. Every member state has got to apply and respect those decisions. So, if you violate a sanctions regime imposed by the Council as a member state, you’re in trouble. The General Assembly resolutions are not binding.

You’ve just referred to a very important decision, which is the decision about nuclear weapons. We’ve had a lot of decisions on banning various types of weapons over the years. Here in Ireland we were involved in anti-personnel mines and other things of that sort, and it was by a large number of member states, but not the guilty parties, not the Americans, not the Russians, not the Chinese, not the British. The ones who control the veto power game are the ones who do not comply. Just like Clinton was one of the proposers, I think, of the ICC [International Criminal Court], but when it came to the end of the day, the United States doesn’t accept it has a role vis-a-vis themselves and their war crimes The same is true of other large states that are the guilty parties in those cases.

So I would go back to your suggestion about the General Assembly. It could be enhanced, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be changed, but it requires tremendous courage on the part of member states. It also requires acceptance by the five veto powers that their day has come to an end, because, in reality, the UN carries very little cachet nowadays to send a UN mission into a country like Myanmar or Afghanistan.

I think we have no power left, we have no influence left, because they know who runs the organization, they know who makes the decisions. It’s not the Secretary-General. It’s not people like me. We are dictated to by the Security Council. I resigned, effectively, from the Security Council. They were my bosses during that particular period of my career.

I have a lecture I do on reforming the Security Council, making it a North-South representative body, which would find Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa in situ, and you’d get very different decisions, you’d get the sort of decisions we get in the General Assembly: much more balanced, much more aware of the world and its North and South and all those other variations. But of course, again, we can’t reform the Council until the five veto powers agree to that. That is the huge problem.

Nicolas Davies:   Yes, in fact, when that structure was announced in 1945 with the Security Council, the five Permanent Members and the veto, Albert Camus, who was the editor of the French Resistance newspaper Combat, wrote a front-page editorial saying this was the end of any idea of international democracy.

So, as with so many other issues, we live in these nominally democratic countries, but the people of a country like the United States are only really told what our leaders want us to know about how the world works. So reform of the Security Council is clearly needed, but it’s a massive process of education and democratic reform in countries around the world to actually build enough of a popular movement to demand that kind of change. In the meantime, the problems we’re facing are enormous.

Another thing that is very under-reported in the U.S. is that, out of desperation after twenty years of war in Afghanistan, Secretary Blinken has finally asked the UN to lead a peace process for a ceasefire between the U.S.-backed government and the Taliban and a political transition. That could move the conflict into the political realm and end the civil war that resulted from the U.S. invasion and occupation and endless bombing campaign.

So what do you think of that initiative? There is supposed to be a meeting in a couple of weeks in Istanbul, led by an experienced UN negotiator, Jean Arnault, who helped to bring peace to Guatemala at the end of its civil war, and then between Colombia and the FARC. The U.S. specifically asked China, Russia and Iran to be part of this process as well. Both sides in Afghanistan have agreed to come to Istanbul and at least see what they can agree on. So is that a constructive role that the UN can play? Does that offer a chance of peace for the people of Afghanistan?

Denis Halliday:   If I were a member of the Taliban and I was asked to negotiate with a government that is only in power because it’s supported by the United States, I would question whether it’s an even keel. Are we equally powerful, can we talk to each other one-to-one? The answer, I think, is no.

The UN chap, whoever he is, poor man, is going to have the same difficulty. He is representing the United Nations, a Security Council dominated by the United States and others, as the Afghans are perfectly well aware. The Taliban have been fighting for a helluva long time, and making no progress because of the interference of the U.S. troops, which are still on the ground. I just don’t think it’s an even playing-field.

So I’d be very surprised if that works. I absolutely hope it might. I would think, in my view, if you want a lasting relationship within a country, it’s got to be negotiated within the country, without military or other interference or fear of further bombing or attacks or all the rest of it. I don’t think we have any credibility, as a UN, under those circumstances. It’ll be a very tough slog.

Nicolas Davies:   Right. The irony is that the United States set aside the UN Charter when it attacked Yugoslavia in 1999 to carve out what is now the semi-recognized country of Kosovo, and then to attack Afghanistan and Iraq. The UN Charter, right at the beginning, at its heart, prohibits the threat or use of force by one country against another. But that is what the U.S. set aside. 

Denis Halliday:   And then, you have to remember, the U.S. is attacking a fellow member state of the United Nations, without hesitation, with no respect for the Charter. Perhaps people forget that Eleanor Roosevelt drove, and succeeded in establishing, the Declaration of Human Rights, an extraordinary achievement, which is still valid. It’s a biblical instrument for many of us who work in the UN.

So the neglect of the Charter and the spirit of the Charter and the wording of the Charter, by the five veto members, perhaps in Afghanistan it was Russia, now it’s the United States, the Afghanis have had foreign intervention up to their necks and beyond, and the British have been involved there since the 18th century almost. So they have my deepest sympathy, but I hope this thing can work, let’s hope it can.

Nicolas Davies:   I brought that up because the U.S., with its dominant military power after the end of the Cold War, made a very conscious choice that instead of living according to the UN Charter, it would live by the sword, by the law of the jungle: “might makes right.”

It took those actions because it could, because no other military force was there to stand up against it. At the time of the First Gulf War, a Pentagon consultant told the New York Times that, with the end of the Cold War, the U.S. could finally conduct military operations in the Middle East without worrying about starting World War III. So they took the demise of the Soviet Union as a green light for these systematic, widespread actions that violate the UN Charter.

But now, what is happening in Afghanistan is that the Taliban once again control half the country. We’re approaching the spring and the summer when the fighting traditionally gets worse, and so the U.S. is calling in the UN out of desperation because, frankly, without a ceasefire, their government in Kabul is just going to lose more territory. So the U.S. has chosen to live by the sword, and in this situation it’s now confronting dying by the sword.

Denis Halliday:   What’s tragic, Nicolas, is that, in our lifetime, the Afghanis ran their own country. They had a monarchy, they had a parliament – I met and interviewed women ministers from Afghanistan in New York – and they managed it. It was when the Russians interfered, and then the Americans interfered, and then Bin Laden set up his camp there, and that was justification for destroying what was left of Afghanistan.

And then Bush, Cheney and a few of the boys decided, although there was no justification whatsoever, to bomb and destroy Iraq, because they wanted to think that Saddam Hussein was involved with Al Qaeda, which of course was nonsense. They wanted to think he had weapons of mass destruction, which also was nonsense. The UN inspectors said that again and again, but nobody would believe them.

It’s deliberate neglect of the one last hope. The League of Nations failed, and the UN was the next best hope and we have deliberately turned our backs upon it, neglected it and distrusted it. When we get a good Secretary General like Hammarskjold, we murder him. He was definitely killed, because he was interfering in the dreams of the British in particular, and perhaps the Belgians, in Katanga. It’s a very sad story, and I don’t know where we go from here.

Nicolas Davies:   Right, well, where we seem to be going from here is to a loss of American power around the world, because the U.S. has so badly abused its power. In the U.S., we keep hearing that this is a Cold War between the U.S. and China, or maybe the U.S., China and Russia, but I think we all hopefully can work for a more multipolar world.

As you say, the UN Security Council needs reform, and hopefully the American people are understanding that we cannot unilaterally rule the world, that the ambition for a U.S. global empire is an incredibly dangerous pipe-dream that has really led us to an impasse.

Denis Halliday:   Perhaps the only good thing coming out of Covid-19 is the slow realization that, if everybody doesn’t get a vaccine, we fail, because we, the rich and the powerful with the money and the vaccines, will not be safe until we make sure the rest of the world is safe, from Covid and the next one that’s coming along the track undoubtedly.

And this implies that if we don’t do trade with China or other countries we have reservations about, because we don’t like their government, we don’t like communism, we don’t like socialism, whatever it is, we just have to live with that, because without each other we can’t survive. With the climate crisis and all the other issues related to that, we need each other more than ever perhaps, and we need collaboration. It’s just basic common sense that we work and live together.

The U.S. has something like 800 military bases around the world, of various sizes. China is certainly surrounded and this is a very dangerous situation, totally unnecessary. And now the rearming with fancy new nuclear weapons when we already have nuclear weapons that are twenty times bigger than the one that destroyed Hiroshima. Why on Earth? It’s just irrational nonsense to continue these programs, and it just doesn’t work for humanity.

I would hope the U.S. would start perhaps retreating and sorting out its own domestic problems, which are quite substantial. I’m reminded every day when I look at CNN here in my home about the difficulties of race and all the other things that you’re well aware of that need to be addressed. Being policeman to the world was a bad decision.

Nicolas Davies:   Absolutely. So the political, economic and military system we live under is not only genocidal at this point, but also suicidal. Thank you, Denis, for being a voice of reason in this insane world.

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Nicolas J. S. Davies is a researcher for CODEPINK, a freelance writer and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

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The Holy month of Ramadan has begun in Afghanistan, and it will also be a month of waiting.

It began on April 13th and this year it is filled with a sense of urgency and anticipation as to whether the United States will withdraw from Afghanistan and fulfill its commitments.

According to MSM reports Biden has realized that there is neither a military nor a political solution to Afghanistan’s issues, or rather that they can’t be solved through outside intervention.

To MSM’s shock, this withdrawal will not happen by the pre-agreed date of May 1st, 2021, but rather prior to the 20th anniversary of September 11th. Other NATO troops in the country will follow suit with the same timeline. Britain will withdraw nearly all its troops from Afghanistan along with Washington’s forces.

It is unknown how the Taliban will accept this, as there have been warnings that attacks on US and NATO personnel and positions would be renewed if the May 1st deadline isn’t honored.

In reality, the fighting in Afghanistan is nowhere near finished, and has not subsided. Afghan Security forces frequently clash with the Taliban, and attack their positions and vice versa.

Overall, after the signing of the Doha agreement, the number of Taliban attacks in Afghanistan increased by 24%. This, of course, was announced by the Afghan authorities.

On April 12th, Taliban reports said that in clashes throughout the country, at least 54 Afghan security forces were killed and 13 injured.

At least 23 Afghan security forces were killed in Taliban attacks on the first day of Ramadan.

Afghan Security forces reportedly killed 91 Taliban and injured 43 more, in “reciprocation” operations on the same day.

Clashes continue despite President Ashraf Ghani and the head of the Supreme Council for National Reconciliation, Abdullah Abdullah calling for peace during the celebration of the holy month.

There is a complete standstill, both in terms of fighting and in negotiations. The Taliban said that they would not attend any conference or political forum aimed at normalization until all foreign troops leave the country.

This mostly relates to the recent announcement of an Afghanistan peace conference to be held in Turkey, between April 24th and May 4th. The Taliban completely rejected attending it if the United States doesn’t fulfill its commitments.

In a statement the group said that any peace would only be possible as an internal solution between Afghanistan’s own parties and that ambiguous and unclear statements benefited nobody and contributed to peace least of all.

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Pfizer Vaccine May Put People at Higher Risk for COVID Variants, Israeli Study Shows

By Megan Redshaw, April 14 2021

Israeli researchers found people who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were eight times more likely to be infected with the South African variant, and people who received one dose of the vaccine were more likely to get the UK variant.

There is Hope. Coming to Grips with This Covid Chaos

By Peter Koenig, April 14 2021

There is hope that we may come to grips with this covid-chaos – worldwide deliberate systematic destruction of social systems and economies, country by country.

Fearmongering Goes Nuclear — ‘We’re in Brand-New Pandemic’

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, April 14 2021

In some areas of the world, including Florida, where I live, life has been fairly normal for almost a full year. Restaurants opened last April, and people have flocked here from out of state and even from other countries to enjoy the fresh air and open businesses. This clearly does not benefit the globalists’ agenda, so, right on cue, fearmongering is ramping up another notch.

Russia Deploys Two Armies, Three Airborne Units to Counter Threat from 40,000 NATO Troops on Its Border

By Rick Rozoff, April 14 2021

Major Russian officials today have warned of military threats posed by the U.S.-led thirty-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization to its western border: its entire western border. And its northern one as well.

Militarize the Southern Border: Joe Biden Strikes Deal with Mexico and Central American States to Curb Migration

By Abayomi Azikiwe, April 14 2021

A crisis of migration into the United States from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras has resulted in negotiations by the White House with the governments of these countries aimed at preventing people from crossing the southern border.

Cuba’s COVID-19 Vaccine Candidates: Soberana 2 and Abdala

By Dr. Birsen Filip, April 14 2021

Cuba is the first nation in Latin America and the Caribbean to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to clinical trials, in spite of the immense challenges it faces from the genocidal U.S. commercial and financial blockade.

Whither India-Russia Ties?

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, April 14 2021

On Monday, the prominent Moscow daily Kommersant commented that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit to New Delhi on April 5-6 “is not going to be easy because relations between the two countries are facing an increasing number of risks, which particularly include the Chinese factor test.”

Ramsey Clark – One of the Greatest

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, April 14 2021

The former US Attorney-General had spent decades in the struggle for human rights both when he was in government and after he ceased to be Attorney-General. He had been in the forefront of so many human rights causes that it will not be possible to offer some reflections on them in a single obituary.

CDC: 3,005 Recorded Deaths in VAERS Following COVID-19 Experimental “Vaccines” – More than Total Vaccine Deaths for Past 13+ Years

By Brian Shilhavy, April 14 2021

The CDC announced today that deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines, following experimental COVID injections, have now surpassed 3000 deaths since December of 2020.

Monsanto Fined $289 Million for Failing to Warn Users of Glyphosate-Cancer Link

By GM Free Me, April 14 2021

A San Francisco jury has found that the widely used herbicide, glyphosate (also known as Roundup) can cause cancer. The jury returned its verdict in the case of a former groundskeeper, Dewayne ‘Lee’ Johnson, who developed terminal cancer after regular exposure to the herbicide.

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Against all expectations, right-wing Guillermo Lasso won the Ecuadorean presidential election on April 11. It was anticipated that Andrés Arauz, a protégé of former leftist President Rafael Correa who famously protected Julian Assange, would win the election. To everyone’s surprise, Lasso won with 52.50% of the vote, while Arauz obtained 47.50% of the vote. This was despite Arauz winning the first round of the presidential election in February with 32.72% of the vote. Although Arauz had favorable polls in the second round, Lasso won the election and Washington could not be happier with this outcome.

The U.S. is obviously happy with the result as Ecuador can now be considered another friendly country in South America, alongside Brazil and Colombia. Ecuador, as a small and politically divided country wedged between Peru and Colombia, is experiencing an economic crisis aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic and is in the middle of an intense war of influence between the U.S. and China. During the Corréiste era (2007-2017), Beijing became a strategic partner, a fact that former U.S. President Donald Trump attempted to overcome by granting loans to Ecuador.

Essentially the election was a choice for Ecuador – alongside the U.S., or a diversified policy that includes friendly relations with China. Lasso, a rich ex-banker, presented himself as someone who supports not only the U.S., but also the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Effectively, Lasso’s accession to the presidency is a continuity of the unpopular and outgoing President Lenin Moreno.

It is remembered that Moreno initially presented himself with leftist tendencies and supposedly aligned to Correa. Elected in 2017 with the promise to continue the “Citizen Revolution,” he instead approached Washington and the IMF by concluding in 2019 and 2020, respectively, loans of $4.2 and $6.5 billion. This was achieved by sacrificing Julian Assange in 2019, an asylum seeker at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Moreno described Assange as a “miserable hacker” and a “spoiled brat.”

These agreements with international financial institutions forced Ecuador, heavily indebted by the fall in oil prices, to remove fuel subsidies and thus cause prices to rise. As a result, riots rocked the country in 2019, forcing Moreno to leave the capital of Quito. Under Moreno, Correa stressed, “Ecuador has become the U.S.’s regional bridgehead, and the U.S. is not willing to lose its new ally.” Correa in the same communique even referred to the possibility of the U.S. establishing a military base in the Galapagos Islands.

For a decade, Correa had been the herald of “21st century socialism” by stabilizing the country and relying on oil to reduce chronic inequalities, just like Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela. He also broke with the IMF and closed the American base in Manta in 2009.

By exchanging Ecuadorean oil with Beijing for cash, Correa wanted to reduce his country’s dependency on Washington. Correa planed to diversify Ecuador’s alliances, and in this context, there was rapprochements with China. There were breaks with the U.S and the IMF, but American companies remained in the Andean country. So it was not a policy of one or the other, but a policy of being friendly to all states and not subservient to any.

However, the Monroe Doctrine still has a bright future ahead of it with the new Ecuadorian President. The victory of Lasso is linked to a period of multiple crises in the region, which results in political oscillations, passing from one extreme to another. Although the left is still the leading political force in the country with 47% of the population, the new Ecuadorian President brought together all the anti-Leftists, well beyond what he represents.

This is seen by the fact that Lasso’s political party, Creating Opportunities, has only 12 seats out of 137 in the National Assembly. Comparatively, Arauz’s Union for Hope has the most seats in the National Assembly, 31 in total, while second placed Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement – New Country, another leftist party, has 27 seats in the National Assembly. Therefore, although Lasso may have won the presidential election, he will have difficulty in the National Assembly as he has little control and influence over it.

The core of the Monroe Doctrine is “America for Americans” – which although sounds like an effort for self-determination, is in actual fact a front for Washington’s expansion into Latin America. Lasso serves Washington’s Monroe Doctrine as he will not only continue to indebt Ecuador to the IMF, but will work towards reducing Chinese economic penetration into the country. It is little wonder that there was a “soar” in Ecuador’s bonds as “Millionaire Banker Wins Presidency,” as a Bloomberg headline read.

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The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is working on a COVID vaccine that will work on all variants and has developed an implantable microchip that it says will continuously monitor the human body for signs of the virus.

Retired Colonel Matt Hepburn, an army infectious disease physician heading up DARPA’s response to the pandemic, appeared on 60 Minutes to demonstrate the technology.

Holding up a vial of green tissue-like gel, which contains the chip, Hepburn proclaimed

“You put it underneath your skin and what that tells you is that there are chemical reactions going on inside the body, and that signal means you are going to have symptoms tomorrow.”

“It’s like a ‘check engine’ light,” Hepburn added, noting that those with the chip “would get the signal, then self-administer a blood draw and test themselves on site.”

“We can have that information in three to five minutes,” Hepburn continued, adding “As you truncate that time, as you diagnose and treat, what you do is you stop the infection in its tracks.”

Watch:

Hepburn also declared that DARPA has developed a filter to remove the virus from the blood via a dialysis machine, and that the FDA has approved it, and it has already been used on 300 patients.

The 60 Minutes report also highlights how the Pentagon has hundreds of tissue samples from soldiers and sailors infected with pathogens all over the world, including the 1918 Spanish Flu which killed millions globally.

Pentagon scientist Dr Kayvon Modjarrad also highlighted that the military is developing a one size fits all vaccine for COVID, commenting

“This is not science fiction, this is science fact.”

“We have the tools, we have the technology, to do this all right now,” he said explaining that the goal is to inoculate people against potentially deadly viruses that have not even appeared yet.

“Killer viruses that we haven’t seen or even imagined, we’ll be protected against,” Modjarrad declared.

It was recently revealed that a third of active duty service members opted out of taking the COVID vaccine, with sources claiming the actual figure is probably closer to half.

The finding prompted the likes of TIME to declare that ‘vaccine hesitancy’ is threatening national security, and that while “These troops may not be co-opted by domestic terrorists, but they are clearly influenced by conspiracy theorists online and they just don’t trust basic science.”

The DARPA announcement of implantable microchip technology tied to the virus and a vaccine will likely only serve to enforce concerns the media continually describes as ‘conspiracy theories.’

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Israeli researchers found people who received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine were eight times more likely to be infected with the South African variant, and people who received one dose of the vaccine were more likely to get the UK variant.

A new study by Israeli researchers found that a South African variant of COVID may put people who have been vaccinated with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine at higher risk of breakthrough infection compared to unvaccinated people.

The study also showed an increased incidence of the UK variant in those who received one dose of the Pfizer shot.

The study, released April 10, reviewed the positive COVID-19 test results of 800 people — 400 people who tested positive for COVID 14 days or more after they received one or two doses of the Pfizer vaccine against 400 unvaccinated people to see if those vaccinated were more likely to be infected with the UK or South African variant compared with unvaccinated individuals.

The South African variant, B.1.351, was found to make up about 1% of all COVID cases across all the people studied, according to the study by Tel Aviv University and Israel’s largest healthcare provider, Clalit.

But among patients who had received two doses of the vaccine, the variant’s prevalence rate was eight times higher than in those unvaccinated — 5.4% versus 0.7%, Reuters reported.

The research suggests the vaccine is less effective against the South African variant, compared with the original COVID variant and a variant first identified in Britain that had comprised nearly all COVID cases in Israel, researchers said.

“We found a disproportionately higher rate of the South African variant among people vaccinated with a second dose, compared to the unvaccinated group,” said Tel Aviv University’s Adi Stern, who headed the research. “This means that the South African variant is able, to some extent, to break through the vaccine’s protection.”

“Based on patterns in the general population, we would have expected just one case of the South African variant, but we saw eight,” Stern told The Times of Israel. “Obviously, this result didn’t make me happy.”

However, Stern said that the sample size was too small to put a figure on its increased ability. “We can say it’s less effective, but more research is needed to establish exactly how much,” she said.

The study also examined the UK B.1.1.7 variant’s ability to break through the Pfizer vaccine’s defenses compared to the original strain. No difference was found in the UK variant’s ability to infect fully vaccinated individuals — those who received two doses. However, the study showed an increased incidence of the UK variant in those who had received only one dose of Pfizer’s vaccine.

According to researchers, the results of the study align with those from in vitro neutralization assays that showed a large reduction in neutralization against the South African variant, and little-to-no reduction against the UK variant in fully vaccinated individuals.

Researchers cautioned the study only had a small sample size of people infected with the South African variant because of its rarity in Israel, and the study was not intended to deduce overall vaccine effectiveness against any variant as it did not look at overall infection rates.

The study still requires peer review to verify the results, Reuters reported. Professor Ran Balicer, director of research at Clalit, said the study was “very important.”

“It is the first in the world to be based on real-world data, showing that the vaccine is less effective against the South Africa variant, compared to both the original virus and the British variant,” Balicer said.

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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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In some areas of the world, including Florida, where I live, life has been fairly normal for almost a full year.  Restaurants opened last April, and people have flocked here from out of state and even from other countries to enjoy the fresh air and open businesses.  This clearly does not benefit the globalists’ agenda, so, right on cue, fearmongering is ramping up another notch. The latest fear du jour is a “double-mutation” of SARS-CoV-2, said to target younger people.

April 5, 2021, the New York Post1 reported the “double mutant” COVID-19 strain has been detected in California — a state that has experienced some of the longest and most restrictive pandemic measures in the U.S. At the time of that report, one case of the variant had been confirmed by a Stanford laboratory. Seven suspected cases were still being screened.

Fear Du Jour: Vaccine-Evading Variants

The double-mutation virus allegedly has two mutations previously found in two separate variants, which “help it latch onto cells,” the New York Post writes.2 What they want you to fear now is that this new variant may be more resistant to vaccine antibodies. Younger people might also be more susceptible to it.3

According to the Observer,4 “COVID-19 variants could beat vaccines within a year if pharma policy doesn’t change.” In other words, they claim that unless sufficiently high numbers of the global population are vaccinated within nine to 12 months, the virus might mutate to evade first-generation vaccines, rendering them useless.

Oklahoma has also confirmed the presence of variants — one that initially emerged in the U.K., and another that emerged in Brazil. According to The Oklahoman,5 “The faster people can get vaccinated, the slower the virus will spread and fewer people will be exposed to variant strains of the virus, said Dr. Dale Bratzler, the University of Oklahoma’s chief COVID officer.”

In other words, they’re putting everyone’s feet to the fire. Hurry, hurry. Get the vaccine now. If you wait, it’s going to be your fault that the vaccine fails and everyone dies. CNN6 also warns that, unless Americans “double down on safety measures until more people are vaccinated,” more contagious variants will spread like wildfire.

According to CNN, the variant known as B.1.1.7 “is changing the pandemic’s playbook and could spell trouble for younger groups that haven’t yet been vaccinated.”

‘We’re in a Brand-New Pandemic’

Dr. Peter Hotez went so far as to state that B.1.1.7 should be thought of as a “brand-new virus” that is “acting differently from anything we’ve seen before.”7 This “we’re in a brand-new pandemic” narrative is also being parroted by Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.8 Osterholm, however, claims that current vaccines are, in fact, effective against the B.1.1.7 variant.

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky, clusters of positive cases among young people have been “connected to participation in youth sports and extracurricular activities.” As a result, the CDC is now suggesting that such activities should be limited, CNN reports.9

If you’ve got the creeping suspicion that we’re about to face another round of lockdowns around the U.S., your spidey senses are probably working just fine. In a recent interview, Osterholm said:10

“There isn’t a country in the world right now that has seen a big increase of this B117 that is not locking down. We’re the exception. And so the bottom line message from all of these countries is, ‘we could not control this virus until we did lock down.’

We have to do a better job of helping the public understand that this is short term. All we’re trying to do is get through this surge of cases that are going to occur over the next six to eight to 10 weeks because of this B117 variant.”

Where, oh where, have we heard that before? “It’s going to be a short-term lockdown, just a couple of weeks to flatten the curve and ensure a functioning hospital system.” Right. Those short-term measures ended up lasting many months in many places, even though hospitals were at no risk of being overrun.

We now have a year’s-worth of data showing that lockdowns simply do not work. They cause far more harm than good. Yet they’re trying to sell us the same non-solution using the same justification once more. As the old saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Dissenting Is Now Domestic Terrorism

The problem we now face is that logical thinking is being vilified. According to pediatrician and California state senator Dr. Richard Pan, people who criticize the COVID-19 vaccine ought to be labeled as domestic terrorists. In an opinion piece in The Washington Post, he writes:11

“Vaccines don’t stop viruses. Vaccinations do. This common public health saying means a vaccine does no good if we can’t get it into people’s arms … but the overall goal of vaccinating a large majority of the U.S. population may ultimately be hampered by the anti-vaccine movement unless steps are taken to limit its impact …

[T]o poison public opinion against vaccinations, could result in countless American deaths. That is akin to domestic terrorism … Some anti-vaccine leaders’ financial well-being depends on endangering everyone else’s health and safety. Social media companies should not be complicit in this dangerous movement … Getting vaccinated is a patriotic act. So is speaking up to support public health efforts.”

With that manipulative and hostile diatribe against law-abiding citizens, Pan secures a lead role in the medical fascism directorate that is spreading faster than the virus.

He even stresses that local and public health officials, not politicians, should be relied upon to lead us to safety. In other words, he’s promoting iatrarchy — meaning government by physicians — which as Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out has been catastrophic in every instance that it’s been tried. In his foreword to my new book, “The Truth About COVID-19,” Kennedy notes:

“The medical profession has not proven itself an energetic defender of democratic institutions or civil rights. Virtually every doctor in Germany took lead roles in the Third Reich’s project to eliminate mental defectives, homosexuals, handicapped citizens and Jews.

So many hundreds of German physicians participated in Hitler’s worst atrocities — including managing mass murder and unspeakable experiments at the death camps — that the allies had to stage separate “Medical Trials” at Nuremberg. Not a single prominent German doctor or medical association raised their voice in opposition to these projects.

So it’s unsurprising that, instead of demanding blue-ribbon safety science and encouraging honest, open and responsible debate on the science, the badly compromised and newly empowered government health officials charged with managing the COVID-19 pandemic response collaborated with mainstream and social media to shut down discussion on key public health and civil rights questions.”

War on ‘Disinformation’ Is Really War on Dissent

Having a frank and open discussion about pros and cons, risks and benefits of vaccination or any other pandemic measure is more likely to result in optimal public health than shoving just one side of the argument down everyone’s throat. But optimal public health is not what the technocratic, globalist elite are after. Their end goal is to manipulate the masses into obedience so that they can acquire even more of their assets.

As noted by Ash Staub in his article12 “The War on Disinformation Is a War on Dissent,” the terms “disinformation” and “misinformation” are simply used “to excuse incompetence and punish opposition.” He provides a number of examples proving that “theories or facts that don’t fit the official narrative, despite being true, are treated as misinformation or disinformation.”

I would add that this is particularly true when it comes to health information, seeing how it’s virtually impossible to find a single remedy or strategy that works 100% for every single person. There are no absolute truths in medicine. It all depends. Many individual factors come into play. Staub continues:

“Whereas misinformation merely refers to inaccurate or misleading information, the label of disinformation implies an intent to deceive. Both have served as the source of much consternation and hand-wringing from media figures and politicians alike …

While our inability as a society to agree on basic facts is certainly a problem, what should be self-evident is that misinformation and disinformation naturally abound when there is very little trust in sense-making institutions.

If the information sources that are deemed ‘authoritative’ are so often wrong or misleading, and inspire little public confidence, is it any wonder that people turn to alternatives? Misinformation and disinformation are natural consequences of our public institutions’ inconsistency and incompetence.”

Most Americans Think Government Officials Are Lying

According to Staub, 69% of Americans “believe their government intentionally lies to them,” and 61% “believe the news media deliberately ignores certain stories or information.” These are record-low rates of confidence, and government and media would do well to take notice of the fact that censorship only erodes trust, it does not build it.

The fact that they turn to censorship rather than trying to be more forthright suggests they are in fact lying and have no intention of stopping. Since they refuse to tell the truth, the only option they have is to silence counter-narratives in the hope that, over time, objections will die out for lack of support.

The problem is, truth has an appeal of its own, and so, in what appears to be a desperate effort to maintain control, “disinformation” is now being called out as “dangerous,” indeed a form of “domestic terrorism,” because if people listen to “bad” information, they might make decisions that will harm them.

Basically, they’re saying that you’re too stupid to think for yourself. You’ll buy whatever you’re sold, no questions asked, and so they have to make sure you’re exposed only to information that will benefit you. Everyone on the planet ought to be insulted by censoring, because, ultimately, it’s a sign that government and media have zero trust in your ability to make decisions for yourself.

“Just last month, former NSA general counsel Glenn Gerstell called for an ‘integrated disinformation center within the federal government’ that would employ ‘counterterrorism’ tactics to combat disinformation.

It’s not exactly clear what these counterterrorism tactics would entail, but the idea that institutions that so often lie to the public should be able to decide what is and what is not ‘disinformation,’ with the help of a surveillance apparatus designed to combat terrorism, is truly unnerving,” Staub writes.

“When the only acceptable information is that approved by the ruling administration, there can be no meaningful check on state power. Consent for the establishment agenda can easily be manufactured, and opposition can simply be deemed ‘disinformation’ and treated as ‘dangerous,’ deserving of censorship and removal. With a silenced opposition, power can therefore be exercised with impunity.”

Understanding the Plan Robs Their Power

In a nutshell, authoritarians are taking extreme steps to control the public discourse because they know we don’t trust them. What’s more, they also realize that if people understand the grand plan, their power over the people will be stripped away. The public can only be controlled as long as we don’t understand what they’re trying to accomplish.

So, what are they trying to accomplish? As detailed in many previous articles, it boils down to the global implementation of a new economic system based on technocratic ideology, that will so radically transform and dehumanize society that they simply cannot “sell” it with honesty. The vast majority would be horrified and refuse to go along with it.

Their only option is to sneak it in under the guise of something else. Right now, that something else is the so-called COVID-19 pandemic. Under the pretext of public health safety, we’re told we need censorship, lockdowns, social distancing, mask wearing, new domestic terrorism laws and vaccine passports.

We need none of those things in order to optimize public health. Those things, however, are necessary for the swift and easeful implementation of the Great Reset.

technocracy and the great reset

Supreme Court Justice Speaks Out Against Censorship

Needless to say, without Big Tech monopolies aiding and abetting, the current level of censorship simply could not occur. The good news is, we may slowly be inching toward a solution. As noted by The Federalist,13 “Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas offered a roadmap to eliminating rampant social media censorship from online monopolies on Monday.”

They’re referring to an April 5, 2021, ruling14 for writ of certiorari on the case of President Joe Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, in which Thomas weighed in on the ability of social media giants to control free speech. The Federalist explains:15

“Thomas concurred in an opinion to send the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit with instructions to dismiss as moot, now that Biden is in the White House.

The case, launched in August, questions whether the First Amendment strips government officials of their ability to block third-party accounts on Twitter if the personal account is used to conduct official business. The lower court ruled Trump violated the First Amendment when blocking users on the platform, which served as a public forum.”

However, while then-President Trump was found to have violated free speech rights by blocking certain Twitter followers, Twitter faced no repercussions when it deleted Trump’s account in its entirety, thereby violating the First Amendment rights of 89 million people, which is the number of followers he had when the account was taken down. As noted by Thomas:16

“It seems rather odd to say that something is a government forum when a private company has unrestricted authority to do away with it. The disparity between Twitter’s control and Mr. Trump’s control is stark, to say the least.”

Immunity Without Corresponding Responsibility 

Thomas highlights the monopoly power of Big Tech, stressing that when a company has unilateral control over a public forum, it ceases to be a public forum. The solution, then, might be to turn them into public utilities, which aren’t allowed to discriminate against any customer.

“Today’s digital platforms provide avenues for historically unprecedented amounts of speech, including speech by government actors. Also unprecedented, however, is the concentrated control of so much speech in the hands of a few private parties,” Thomas writes.

“We will soon have no choice but to address how our legal doctrines apply to highly concentrated, privately owned information infrastructure such as digital platforms … It changes nothing that these platforms are not the sole means for distributing speech or information.

A person always could choose to avoid the toll bridge or train and instead swim the Charles River or hike the Oregon Trail. But in assessing whether a company exercises substantial market power, what matters is whether the alternatives are comparable. For many of today’s digital platforms, nothing is.

If the analogy between common carriers and digital platforms is correct, then an answer may arise for dissatisfied platform users who would appreciate not being blocked: laws that restrict the platform’s right to exclude.

When a platform’s unilateral control is reduced, a government official’s account begins to better resemble a ‘government-controlled spac[e]’ … This analysis may help explain the Second Circuit’s intuition that part of Mr. Trump’s Twitter account was a public forum.

But that intuition has problems. First, if market power is a predicate for common carriers (as some scholars suggest), nothing in the record evaluates Twitter’s market power. Second, and more problematic, neither the Second Circuit nor respondents have identified any regulation that restricts Twitter from removing an account that would otherwise be a ‘government-controlled space.’

Even if digital platforms are not close enough to common carriers, legislatures might still be able to treat digital platforms like places of public accommodation … ‘[I]t stands to reason that if Congress may demand that telephone companies operate as common carriers, it can ask the same of’ digital platforms. Turner, 512 U. S., at 684 (opinion of O’Connor, J.).

That is especially true because the space constraints on digital platforms are practically nonexistent (unlike on cable companies), so a regulation restricting a digital platform’s right to exclude might not appreciably impede the platform from speaking …

Yet Congress does not appear to have passed these kinds of regulations. To the contrary, it has given digital platforms ‘immunity from certain types of suits’ … with respect to content they distribute, 47 U. S. C. §230, but it has not imposed corresponding responsibilities, like nondiscrimination, that would matter here.

None of this analysis means, however, that the First Amendment is irrelevant until a legislature imposes common carrier or public accommodation restrictions — only that the principal means for regulating digital platforms is through those methods.”

Thomas Confirms Illegality of Government-Sponsored Censorship

Thomas makes another very important point in his statement. He points out that while private entities are “not ordinarily constrained by the First Amendment,” they are indeed so constrained “if the government coerces or induces it to take action the government itself would not be permitted to do, such as censor expression of a lawful viewpoint.”

In other words, a private company has the right to decide what the kinds of speech it will allow and which it will not, BUT, if government officials demand that they censor an otherwise lawful viewpoint on their behalf, then that company is liable for having violated the First Amendment.

This is pertinent right now, as elected officials are getting ever more belligerent in their demands that social media platforms censor certain kinds of speech, such as “anti-vaccine” material. As detailed in “Free Speech Threatened by Censorship Extremists,” what they’re doing is illegal, yet they’re doing it anyway. As noted by Thomas:

“The government cannot accomplish through threats of adverse government action what the Constitution prohibits it from doing directly … Under this doctrine, plaintiffs might have colorable claims against a digital platform if it took adverse action against them in response to government threats.”

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Notes

1, 2 New York Post April 5, 2021

3, 8, 10 Yahoo News April 4, 2021

4 Observer March 30, 2021

5 The Oklahoman February 22, 2021

6, 7, 9 CNN April 6, 2021

11 Washington Post February 28, 2021

12 Human Events February 4, 2021

13, 15 The Federalist April 5, 2021

14, 16 Ruling for writ of certiorari, President Joe Biden v. Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, April 5, 2021 (PDF)

The Plot Against Jordan’s King Abdullah

April 14th, 2021 by David Hearst

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***

For once, just for once, US President Joe Biden got something right in the Middle East, and I say this conscious of his abysmal record in the region.

In accepting the intelligence he was passed by the Jordanians that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was up to his ears in a plot to destabilise the rule of King Abdullah, Biden brought the scheme to a premature halt. Biden did well to do so.

His statement that the US was behind Abdullah had immediate consequences for the other partner in this scheme, Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel.

While bin Salman was starving Jordan of funds (according to former Foreign Minister Marwan Muasher, the Saudis have not provided any direct bilateral assistance since 2014), Netanyahu was starving the kingdom of water.

This is water that Israel siphons off the River Jordan. Under past agreements, Israel has supplied Jordan with water, and when Jordan asks for an additional amount, Israel normally agrees without delay. Not this year: Netanyahu refused, allegedly in retaliation for an incident in which his helicopter was refused Jordanian airspace. He quickly changed his mind after a call from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken to his counterpart, Gabi Ashkenazi.

Had former US President Donald Trump still been in power, it is doubtful whether any of this would have happened.

Without Washington’s overt support, King Abdullah would now be in serious trouble: the victim of a two-pronged offensive from Saudi Arabia and Israel, his population seething with discontent, and his younger half-brother counting the days until he could take over.

The problem with Abdullah

But why were bin Salman and Netanyahu keen to put the skids under an ally like Abdullah?

Abdullah, a career soldier, is not exactly an opposition figure in the region. He of all people is not a Bashar al-Assad, Recep Tayyip Erdogan or Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Abdullah was fully signed up to the counter-revolution against the Arab Spring. Jordan joined the Saudi-led anti-Islamic State coalition, deployed aircraft to target the Houthis in Yemen, and withdrew its ambassador from Iran after the Saudi embassy in Tehran and consul in Mashhad were sacked and Saudi Arabia consequently cut diplomatic relations.

He attended the informal summit on a yacht in the Red Sea, convened to organise the fight against the influence of Turkey and Iran in the Middle East. That was in late 2015.

In January 2016, Abdullah told US congressmen in a private briefing that Turkey was exporting terrorists to Syria, a statement he denied making afterwards. But the remarks were documented in a Jordanian foreign ministry readout passed to MEE.

Jordan’s special forces trained men that Libyan general Khalifa Haftar used in his failed attempt to take Tripoli. This was the pet project of the UAE.

Abdullah also agreed with the Saudis and Emiratis on a plan to replace Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas with Mohammed Dahlan, the Emirati- and Israeli-preferred choice of successor.

Why then, should this stalwart of the cause now be considered by his Arab allies, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, an inconvenience that needs to be dealt with?

Insufficiently loyal

The answer partly lies in the psychology of bin Salman. It is not good enough to be partially signed up to his agenda. As far as he is concerned, you are either in or out.

Under Abdullah, Jordan never quite managed to be fully in. As one former Jordanian government minister told me:

“Politically, Mohammed bin Salman and his father were never very close to the Hashemites. King Salman does not have any affinity to the Hashemites that his other brothers might have had. So on the political front, there is no affinity, no empathy.

“But there is also a feeling [in Riyadh] that Jordan and others should be with us or against us. So we were not completely with them on Iran. We were not completely with them on Qatar. We were not completely with them on Syria. We did what we could and I don’t think we should have gone further, but to them, that was not enough.”

Abdullah’s equivocation certainly was not enough for the intended centrepiece of the new era, Saudi Arabia’s normalisation of relations with Israel.

Here, Jordan would have been directly involved and King Abdullah was having none of it. Had he gone along with the Trump plan, his kingdom – a careful balance between Jordanians and Palestinians – would have been in a state of insurrection.

In addition, Abdullah could not escape the fact that he was a Hashemite, whose legitimacy stems in part from Jordan’s role as custodian of Al-Aqsa Mosque and the holy sites in Jerusalem. This, too, was being threatened by the Al Sauds.

The importance of Aqaba

But the plan itself was regarded by both bin Salman and Netanyahu as too big to stop. I personalise this, because in both Saudi Arabia and Israel, there are experienced foreign policy and intelligence hands who appreciate how quickly this plan would have destabilised Jordan and Israel’s vulnerable eastern border.

The plan has been years in the preparation and the subject of clandestine meetings between the Saudi prince and the Israeli leader. At the centre of it lies Jordan’s sole access to the Red Sea, the strategic port of Aqaba.

The two cities of Aqaba and Ma’an were part of the kingdom of Hejaz from 1916 to 1925. In May 1925, Ibn Saud surrendered Aqaba and Ma’an and they became part of the British Emirate of Transjordan.

It would be another 40 years before the two independent countries would agree on a Jordan-Saudi border. Jordan got 19 kilometres of coastline on the Gulf of Aqaba and 6,000 square kilometres inland, while Saudi Arabia got 7,000 square kilometres of land.

For the new kid on the block, bin Salman, a prince who was always sensitive about his legitimacy, reclaiming Saudi influence over Aqaba in a big trade deal with Israel would be a big part of his claim to restoring Saudi dominance over its hinterland.

And the trade with Israel would be big. Bin Salman is spending $500bn constructing the city of Neom, which is eventually supposed to straddle Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. Sitting at the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, the Jordanian port would be firmly in Saudi sights.

H.E. Bassem Awadallah, CEO, Tomoh Advisory at #FII2019 - YouTube

This is where Bassem Awadallah, the former chief of Jordan’s royal court, comes in. Two years before he definitively broke with King Abdullah, and while he was still Jordan’s envoy to Riyadh, Awadallah negotiated the launch of something called the Saudi-Jordanian Coordination Council, a vehicle that Jordanian officials at the time said would “unblock billions of dollars” for the cash-starved Hashemite kingdom.

Awadallah promised that the council would invest billions of Saudi dollars in Jordan’s leading economic sectors, focusing on the Aqaba Special Economic Zone.

Awadallah was also close to the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, who had his own agenda in Jordan. He wanted to ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood and the forces of political Islam were permanently eradicated from the country, something Abdullah has refused to do, although he is no supporter.

The money, of course, never materialised. Saudi support for the kingdom diminished to a trickle, and according to an informed source, Muasher, Saudi funds stopped almost completely after 2014.

The price for turning on the tap of Saudi finance was too high for Abdullah to pay. It was total subservience to Riyadh. Under this plan, Jordan would have become a satellite of Riyadh, much as Bahrain has become.

Netanyahu had his own sub-agenda in the huge trade that would flow from Neom once Saudi Arabia had formally recognised Israel.

A confirmed enemy of the Oslo plan to set up a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza, Netanyahu and the Israeli right have always eyed annexation of Area C and the Jordan Valley, which comprises 60 percent of the West Bank. Under this new Nakba, the Palestinians living there, denied Israeli citizenship, would be slowly forced to move to Jordan. This could only happen under a Saudi-oriented plan, in which Jordanian workers could travel freely and work in Saudi Arabia. As it is, remittances from the Jordanian workforce in Saudi Arabia are an economic lifeblood to the bankrupt kingdom.

The money pouring into Jordan, accompanied by a  mobile workforce of Jordanians and  stateless Palestinians, would finally put to bed grandiose visions of a Palestinian state, and with it the two-state solution. On this, Netanyahu and bin Salman are as one: treat them as a mobile workforce, not citizens of a future state.

Hussein’s favoured son

That Prince Hamzah should be seen as the means by which Jordan is enlisted to this plan represents the final irony of this bizarre tale.

If the Hashemite blood runs deep in any veins, it is surely in his. He was King Hussein’s favoured son. In a letter sent to his brother Prince Hassan in 1999, King Hussein wrote:

“Hamzeh, may God give him long life, has been envied since childhood because he was close to me, and because he wanted to know all matters large and small, and all details of the history of his family. He wanted to know about the struggle of his brothers and of his countrymen. I have been touched by his devotion to his country and by his integrity and magnanimity as he stayed beside me, not moving unless I forced him from time to time to carry out some duty on occasions that did not exceed the fingers on one hand.”

Abdullah broke the agreement he made with his father on his death bed when he replaced his half-brother with his son, Hussein, as crown prince in 2004.

But if Hashemite pride in and knowledge of Jordan’s history runs deep in Hamzah, he of all princes would have soon realised the cost to Jordan of accepting bin Salman’s billions and Netanyahu’s tacit encouragement, just as his father did.

Hamzah’s friends ardently dispute they are part of this plot and downplay connections with Awadallah. Hamzah only owns up to one thing: that he is immensely concerned at how low Jordan has fallen under years of misrule. In this, Hamzah is 100 percent right.

It is clear what has to happen now. King Abdullah should finally see that he must completely overhaul the Jordanian political system, by calling for free and fair elections and abiding by their result. Only that will unite the country around him.

This is what King Hussein did when he faced challenge and revolt by Jordanian tribes in the south of the kingdom; in 1989, Hussein overhauled the political system and held the freest elections in the history of the kingdom.

The government that emerged from this process led the country safely out of one of the most difficult moments for Jordan: Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait and the subsequent Gulf War.

The real villains

Biden, meanwhile, should realise that letting bin Salman get away with the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi has a cost.

Bin Salman did not learn anything from the episode and carried on in exactly the same way, reckless and swift, against an Arab neighbour and ally, with potentially disastrous consequences.

The new foreign policy establishment in Washington should wean itself off the notion that US allies are its friends. It should learn once and for all that the active destabilisers of the Middle East are not the cartoon villains of Iran and Turkey.

Rather, they are the closest US allies, where US forces and military technology are either based, or as in the case of Israel, inextricably intertwined: Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Israel.

Jordan, the classic buffer state, is a case in point.

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David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was The Guardian’s foreign leader writer, and was correspondent in Russia, Europe, and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

Featured image: Portraits of late King Hussein (M), Prince Hamzah (L) and King Abdullah of Jordan (R) (Illustration by Hossam Sarhan via MEE)

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***

Major Russian officials today have warned of military threats posed by the U.S.-led thirty-nation North Atlantic Treaty Organization to its western border: its entire western border. And its northern one as well.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu announced that Russia has redeployed two armies and three Airborne Forces units to its western border as part of what he termed an ongoing readiness inspection.

In one of the sternest warnings issued by a Russian official in the post-Cold War era, Shoigu added,

“We’ve taken proper measures in response to the alliance’s military activities which threaten Russia.” Regarding the ground and airborne forces, the defense minister said: “The troops have manifested complete preparedness and the ability to perform their duties to guarantee the country’s military security. At the present time, these units are involved in exercises.”

He also warned that NATO is now concentrating over 40,000 troops and 15,000 items of armaments and military hardware as well as strategic aircraft near the Russian border, stating: “The troops in Europe are moving towards Russian borders. The basic forces are being amassed in the Black Sea area and in the Baltic region.” He also mentioned the preponderance of U.S. military personnel in those deployments, as the Pentagon is reinforcing troops in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

In addition he highlighted the fact that: “The alliance annually holds up to 40 large operational training measures of a clearly anti-Russian bias in Europe. In the spring of this year, the NATO allied forces launched Defender Europe 2021 drills, the largest exercise over the past 30 years.” (Estimates range as high as 37,000 U.S. and NATO troops involved in the several-weeks-long war games from the Baltic to the Black Seas and the Balkans.)

The Russian defense minister pointed out that Russia’s western border wasn’t the only location where the U.S. and NATO were threatening his nation. He alsoexpressed alarm over the U.S. and NATO military build-up on Russia’s northern flank, the Arctic. He said:

“The competition between the world’s leading powers for access to the Arctic Ocean’s resource and transport routes is increasing. The US and its NATO allies increase their naval and ground groups in the Arctic, increase the combat training intensity, extend and upgrade the military infrastructure.”

In general Shoigu stated that over the past three years NATO has increased its activity along Russia’s borders.

Also today Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that American warships deployed in the Black Sea off Russia’s coast were a provocation. He was speaking as two U.S. guided-missile destroyers, USS Donald Cook and USS Roosevelt, both equipped to carry 56 Tomahawk cruise missiles and an undisclosed number of Standard Missile-3 anti-ballistic missiles, are to enter the Black Sea tomorrow and the following day. Earlier this year the guided-missile destroyers USS Donald Cook, USS Thomas Hudner and USS Porter and the guided-missile cruiser USS Monterey were in the Black Sea for exercises, often two at a time. (The most, in terms of tonnage, allowed by the 1936 Montreux Convention, though Turkey’s proposed Istanbul Canal may eliminate that limit.)

Ryabkov said that American warships sailing thousands of miles from U.S. naval bases “always involves a geopolitics element.”

His comments are worth citing extensively:

“I wouldn’t like to go too much into particulars of various interpretations of what freedom of navigation and freedom of the seas is, especially in this context. I know one thing: American ships have absolutely nothing to do near our coasts, and this is a purely provocative undertaking. It’s provocative in the literal sense of this word: they’re testing our patience and getting on our nerves. This won’t work.”

And he issued this stark admonition in the context of the Western threats to Russia over Ukraine:

“Apparently seeing itself as the queen of the seas […] the U.S. should understand after all that the risks of various incidents are very high. We warn the U.S. that it should steer clear of Crimea and our Black Sea coast. This would be to their own benefit.”

His warning is a timely one as Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba is at NATO headquarters today, where U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrives tomorrow and Secretary of State Antony Blinken shortly after him.

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On 11 April 2021, Guillermo Lasso (52,4%), the right-wing candidate, defeated Andres Arauz, the candidate supported by Rafael Correa and part of the Left, by 52.4% vs 47.6% in the second round of ballots for the presidential election. Lasso was elected thanks to the division of the Left, since a significant part of it, which has become deeply diffident of Rafael Correa, called for a null vote. Votes on the popular side, that represented a clear majority in the first round of February 2021, were divided, which made it possible for a former banker to be elected president.

The situation is serious for an opportunity to break away from Lenin Moreno’s brutal neoliberal policies has been lost.

Former banker Lasso, though critical of Lenin Moreno’s positions out of sheer electoral calculation, will continue in the same harmful direction: a deepening of neoliberal policies, submission to the private interests of Big Capital, particularly of Ecuador’s powerful banking sector and of the import-export industry, and submission to the United States. How can we explain that a significant part of popular votes did not go to Andres Arauz to prevent Guillermo Lasso from getting elected? It can be accounted for by the rejection prompted by Rafael Correa’s policies, particularly after 2011, among part of the Left, notably with the CONAIE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nations of Ecuador.

Lasso’s victory was anything but predictable for, in the general elections, the two leading political forces were on one hand the political movement supported by Rafael Correa with 42 representatives and on the other Pachakutik, the political extension of the CONAIE with 27 elected members, which was the best parliamentary result ever for the indigenous movement. In the presidential election, the outcome of the first round was clearly in favour of the popular side; indeed, if you added votes for Andres Arauz (a little more than 32%) and those for Yaku Perez (just under 19%) you had a majority, to which could be added part of the votes for a candidate that came fourth under the social-democrat label and had gathered close to 14%.

Former banker Lasso came second with 19% but only a very short edge on Yaku Perez, the Pachakutik candidate in February 2021, and 13% less than Andres Arauz. Yaku Perez and the CONAIE first complained about what they called a massive electoral fraud. Then a couple of days after the first round Yaku Perez passed an agreement for mutual support with Guillermo Lasso, an agreement that was soon cancelled by Lasso. Next the CONAIE and other left-wng forces called for a null vote in the second round and refused to vote for Andres Arauz to beat Guillermo Lasso. The CONAIE and Pachakutik were divided on this issue for a right-wing section of Pachakutik called for a vote for Lasso while the president of the CONAIE, Jaime Vargas, had called to vote for Andres Arauz with the support of a majority of indigenous organizations in the Amazonian part of Ecuador. In spite of discordant voices announcing that they would vote for Lasso or for Arauz, the CONAIE confirmed its call for a null vote, which eventually amounted to 16.3% on election day.

The election of Lasso as president opens a new stage in the implementation of policies that will be even more favourable to Ecuadorian Big Capital, to foreign multinational corporations, to an alliance among right-wing presidents in Latin America and to the pursuit or indeed reinforcement of US domination on the continent. The election outcome on 11 April 2021 is a dark signal for the popular side. In order to understand why a significant part of of the popular side refused to vote for Arauz to defeat Lasso, we have to examine the policies implemented by Rafael Correa after he was reelected president in 2010.

Reminder of policies implemented by Correa from 2007 to 2010

As detailed in several former articles, from 2007 to 2010, Ecuador’s government led the way in making the sovereign decision of auditing its public debt to identify illegitimate debts and suspend repayment. The suspension of payment of a large part of its commercial debt, followed by its undervalue repurchase, shows that the government was not content with merely expressing outrage. In 2009 it unilaterally restructured part of its external debt and won a victory against private creditors, mainly US banks and investment funds. In 2007, at the outset of Correa’s presidency, Ecuador’s government came into conflict with the World Bank and expelled its permanent representative. Moreover, from 2007 to 2010, under Correa’s presidency, a number of important positive policies were initiated: a new constitution was democratically adopted, announcing significant changes which, however, never really materialized; Ecuador put an end to the US military base of Manta on the Pacific coast; Ecuador attempted to set up a Bank of the South with Argentina, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay; Ecuador left the WB tribunal.

Rafael Correa’s U-turn from 2011

2011 marks a U-turn in the policies of the Ecuadorian government on several fronts, whether social, environmental, commercial or concerning debt. The conflicts between the government and a number of significant social movements such as the CONAIE on the one hand, teachers’ unions and the student movement on the other, deteriorated. Rafael Correa and his government went ahead with trade negotiations with the EU, making more and more concessions. As for debt, from 2014, Ecuador gradually began to have recourse to international finance markets, not to mention the debts contracted with China. On the environmental front, in 2013 Correa’s government abandoned the commitment not to extract oil in a very sensitive part of the Amazon. Correa also condoned patriarchal and reactionary positions on the issue of depenalizing abortion and on the LGBTQI+.

The Yasuní-ITT Initiative abandoned in 2013

The Yasuní-ITT Initiative was presented in June 2007 by Rafael Correa. It consisted of leaving underground 20 % of the country’s oil reserves (about 850 million barrels of oil), situated in a region of outstanding biodiversity, Yasuní National Park, in the North-West of the Ecuadorian Amazon. [1] As Matthieu Le Quang explains, “To compensate for the financial losses of non-exploitation, the State of Ecuador asked the countries of the North to make an international financial contribution equivalent to half of what the country would have earned from exploitation (3.6 billion dollars, based on the price of oil in 2007). This was an extremely ambitious policy, particularly the goal of changing the energy matrix of a country which, although exploiting and exporting crude oil, nevertheless remained an importer of its derivatives and dependant on them to generate its electricity.” [2] Matthieu Le Quang goes on, “A very strong decision made by the Ecuadorian government was to have registered the Yasuní-ITT Initiative in United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), that is, to have placed the emphasis on the non-emission of greenhouse gases that would result from non-exploitation of oil.” In August 2013, Rafael Correa, who had been re-elected for a third presidential mandate in February with over 57 % of votes in the first ballot, announced the end of this project. He justified his decision by the very real lack of commitment from the various countries supposed to finance the non-exploitation of oil in Yasuni-ITT.

Rafael Correa’s failure even to begin abandoning the extractivist-export model was a fundamental flaw of his presidency. This model consists of a set of policies aiming to extract from below ground or from the land’s surface a maximum of primary goods (such as fossil fuels, minerals or timber…) or to produce a maximum of agricultural produce intended for foreign market consumption, in order to export them on the global market. In the case of Ecuador this means bananas, sugar, African palm, flowers, broccoli. [3] To these should be added the export of farmed prawns and tuna fished on an industrial scale.

This model has numerous harmful effects: environmental destruction (open-air mines, deforestation, contamination of running water, salinization/ depletion/ poisoning/ erosion of soils, reduction of biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, etc.); destruction of the natural habitat and way of life of entire populations (first peoples and others); depletion of unsustainable natural resources; dependency on global markets (stock-markets for raw materials and agricultural commodities) where the prices of export products are determined; salaries kept low to remain competitive; dependency on technologies owned by the highly industrialized countries; dependency for inputs (pesticides, herbicides, seeds whether transgenic or not, chemical fertilizers…) produced by major transnational companies (mostly from highly industrialized countries); dependency on international financial and economic conditions.

François Houtart (1925-2017), who had studied the process unfurling in Ecuador closely and supported Rafael Correa’s policies, did not hesitate to express criticism and make it known to the government. Shortly before he died, he wrote the following about the agricultural policies:

“These are also short-term policies. They do not take account of natural changes and their long-term effects, of food sovereignty, workers’ rights, or the origins of rural poverty. They emphasize an agro-export model presented as an objective without mentioning the consequences.” He further stated: “As authors, we asked ourselves in our report whether it was possible to build 21stcentury socialism from19th century capitalism. (…) Once again as throughout history, it is the rural world and its labourers that pay the price of modernization. It was the case for European capitalism in the 19th century, for the Soviet Union in the 1920s, and for China after the Communist revolution.” [4]

Rafael Correa and the social movements: A conflictual relationship

Rafael Correa’s government had great difficulty in taking on board the contributions of a certain number of front line social organizations. Rafael Correa’s tendency and the orientation of his political movement Alianza PAIS (“for a proud and sovereign country”, in Spanish), most often consisted of side-stepping or ignoring the biggest of the indigenous organizations, the CONAIE, the biggest teachers’ union (the National Union of Educators, or UNE), the union of Petroecuador (the national oil company) and a good many other social organizations. All these organizations underwent regular attacks from the executive authority that accused them of mobilizing for corporatist reasons with the aim of defending privileges.

Moreover, Rafael Correa did not act upon the historical claim, mainly carried by the CONAIE, for integration of the indigenous component of society in the decision-making process on all the major issues relating to the government’s orientations. For its part CONAIE, fighting for the general principles of the Constitution to be transcribed in law, [5] did not hesitate to confront Rafael Correa. On several occasions, the government tried to push measures through without entering into any dialogue with the organizations of the social sectors concerned. This approach is not unlike that adopted by the Lula government in Brazil, when the latter undertook a neoliberal-style reform of the pension system in 2003 (just when, in France, the right-wing government led by Jean-Pierre Raffarin was putting a similar reform in place). Lula conducted his campaign for pension reform by attacking the rights of civil service workers, labelling them as privileges.

Among the most serious disputes opposing the executive power to Ecuador’s social organizations were, on the one hand, the draft bill on water, and on the other, Rafael Correa’s policy of opening the economy to private foreign investment in the mining and oil industries. [6] At a special meeting held on 8 and 9 September 2009 in Quito, the CONAIE did not spare the Correa government’s policies that it stigmatized as neoliberal and capitalist. [7]

The CONAIE “demand[ed] of the State and the government that they nationalize the country’s natural resources and instigate an audit of concessions in the domains of oil, mining, aquifers, hydraulics, telephone, radiophone, television and environmental services, external debt, tax collection and the resources of the social security” and also “the suspension of all concessions (extractive, oil, forestry, aquifer, hydro-electric and those linked to biodiversity)”. [8]

After 30 September 2009, the CONAIE took action, organizing rallies, blocking roads and bridges against a draft bill on water. President Correa reacted against these anti-government mobilizations first by refusing any kind of negotiation, then by casting suspicion on the indigenous movement by claiming that Right-wing forces were at the heart of it, especially former president Lucio Gutiérrez. But finally the CONAIE obtained public negotiations at the highest level. Thus 130 indigenous delegates were received at the seat of the government by President Correa and several ministers, and they finally managed to get the government to back down on several points, notably the instigation of a permanent dialogue between the CONAIE and the Executive, with amendments on the draft bills on water and the extractive industries.

Another social conflict also broke out against the government with the mobilization of teachers, under the aegis of the main union of the profession, the UNE, in which the MPD [9] party is extremely influential. There too, the conflict finally led to dialogue. In November and December 2009 a third social front emerged with the protest movement in universities against a draft reform which aimed in particular to reduce the autonomy of universities, something that is considered in Latin America to be an irreversible element of social progress and a guarantee of independence regarding political authorities.

All in all, Rafael Correa’s government soon showed serious limitations when it came to defining policies involving the point of view of the social movements without the latter having to make their point through a power struggle. In 2010 and 2014, there was major social mobilization against the Correa government’s policies. The list of demands upheld by organizations which, led by CONAIE, called for people to join the struggle in June 2014 speaks volumes about the government’s orientation: resistance against mining and oil extraction, against the criminalization of social protest, against the new Labour legislation; demands for a different policy for energy and water; for the rights of indigenous communities and especially the refusal of ethnic community school closures; [10] rejection of the Constitutional reform which would enable unlimited electoral mandates; rejection of the free-trade agreement to be signed with the European Union.

In December 2014 Rafael Correa wanted to expel the CONAIE from its premises which incited the CADTM, like numerous other organizations, both Ecuadorian and foreign, to insist that the government renounce this decision. [11] The government backed down. At the end of 2017, Rafael Correa’s government wanted to withdraw legal personality from a left-wing ecological organization called Acción Ecológica. Again, it took a wave of national and international protest to get the authorities to finally give up this infringement of liberties. [12]

Conclusion on Rafael Correa’s presidency

From the beginning of his first mandate, Rafael Correa took care to include both ministers from the left and ministers with more or less direct links to different sectors of the traditional Ecuadorian capitalist class in composing his government, which led to constant arbitration. As time passed, Correa made more and more concessions to big capital, both on the national and the international level.

Despite a discourse in favour of changing the productive model and of 21st century socialism, Correa, in ten years of 21stcentury presidency, did not initiate profound modification of the country’s economic structure, of property relations or of relations between social classes. Alberto Acosta, formerly minister of energy in 2007, president of the Constituent Assembly in 2008 and an opponent of Rafael Correa’s since 2010, wrote with his colleague John Cajas Guijarro: “the absence of structural transformation means that Ecuador remains a capitalist economy tied to exporting raw materials and therefore tied to long-term cyclical behaviour dependent on the demands of the transnational accumulation of capital. This long-term cyclic behaviour is due to the contradictions inherent in capitalism, but is also strongly influenced by dependency on massive exportation of barely transformed raw materials (extractivism). In other words, capitalist exploitation – of both labour and nature— following international demands, keeps Ecuador ’chained’ to a succession of ups and downs which originate as much within the country as abroad.” [13]

Lenin Moreno or the return to neoliberal policies and to submission to US interests

In 2017, at the end of Rafael Correa’s presidential mandate and just when he was succeeded by President Lenin Moreno (the candidate Correa had supported), the country’s debt surpassed the level attained 10 years earlier. Rapidly Lenin Moreno turned once more to the IMF. That led to massive popular protests in September-October 2019 which obliged the government to capitulate to the people’s organizations and abandon the decree which had triggered the revolt.

We should remember that Correa’s government offered asylum to Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London from June 2012 onward. Correa resisted pressure from the UK and the US, demanding that Assange be delivered to them. Lenin Moreno, who succeeded Rafael Correa in 2017, disgraced himself by handing Assange over to the British justice system in April 2019 and by withdrawing the Ecuadorian citizenship that Correa’s government had granted him in 2017. [14]

In 2019, Lenin Moreno acknowledged Juan Guaido as president of Venezuela whereas the latter was calling for a US armed intervention to overturn the government of the elected president Nicola Maduro.

En 2020, Lenin Moreno signed another humiliating agreement with the IMF and in 2021 he tried to have a bill voted that would make the Central Bank completely independent of the government and thus even more closely subjected to the interests of private banks.

His popularity faded to nothing: in the last polls, Lenin Moreno had a mere 4.8% approval rating. Candidates supported by Moreno at the general elections and in the first round of the presidential election in February 2021 did not get more than 3% of the votes.

The programme of Guillermo Lasso, elected president in Ecuador on 11 April 2021 and the new stage

When Rafael Correa became president of Ecuador in 2007, it was thanks to the social mobilizations that punctuated the years from 1990 until 2005. Without them, his proposals would never have received the attention they got and he would not have been elected. Unfortunately, after a very good start, he clashed with a significant part of the social movements and opted for modernization of extractivist-export capitalism. Then his successor, Lenin Moreno, broke away from Rafael Correa’s policies and went back to brutal neoliberalism.

This hard-line neoliberal policy will be further developed by Guillermo Lasso. He has clearly announced that he wants to lower taxes on companies, to attract foreign investment, to give even more freedom to bankers, to consolidate the policy of free trade by joining the Pacific Alliance. It is likely that Guillermo Lasso will try to somehow integrate leaders linked to Pachakutik and the CONAIE into his government or administration. If this succeeds, the CONAIE and Pachakutik will emerge even more divided than they were on the eve of the run-off elections. It is fundamental for the future of the popular camp to radically and actively oppose the government that Lasso will form.

Ecuador’s future with Guillermo Lasso as president

Once again, only social mobilization will end these policies and bring back the measures of anti-capitalist structural change indispensable for emancipation. In 2019 the CONAIE and a whole range of trade union organizations, feminist associations and ecologist collectives drew up an excellent alternative proposal to capitalist, patriarchal and neoliberal policies: this should constitute the basis of a vast government programme. [15]

The issue of rejecting the policies of the IMF, the World Bank and illegitimate debt will be back at the heart of the social and political battles. [16] In a document made public in July 2020 by more than 180 Ecuadorian people’s organizations can be found the following demand: “suspension of payment of external debt and an audit to be carried out on external debt accumulated between 2014 and the present, as well as citizen controls of how the debts contracted were utilized.” [17]

Final considerations on the election on 11 April 2021

With 98.84% of votes counted,

  • Arauz got 47.59%, which corresponds to 4,100,283 votes.
  • Lasso got 52.4%, which corresponds to 4,533,275 votes.
  • Null votes: 16.33%, which corresponds to 1,715,279 votes.
  • Total of voters: 10,501,517 voters.
  • Absenteeism: 2,193,896 people.

Null votes reached 9.5% in the first round; the null vote increased by 6.83% between the first and second rounds; in terms of votes this yields:

  • Null votes February 2021: 1,013,395 votes.
  • Null votes April 2021: 1,715,279 votes.
  • Difference: +701,884 votes.

All in all, a large part of this difference can be traced to the campaign led by Pachakutik, the Conaie, social movements and left-wing organizations that did not support Correa’s candidate. This means that less than half of their voters chose a null vote; remember that Yaku Pérez had got 19.39% in the first round, i.e. 1,798,057 votes. Assuming that a majority among those voters follow Pachakutik, this means that 39% of its voters opted for a null vote. As it is likely that other sectors opted for an null vote, it is a fair assumption that the null votes related to Pachakutik be around 30% of its voters. In other words, one Pachakutik voter out of three opted for a null vote, probably the most reliable and determined Pachakutik voters.

Unfortunately the remaining 70% mostly went to Lasso, probably in rejection of Correa’s heritage in terms of a history of aggression against the popular movement; but this still means a right-wing vote, thus reneging their votes in the first round.

This also shows how fragile a vote for an alternative away from polarization between Correism and traditional Right is.

It further shows that if the CONAIE, Pachakutik and other left-wing organizations had called to vote against Lasso or for Arauz, it was perfectly possible to defeat Lasso and put pressure on Arauz for him to take into account the demands formulated both in the CONAIE text of October 2019 and in the proposal by the parliament of the peoples of July 2020. Those are excellent statements that are further left than the content of Yaku Perez’ electoral campaign for the first round or Andres Arauz’ programme.

 

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Translated from the French by Snake Arbusto, Vicki Briault and Christine Pagnoulle (CADTM). First published on CADTM.

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. 

He is the author of Debt System (Haymarket books, Chicago, 2019), Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc. He co-authored World debt figures 2015 with Pierre Gottiniaux, Daniel Munevar and Antonio Sanabria (2015); and with Damien Millet Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty Answers, Monthly Review Books, New York, 2010. He was the scientific coordinator of the Greek Truth Commission on Public Debt from April 2015 to November 2015.

Notes

[1] For a presentation of the project in 2009, see Alberto Acosta interviewed by Matthieu Le Quang “Le projet ITT: laisser le pétrole en terre ou le chemin vers un autre modèle de développement” (The ITT Project: leave the oil in the ground or the path towards another model of development) published 18 September 2009, http://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=4757 (in Spanish and French).

[2] Matthieu Le Quang interviewed by Violaine Delteil, “Entre buen vivir et néo-extractivisme : les quadratures de la politique économique équatorienne” (Between good living and neo-extractivism: how Ecuador’s economic policy squares up) in Revue de la Régulation, Semester 1, 2019, https://journals.openedition.org/regulation/15076 [accessed 30 December 2020] (French only).

[3] Regarding broccoli production in Ecuador, François Houtart wrote: “Mention should be made of the 2013 study on broccoli production in the Pujilí region, in the province of Cotopaxi. 97 % of broccoli production is exported mainly towards countries capable of producing their own broccoli (the United States, EU, Japan), for reasons of comparative advantages (low salaries, less demanding environmental laws, etc.). The production company monopolizes water resources, leaving insufficient water for the needs of the neighbouring communities. They also ‘bombard’ rainclouds to deflect showers from the broccoli fields to the surrounding area. Chemical products are used within the legal limit of 200m of human habitations. Polluted water runs into the rivers. Workers’ health is affected (skin, lungs, cancer). Contracts are drawn up partly on a weekly basis, with a foreman who gets 10% of the workers’ salaries. Overtime is often not paid. The company that transforms the broccoli for export works 24 hours round the clock, in three shifts. Workers are often obliged to work on two successive shifts. Trade unions are prohibited. Moreover, of the two firms, which have now merged, one had its capital in Panama and the other in the Dutch Antilles.” https://www.cadtm.org/Ecuador-Un-factor-de-control-de-la(in Spanish only)

[4] The original text in Spanish: “Estas políticas son también a corto plazo. No tienen en cuenta los cambios naturales y sus efectos a largo plazo, la soberanía alimentaria, los derechos de los trabajadores, el origen de la pobreza rural. Se acentúa un modelo agro-exportador presentado como una meta, sin indicar las consecuencias.” “Como autores, nos hemos preguntado en nuestro informe, si era posible construir el socialismo del siglo XXI con el capitalismo del siglo XIX ¿(…) Una vez más en la historia, es el campo y sus trabajadores los que pagan el precio de la modernización. Fue el caso del capitalismo europeo en el siglo XIX, de la Unión Soviética en los años 20 del siglo XX, de China, después de la Revolución comunista.” https://www.cadtm.org/Ecuador-Un-factor-de-control-de-la

[5] See Floresmillo Simbana “Movimiento indígena y la revolución ciudadana”:
https://www.cadtm.org/Movimiento-indigena-y-la

[6] Ecuador’s economy is based mainly on oil revenues. It is important to bear in mind that in 2008, oil represented 22.2% of GDP, 63.1% of exports and 46.6% of the State’s general budget.

[7] Asamblea Extraordinaria de la CONAIE: Resoluciones de Nacionalidades y Pueblos, “Declarar al gobierno de Rafael Correa como gobierno neoliberal y capitalista por sus acciones y actitudes”, accessible at: https://kaosenlared.net/resoluciones-de-los-pueblos-y-nacionalidades-del-ecuador/ (in Spanish).

[8] Ibid.

[9] MPD: Popular Democratic Movement, the electoral arm of the Marxist-Leninist (Maoist) Communist Party of Ecuador.

[10] Concerning the Correa government’s intention to close the community schools, François Houtart wrote in 2017: “the plan to close 18 000 community schools (known as ’poverty schools’) in favour of ’millennium schools’ (early 2017: 71 were built, 52 under construction and by the end of 2017, 200 were functioning) highlights the problems. No doubt these millennium schools are well-equipped, with competent teachers, but they belong to a philosophy which breaks away from traditional life, opening up to a modernity which is now called into question because of its social and environmental consequences. Nor do they easily fulfil the constitutional right to a bilingual education. Furthermore, in several cases, the transport system has not been adequate to needs and obliges students to walk for hours on badly maintained paths, which also results in high rates of absenteeism.” https://www.cadtm.org/Ecuador-Un-factor-de-control-de-la

[11] See Letter from the CADTM Ayna to Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador, published 27 December 2014 https://www.cadtm.org/Lettre-du-CADTM-Ayna-a-Rafael

[12] See in Spanish “Acción Ecológica, ¡ GRACIAS !”, published 17 January 2017, https://www.cadtm.org/GRACIAS

[13] Alberto Acosta, John Cajas Guijarro, Una década desperdiciada Las sombras del correísmo,Centro Andino de Acción Popular Quito, 2018.

The original quote in Spanish: “la falta de una transformación estructural provoca que el Ecuador se mantenga como una economía capitalista atada a la exportación de materias primas y, por lo tanto, amarrada a un comportamiento cíclico de larga duración vinculado a las demandas de acumulación del capital transnacional. Tal comportamiento cíclico de larga historia es originado por las contradicciones propias del capitalismo pero; a su vez, es altamente influenciado por la dependencia en la exportación masiva de productos primarios casi sin procesar (extractivismo). Es decir, la explotación capitalista –tanto de la fuerza de trabajo como de la Naturaleza– en función de las demandas internacionales, mantiene al Ecuador ’encadena do’ a un vaivén de animaciones y crisis económicas que se originan tanto interna como externamente.”

[14] CADTM AYNA, “Ensemble avec le peuple équatorien”, published 15 October 2019,
https://www.cadtm.org/Ensemble-avec-le-peuple-equatorien (in French and Spanish). See also the collective work: Franklin Ramírez Gallegos (Ed.), Octubre y el derecho a la resistencia. Revuelta popular y neoliberalismo autoritario en Ecuador, Buenos Aires, CLACSO. It can be downloaded free of charge at: http://www.clacso.org.ar/libreria-latinoamericana/buscar_libro_detalle.php?campo=titulo&texto=derecho&id_libro=2056

[15] CONAIE, Entrega de propuesta alternativa al modelo económico y social, 31 October 2019, https://conaie.org/2019/10/31/propuesta-para-un-nuevo-modelo-economico-y-social/

[16] Collective statement signed by Éric Toussaint, Maria Lucia Fattorelli, Alejandro Olmos Gaona, Hugo Arias Palacios, Piedad Mancero, Ricardo Patiño, Ricardo Ulcuango “We denounce the renegotiation of the debt by Lenín Moreno’s government”, published 1st August 2020, https://www.cadtm.org/We-denounce-the-renegotiation-of-the-debt-by-Lenin-Moreno-s-government

[17] See PROPUESTA-PARLAMENTO-DE-LOS-PUEBLOS.pdf published in July 2020 https://rebelion.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/PROPUESTA-PARLAMENTO-DE-LOS-PUEBLOS.pdf

Featured image is from CADTM

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Yemen’s Ansar Allah give the impression that it has an endless supply of drones.

The Houthis (as Ansar Allah is also known) appear to be adept at using them, if their own claims are to be entirely trusted.

On April 11th, two Qasef-2K drones were used to separately target the Jizan Airport and the King Khalid Airbase.

The Jizan Airport is a new target that has recently come up in reports of Houthi attacks.

The location includes hangars containing Saudi warplanes.

The King Khalid Airbase in ‘Asir suffers from the Houthi drone attacks more frequently, and has been subject of attacks at least 4 times in separate incidents since April 1st.

On April 9th, the Jizan Airport was targeted for the first time, and so was the Abha International Airport.

The Houthis are using their drones to disturb the aerial operations of the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen.

Riyadh generally either denies these reports of attacks or says they were ineffective, while Ansar Allah claims they successfully fulfilled their mission.

Clashes on the ground continue in Yemen, with the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis fighting in the Madghal district, and in the southern Kadhah district.

Saudi Arabia attempts to dig out every reason why its war in Yemen is failing, and on April 10th announced the execution of three of its soldiers for “high treason”.

They were allegedly collabarating with an enemy against Riyadh’s military interests.

They could have been in contact with the Houthis or with Iran.

This is practically the same, as Tehran supports Ansar Allah.

This means that Riyadh can’t fully trust its own armed forces, and it could require some help, in the form of mercenaries.

The militants in Syria that Turkey deploys and uses in small-scale conflicts such as Libya and Nagorno-Karabakh could be potential candidates for this.

Turkey, under Egyptian pressure, is expected to withdraw the mercenaries from Libya.

According to reports, it will do so within the next 5 months.

Separately, a video showing Turkish-backed Syrian mercenaries complaining for not getting paid after fighting for Azerbaijan went viral.

Immediately after it gained popularity, these same militants released a video saying that the news was fabricated, and that they never fought in Nagorno-Karabakh to begin with.

According to unnamed Yemeni intelligence sources, terrorists from Syria were expected to join the Saudi-led coalition in early April.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula was reportedly waiting for new militants to arrive in Yemen’s southern province of Abyan to latter send them to Marib.

Today, many Turkish-backed mercenaries are sitting idly, unemployed.

This could mean either bad news for Syria, which will have to deal with them, or Ankara might decide to send them to Riyadh, if it “asks” for assistance.

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On April 9th, Ramsey Clark passed away at his home surrounded by his family.

Clark was Attorney General of the United States from 1967-1969 under Lyndon Johnson, during which time he led the way on voting rights for African-Americans, and school desegregation and drafted the landmark Civil Rights Act of 1968, better known as the Fair Housing Act, which addressed housing discrimination.

As the most progressive Attorney General in U.S. history, Clark also ordered a moratorium on federal executions and prison construction; banned wiretaps in criminal cases; and refused to enforce a law that was intended to countermand the Supreme Court’s restrictions on the questioning of criminal suspects under the so-called Miranda.

Clark was critical of the Vietnam War, though in 1967, he told President Johnson that antiwar demonstrators had been infiltrated by communists, and the same year in Boston, he prosecuted famed pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffinand three other antiwar activists for conspiring to undermine selective service laws.

Draft Resistance Indicted

Left to right: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber. Clark felt guilty about prosecuting them for conspiring to undermine selective service laws and later defended antiwar activists. [Source: woodstockwhisperer.info]

Clark’s guilt for these actions inspired his later antiwar activism.

In 1970, he defended the Harrisburg Seven, antiwar activists led by the Rev. Philip Berrigan, the radical Roman Catholic priest, who were charged with 23 counts of conspiracy, including plotting to kidnap Henry A. Kissinger, and in 1972, traveled to Hanoi to meet with North Vietnamese officials and publicly criticized U.S. war conduct.

In subsequent years, Clark publicly denounced U.S. support for the Shah of Iran, the bombing of Libya (in 1986 and 2011), Grenada, Bosnia, Kosovo, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq, among other countries, and criticized U.S. support for the Tutsis in Rwanda whom he believed started the war there and killed more than the Hutu.[1] (see CAM exclusive on this)

In 1991, Clark filed a complaint with the International War Crimes Tribunal accusing President George H.W. Bush of war crimes after spending two weeks visiting Iraq and documenting the effects of the war on its people.

Clark found that U.S. “smart” bombs hit more than military targets, decimating homes, destroying vital infrastructure, and killing thousands of innocent civilians, and that U.S. sanctions compounded the human misery.

In his 1992 book The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in Iraq, Clark wrote that “a whole nation [Iraq] lay helpless beneath an alien military that could attack and destroy with impunity…U.S. planes [in the assault on Iraq] had flown more than 109,000 sorties, raining 88,000 tons of bombs, the equivalent of seven Hiroshimas, and killing indiscriminately across the country.”[2]

Clark helped found the New York-based International Action Center in the 1990s which, among other activities, organized street protests in 1999 condemning the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

In 2018, Clark said that he considered U.S. foreign policy to be “the greatest crime since WWII. American aggression had already created incalculable levels of misery for the world. The poor of the planet are made poorer, dominated and exploited by the foreign policies of the U.S. and its rich allies. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a war of aggression, an offense called ‘the supreme international crime’ in the Nuremberg Judgment.”

Clark continued:

Our overriding purpose, from the beginning right through to the present day, has been world domination—that is, to build and maintain the capacity to coerce everybody else on the planet: nonviolently, if possible; and violently, if necessary. But the purpose of our foreign policy of domination is not just to make the rest of the world jump through hoops; the purpose is to facilitate our exploitation of resources. And insofar as any people or states get in the way of our domination, they must be eliminated or, at the very least, shown the error of their ways.”

See this remarkable speech by Ramsey Clark criticizing U.S. foreign policy as a representation of plutocratic interests and its unjust war against the Third World. This dedicated video segment featuring Clark had its own YouTube post but was inexplicably taken down just after Clark’s death. CAM has reposted it in our Covert TV YouTube channel thanks to Frank Dorrel’s excellent film entitled “What I’ve Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy: The War Against The Third World,” which features the clip. [Source: youtube.com]

In 2008, the United Nations General Assembly awarded Clark its prize, which it gives every five years to human rights defenders.

Clark told The Washington Post that his work had always been motivated by the attempt to “prevent war and strengthen international institutions and protect human rights and create social and economic justice.”

He confessed in another interview that he was often overwhelmed by “the enormity of human misery on the planet; the enormity of poverty and suffering; the contrast between raw power and the vaster poverty of the impotent,’” and hoped to at least make a small difference.

Watch Citizen Clark: A Life of Principle | Prime Video

2018 documentary about Clark’s life extolling his human rights work. [Source: amazon.com]

After news broke of Clark’s passing, tributes poured in including from Cuba’s President Miguel Díaz-Canel, who wrote on twitter that “Clark was an honest and supportive man that stood by our side during crucial battles and denounced the great injustices committed by his country worldwide. #Cuba pays him grateful tribute.”

Mary Anne Grady Flores of the Ithaca Catholic Workers in another tribute wrote that Clark was “a friend of the Catholic Workers [peace group], a great defender of Plowshares anti-nuclear activists, a defender of Palestine, Cuba and Nicaragua, (to name a few) and defender of all issues concerning justice throughout the world.”

Sara Flounders, who worked with Clark at the International Action Center, further noted that Clark “took big personal risks in challenging criminal U.S. policies, [and was] brilliant in sifting through material to pull out the relevant facts in writing wrenching reports. He always tried to work with and listen to activists on the local level and encourage people to work together. His view, as he’d say at almost every rally, speaking engagement, press, conference, or forum was: ‘the power is in the people.’”

Controversial Clients

Clark garnered controversy by defending U.S. adversaries such as Slobodan Milosovic—whom Clark praised for “standing tall [in the face of U.S. aggression] and for his “heroic individual resistance—Saddam Hussein, and Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center.[3]

Clark said: “if you believe in the rule of law, you’re never afraid to represent anyone.”

His particular interest in representing Saddam Hussein began when media reports started coming in of Mr. Hussein’s arrest in a spider-hole hideout in the desert. Clark said he was “shocked” by the images he saw and “the savage presentation of [Mr. Hussein], disheveled, with his mouth open, people probing in his mouth, the dehumanization.”

Operation Red Dawn - Wikipedia

Clark was appalled by the image of Saddam Hussein pried out of a spider-hole by U.S. soldiers and chose afterwards to defend him. [Source: wikipedia.org]

“I represented Indian peoples for many years, and I can’t tell you how many Indians I’ve worked with called after they saw the picture and said, ‘That’s exactly the way they treated us.’ And this is hardly the road to peace if you want respect for human dignity.”

Clark added that he hoped to help ensure a fair trial of Hussein, which “would be difficult to ensure—and was critically important to the future of democracy in Iraq” and “in terms of reconciliation of peoples, and in terms of belief in truth and justice as a priority over force and violence. It’s about addressing the concept of victor’s justice, which is only the exercise of power. If you really want peace, you have to satisfy people about the honor of your purpose.”

Influence of His Father

Born in Dallas in 1927, Clark grew up in a family steeped in Texas culture and politics. His father, Tom Clark—who was appointed by Harry S. Truman as Attorney General in 1945, and became a Supreme Court Justice in 1949—taught him the ways of the outdoorsman and the values of the rugged individualist. On weekends they camped, fished, and hunted. Tom’s involvement in local politics had Ramsey attending rallies and speeches, hanging posters, and handing out flyers. Tom Clark’s work as one of the few local attorneys willing to represent African-Americans had a profound impact on his son.

Ramsey witnessed his father’s guilt and despair when one client, a black teenager accused of raping a white woman, was found guilty and sentenced to death.

Neither Tom’s legal arguments nor his certainty of the young man’s innocence had been enough to save his life. Another client, Charlie Ellis, hired Tom to save his family’s home, slated by the city for demolition to build a parking lot. They won the case, and the Ellises paid in kind by doing the Clarks’ laundry.

Every week Ramsey and his mother drove 30 minutes to pick up and drop off their clothes. From his seat in the car, he watched the Ellis children in their dirt yard, laughing and playing, just like he and his cousins did. He sensed something was wrong, though he was too young to understand what it was.

Father, Son, and Constitution: How Justice Tom Clark and Attorney General Ramsey Clark Shaped American Democracy: Wohl, Alexander: 9780700619160: Amazon.com: Books

Ramsey’s early career followed expectations. He joined the Marines in 1944 and served as a courier in post-War Europe, where he saw terrible scenes of destruction that shaped his life-long aversion to war. Afterwards, Clark earned three degrees—a bachelor’s, a master’s, and a law degree—in four years. He married his college sweetheart Georgia Welch, fathered two children, and returned to Dallas to become a partner at his uncle’s law firm. On behalf of Safeway Stores, he argued his first case before the U.S. Supreme Court. Tom Clark, appointed to the Court in 1949, recused himself to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest.

A political outsider in a state that leaned more and more conservative, Ramsey stayed away from Texas politics. At the same time, he became bored with corporate law. “I got tired of fighting over other people’s money,” he explained.

Then came an opportunity, in the form of John F. Kennedy—the chance to make a difference. In 1961, Clark became the Department of Justice’s Assistant Attorney General for Lands. Moving his way up the government ladder, he was appointed Lyndon Johnson’s Attorney General in 1966. His years in public service would change the course of his life.

Early in his tenure, Clark focused on managing government lands and spent much of his time procuring property, either through purchase or by force, for the construction of missile sites, space stations, reservoirs, and other public facilities.

His attempts to bring fairness to the process—and in particular his efforts to equitably settle lawsuits brought by Native Americans seeking restitution for property seized from their ancestors—caught Attorney General Bobby Kennedy’s attention. As the administration’s focus shifted toward Civil Rights, Bobby Kennedy called on Clark to assist.

Hoping that his Southern accent and Texas roots would open doors closed to a New Englander, Kennedy sent Clark to Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana to enforce federal integration orders. Ramsey served with a cadre of federal agents who walked the campus of Ole Miss with James Meredith to protect him from violence.

In early March of 1965, Clark drove along U.S. Route 80 between Montgomery and Selma, setting up camps for marchers and trying to ensure that armed racists didn’t break the thin blue line protecting civil rights activists. “Imagine,” he later reflected, “in this country, in 1965, having to march five days for the right to vote.”

Clark witnessed how these activists pushed government policy by forcing representatives to take stronger action. He noted their patience and commitment and admired their methods of civil disobedience. After leaving office in 1969, he was determined to join their ranks, and in 1969, at the age of 41, after his tenure as Attorney General ended, began the second stage of his career.

He first wrote Crime in America, a book excoriating the correctional system he’d just overseen. In the work he referred to American prisons as “manufacturers of crime,” and proposed a systemic overhaul that favored rehabilitation over punishment.

Clark subsequently took a job with a progressive New York law firm where he focused his energy on pro bono cases. Over the years, he represented the American Indian activist Leonard Peltier, the Plowshares 8 (antiwar activists who tried to sabotage nuclear weapons facilities), the Attica prison rioters, the families of air force officers “disappeared” by the U.S.-backed Pinochet government in Chile, a woman convicted of aiding Marxist guerrillas in Peru, Libyans killed in U.S. bombing in 1986, and death row inmates. He joined the board of Amnesty International. He worked with Coretta Scott King to establish a national holiday in honor of her slain husband. He ran for U.S. Senate on a platform of cutting the defense budget by 50 percent and lost.

Clark’s activism took him overseas to the world’s hot spots, including Grenada, Iran, Libya, Panama, North Korea, Sudan and Iraq, where he became a “one-man opposition to the State Department” and hoped to hold the U.S. accountable to the laws and spirit of the Geneva Accords and the U.S. Constitution.

Peace activist John Parker (with microphone) and unidentified man with Clark during a mission to Sudan in September 1998 to uncover the truth about the U.S. bombing of the Al-shifa pharmaceutical plan, which supplied vital medicine for Sudan and all of Africa. The Clinton administration had claimed that this plant manufactured nerve gas which proved to be false. [Source: Photo courtesy of John Parker]

Frequently, Clark would host mock war crimes tribunals. In 2011, he served as an expert witness in defense of the Creech 14 who attempted to impede illegal drone killings carried out from a military base in Las Vegas. He was also a leading spokesman against the imposition of economic sanctions, which have borne terrible human costs.

Ramsey Clark outside courthouse where he testified on behalf of the Creech 14. [Photo courtesy of Colonel Ann Wright]

Throughout his career, Clark’s willingness to provide legal advice and representation to those on the outskirts of society and dubbed enemies of the United States brought him both admiration and disdain. To some, he was a voice of truth in a system defined by hypocrisy. Others saw him as anti-American, or a “piece of lint from the 1960s,” to quote conservative columnist George F. Will.

A man of strong ideals and few words, Clark would provide a simple response. “Democracy is not a spectator sport,” he was fond of saying. He believed that for a country to truly be democratic, the people must participate. They must hold their government accountable for its actions. And he spent his life trying to do that.

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Frank Dorrel is a member of the Los Angeles chapter of Veterans for Peace and publisher of the popular antiwar book, Addicted to War. He also put together a two-hour film titled What I’ve Learned About U.S. Foreign Policy: The War Against The Third World, which has been seen by as many as 2 million people since 2000. It includes a segment on Ramsey Clark. He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

1. Clark had defended Hutu clergyman Elizaphan Ntakirutimana who was charged with genocide. Clark believed him to be innocent. 

2. Ramsey Clark, The Fire This Time: U.S. War Crimes in the Gulf (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1992), xvi. Clark continued: “What was visible was a nation with thousands of civilian dead, without water, hospitals, or health care, with no electricity, communications or public transportation; without gasoline, road and bridge repair capacity…and a growing food crisis. The bombing, as could be seen from the ground, was hardly surgical, but was clearly designed to break a whole country and its population for a long time to come.”

3. Clark had other controversial clients, including ex-Nazis accused of war crimes and Lyndon LaRouche, head of a political cult-like group who was convicted in 1988 of conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

Featured image: Ramsey Clark speaking at Riverside Church in New York in 2013. [Source: iacenter.org]

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***

A crisis of migration into the United States from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras has resulted in negotiations by the White House with the governments of these countries aimed at preventing people from crossing the southern border.

During the month of March, a record number of migrant workers and children attempted to enter the U.S. while many are being housed in overcrowded and unsafe detention facilities in Texas.

The administration of incumbent President Joe Biden announced on April 12 that after discussions with the governments of the above-mentioned states, the military and police forces in Mexico and Central America would strengthen their prevention efforts to halt migrants from these respective countries. After the exposure of the horrid conditions under which children and adults were living in after being captured and detained by U.S. Custom and Border Protection (CBP), the president appointed Vice President Kamala Harris as the point person for resolving the immediate situation.

Nonetheless, it is not clear whether these new measures will halt the flow of people trying to cross the border. The ongoing problems of social underdevelopment, climate change and the domination of Latin American economies by U.S. imperialism will still prompt millions to leave their countries to seek what they believe to be prospects for employment and security. The problem of migration and the dangers inherent in the transport of human beings by traffickers, is a worldwide phenomenon stretching from Central Asia to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

Moreover, many seeking to cross into the U.S. are not from Mexico and Central America. There are growing numbers of people from Africa and other geo-political regions which have made their ways to Brazil, Colombia and Panama as a transit route into the U.S.

Recent reports on the foreign policy orientation of the Biden administration in relationship to this burgeoning political problem places the onus of responsibility on the neighboring states without addressing the fundamental orientation of Washington towards Latin America which has been centuries in the making. White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki revealed the new deal in a briefing on April 12.

An article summarizing the Biden administration approach says that:

“The agreements, which Psaki said were reached over the last several weeks, aim ‘to make it more difficult to make the journey’ for migrants hoping to reach the United States, and to make crossing borders more difficult. Mexico agreed to keep 10,000 troops along its southern border, which officials believe will result in twice as many migrant interdictions per day. Guatemala agreed to send an additional 1,500 police and military officers to its southern border and will also establish 12 checkpoints along identified migratory routes across the country. Honduras will send 7,000 police and military to ‘disperse a large contingent of migrants,’ Psaki said. The news of the border agreements between the four countries was first revealed by Tyler Moran, special assistant to the President for immigration for the Domestic Policy Council, on MSNBC Monday morning.”

Consequently, the thrust of the Biden administration is to further militarize the southern border along with the security apparatuses of these targeted states. The responsibility for curbing migration is being shifted to the governments of Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras where U.S. economic and political policies have been detrimental to the workers and farmers of these countries. The blatant interference in the internal affairs of these states coupled with a series of trade deals including the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) during the 1990s and the revised version altered under the former administration of President Donald Trump, have devastated their national economies.

A Militarized Approach to a Crisis of Underdevelopment

Psaki said clearly during the April 12 briefing at the White House that the purpose of the new policy is to make the journey and border crossing more difficult for migrants seeking to flee from human rights abuses, food deficits and lack of the ability to earn a living. Providing incentives for the police and military forces of these three countries heightens the potential for migrants to be subjected to brutality and extortion. There have been complaints over the years related to the excesses of the security forces in Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras.

Even if the migrants are able to cross the border and elude the CBP agents, they continue to be hunted down by the authorities. Thousands now are being held in facilities which violate even the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regulations on curbing the spread of COVID-19. The U.S. is experiencing a surge in coronavirus infections causing even more distress for healthcare systems where intensive care units of hospitals are rapidly filling up with patients suffering from the disease.

The Guardian newspaper noted in regard to the current situation involving U.S. policy which emphasizes a punitive approach saying:

“Previously militarized attempts to prevent movement in the region have not reduced the number of people traveling north through Mexico, but instead forced migrants to take riskier routes through remote regions, and exposed them to a heightened risk of robbery, rape, abduction and death. Mexicans represented the largest proportion of people encountered by the U.S. border patrol, and nearly all were single adults. Arrivals of people from Honduras and Guatemala were second and third, respectively, and more than half of the people from those countries were families or children traveling alone.”

Figures supplied by the U.S. government reveals that 4,200 children are being held in custody by the CBP. Another 16,000 are being housed in federal shelters administered by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Federal laws prohibit unaccompanied children from being detained by CBP authorities for more than 72 hours.

Since February 22, the Biden White House has announced the opening of 8 emergency influx sites for children in the state of Texas. These facilities have a capacity to hold up to 14,000 children.

Prospects for Legislative Reforms

Even though the numbers of migrant adults and children seeking to enter the U.S. has grown exponentially over the last three months, it remains unclear as to whether the Senate will adopt the two immigration reform bills passed recently by the House of Representatives. The Dream and Promise Act of 2021 and The Farm Workforce Modernization Act provides a complicated model for the “legalization” of those brought to the U.S. as children and those who work in the agricultural sector of the U.S. economy. The stalemate surrounding these issues extend back for more than a decade. (See this and this)

During the administration of former President George W. Bush, Jr. (2001-2009), the introduction of punitive legislation against immigrants served to spark a nationwide movement led by people from Latin America and other geo-political regions. There were “Days Without Immigrants” beginning in 2006, when millions struck demanding an end to draconian laws and the brutality of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, a key division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The resurrection of May Day during 2006-2007, mobilized millions across the country under the banner of justice for migrants, the undocumented and workers in general.

With the passing of the Bush administration, President Barack Obama in his first term (2009-2013) earned a reputation as a fierce enforcer of the existing racist immigration laws directed towards the undocumented. Entire communities were terrorized by ICE agents when raids were carried out on workplaces and homes often living children unattended. The Obama administration deported more people from the U.S. than any previous presidential regime in U.S. history. Although there were discussions during 2012 about passing an immigration bill, the details of the plan represented a retreat from the gains made as a result of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.

Biden was repeatedly questioned during the 2019-2020 campaign for the presidency about the nature of the immigration policy enacted while he was Vice President. At present there does not appear to be any fundamental differences in the Biden policy other than a pledge not to deport unaccompanied children. Nevertheless, the actual harm done to minors living in detention facilities and temporary shelters could damage them for life. However, children accompanied by adult migrants are being prevented from entering the U.S. and being returned to Mexico in the thousands.

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

Featured image is from the author

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***

‘Our doctors are not health care merchants.

Our mission is loftier than just earning a few dollars. Our mission is to create a doctrine about human health, to set an example of what can be done in this field, which is obviously the most crucial for everyone in the world. People’s lives and health are in doctors’ hands.

There is an enormous difference between the way people are educated in such selfish and individualistic societies and the way they are educated in a system like ours. And you can see the fruits of this. I ask if anyone can refute this, in the same way that I can ask if any other country, no matter how wealthy, has the same number of doctors per capita that we do. Our doctors are in every corner of this country; no other country has that.’

Fidel Castro, Havana 1999

Cuba is the first nation in Latin America and the Caribbean to bring a COVID-19 vaccine to clinical trials, in spite of the immense challenges it faces from the genocidal U.S. commercial and financial blockade, which has been in place for more than six decades. As such, the island is poised to become a major vaccine supplier for many of its neighbours that are grappling with COVID-19 outbreaks.

However, Cuba’s success in developing COVID-19 vaccines is not an overnight achievement; rather, the advancement of science became a key priority for the country in the aftermath of the 1959 Socialist Revolution. In the early years of Socialist Cuba, Fidel Castro (1960) stated that the country’s future would be one of ‘men of science.’ He specifically advocated for the importance of safeguarding the health of the Cuban people by pursuing research projects in biotechnology, with an emphasis on the development of new vaccines for infectious diseases.

Accordingly, Castro and a number of the other revolutionaries prioritized the creation of new public institutions aimed at educating and training large numbers of scientists, advancing scientific research and development, and safeguarding the health of all Cubans. This included the founding or establishment of: the Ministry of Health in 1961; the National Centre for Scientific Research (CENIC) in 1964; the Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (CIGB) in 1986; the Finlay Vaccine Institute in 1991; the National Biopreparations Centre in 1992; the Center of Molecular Immunology in 1994; and, the Group of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical Industries (BioCubaFarma) in 2012. From the 1980s up until the end of the 1990s, the socialist government of Cuba invested over US$2 billion in the development of its biotechnology sector.

The massive public investments committed to establishing state science institutions and organizations in the past played a major role in facilitating the development of five COVID-19 vaccines candidates on the part of Cuban scientists: Soberana 1, Soberana 2, Soberana Plus, Abdala, and Mambisa (which is applied as a nasal spray and does not require an injection). The Soberana 1, Soberana 2, and Soberana Plus vaccines were developed by the Finlay Vaccine Institute,[i] which produces vaccines to combat infectious diseases, and was originally founded to advance ‘the achievement of a group of Cuban scientists who investigated, produced and presented a vaccine against Neisseria meningitidis.’[ii] Meanwhile, the Abdala and Mambisa vaccines were developed by the CIGB, which conducts research in a variety of health-related areas, including genetic engineering, vaccines, therapeutics, plant molecular biology, and bioinformatics. It is important to note that the Finlay Vaccine Institute and the CIGB do not work in isolation. Instead, they are part of network of more than 30 Cuban institutions and companies that collaborate with each other in order to advance research and development in the field of biotechnology.

Among Cuba’s five potential COVID-19 vaccine candidates, Soberana 2 and Abdala are the closest to being approved, as both are in the final stages of clinical trials. Around 48,000 volunteers were given their first dose of Abdala in March, and applications of the second dose began on April 5th. Meanwhile, Soberana 2 has been given to 44,010 volunteers. Subsequently, health officials will start to vaccinate more than 1.5 million people in Havana with Soberana 2 and Abdala at the end of April as part of an intervention study.[iii] They will then wait until the fall before vaccinating the general population, provided that no side effects are observed.

According to Dr. Dagmar García-Rivera, Director of Research at the Finlay Vaccine Institute, some of the widely recognized vaccines that are currently available for widespread use in many countries, including Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Oxford-AstraZeneca, employednewer technologies still in development to proceed to clinical phases. Adenoviral vector vaccine candidates and those using messenger RNA (mRNA) technology…are among those not yet proven effective in humans.’[iv]

To the contrary, scientists at the Finlay Vaccine Institute and the CIGB relied on more traditional and well-tested technologies that have been proven safe and effective in the past. More specifically, Dr. García-Rivera explained that the Finlay Vaccine Institute elected to combat COVID-19 by developing ‘a protein-subunit vaccine,’ which is based on many years of experience, ‘knowledge and success with other vaccines’ that were previously developed in Cuba.[v] As an example, she pointed out that the Cuban Meningococcal Vaccine is ‘a subunits vaccine developed over 30 years ago.’[vi] Other subunit vaccines developed by Cubans in the past included ‘a recombinant hepatitis B vaccine and the Haemophilus influenzae type b (Hib) vaccine using a synthetic antigen, the first of its kind in the world.’ Additionally, all Cuban children under one year of age are given a pentavalent vaccine (i.e., the 5-in-1 vaccine), which has subunit components.

This Cuban-manufactured vaccine, which was introduced in 2006, ‘immunizes children against diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis, hepatitis B and Haemophilus influenzae type b.’[vii] Dr. Luis Saturnino Herrera Martínez, Director of the CIGB and scientific advisor at BioCubaFarma, reiterated that Cuba’s strategy in combatting COVID-19 was to develop safe and effective vaccines based on technology that has been mastered by Cuban scientists.[viii] He insisted that choosing to develop subunit vaccines was the right course of action. Moreover, he argued that a pandemic is not the time for pharmaceutical companies to develop vaccines based on a new and unproven technologies.[ix]

Another key difference that emerges when comparing the vaccines being developed by socialist Cuba with some of those being produced in capitalist countries is the temperature required for storage and transportation. For example, the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine needs to be kept at minus 70 degrees Celsius, while that of Moderna must to be stored at minus 20 degrees Celsius.

Meanwhile, Soberana 2 can be stored at between 2-8 degrees Celsius, which means it can be used anywhere in the world, including poor countries that often lack the resources needed to store and transport large quantities of vaccines under extreme refrigeration. Furthermore, the experimental vaccines developed using mRNA technology do not actually claim to prevent the transmission of the COVID-19 virus, whereas Soberana 2 promises a high level of protection against its spread.

Since the Soberana 2 vaccine appears to have been very successful in preventing the transmission of the COVID-19 virus in the final stages of its clinical trials, Cuba’s government recently announced its intention to produce 100 million doses of the vaccine in 2021, part of which will be used to immunize its own population before the end of the year. Although final approval is still pending, a number of countries have already expressed interest in importing Soberana 2 in order to vaccinate their own people, including Iran, Nicaragua, Vietnam, and Venezuela. In fact, Iran and Cuba are planning to co-produce the vaccine after it has been fully approved. Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, recently stated that his country will not import any vaccines from the U.S. or any European countries, because he does not trust them. More recently, the administration of President Alberto Fernandez in Argentina has begun negotiations with the Cuban government to obtain access to Soberana 2. Additionally, Cuba’s socialist government is also planning to make its vaccine available to tourists visiting the island after it has been approved.

Even though the U.S. blockade hinders Cuba’s vaccination efforts by making it difficult for the island to obtain all of the raw materials and supplies it needs to produce medicines in sufficient quantities, the Cuban government still intends to distribute its vaccines to parts of the world where people are least likely to have access to them. Unfortunately, poor countries that have implemented neo-liberal economic reforms over the last four decades have experienced a gradual erosion in their capacities to safeguard the health of their citizens. Such countries do not have the means to develop and manufacture vaccines and other medical products on their own, meaning that they have no choice but to rely on external assistance to protect their populations against the emergence of new life threatening viruses and diseases.

Cuba’s success in developing multiple COVID-19 vaccine candidates, even while having its imports of medical supplies and other essential products severely restricted by a genocidal American trade embargo, demonstrates what can be accomplished when public investments and political power are dedicated to achieving the collective good. Moreover, Cuba’s proficiency in vaccine development is the culmination of the socialist system’s long-term commitment to the provision of universal public health care services, which has spanned more than six decades.

Fidel Castro and the Cuban revolutionaries regarded universal access to healthcare and medicine as basic human rights. As such, they believed that it was the duty of Cuba’s socialist government to establish an excellent health care system that would be available to everyone. Since the success of the Socialist Revolution, the Cuban government has invested heavily to increase its supply of doctors and establish scientific research institutes in order to develop its own medicines and meet the needs of its health care system.

Fidel Castro was highly critical of the practice of treating health care services as though they were business transactions in a free-market system. He reiterated the point that the commercialization of health care was ‘repugnant,’ and that everybody should have free access to adequate health care services. Accordingly, the privatisation of health care would not be permitted on the socialist island of Cuba.

In addition to denouncing all forms of private health care, Fidel Castro also strongly condemned profit-oriented pharmaceutical companies. He specifically expressed his frustrations with large and powerful pharmaceutical companies that dedicated themselves to maximizing their profits instead of demonstrating a genuine commitment to human life when he addressed ‘the special session commemorating the 50th anniversary of the World health Organization,’ in Geneva, Switzerland, on May 14, 1998, and stated that:

medicines, that should be made to save lives, are sold at increasingly higher prices. In 1995, the market of pharmaceuticals involved 280 billion dollars. The developed countries with 824 million people, 14.6 percent of the world population, consume 82 percent of the medicines while consumption in the rest of the world with a 4,815 million population is only 18 percent. The prices are actually prohibitive for the Third World where consumption is limited to the privileged sectors. The control of patents and markets by the big transnational companies allows them to raise prices over ten times above production costs. The market price of some advanced antibiotics is 50 times higher than their cost.

In these times when purely profit-oriented pharmaceutical companies are able to exert unprecedented tyrannical and oppressive power over the health and well-being of so many people, the world should be reminded of Fidel Castro’s (Havana 1998) warning that, ‘Man can’t be a piece of merchandise nor can human health be a piece of merchandise, because selling, trading, profiting from health is like selling, trading and profiting from slaves, trading and profiting from human life…’

‘Long live the Homeland!

Long live the Revolution!

Long live socialism!’ (Fidel Castro)

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Birsen Filip holds a Ph.D. in philosophy and master’s degrees in economics and philosophy. She has published numerous articles and chapters on a range of topics, including political philosophy, geo-politics, and the history of economic thought, with a focus on the Austrian School of Economics and the German Historical School of Economics. She is also the author of The Rise of Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).  

Notes

[i] https://www.finlay.edu.cu/en/about/#history

[ii] https://www.finlay.edu.cu/en/about/#history

[iii] ‘Intervention (or Experimental) studies differ from observational studies in that the investigator assigns the exposure. They are used to determine the effectiveness of an intervention or the effectiveness of a health service delivery. They can also be used to establish the safety, cost-effectiveness and acceptability of an intervention.’ (https://www.drcath.net/toolkit/intervention-studies)

[iv] https://mediccreview.org/soberana-cuba-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/

[v] https://mediccreview.org/soberana-cuba-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/

[vi] https://mediccreview.org/soberana-cuba-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/

[vii] https://mediccreview.org/soberana-cuba-covid-19-vaccine-candidates/

[viii] http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2021/04/12/dr-luis-herrera-sobre-las-vacunas-cuba-busco-una-apuesta-segura-con-base-en-las-posibilidades-y-en-tecnologia-dominada/?fbclid=IwAR1f8DVzqI2BuWqjPr4GB_-OFBJlngTXnj2CmQG1aDOH06W2UFSMw6G1MJE

[ix] http://www.cubadebate.cu/especiales/2021/04/12/dr-luis-herrera-sobre-las-vacunas-cuba-busco-una-apuesta-segura-con-base-en-las-posibilidades-y-en-tecnologia-dominada/?fbclid=IwAR1f8DVzqI2BuWqjPr4GB_-OFBJlngTXnj2CmQG1aDOH06W2UFSMw6G1MJE

Whither India-Russia Ties?

April 14th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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***

Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility is an incredibly important piece of infrastructure for Tehran’s interests.

One of its most important roles is that of providing leverage when the Islamic Republic is on the Nuclear Deal negotiating table.

Natanz was largely built underground to withstand enemy airstrikes.

Back in 2002, when it was established it became a focal point of Western fears regarding the potential of Tehran acquiring nuclear weapons.

Despite many accusations, mostly from Israel, Iran maintains that it develops its enriched uranium for peaceful purposes.

The fact that it also applies pressure on the other signatories on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (known as the Iranian Nuclear Deal) is an added, and needed bonus.

The Natanz facility was subject to an alleged cyber-attack on April 11th.

This led to a large blackout, and was considered a significant strike against Tehran.

Iran’s nuclear program spokesman, Ali Akbar Salehi, confirmed that the electrical disruption at Natanz was a deliberate act of sabotage, calling it “nuclear terrorism.”

Israel’s officials refused to provide any comment, and disregarded the incident.

Israeli media, however, continue citing anonymous sources, claiming that it had been a Mossad operation, and that it had achieved great success.

The timing of the attack was also said to not be incidental, coming the day after Iran celebrated its National Nuclear Technology Day.

Iran itself didn’t blame Israel, but in statements, officials said that the attack came from those who oppose Tehran’s negotiations with the West.

The United States and the Islamic Republic have been involved in indirect negotiations in rescuing the Nuclear Deal.

Anything conclusive is still far off.

For any real progress to occur, Iran requires from the Biden Administration to lift all sanctions against it, related to the Nuclear Deal or otherwise.

The result is a standstill, in which Iran refuses to accept the US back into the deal with significant concessions, and Washington not in a hurry to fulfill any demands.

Tehran then continues incrementing various reductions of its commitments to the Iran Nuclear Deal, in loosely permitted margins.

In this way, it not only attempts to gain leverage over the US, but also tries to push the EU signatories into entering into discussions with Washington to salvage the deal.

The United States has admitted, without specifying clearly, that some sanctions that are inconsistent with the Nuclear Deal and could be lifted.

Iran likely did not appreciate such a concession.

Tehran, still, shouldn’t hold its breath, since the enemies of any such progress are many, and it is not put out of the question that if Israel was actually behind the incident in Natanz, that some from Washington’s fold were also present in the plot.

Still, Israel and also many in the US oppose any form of normalization between Tehran and Washington, and the continuous MSM reports that attempt to stir the pot stand testament to that.

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***

The Trudeau government’s refusal to sign the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty is both unpopular and hypocritical.

According to a poll released last week by Nanos Research, 55% of Canadians “support” and 19% “somewhat support” signing the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. The same percentage agreed, or somewhat agreed with Canada signing a treaty that became international law in January even if Washington pressures Ottawa not to.

The poll commissioned by the Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition, Simons Foundation Canada and Collectif Échec à la guerre also found that Canadians are concerned about the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Eighty percent of the 1007 people asked said the world should work to eliminate nuclear weapons while only 9% considered it acceptable for countries to have nuclear weapons for protection.

The poll highlights the unpopularity of the government’s position towards a treaty designed to stigmatize and criminalize nukes in a similar fashion to the UN landmine treaty and Chemical Weapons Convention. Canada was one of 38 states to vote against — 123 voted in favour — holding the 2017 UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination. Justin Trudeau then refused to send a representative to the TPNW negotiating meeting, which two-thirds of all countries attended. The PM went so far as to call the anti-nuclear initiative “useless” and since then his government has refused to join the 86 countries that have already signed the treaty. At the UN General Assembly in November Canada voted against 118 countries that reaffirmed their support for the TPNW.

The Liberals have taken these positions as they’ve publicly expressed a desire to abolish these ghastly weapons. Just before the TPNW entered into force at the start of the year Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs Rob Oliphant said “we are committed to achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.” In October, Global Affairs declared, “Canada unequivocally supports global nuclear disarmament.”

In isolation the gap between the Liberals’ nuclear weapons pronouncements and actions is striking. But if one broadens the lens, the hypocrisy is substantially more astounding. The Trudeau government says its international affairs are driven by a belief in an “international rules-based order” and “feminist foreign policy” yet they refuse to sign a nuclear treaty that directly advances these stated principles.

The TPNW has been dubbed the “first feminist law on nuclear weapons” since it specifically recognizes the different ways in which nuclear weapons production and use disproportionately impacts women. Additionally, the TPNW strengthens the international rules-based order by making weapons that are immoral also illegal under international law.

Fortunately, the NDP, Greens and Bloc Québécois all actively support the TPNW. The recent Nanos poll suggests five times more Canadians would vote for a party that supports the Treaty than would vote against one for doing so.

By signing the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty the Trudeau government can fulfill both Canadians wishes and their stated foreign-policy rhetoric.

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This article was originally published in 2018.

A San Francisco jury has found that the widely used herbicide, glyphosate (also known as Roundup) can cause cancer.

The jury returned its verdict in the case of a former groundskeeper, Dewayne ‘Lee’ Johnson, who developed terminal cancer after regular exposure to the herbicide.

It ordered the agrochemical giant Monsanto to pay $39.2 (£30) million in compensatory damages and $250 (£195) million in punitive damages for failing to warn consumers that exposure to Roundup weed killer causes cancer.

Mr Johnson filed the lawsuit against St. Louis-based Monsanto Company on January 28, 2016, alleging that exposure to the Roundup herbicide he sprayed while working as a groundskeeper for the Benicia Unified School District caused him to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL).

His case was the first of its kind to proceed to trial due to his terminal diagnosis.

After 8 weeks of trial proceedings, the jury found unanimously that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based Roundup weed killer caused Mr Johnson to develop NHL, and that Monsanto failed to warn of this severe health hazard. Importantly, the jury also found that Monsanto acted with malice, oppression or fraud and should be punished for its conduct.

Secret documents revealed

Despite the world’s foremost authority on cancer—the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)—listing glyphosate as a probable carcinogen in 2015 Monsanto has continued to promote glyphosate as safe.

This is a line that the company has maintained for years, yet a mountain of testimony and documents was admitted during the trial. Johnson’s attorneys proved through testimony from Monsanto’s witnesses that company employees “ghostwrote” scientific articles and paid outside scientists to publish the articles in their name.

Internal documents also revealed that a scientific advisor hired by Monsanto told the company that past testing for Roundup was insufficient because glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup, was tested in isolation without the other chemical ingredients that make up the Roundup formulation.

“Many of these confidential Monsanto documents were unsealed for the first time,” said co-lead counsel David Dickens. “They show that Monsanto knew that its testing was insufficient and that there was a synergistic effect when glyphosate is combined with surfactants which help the glyphosate penetrate both plant and animal cell walls.”

In other now-public documents, Monsanto employees reacted to California EPA’s listing of glyphosate as a carcinogen by calling Californians “liberals and morons,” overwhelming Monsanto like a “zombie movie” that they had to take out one at a time starting with the 2016 presidential election.

Co-lead trial counsel Brent Wisner said the verdict was a result of newly-revealed, confidential company documents.

“We were finally able to show the jury the secret, internal Monsanto documents proving that Monsanto has known for decades that glyphosate and specifically Roundup could cause cancer. Despite the Environmental Protection Agency’s failure to require labelling, we are proud that an independent jury followed the evidence and used its voice to send a message to Monsanto that its years of deception regarding Roundup is over and that they should put consumer safety first over profits.”

Heart-wrenching testimony

In addition to hearing from expert witnesses, the jury listened to heart-wrenching testimony from Lee Johnson and his wife, Araceli.

Araceli recalled for the jury the many sleepless nights Lee spent crying in bed when his children were not around. “He tried to hide it, and I think he tried to show that he was strong,” she said. “He tried to be positive; he wanted to be…for us and the kids.”

After her husband began chemotherapy, Araceli took a second job working 14-hour days to help pay the family’s rising medical bills while still driving her two sons an extra 45 minutes to Napa Valley School District in hopes of providing them better educational opportunities.

When Lee took the stand, he told the jury how scared and confused he was after receiving the news that he had cancer. He also described the times he contacted Monsanto to see if the skin lesions he developed were related to his use of Roundup. When he did not hear back from the company, he continued to use the herbicide.

Most notably, Johnson testified that he would never have used Roundup if he had known of the dangers, and accused Monsanto of concealing Roundup’s safety risks to continue profiting from its billion-dollar herbicide.

“I never would’ve sprayed that product on school grounds or around people if I knew it would cause them harm,” Johnson said during emotional testimony. “It’s unethical. It’s wrong. People don’t deserve that.”

More trials to come

Amazingly the jury in this trial was not allowed to see many of the internal documents that were uncovered during the trial. However, all these documents are now in the public domain and will inform the trials of more than 4,000 people from across the US who have also filed suit against Monsanto based on allegations linking Roundup to cancer.

Monsanto is expected to appeal the San Francisco court’s decision. In the meantime, the next Roundup cancer trial against Monsanto is another state case and is scheduled to begin in October in St. Louis, Missouri with dates for further cases to be announced in the next couple of months.

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Featured image: Roundup’s active ingredient, glyphosate, is the most heavily-used agricultural chemical in history. (Photo: Mike Mozart/Flickr/cc)

Ramsey Clark – One of the Greatest

April 14th, 2021 by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

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On the 9th of April 2021, Ramsey Clark passed away in the States. He was ninety four. The former US Attorney-General had spent decades in the struggle for human rights both when he was in government and after he ceased to be Attorney-General. He had been in the forefront of so many human rights causes that it will not be possible to offer some reflections on them in a single obituary.

In this short tribute, I have chosen to highlight some of his outstanding achievements. At some point in the future, one hopes that some better qualified person will analyse in depth his impact upon American society and global politics.

It was Sara Founders, his close associate, herself a renowned activist, who conveyed news of his demise to me. I was deeply saddened by the news. The entire JUST family shares my profound sorrow.

JUST salutes Ramsey Clark as one of the greatest champions of social justice and human rights of our time. He fought for the marginalised and oppressed within his own country and in the world at large. His record of service to the weak and the vulnerable, whoever they were and wherever they were found, is without parallel.

JUST and I had the pleasure of hosting Mr. Clark when he visited Malaysia in the early nineties. We had invited him to speak on the Gulf War. His honest, candid views on the War and what its real motives  were and how it served the vested interests of  a  few made a deep impression on the audiences he spoke to.

Ramsey will be remembered as a fearless opponent of US hegemony and its devastating impact upon people everywhere.A person of admirable courage, he was willing to sacrifice his own well-being and face grave dangers and immense hardships as he attempted to defend the victims of US hegemony. For the people of Cuba and Palestine and numerous other such places, Ramsey Clark was the voice of justice, the unflinching spokesman of the downtrodden who could not be silenced by the might of power.

Many will also  honour him as  the US Attorney-General who supervised the drafting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Civil Rights Act of 1968 which empowered the African American population as never before. He also enforced the desegregation of schools across the South. It is not widely known that Clark had also espoused the cause of another voiceless community in the US, namely native Americans.

The voice of the voiceless is no more. But the legacy of Ramsey Clark will live on.  He will continue to inspire all those who are committed to justice and human dignity for centuries to come.

May God Almighty place him among the righteous in the hereafter.

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Dr Chandra  Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia.

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The CDC announced today that deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines, following experimental COVID injections, have now surpassed 3000 deaths since December of 2020, when the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID shots were given emergency use authorization (EUA) by the FDA.

This was reported on the CDC website today, on their “Selected Adverse Events Reported after COVID-19 Vaccinationpage.

They report that 3,005 people have now died following COVID-19 experimental “vaccines.” (Note: not all of these deaths they are reporting have been entered into the VAERS database yet. Additional data is entered into VAERS every Friday.)

The CDC wants the public to think that this is an insignificant number, since over 189 million doses of COVID-19 emergency use injections have now been administered to the public.

But to put this into perspective, these 3,005 deaths now exceed the total number of deaths following ALL vaccinations from August of 2007, through the end of November, 2020, just before the experimental COVID shots started.

That is a time period of over 13 years, with 3,001 deaths following ALL vaccinations administered during that time frame.

Source

And yet, the CDC’s position has not changed. According to the CDC, all of these deaths following COVID-19 injections are “coincidences” and have nothing to do with the shots.

A review of available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records revealed no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths. (Emphasis theirs. Source.)

In spite of this, earlier today, the FDA and CDC temporarily halted injections of the Johnson and Johnson COVID-19 vaccines due to many reports of blood clots in the brain.

And blood clots are not the most common injuries being recorded following COVID experimental injections where the patient dies. Only two or three people have died in the U.S. from blood clots following the J&J injections.

Deaths by heart attack (cardiac arrest), for example, is much more prevalent, with 188 recorded deaths so far following COVID injections (source), including 7 heart attack fatalities following J&J shots. A total of 54 deaths have been recorded so far following J&J shots through April 1, 2021, with only 1 of those attributed to blood clots.

But these blood clot “clusters” are reportedly so rare among the general population, especially in the kind of clusters seen following J&J injections, that almost everything else has been ruled out, leaving the “vaccines” as the most likely cause.

Don’t expect the FDA to permanently stop the J&J injections, however. They are going to revise the guidelines given to healthcare people giving the J&J shots, so they know how to better treat these blood clots when they see them.

Since they are so rare and apparently unique to the AstraZeneca and J&J adenovirus “vaccines,” this will probably be viewed as another opportunity for Big Pharma to develop more new drugs to treat these unique blood clots.

And there were major supply issues in the U.S. for the J&J doses, so this will now allow U.S. COVID mass vaccination plans to use more of the Pfizer and Moderna experimental mRNA shots.

However, just as the UK has so far refused to stop injecting people with AstraZeneca shots that are causing blood clots, even as dozens of other countries have, expect the U.S. to take the same approach with the J&J shots and put them back into the market as soon as more doses are produced and become available.

And these 3,005 deaths that the CDC is reporting today are not the total deaths occurring following COVID-19 injections, as the VAERS system is a “passive” reporting system, and there is no way to know how many actual deaths are occurring and never being reported.

Here is a piece that MSNBC did back in 2009 discussing the limitations of the CDC VAERS database. This is from our Rumble channel, and it will also be available on our Bitchute Channel soon.

Click here to watch the video.

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There is Hope. Coming to Grips with This Covid Chaos

April 14th, 2021 by Peter Koenig

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There is hope that we may come to grips with this covid-chaos – worldwide deliberate systematic destruction of social systems and economies, country by country. The rendering of hundreds of millions of unemployed people, extreme poverty, abject famine and death – millions and millions of people died from this invisible enemy, the corona hoax in the past 15 months, mind you not from corona or covid-19, or SARS-CoV-2, but from the covid fraud’s collateral damage.

There is hope that we may regain our senses our freedom, maybe even our sovereignty as humans and sovereignty as nations – as independent individual nations. No One World Order (OWO), no Global Reset – and the disappearance for good of the nefarious World Economic Forum (WEF). And no longer a forced masquerade and social distancing and prohibition of meeting with family and friends, and with people in general – senseless and harmful quarantines; rules unconstitutionally imposed by most every government and if not obeyed, punishable with hefty fines and even prison. The regaining of long-lost solidarity.

Elite-made misery is what the last 13 months, since about March 2020, have brought us, people of the entire globe. It came as a shock – and the shock waves are still noticeable… by fear, a tremendous fear – fear from death, fear from an enemy, a virus which nobody has seen, but which is said to be mortal – yet, true science – which is not listened to and censured throughout the western world – determined that mortality from  this so-called corona virus is between 0.03% to 0.08 %, about equivalent to the common flu (See Dr. Antony Fauci “Covid-19 – Navigating the Uncharted NIAID / NIH 28Febr2020 in NEJM).

The shock – even according to the “Shock Doctrine” (Naomi Klein, 2008) – will ebb off – and HOPE will surface – and will grow. That’s what is happening these days. And this even as the “Dark Cabal” intends to dismantle Human Rights, the long and elaborate work of HRs organizations – abolish HRs with the stroke of an arbitrary judgement by a bought or threatened court, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), allowing nations to legally impose vaccination for the “common good of the people”. Thereby, they are setting a precedent for other basic HRs being outright killed. See this.

Hope emanates from the relentless work of doctors for the truth around the world and foremost of lawyer Dr. Reiner Füllmich, leader of the independent German Corona Investigative Committee.

Dr. Füllmich is advancing his agenda of one or several Class Action Suits in the US and Canada, as well as lawsuits against individuals and institutions in Europe and the US. He warns that the current geopolitical changes in the world are to be regarded as crimes against Humanity, since they are not based on science nor reason. Watch the video below.

Since March 2020, the world is in the grip of a small, extremely wealthy economic cabal.

Their names must not be mentioned. Those concerned know who they are – and how they are tyrannizing the entire globe – all 193 UN member countries – and, of course, first of all, the entire UN system.

The very world system that was created after WWII to preserve peace on earth, to fight for Human Rights, equality among races, cultures, religions, geographic regions and countries – though not easy – it is a noble task that only people with integrity in their veins can tackle.

There is no shortage of people with leadership capacity and integrity. But they are unfortunately not suitable for the (mostly western) corrupt system that has been growing exponentially during the past couple of hundred years.

All good intentions aside, many of the leaders of the UN and its sub-organizations got their jobs through nepotism or corruption. Or they were corrupted once in their office. Otherwise, it would have been impossible for a small so-called, self-declared elite, a materially rich and immoral group to take over the command of the world.

At the same time they corrupt, coerce or threaten all 193 UN member governments into following their dictate: creating an OWO, abolishing differences in culture, races, history, languages, colors – and well – believes, religious or non-religions – and finally forging a fully digitized world, where humans are implanted with electromagnetic fields, so they can be surveyed and manipulated by this elite and its servants, and, thus, transform humans into “transhumans” (Klaus Schwab in the 4th Industrial Revolution and The Great Reset).

A key premise to reach this objective is a much smaller world population. Which can be easier manipulated. Natural and especially unrenewable resources would be lasting longer for the elite, so that they may maintain their exquisite lifestyle a bit longer – sharing “their” stolen resources with fewer people.

If the principal eugenists that are part of this diabolical cabal have their way – world population should be reduced.

Around the time, when the 2010 Rockefeller Report was issued, with its even more infamous “Lock Step” Scenario, precisely the scenario of which we are living the beginning right now, Bill Gates talked on a TED show in California, “Innovating to Zero” about the use of energy.

He used this TED presentation to promote his vaccination programs, literally saying, in substance:

If we do a real good job on new vaccines …. we could lower the world population by 10% to 15%.

TED Talk at 04:21:

(See Exact quotation, screenshot of Transcript below)

 

On the way to this diabolical objective, for which they have set themselves a ten-year goal, i.e. the UN Agenda 2030, they plan to transfer the remaining people’s resources and assets from the bottom to the top. Again, the UN body is in the forefront. They – their leaders – acquiesce to these demands.

This agenda was born during the first so-called environmental conference in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro – officially called the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), also known as the ‘Earth Summit’, held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, from 3-14 June 1992. Everybody with a name in international diplomacy and international organizations – financial institutions and corporate interests was present, to grab a piece of the pie. The conclusions of this conference were planned decades in advance by numerous interim conferences and summits.

The ultimate conclusions, were environmental concerns, like in the fake “Global Warming”, Climate Change, Overpopulation and an invisible enemy, a virus-strike at once the entire planet – all merged to give us the horror scenario we are living now.

After a year the first shock waves have passed, even though the corrupted governments, particularly in the Global North, steamroll over any evidence that this is all a criminal swindle.

In the long-run to no avail, as truth will prevail. Those politicians – and leaders (sic) – of the participating 193 Governments, they are all aware of the game and the massive crime being perpetrated on humanity, on the very people who elected them and pay for their salaries and social benefits. These politicians must be called to justice as the truth will surface and prevail.

Hope – manifests itself also on a more modest, but nonetheless convincing and encouraging scale – people want to live, they want their stolen lives back, they want to enjoy living, being again their sovereign selves.

They want to dance again, with even the police participating – see this encouraging 6 min youtube of people randomly coming together in the Gare de l’Est of Paris on 8 April 2021 – to dance and sing to a spontaneously appearing band, manifesting resolutely for the almost lost “Joie de vivre”. Encouraging. To be repeated throughout the world.

Le Retour ! “DANSER ENCORE” – Flashmob – Gare de l’Est – 8 Avril 2021

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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.

Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark delivers an address on the threat of war in the Asia-Pacific at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan on August 1, 2013.

The speech is part of a series of events held in Pyongyang, Seoul and Tokyo around the 60th anniversary of the signing of the Korean War armistice agreement on July 27, 1953.

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VIDEO

Produced by James Corbett

 

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Selected Articles: “The Free World” Died of COVID-19

April 13th, 2021 by Global Research News

Total Lockdown, Everything Closed: Urgent Appeal by German Medical Lawyer Dr. Beate Bahner

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel and Dr. Beate Bahner, April 13 2021

On Sunday 11 April 2021, Dr Beate Bahner, a lawyer, member of the Lawyers for Medical Law and member of the Lawyers for the Right to Enlightenment, made an urgent video appeal to all Germans.

UK Government Predicts ‘Third Wave’ of COVID Deaths ‘Dominated’ by Those Who Are Vaccinated

By Michael Haynes, April 13 2021

In official documents released by the U.K. government, models for the planned “third wave” of COVID-19 predicted that any hospitalizations and deaths would be “dominated” by people who had already been vaccinated.

The Shadowy Alliance Between Big Pharma and Big Tech: RFK, Jr. and Dr. Joseph Mercola

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr and Dr. Joseph Mercola, April 13 2021

CHD Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dr. Joseph Mercola discuss how the narrative perpetuated by Big Pharma and Big Tech — that “vaccines are the only way to restore normalcy” — is leading to the destruction of our Constitutional rights.

Johnson & Johnson Vaccine Site Shut Down After 11 People Suffer Reactions, 2 Hospitalized

By Megan Redshaw, April 09 2021

A mass vaccination site in Colorado was shut down and 600 people with appointments turned away after 11 people experienced reactions, but state officials say side effects were “consistent with what’s expected.”

DNA/RNA Vaccines: “Can They Alter Our Own Genetic Codes”

By Dr. Ken Biegeleisen, April 13 2021

Everyone is talking about DNA/RNA vaccines. Can they alter our own genetic codes? The vaccine lobby says “Never!” I, however — laboring beneath the weight of a Ph.D. in virology — would instead quote Gilbert and Sullivan: “Well, hardly ever.”

Ramsey Clark, Human Rights Fighter – 1927-2021

By Sara Flounders, April 13 2021

Ramsey Clark was a founder of the International Action Center and inspired the political activists who used its structure to defend liberation struggles, oppose U.S. wars of aggression, defend political prisoners whether in U.S. prison-industrial complex or in the U.S.-backed dictatorships worldwide.

Facing the Facts of War with Russia

By Douglas Macgregor, April 13 2021

Conflict with Russia may be inevitable. Kiev’s strident threats to resolve the crisis in Eastern Ukraine with force of arms, combined with Washington’s refusal to acknowledge that Moscow actually has legitimate national security interests in Eastern Ukraine, makes it so.

Sweden Axes Gates’s Mad Global Warming Scheme

By F. William Engdahl, April 13 2021

For more than a decade Bill Gates has funneled millions of dollars into a scientifically mad scheme allegedly to study the possibility of “manmade global cooling.” The project, led by a Harvard physicist, proposes to send satellites into the atmosphere in order to drop tons of chemicals in an attempt to block the sun.

Tensions over the Arctic Are on the Rise

By Uriel Araujo, April 13 2021

Much has been written recently on Russian military activities in its far north region. Not so much has been written on NATO’s ambitions to militarize the Arctic or on the military activities of the US and their NATO allies in the region (or even their bellicose rhetoric regarding this issue).

The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, April 13 2021

We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in modern history. We are living history, yet our understanding of the flow of events since January 2020 has been blurred. Worldwide, people have been misled both by their governments and the media.

“The Free World” Died of COVID-19

By Jordan Schachtel, April 13 2021

While it is easy to get carried away debating the merits of a heavily compromised man being the physical representation of the Free World, and how cringeworthy and depressing that is, I can’t help but get stuck on the possibility that the term itself is no longer viable. “What Free World?”

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First published by GR on July 3, 2015

Earlier this week, I wrote about a deal reached that would soon be pumping out medical microchip implants. Meet the new face of medicine that polygamously marries Big Pharma, biotech, nanotech and wireless remote technology. Maybe hooking oneself into the Internet of Things will be an additional app, although this sounds like a passive form of medicine where someone else gets to call the shots, so to speak.

The same developers who are bringing wireless remotely controlled microchip implants are actually focusing on their first flagship product: Gates Foundation-funded birth-control microchip implants.

Wireless technology allows the remotely controlled chip to turn a woman’s ability to conceive off or on at will – temporary sterilization. Of course with remote technology funded by eugenics depopulation fanatics, the first questions should always be, “the ability to conceive by whose will?” This would be the complete antithesis of female empowerment or a “woman’s right to choose” – would it not?

The encryption is alleged to be so safe, that cyberhackers cannot break entry – that means you too.

The chip can be implanted into the hip, arms or beneath the back. Mum was the word during the last few years of development until it was finally publicly confirmed that the beta testing for the birth control chip would be starting towards the end of this year. Indeed, human volunteers will be sought for real-life chip testing.

TWCN Tech News reports more details on the microchip birth-control implant:

The birth control chip is the brain child of a professor, Robert Langer, from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Bill Gates and Melinda foundation has funded the research and the prototype is ready for human testing. The chips will be ready for sale by the year 2018 according to Robert Langer. The institute’s Chip Foundation and Bill Gates’ foundation have been working on the birth control chip for past three years.

The chip’s size is 20mm by 20mm by 7mm. The reservoirs of hormones would be stored on a microchip of 1.5cm. The chip’s data would always be encrypted so that others (cybercriminals or hackers) cannot access the information contained in the chip or misuse/alter or destroy it.

[…]

The release of hormones will be done by melting a part of solid hormonal stock using a small electric shock which won’t be noticed by humans.

[…]

The safety tests would begin by the end of year 2015 and Robert Langer is confident that the chips will hit market sometime in 2018.

As usual, “The main target” for the testing phase of the chips are women in third-world countries. That means African and Indian women will be human guinea pigs, subject to more of Gates’ polio vaccine tests. Or deaths/paralysis in Pakistan and more paralysis in Africa. But, I’m sure they will go back and make sure those women can conceive again, right? No one is admitting who is actually in control of the wireless capabilities of the implant that is allegedly impenetrable by hackers. Who does a woman see to have her ability to conceive turned back on? That would be an important piece of information, correct?

Interestingly, this news came right on the heels of New Zealand academic higher-ups seriously suggesting the temporary sterilization of all young teen girls – at least in New Zealand.

Brave New World much?

Headlines were simply calling it “free contraception” and recommending the temporary chemical shutting off of young female fertility for society’s sake. No thought whatsoever to looking to solve the source of “the problem” if it even should be looked at so harshly, or to the health of developing teen girls. And just like Gates’ moves in India, no real thoughts go to solving issues of impoverishment which historically, lead to blooming birth rates and medical birth issues. Why better people’s lives when there is so much control in remotely and wirelessly deciding if a woman can conceive?

Pregnancy costs too much….it’s inconvenient…it’s bad for mother and child, and other dehumanizing reasons were given. Ethics, compulsory slippery slopes and STD concerns aside, critics zeroed in on health and environment concerns regarding chemicals. Isn’t it convenient that Gates’ birth-control microchip should launch to save the world from those critiques? Who needs artificial hormones when wireless voltage and gold are there to alchemically or A.I.-chemically create “an artificial organ” through biotech, according to one of its developers. This is where Woman meets Machine to reproduce. Now there is no reason to protest – temporary sterilization for all!

How is that for female empowerment? It requires permission…

This writer’s sentiments align with the anti-eugenics op-ed piece by Leading Edge, that said:

For me, one of the most troubling aspects of this proposal is the way in which it so flippantly treats normal healthy female fertility as if it were something that needs to be shut down or medicated against – like we would a disease, or some other physiological problem.

Indeed, is the human body really worth altering to the point of switching on and off like it’s an inconvenient afterthought? Why go against who you are – you are not a disease. At least you deserve to be thought of as a glorious human being, and not something to be eradicated. Worse yet, why let someone else take the wheel from a remote location?

Image by Heather Callaghan

Heather Callaghan is an independent researcher, natural health blogger and food freedom activist. You can see her work at NaturalBlaze.com and ActivistPost.com. Like at Facebook.

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Ucraina, bomba Usa in Europa

April 13th, 2021 by Manlio Dinucci

Caccia F-16 Usa, inviati dalla base di Aviano, sono impegnati in «complesse operazioni aeree» in Grecia, dove ieri è iniziata l’esercitazione Iniochos 21.

Essi appartengono al 510th Fighter Squadron di stanza ad Aviano, il cui ruolo è indicato dall’emblema: il simbolo dell’atomo, con tre fulmini che colpiscono la terra, affiancato dall’aquila imperiale. Sono dunque aerei da attacco nucleare quelli impegnati dalla US Air Force in Grecia, che ha concesso nel 2020 agli Stati uniti l’uso di tutte le sue basi militari.

Partecipano all’Iniochos 21 anche cacciabombardieri F-16 e F-15 di Israele ed Emirati Arabi Uniti. L’esercitazione si svolge sull’Egeo a ridosso dell’area comprendente Mar Nero e Ucraina, dove si concentra la maxi esercitazione Defender-Europe 21 dell’Esercito Usa.

Queste e altre manovre militari, che fanno dell’Europa una grande piazza d’armi, creano una crescente tensione con la Russia, focalizzata sull’Ucraina. La Nato, dopo aver disgregato la Federazione Iugoslava inserendo il cuneo della guerra nelle sue fratture interne, si erge ora a paladina dell’integrità territoriale dell’Ucraina.

Il presidente del Comitato Militare della Nato, il britannico Stuart Perch capo della Royal Air Force, incontrando a Kiev il presidente Zelenskyy e il capo di stato maggiore Khomchak, ha dichiarato che «gli alleati Nato sono uniti nel condannare l’illegale annessione della Crimea da parte della Russia e le sue azioni aggressive nell’Ucraina orientale».

Ha così ripetuto la versione secondo cui sarebbe stata la Russia ad annettersi con la forza la Crimea, ignorando che sono stati i russi di Crimea a decidere con un referendum di staccarsi dall’Ucraina e rientrare nella Russia per evitare di essere attaccati, come i russi del Donbass, dai battaglioni neonazisti di Kiev.

Quelli usati nel 2014 quale forza d’assalto nel «putsch» di piazza Maidan, innescato da cecchini georgiani che sparavano sui dimostranti e sui poliziotti, e nelle azioni successive: villaggi messi a ferro e fuoco, attivisti bruciati vivi nella Camera del Lavoro di Odessa, inermi civili massacrati a Mariupol, bombardati col fosforo bianco a Donetsk e Lugansk.

Un sanguinoso colpo di stato sotto regia Usa/Nato, col fine strategico di provocare in Europa una nuova guerra fredda per isolare la Russia e rafforzare, allo stesso tempo, l’influenza e la presenza militare degli Stati uniti in Europa.

Il conflitto nel Donbass, le cui popolazioni si sono auto-organizzate nelle Repubbliche di Donetsk e Lugansk con una propria milizia popolare, ha attraversato un periodo di relativa tregua con l’apertura dei colloqui di Minsk per una soluzione pacifica.

Ora però il governo ucraino si è ritirato dai colloqui, col pretesto che rifiuta di andare a Minsk non essendo la Bielorussia un paese democratico. Allo stesso tempo le forze di Kiev hanno ripreso gli attacchi armati nel Donbass.

Il capo di stato maggiore Khomchak, che Stuart Perch ha lodato a nome della Nato per il suo «impegno nella ricerca di una soluzione pacifica del conflitto», ha dichiarato che l’esercito di Kiev «si sta preparando per l’offensiva nell’Ucraina orientale» e che in tale operazione «è prevista la partecipazione di alleati Nato».

Non a caso il conflitto nel Donbass si è riacceso quando, con l’amministrazione Biden, ha assunto la carica di segretario di Stato Antony Blinken. Di origine ucraina, è stato il principale regista del putsch di piazza Maidan in veste di vice-consigliere della sicurezza nazionale nell’amministrazione Obama-Biden.

Quale vice-segretaria di Stato Biden ha nominato Victoria Nuland, nel 2014 aiuto-regista dell’operazione Usa, costata oltre 5 miliardi di dollari, per instaurare in Ucraina il «buon governo» (come lei stessa dichiarò).

Non è escluso che a questo punto abbiano un piano: promuovere una offensiva delle forze di Kiev nel Donbass, sostenuta di fatto dalla Nato. Essa metterebbe Mosca di fronte a una scelta che tornerebbe comunque a vantaggio di Washington: lasciar massacrare le popolazioni russe del Donbass, o intervenire militarmente in loro appoggio. Si gioca col fuoco, non in senso figurato, accendendo la miccia di una bomba nel cuore dell’Europa.

Manlio Dinucci

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First published by GR on August 8. 2015 reviews the history of eugenics and the role of the United Nations

 

From the ancient Acropolis in Athens, to the city in the sky in Peru; the only time many people hear about UNESCO – the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization – is in relation to their world heritage programme. What must be documented however, are the views and opinions of UNESCO’s first Director-General, Julian Huxley.

Born in London in 1887, Huxley (pictured to the left) was an evolutionary biologist, philosopher, author and internationalist, who served as the head of UNESCO from 1946 to 1948. The brother of Brave New World author, Aldous Huxley, and the grandson of “Darwin’s bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley, the former UNESCO chief was from a family deeply entrenched within the British elite. Huxley was also a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), in addition to being an influential figure in popularising the movement of transhumanism.

But what most concerns us here is his devotion to the religion of the global elite; namely eugenics. Huxley was a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society, serving both as vice-president and president of the society in his lifetime. He wrote numerous essays throughout his life, writing extensively on eugenics and the need to depopulate the planet. In a 1964 essay titled: The Humanist Frame, the former UNESCO head reveals his desire to decrease the global population:

The world has to achieve the difficult task of reversing the direction of its thought about population. It has to begin thinking that our aim should be not increase but decrease – immediate decrease in the rate of population-growth; and in the long run, decrease in the absolute number of people in the world.

In another essay titled: The Crowded World, Huxley is even more explicit in stating his views. He argues that “eugenics can make an important contribution to man’s further evolution,” and that the human race must discourage “genetically defective or inferior types from breeding.” He then moves on to call for the “regulation and control of human numbers,” in addition to a “world population policy:”

Above all we need a world population policy – not at some unspecified date in the future, but now… We want all the international agencies of the U.N. to have a population policy.

Huxley believed that UNESCO should play a pivotal role in advancing the cause of eugenics, writing in a 1946 paper titled: UNESCO, its Purpose and its Philosophy:

At the moment, it is probable that the indirect effect of civilisation is dysgenic instead of eugenic; and in any case it seems likely that the dead weight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability, and disease-proneness, which already exist in the human species, will prove too great a burden for real progress to be achieved. Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable. (p.21).

The UN and Population Control

UNESCO is just one agency of the UN, with many other departments advocating population control – including the UN Population Fund. Many top UN officials have been vocal proponents of reducing the world’s population, often citing the faux issue of man-made global warming as the justification. In 2013 for instance, the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC), Christiana Figueres, stated that “we should make every effort” to reduce the world’s population.

A resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1997 once again reveals the desire of the UN to depopulate the planet (emphasis added):

On a more positive note, population growth rates have been declining globally, largely as a result of expanded basic education and health care. That trend is projected to lead to a stable world population in the middle of the twenty-first century (8.)… The current decline in population growth rates must be further promoted through national and international policies that promote economic development, social development, environmental protection, and poverty eradication, particularly the further expansion of basic education, with full and equal access for girls and women, and health care, including reproductive health care, including both family planning and sexual health, consistent with the report of the International Conference on Population and Development (30.).

But how can the elite reduce the global population?

In reality, there are very few (if any) viable ways to morally and humanely reduce the world’s population, without engaging in genocidal and nefarious policies. Covertly sterilizing people would of course be one of the most nefarious strategies for depopulating the planet, but also one of the most effective strategies at the disposal of the psychopathic elite.

In 2014, the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association (KCDA) accused UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO) ofsterilizing millions of girls and women through an anti-tetanus vaccination program. The KCDA claims that the vaccines had an undeclared anti-fertility agent added to them. Muhame Ngare, the spokesperson for the KCDA, stated that: “This WHO campaign is not about eradicating neonatal tetanus, but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine.”

Many individuals around the world strongly suspect that the primary objective of certain vaccination initiatives is to covertly depopulate the planet. This argument was further strengthened in 2010, when Bill Gates – the head of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which funds a plethora of vaccination initiates across the planet (including Gavi) – gave a talk at the 2010 TED conference. In the talk, Gates stated that “vaccines” are one tool that could be used for global population control:

First we’ve got population. The world today has 6.8 billion people; that’s heading up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really good job on new vaccines, health care [and] reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent (4.30 into the video).

Despite many departments of the UN seeming benign and altruistic, there are far more nefarious forces at play than initially meets the eye. Huxley was one of the ideological founders of UNESCO and the UN in general, with his malevolent views concerning population control and eugenics shared by many individuals who are currently part of the global elite.

Steven MacMillan is an independent writer, geopolitical analyst and editor of  The Analyst Report. 

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Downing Street’s dodgy dealings with Citigroup and Greensill show just how far the British government is willing to go to line the pockets of banks and other financial firms while bleeding taxpayers dry. 

The collapse of UK-based supply chain finance firm Greensill Capital continues to reverberate. In Germany the private banking association has paid out around €2.7 billion to more than 20,500 Greensill Bank customers as part of its deposit guarantee scheme after the bank collapsed in early March. But the deposits of institutional investors such as other financial institutions, investment firms, and local authorities are not covered. Fifty municipalities are believed to be nursing losses of at least €500 million.

Greensill’s biggest source of funds, Credit Suisse, has seen its share price plunge by almost a quarter. This is due not only to the fallout from Greensill’s collapse but also the impact of losses at its prime brokerage division caused by the stricken U.S. hedge fund Archegos, which are expected to reach €4 billion. The lender has warned of “considerable uncertainty” regarding the valuation of its supply chain finance fund. More than $5 billion of the roughly $10 billion invested in the fund remains outstanding.

Credit Suisse had assured clients in marketing documents that the debt in the supply chain fund was “low risk”. In one factsheet, it also said: “The underlying credit risk of the notes is fully insured by highly rated insurance companies.” At the beginning of March, that turned out not to be true. Some clients whose money remains trapped in the fund have threatened to sue.

Greensill’s biggest client, Anglo-Indian steel magnate Sanjeev Gupta, is on the verge of bankruptcy. Gupta’s GFG Alliance reportedly owes Greensill more than €3 billion. It began defaulting on its obligations after Greensill stopped lending to the group at the beginning of March. At the end of March Gupta requested a £170 million emergency loan from the UK government, which was duly rejected. Greensill’s administrator, Grant Thornton, has been unable to verify invoices underpinning some of the loans to Gupta. Companies listed on the documents denied ever having done business with the metals magnate.

Now the fallout is beginning to splatter the British government, which invited Greensill to participate in its Coronavirus Large Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CLBILS). This is despite the fact the company:

a) wasn’t a bank; and

b) was quite clearly already in deep financial trouble. Greensill’s participation in CLBILS allowed it to extend even more loans, this time government backed, to Gupta’s empire.

Taxpayers will now probably end up holding the bag for those loans.

Special Treatment, Frantic Lobbying

Greensill Capital was the only non-bank financial firm to administer the emergency coronavirus loan schemes. The Treasury has admitted that Greensill was exempt from the capital adequacy and stress tests that would safeguard the public from risk when using other lenders. The apparent reason for this special treatment was that former UK Prime Minister David Cameron, who had joined Greensill as an advisor in 2018, was frantically lobbying Chancellor of Exhchequer Rishi Sunak to hand government loans to the embattled financial firm even as it spiralled toward bankruptcy.

Cameron is believed to have held share options in Greensill Capital worth tens of millions of pounds. Now they’re worth nothing.

Cameron’s ties with Greensill’s eponymous founder, Lex Greensill, date all the way back to 2011, when Cameron’s then-cabinet secretary, Jeremy Heywood, brought Greensill — then the head of Citi’s supply chain finance division — into 10 Downing Street as a special advisor. Greensill was still on Citi’s payroll when he joined the government. As an expose in The Sunday Times reveals, his brief was to convince ministers and senior civil servants to hire Citi to extend early payment to many of the government’s biggest suppliers.

Citigroup’s pitch was to pay the state’s suppliers in sectors where it apparently paid late, such as pharmacists awaiting NHS prescription fees.

[Maurice Thompson, the British boss of Citigroup who would later become chairman of Greensill Capital’s supervisory board] claimed this would help business owners — offering them an alternative to expensive loans — and the government. It would also be a smart investment for Citi: paying tens of billions of pounds in invoices on behalf of the most reliable of clients, the state, and taking a cut along the way.

This was not about finding a solution to a government problem, but rather a government problem that would fit Citi’s — and later Greensill’s — particular solution. The plan met stiff opposition in certain quarters. Given that government can borrow at ultra-low interest rates, some began asking why it needed to bring in Citigroup, or any investment bank for that matter, to pay its bills. Surely it made more sense to find a way to expedite its payments to suppliers rather than pay an intermediary to do so on its behalf.

Citi aimed to start small, by paying pharmacists that supplied the NHS, but its ambition was sweeping. It sought to roll out supply chain finance across the UK’s public sector, “paying invoices covering GPs, dentists, opticians, physiotherapists, the Ministry of Defence, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Royal Mail and even the BBC.”

Dodgy Dealings

A group of civil servants tried to thwart the plan. But Greensill enjoyed the backing of Heywood, Britain’s “most powerful civil servant” at the time. Heywood gave Greensill his own team and access to any department he wished to address. He also made him a senior advisor and crown representative to Her Majesty’s Government on supply chain finance.

What really irked some civil servants was the ambiguity of Greensill’s position. After Greensill had left Citibank, months after joining Downing Street, and set up his own supply chain finance firm (Greensill Capital) “it was unclear whose interests he was advancing: his former employer’s, his own firm’s or, as one would expect, the taxpayer’s.” Even more dubious was the way in which the government assigned projects to Citi (and later Greensill Capital), reports the Sunday Times.

At the time the pharmacy scheme was announced, there was no detail about who would benefit from it. The government never formally announced or published details of the policy.

 It is only thanks to the legal small print sent to pharmacists that details have emerged. For the first five years the scheme was operated by Citigroup. Then it was awarded to Greensill Capital, which ran it until the company’s collapse last month. The scheme has since been nationalised.

The precise circumstances in which the work was awarded to Citigroup remain unclear. The law states that unless the government is procuring services in an emergency, such as buying PPE during a pandemic or a helicopter in the middle of a war, it must create open and fair competition for companies that hope to deliver them.

However, last night the government admitted it did not sign a contract for Citigroup’s services. Nor did it create an open competition so that other banks could bid for the work. Despite the warnings of Peilow, it was handed out directly to Citi via an existing and secretive relationship between the bank and the Government Banking Service.

This chimes with an email sent by Greensill on November 12, 2012. He wrote: “It is important to note that there is no formal contract with Citibank with respect to the provision of supply chain finance.” He added: “This situation is entirely normal in the private sector as the bank is providing financing to our suppliers, not us.”

What is not normal is that a Wall Street bank was allowed to handle billions of pounds of NHS cash without a contract. Even by the government’s own standards it was exceptional: in 2018 it created a formal procurement process before handing the scheme to Greensill.

The evidence points to a stark conclusion: in the face of staunch opposition from civil servants, the government secretly gave a scheme to Citigroup, which came up with the idea, after its former head of supply chain finance, Greensill, drove the policy through Whitehall.

The only point of this scheme was to create easy money for financiers while bleeding taxpayers dry. As such, this scandal is not just about the losses taxpayers will have to bear as a result of the government’s underwriting of Greensill’s emergency loans to Gupta; it’s about the money that’s already been squandered by the government’s wholly unnecessary use of supply chain finance in the first place.

It’s all eerily reminiscent of the disastrous Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Over decades successive Tory and Labour governments signed off on hundreds of debt-financed projects for which the rate of interest could be as much as 2 to 3.75 percentage points higher than the cost of government borrowing. It was a giant cash cow for the government’s corporate and banking partners. In 2018 it was estimated that the government would end up paying private companies £199 billion, including interest, between April 2017 until the 2040s for existing deals, in addition to some £110 billion already paid — for 700 projects worth around £60 billion!

The senior politicians and civil servants get rewarded for their loyalty later down the line. The civil servant in charge of all the government’s commercial contracts during Cameron’s administration, Bill Crothers, became a director at Greensill in 2016, a year after leaving government. In 2017 Lex Greensill was awarded the  CBE for services to the British economy in Queen Elizabeth II’s 2017 Birthday Honours. A year later his company won a juicy government contract.

Happy Camping With Bin Salman

As for Cameron himself, he joined Greensill as a a special adviser in 2018, two years after leaving politics. In February 2020 he and Lex Greensill went on a camping holiday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, little more than a year after bin Salman had arranged the murder of Washington Post and Middle East Eye columnist Jamal Khashoggi. The holiday appears to have reaped dividends. In June 2020, a senior Greensill Capital executive spoke publicly about the company’s partnership with the Saudi Public Investment Fund, describing it as “part of the family” of the sovereign wealth fund.

According to most reports Cameron did nothing wrong. Last week he was cleared of breaking lobbying rules after it was concluded that as an employee of Greensill, he was not required to declare himself on the register of consultant lobbyists. But his already tarnished reputation is in tatters and he could face an investigation. Cameron himself refuses to even respond to the lobbying allegations. His ear-splitting silence speaks volumes about the state of British politics today.

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With a new Cold War heating up between the U.S. and Russia and China, Witness for Peace Southwest, Addicted to War and CodePink organized a Truth Commission on the original Cold War on March 21st, which brought together the testimony of historians, activists and others who lived through the period.

Following a hearing three years ago, the Zoom event was hosted by Frank Dorrel, publisher of the popular anti-war text Addicted to War, and Rachel Bruhnke, a high school Spanish teacher and member of Witness for Peace Southwest.

See webinar here. [Source: freepress.org]

In her opening remarks, Bruhnke emphasized that the Cold War should rank as one of three great crimes in U.S. history, the first two being the genocide of the native Americans, and enslavement of African-Americans.

Bruhnke said that the aim of the Truth Commission was to “expose U.S. illegal and immoral actions in the name of anti-communism” and “150-year drama of red-baiting,” and to “unravel the web of lies.”

The truth-telling will help “enhance public understanding of today’s domestic and international events,” and avert new catastrophes.

Truth Commissions in countries that experienced large-scale atrocities, like Argentina, South Africa, Guatemala, and South Korea have helped pave the way for national reconciliation and led to a repudiation of past crimes so they would not happen again.

Ideally, this would happen also in the U.S.

An Avoidable Conflict

One of the first speakers at the Cold War Truth Commission, Dr. Peter Kuznick, Director of Nuclear Studies at American University and author of the best-selling book, An Untold History of the United States with Oliver Stone (2013), emphasized that the Cold War could have been prevented.

Near the end of World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt sought to sustain the spirit of cooperation between the U.S. and the USSR at the Yalta Conference where both countries agreed to accept each other’s sphere of influence in its respective domains (the Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and the U.S. in Western Europe).

The day before his death on April 12, 1945, Roosevelt cabled Prime Minister Winston Churchill that he wanted to “minimize the general Soviet problems as much as possible because these problems, in one form or another, seem to arise every day and most of them straighten out.”

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta conference. [Source: biography.com]

Nine months earlier, at the 1944 Democratic Party convention at Chicago Stadium, party bosses plotted behind the scenes to replace Henry Wallace with Harry S. Truman as Vice President, despite Wallace’s overwhelming popularity.

Wallace was a progressive anti-fascist who favored sustaining Roosevelt’s policy of cooperation with the Soviet Union.

Henry Wallace surrounded by supporters at the 1944 Democratic Party convention. [Source: reformation.org]

Truman, by contrast, was a provincial who owed his career to the corrupt Pendergast political machine in Missouri, and was easily manipulatable.

At the convention, Florida Senator Claude “Red” Pepper was five seconds away from rubber stamping Wallace’s nomination when a mysterious blackout halted the day’s proceedings, and allowed for a night of back-room horse-trading by party power-brokers that doomed Wallace.

The result was the advent of the Cold War that cost millions of lives and warped democratic development. Its ominous first salvo was the dropping of the atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which killed over 140,000 civilians and poisoned countless more.

When the U.S. Invaded Russia

In 1917, the Woodrow Wilson administration first precipitated conflict with Russia when it sent 10,000 troops there in an effort to reverse the Bolshevik Revolution.

This forgotten military intervention was waged illegally, without the consent of Congress, and in violation of international law.

It was driven by an aversion to the Bolshevik nationalization decree, which threatened more than $650 million in U.S. investments (equivalent to over $11 billion in 2021 dollars adjusted for inflation).

The United States, as well as Britain, Canada, France and Japan, fought on the side of white counter-revolutionary generals, who “represented the minority and ancient imperialists who were obstinately impervious to the new Russia flaming in revolution against age-long abuses and tyranny,” as a Lieutenant in the 339th U.S. infantry put it.

Advertisement for war bond used to support the U.S. invasion of Russia. [Source: smithsonianmag.com]

These white generals committed atrocities that “would have been considered shameful in the Middle Ages,” according to Lieutenant Colonel Robert Eichelberger.

General William S. Graves, the commander of U.S. forces in Siberia, expressed doubt if “history will record in the past century a more flagrant case of flouting the well-known and approved practice in states in their international relations and using instead of the accepted principles of international law, the principle of might makes right.”

Today, less than ten percent of U.S. citizens have any knowledge of the U.S. invasion of Russia, which does not fit into the dominant triumphalist narrative about the Cold War that the Truth Commission was designed to counteract.

Special Economic Interests

Famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Dan Ellsberg, author of The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner(2017), stressed at the Truth Commission the role of special economic interests in driving forward the Cold War.

Ellsberg stated that his view of the conflict changed a few years ago when he read Frank Kofsky’s book, Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948: A Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation (St. Martin’s Press, 1996).

In this book, Kofsky showed how American aerospace corporations, concerned about the loss of government contracts following the end of World War II and facing bankruptcy, successfully lobbied for the Truman administration to establish a permanent warfare economy.

The lobbying was successful because of a sophisticated public relations campaign that convinced the public of the danger of the Soviet Union and the need for permanent war readiness.

According to Ellsberg, a large part of the Cold War was to provide an annual subsidy for the aerospace industry.

Ellsberg said that “these are the people we [in the peace movement] are confronting—the largest defense contractors [Lockheed, Boeing or Raytheon] and the profits [for war scares and mobilization], jobs, campaign donations, and the revolving door between the large military contractors and Pentagon.” (See Christian Sorensen’s CAM article for more details on War Profiteers)

With a new Cold War now going forward, the Pentagon’s doomsday arsenal could cause a nuclear black winter, which almost came to pass during the 1st Cold War.

Reclaiming the Lost Victims

Carol Francis, a retired L.A. teacher and veteran of the U.S.-Cuba solidarity movement, pointed out in her talk that the red-baiting practices associated with McCarthyism originated in the 1850s—just after the publication of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’ Communist Manifesto.

Political dissidents in Europe and the U.S. at that time were labeled derisively as communists and blacklisted from respectable professions as were abolitionists and anti-slavery activists.

During the 1950s, people involved in Hollywood film productions were a main target of red-baiting because of the glamour of the movie industry and its influence in shaping public opinion.

Film historian Ed Rempell detailed how the silent movie star Charlie Chaplin was denied re-entry into the United States after he had produced a film ridiculing Adolf Hitler and generated a Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) file of more than 2,000 pages.

The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) also targeted Marty Bookman, screenwriter of the Oscar winning 1939 film, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” whose message about a young congressman fighting corruption was considered subversive in the 1950s.

According to Rempell, the blacklist not only ruined individual careers and undermined the First Amendment, but also fostered conservatism and conformity in U.S. culture, which is what societal elites wanted.

HUAC hearing, 1947. [Source: pinterest.com]

Greg Godels, an author at Marxism-Leninism Today, wants us to remember not only the well-known figures who were victims of the blacklist, but the countless Communist Party and other political activists who suffered from the impact of McCarthyism—whether as a result of lost jobs, public shaming, loss of their families, or from unjust imprisonment.

Godels’ talk focused on the forgotten victims of McCarthyism in his hometown of Pittsburgh—a center of McCarthyite repression. One was Leon Swimmer, a baker who tried to integrate the city’s pools. Two others were Allen Thomas and Joseph “Sonny” Robinson, leaders of the local steelworkers’ union and Communist Party USA, who had illegal items planted in their lockers so that they would be fired and arrested.

When Thomas appealed to his union, they asked him if he supported the second front in World War II against Germany. Thomas replied that he was really for a second front in Mississippi, which Godels said went over like lead.

Besides the honorable victims, Godels said that we should also remember the snitches—men like Harvey Matusow, Max Vetick and others who were later exposed as liars and alcoholics, but whom the government relied upon.

The FBI’s dubious role in the red scare should also never be forgotten, and the FBI never lionized.

Immoral U.S. Foreign Policy

The immorality of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War was spelled out by Bruce Gagnon, coordinator of the global network against weapons and nuclear power in space, who in his talk discussed Operation Paperclip, in which U.S. government agencies smuggled Nazi scientists and war criminals into the U.S. after World War II in order to gain a military-technological edge over the Soviets.

The most famous such scientist was Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi SS Major who recruited slave labor from Buchenwald concentration camp for the development of the V-2 rocket at the Mittelwerk underground factory in Nordhausen, and was appointed to direct the Marshall Space Flight Center at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Von Braun’s boss, Major General Walter Dornberger, also became a leader in the U.S. space program and Vice President of Bell Aerospace Company.[1]

Walter Dornberger, left, with Wernher von Braun, after their surrender to the Allies in Germany in May 1945. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Stating that he had already lost two world wars and didn’t come to the U.S. to “lose a third,” Dornberger drafted a blueprint for the development of an orbital battle station at the top of the earth’s gravity well—a dream that has come to be fulfilled with the Trump administration’s new space command.

CovertAction Magazine’s Executive Editor Chris Agee testified at the Truth Commission about his father, Philip Agee, who became a CIA case officer and then whistleblower after he overheard screams of people being tortured while he was meeting with the Uruguayan chief of police in Montevideo. When Mr. Agee asked who the victims screaming were, the police chief responded that “they were the people you gave us [the police] last week.” Their ranks included trade union activists and other leftists organizing for better socio-economic and political conditions in Uruguay.

To give one example, one of Mr. Agee’s job, Chris said, was to plant an incriminating message in the toothpaste tube of a Cuban diplomat so that he would be apprehended—all in an effort to undermine interstate relations with the Cuban revolution.

Chris shared three principle ideas that guided his father: (1) the Cold War myth was a ruse to distract the population from understanding U.S. plutocratic imperial interests while hiding the true goals of third world revolutionary movements, (2) the need to struggle for internationalist worker solidarity and (3) raise awareness and organize through political activism for a more just world, politically, social and economically.

As his father stated toward the end of CIA Diary: On Company Business—his tell-all book where he named all the agents and their activities—he came to learn that instead of working toward building democracy and freedom around the world, as he had been led to believe through his training and indoctrination, he really served as a secret policeman for multinational corporate interests whose aim was to secure cheap access to labor, raw materials, foreign markets and U.S. geo-political control. While distracting attention away from real human needs, the Cold War myth served the military industrial complex with huge military budgets and provided the means for that geopolitical control.

The examples are endless: Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Angola, Nicaragua…and so on. Chris encouraged people to read Killing Hope written by William Blum, who worked with CovertAction Magazine for many years, and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, the latter book his father gave him at a young age to debunk the myths of the Cold War bi-polar model taught in his high school.

After blowing the whistle on the Agency, Mr. Agee lived in exile for the rest of his life, causing young Chris’ life to be upended.

CovertAction Magazine’s co-founder, Louis Wolf, gave testimony about his time in Laos with the International Voluntary Services (IVS) from 1964 to 1967 digging wells, distributing seeds for fertilizer, and teaching English.

Wolf commented that, during his free time, he would share a drink with American pilots, who would routinely ‘dump’ their ordinance in Laos rice paddies because they could not otherwise land safely. In the name of fighting communism, more tonnage of bombs was dropped on Laos than in all theaters of World War II, with unexploded ordinance still contaminating large portions of the country.

Third World Victims

The Cold War provided a convenient pretext for an intensified war on the Third World. Any regime promoting independent economic development and control over its natural resources was labeled as communist and targeted for regime change.

CodePink founder Medea Benjamin spoke at the Truth Commission about her experiences as a nutritionist in the 1970s and early 1980s in Mozambique, whose promising experiment with socialism under Samora Machel was cut short by Machel’s assassination in 1986.

With covert U.S. assistance, apartheid South Africa supported RENAMO terrorist forces, which used the veneer of anti-communism to commit horrific atrocities and further destroy the country.

Nuri Ronaghy, a longtime peace activist, testified about the 1953 CIA-sponsored coup in Iran against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, who had wanted to nationalize Iran’s oil but was branded as a communist.

Ronaghy’s brother, a physician, was almost executed in the aftermath of the coup, and her family had to flee Iran.

Mossadegh was replaced by the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who mobilized Iranian resources to attack Dhofar in western Yemen following the coup, killing 30,000 people.

During his 25-year reign (1953-1979), the Shah killed so many people that the most famous song of the era was called “kiss me goodbye.”

When Ronaghy returned to Iran in the 1970s, she was sent to the infamous Evin prison where thousands were tortured and executed by the Shah’s secret police created by the CIA, known as SAVAK.

While in the prison, Ronaghy witnessed from her cell political prisoners being sent for torture and then returning unable to walk.

She also recounted how, during the 1979 Iranian revolution, U.S. agents burned a theater in Abadan where politically active youth watched movies.

Alicia Rivera testified after Ms. Ronaghy about her experience in El Salvador during the 1980s, where the Reagan administration supported right-wing death squads to counter the leftist Farabundo Marti Liberation Movement (FMLN).

Rivera fled the country after many people she had grown up with and their parents were killed.

She had gone to Catholic school and to the church of Archbishop Oscar Romero, who promoted liberation theology, which used the gospel as a basis for fighting for social justice.

Romero was branded as a communist and assassinated by neo-fascists backed by the CIA in 1980 as he was delivering a sermon. The Cold War resulted in at least 75,000 deaths in El Salvador, 8,000 more “disappeared” and one million displaced. Cold Warriors in Washington nevertheless considered the country a great model and called for the “Salvador option” in Iraq.

Making Losers of Us All

The Cold War Truth Commission offered strong evidence in favor of Mikhail Gorbachev’s maxim that “the Cold War made losers of us all.”

One of the speakers, Chris Venn, a peace activist from California, spoke about the epidemic of homelessness in the U.S. in the 1980s that resulted from President Ronald Reagan’s cutbacks to the budget of the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development while his administration was funding vast military arsenals to fight the supposedly “evil” Soviet empire.

Nadya Williams spoke about her father’s blacklisting and premature death resulting from the CIA’s murderous 1965 coup in Indonesia, which resulted in over two million deaths and the imprisonment of tens of thousands more for decades under the most inhumane conditions.

The Truth Commission included testimonies from youth activists, film clips, and speeches from dissident voices like Ramsey Clark, the former Attorney General of the United States, Mumia Abu-Jamal, an award-winning author unjustly incarcerated for more than 40 years, and S. Brian Willson, a Vietnam veteran who lost his legs in 1987 to a purposely speeding train while trying to block arms shipments to the Contras, a right-wing terrorist army setup and armed by the U.S. to sabotage the socialist Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.

S. Brian Willson lies on the ground after being run over by a train carrying arms to the Nicaraguan Contras. [Source: blog.pmpress.org]

One of the clips spotlighted the noble efforts of Father Roy Bourgeois, a Vietnam veteran, to shut down the U.S. Army School of the Americas in Ft. Benning, Georgia. The School of the Americas has trained some of the worst dictators and assassins in Latin American history.

Another clip featured music from Gil Scott-Heron, who warned about how U.S. foreign policy was turning the planet into a cemetery and commented that there was no money to be made in peace.

“The Struggle of Memory Against Forgetting”

The Czech philosopher Milan Kundera famously stated that “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

The Cold War Truth Commission is of special importance today because of the new Cold War between the U.S., Russia and China which has already broken out.

Many of the speakers conveyed their dismay with President Joe Biden’s statements calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a “killer,” and with the dangerous escalation of U.S. missile emplacements in Eastern Europe and expansion of NATO toward Russia’s border, as well as with the fervent anti-Chinese rhetoric coming out of the White House.

While the Cold War Truth Commission may not be able to reverse the insanity of current U.S. policies, it has at least helped to ensure that a truthful history will be preserved.

It can also help lay the foundation for a resurgent left-wing movement that is guided by the wisdom and spirit of its Cold War-era predecessor.

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Notes

[1] For more on Paperclip, see Annie Jacobsen, Operation Paperclip: The Secret Intelligence Program That Brought Nazi Scientists to America (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 2014).

Featured image is from themontrealreview.com

DNA/RNA Vaccines: “Can They Alter Our Own Genetic Codes”

April 13th, 2021 by Dr. Ken Biegeleisen

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).

***

Everyone is talking about DNA/RNA vaccines. Can they alter our own genetic codes?

The vaccine lobby says “Never!” I, however — laboring beneath the weight of a Ph.D. in virology — would instead quote Gilbert and Sullivan: “Well, hardly ever.”

Most people don’t know very much about DNA or RNA, so I’ll start with a 30-second chemistry discussion. DNA and RNA are both polymers, long strings (in this case, very long strings) composed of seemingly endless repetitions of a single basic chemical building block, called a nucleotide.

The resulting structure is often likened to a string of pearls, or to the rungs of a very, very long ladder. A single human cell contains some 6 billion nucleotide building blocks in its chromosomes.

In the picture below, the DNA basic building block is on the left, and the RNA building block is on the right. Take a look and see whether or not you can discern the difference:

DNA RNA Building Blocks

Don’t see much difference? That’s because there isn’t much. The red asterisk (*) shows the primary difference. RNA has an extra “O” (the abbreviation for an Oxygen atom). That’s about it.

Viruses have no lives of their own. They can grow only in host cells, such as, for example, your cells. In order for a virus to infect you, it needs to recognize a “receptor” on your cell surfaces. If — and only if — the virus can recognize such a receptor, then it has its own clever way of attaching itself to that receptor and sneaking its DNA (or RNA — viruses can have either one) into your cells.

Once inside, the DNA (or RNA) virus chromosome proceeds to reproduce itself, giving rise to hundreds or thousands of exact copies. These are then turned into complete virus particles by being covered with a protective protein coat. Next, the cell is broken open and the new progeny viruses disperse, infecting hundreds or thousands of other cells.

It’s easy to see how a viral infection can spread like wildfire in your body.

Even though the chemical differences between DNA and RNA are relatively small, the cell is smart enough to instantly recognize those small differences and act accordingly.

DNA is replicated in our cells by means of an enzyme called “DNA polymerase.” RNA, however, will not ordinarily be replicated by our cells because that’s simply not the way things work. So how does the RNA virus reproduce?

Some RNA viruses have an enzyme called “reverse transcriptase,” which begins each new viral life cycle by converting the virus’ RNA chromosome into DNA. This DNA copy can then be replicated by the cell’s own DNA polymerase-based system.

But other RNA viruses, including the COVID-19 strain of coronavirus, bring in their own special reproductive enzyme called “RNA polymerase,” which has the ability to directly produce numerous copies of the virus’ own RNA chromosome without any help from the cell’s native DNA polymerase system.

Now let’s speak for a moment about alteration of our genetic code. The interaction between a virus and the host cell is generally classified as being one of two distinct types of interaction.

Historically, the first type of interaction (discovered in the late 19th and early 20th centuries) was what we now call, in retrospect, a “productive infection.” Here the virus reproduces and kills the cell, releasing the many progeny as described above.

It was only in the later years of the 20th century that it became clear that there is a second sort of interaction, very different in nature, known as a “transforming” interaction (also called a “latent” infection). In a transforming interaction there is no virus growth at all. Instead, the single chromosome of the virus uses its bag of genetic tricks to insert itself into one of the 46 chromosomes of the host cell. There the viral DNA remains, sometimes forever.

In some species, such as herpesviruses, the virus’ chromosome just sits there, inside the host chromosome, apparently doing nothing — unless and until some sort of stimulus causes it to “pop out” again and begin growing. This produces a “cold sore” of the lips (herpesvirus type 1) or genitalia (herpesvirus type 2).

A large number of publications have documented that many — perhaps most — human beings have, within their nervous systems, cells which quietly harbor latent herpesvirus infections, even though the majority of humans will never get a cold sore. It is a known fact that herpes type I, in the latent state, resides in the trigeminal ganglion, inside the skull near the spinal cord. It is believed to be perfectly harmless in this latent state.

Other viruses, however, are not harmless in the latent state. A good example is SV-40, a DNA virus which is known to be capable of causing cancer in many mammalian species. SV-40 infects cells, but it usually doesn’t grow. Instead, it inserts its own chromosome into one of the cell’s chromosomes (a process called “integration”), and from that new base of operations it converts the cell from a normal cell, which is subject to normal forms of growth control, to a malignant cell which respects none of the host organism’s growth controls, and thereby causes cancer. This alteration, from normal to cancerous, is referred to as a “malignant transformation.”

But the term “transformation” does not automatically connote malignancy. Although a “transformation” may be harmful in any number of ways (and not solely limited to cancer), it might in other cases be entirely inconsequential (as far as the eye can see). In special cases, it might even be beneficial.

Curiously, however, even now — 68 years after the publication of the “Watson-Crick double-helix” structure for DNA — the dream of curing disease via human genetic re-engineering, employing custom-made viruses, remains in its infancy.

On the other hand, certain questionable forms of hastily-contrived human genetic experimentation, empowered by “executive orders,” and facilitated by “fast-track” bypassing of safety protocols, have become alarmingly commonplace.

Can a DNA-based vaccine ‘transform’ a human cell into something genetically different?

With all this in mind, we can now ask the question of whether or not a DNA-based vaccine might “transform” a human cell into something genetically different.

This is no small question, because if the answer is “yes,” and if the transformation proves to be harmful, then that harm may be passed to every subsequent generation — forever.

From 1972-1978, I was an M.D. – Ph.D. student at the New York University School of Medicine. Our lab addressed a question which was current at that time: In “productive infections,” where a virus replicates in cells and ultimately destroys them, might there nevertheless be integration of viral DNA into the host cell chromosomes?

We asked that question because, at that time in virological history, it had become abundantly clear that many different types of viruses could transform many different types of cells into malignant cancer cells. Those cells, if transplanted into animal hosts, would then form cancerous growths which would quickly kill the animal.

This sort of virus-mediated malignant transformation always began with the insertion (i.e., integration) of viral DNA into the chromosomes of the host cells. (Yes, I’m talking about that which the vaccine companies “assure” us will not follow vaccination with their “fast-tracked” new products).

Once these viral genes take up residence in host cell chromosomes, they are thereby empowered to seize control of the cell’s metabolism, perverting it to their own purposes.

So the question virologists were asking in the 1970s was this: Is the insertion of viral genes into host cell chromosomes a process uniquely associated with cancerous transformations? Or might the insertion of viral genes into host cell chromosomes take place in any and every sort of viral infection, whether it was a “productive” infection leading to virus multiplication and cell death, or whether it was a “transforming” infection where there was no virus multiplication at all?

We looked into this question by studying the infection of mammalian cells by herpesviruses. In the end, we published three papers, all in leading virology journals. These papers, listed below, are very difficult reading for anyone not familiar with the peculiar jargon of the field. But for those who are interested, here are the three references:

  1. Rush MJ & Biegeleisen K.  Association of Herpes simplex virus DNA with host chromosomal DNA during productive infection. Virology, 69:246-257 (1976).  https://doi.org/10.1016/0042-6822(76)90211-7.
  2. Rush MJ, Yanagi K & Biegeleisen K.  Further studies on the association of Herpes simplex virus DNA and host DNA during productive infection.  Virology, 83:221-225 (1977).  DOI:  10.1016/0042-6822(77)90227-6.
  3. Yanagi K; Rush MG; Biegeleisen K.  Integration of herpes simplex virus type 1 DNA into the DNA of growth-arrested BHK-21 cells. Journal Of General Virology, 44(3):657-667 (1979).  DOI: 10.1099/0022-1317-44-3-657.

The first paper proved that herpesvirus genes are integrated into host cell chromosomes, but left some important questions unanswered concerning the physico-chemical nature of the linkage between viral and host DNA.

By the third paper, however, all reasonable doubt about the integration of viral DNA into host chromosomes had been laid to rest.

Another line of investigation going on at about the same time, in the laboratory of W. Munyon, led to the same conclusion. Munyon and his associates studied an enzyme called “thymidine kinase.” What that enzyme does is extraneous to this discussion. What matters is that the gene for the enzyme is normally found in human chromosomes, and also in herpesvirus chromosomes.

Munyon and his team had a mutant strain of cells that lacked the thymidine kinase gene. They infected those cells with herpesvirus that had been irradiated, and thereby rendered incapable of multiplying in and killing the cells.

But the virus did, nevertheless, carry in its own thymidine kinase gene. Upon infection, the cells were shown to suddenly have acquired that enzyme, even though they were mutants who had none of their own. Because the virus had been irradiated, it did not kill the cells, which continued growing in the laboratory.

Eight months — which is hundreds of generations — later, the progeny of those cells were still producing thymidine kinase!

So if a DNA vaccine company alleges that their vaccine will cause my cells to temporarily manufacture corona spike protein, but will not permanently “transform” my cells in any other way, what am I to think?

Or, perhaps I’m not supposed to think?

So far we’ve talked only about herpesvirus. The new Johnson & Johnson vaccine uses “reproductively incompetent” genetically engineered adenovirus as the carrier for the corona spike protein gene.

Should we worry? After all, unexpected integration of viral genes may be peculiar only to herpesvirus, and not adenovirus, right?

Unfortunately, that’s not the case. What I did not realize, at the time I was doing my own Ph.D. research on herpesvirus, was that other labs were conducting the same type of research on the adenovirus. Here’s an example of that work:

Schick J, Baczko K, Fanning E, Groneberg J, Burgert H, & Doerfler W (1975).  Intracellular forms of adenovirus DNA: Integrated form of Adenovirus DNA appears early in productive infection.  Proc Nat Acad Sci USA, 73(4):1043-1047.  DOI: 10.1073/pnas.73.4.1043.  PMID: 1063388.  PMCID: PMC430196.

Like coronavirus, there are dozens of known adenovirus types, most of which are classified as “cold viruses.” But some adenoviruses cause much more serious disease, including cancer.

In the 1970s, the adenovirus researchers were asking the same questions that the herpesvirus workers were asking. And they were coming up with the same answers: In “productive infection,” where adenovirus was supposed to only replicate and destroy the cell, there was indeed extensive integration of viral genes into the host cell chromosomes — even though there was no obvious biological reason for the virus to do that.

No guarantees, despite what vaccine makers say

It seems that in many, perhaps most viral infections, integration of viral DNA into the host cells is a very real possibility. When this occurs, there is absolutely no way to “guarantee” that the genetic code of the host cell will not be re-written.

The question then arises: If this is the case, why do vaccine manufacturers “assure” us that their marginally tested products are genetically “safe?”

I would suggest three possible explanations, all equally reprehensible:

  1. It may be that the scientists in these companies simply do not know the history of this field. What can one say? “Those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”
  2. It may be that anything in industry which does not improve the quarterly profit report is at great risk of being ignored.
  3. It may be that calling a new vaccine “safe,” in the pharmaceutical world, means little more than that the company has the legal resources to deal with any liability claims that arise.

Which of these three possible explanations is the correct one? Or is it all three?

In any event, you now know why I shall not take the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

What about RNA vaccines?

We’ve been discussing DNA vaccines. What about RNA vaccines, such as Pfizer and Moderna?

Although I have no personal experience working in the lab on genetic transformation of human cells by RNA viruses, it is appropriate to comment briefly on that subject before closing.

The RNA vaccines are alleged by their promoters to be genetically “safe” because RNA cannot be directly incorporated into human chromosomes.

Is that true? Yes. But does that make them “safe?” Perhaps not.

What the vaccine companies forgot to tell you is that our cells have several types of “reverse transcriptase” of their own, which can potentially convert the vaccine RNA into DNA.

In December 2020, a team of researchers from Harvard and MIT (Zhang et al) posted an article at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory-hosted bioRxiv preprint server showing that, in all probability, incorporation of coronavirus spike protein genes, into the chromosomes of infected cells, does indeed take place, and is mediated by the so-called “LINE-1” type of human reverse transcriptase. (For more on the Harvard-MIT study and its implications, read this article previously published by The Defender).

To be clear, this was not a vaccine study, but a study in which cells were deliberately infected with whole, non-inactivated virus, as happens in nature, and which apparently can result in genetic transformation of the cells after all.

This, suggested the authors, may account for the now-frequent observation of COVID-19 test “positivity” in people who are clearly not sick. That is, the bodies of such people are continually manufacturing corona spike protein, from the viral genes which have been permanently incorporated into their genetic codes.

It could be said, in defense of the genetics-based-vaccine lobby, that since infection with whole, functional coronavirus clearly appears capable of transforming the human genetic code, causing our cells to forever manufacture the viral spike protein, there may therefore be some justification in mimicking this natural transformation via an unnatural RNA vaccine.

In condemnation of that lobby, however, we cannot overlook the obviously unwarranted assurances of vaccine manufacturers that alteration of our genetic code “will not happen.” Such a statement casts doubt on (a) their competence in their own field, and (b) their willingness to accept the consequences of their own actions.

Moreover, reverse transcription is a known means of normal human chromosome-to-chromosome gene mobility, a fascinating process whose study goes back to the pioneering work of Barbara McClintock in the 1930s. It has thus been well-known, for the better part of a century, that the effects of moving genes around will very much depend on where they are moved, and on exactly and precisely what is moved.

In the case of the current vaccine-borne corona spike protein gene, no one has any clue as to where in our genomes it will wind up, or what it will do when it gets there.

There is a corona vaccine, Novavax, which contains no genetic material at all (i.e., no DNA or RNA), but rather consists solely of the corona spike protein. Of all the available vaccines, this is the one least likely to cause human genetic harm. But almost no one gets it, because it’s not available in most countries. Why not?

There are also at least two corona vaccines (Sinopharm, Sinovac) which are made from whole inactivated virus, analogous to the polio vaccines of the 20th century. This is a tried and tested form of technology, but very few people get those vaccines either.

Instead, we’re all being pressured into taking hastily prepared genetic vaccines, which are likely to transform our heredity, permanently. Is there any reason for this, other than countless billions of dollars in windfall profits?

It is my view that the massive and barely studied global human genetic experiment going on right now is the biological equivalent of a drunk driver, speeding down the highway with impunity at 60 mph — at night without headlights — because he says that “he knows the road.”

Most sensible people are wary about “GMO,” even in food. Now we’re going to genetically modify ourselves? Why? What madness is this?

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Ken Biegeleisen, M.D., Ph.D., has studied virology and is the author of multiple studies on virology and DNA/protein structure.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

Economic Impacts of Russia’s Declining Population

April 13th, 2021 by Kester Kenn Klomegah

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

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Despite various official efforts, including regular payment of maternal capital to stimulate birth rates and regulating migration policy to boost population, Russia is reportedly experiencing decreasing population. According to the Federal State Statistics Service, Russia’s population currently stands at approximately 144 million, down from 148.3 million.

Experts at the Higher School of Economics believe that regulating the legal status of migrants, majority of them arriving from the Commonwealth of Independent States or the former Soviet republics, could be useful or resourceful for developing the economy, especially on various infrastructure projects planned for country. These huge human resources could be used in the vast agricultural fields to boost domestic agricultural production. On the contrary, the Federal Migration Service plans to deport all illegal migrants from Russia.

Within the long-term sustainable development program, Russia has multibillion dollar plans to address its infrastructure deficit especially in the provinces, and undertake megaprojects across its vast territory, and migrant labor could be useful here. The government can ensure that steady improvements are consistently made with the strategy of legalizing (regulating legal status) and redeploying the available foreign labor, majority from the former Soviet republics rather than deporting back to their countries of origin.

Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has been credited for transforming the city into a very neat and smart modern one, thanks partly to foreign labor – invaluable reliable asset – performing excellently in maintaining cleanliness and on the large-scale construction sites, and so also in various micro-regions on the edge or outskirts of Moscow.

With its accumulated experience, the Moscow City Hall has now started hosting the Smart Cities Moscow, international forum dedicated to the development of smart cities and for discussing about changes in development strategies, infrastructure challenges and adaptation of the urban environment to the realities of the new normal socity.

Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that Russia lacks sufficient number of migrants to fulfill its ambitious development plans. He further acknowledged that the number of migrants in Russia has reduced significantly, and now their numbers are not sufficient to implement ambitious projects in the country.

“I can only speak about the real state of affairs, which suggests that, in fact, we have very few migrants remaining over the past year. Actually, we have a severe dearth of these migrants to implement our ambitious plans,” the Kremlin spokesman pointed out.

In particular, it concerns projects in agricultural and construction sectors.

“We need to build more than we are building now. It should be more tangible, and this requires working hands. There is certainly a shortage in migrants. Now there are few of them due to the pandemic,” Peskov said.

Early April, an official from the Russian Interior Ministry told TASS News Agency that the number of illegal migrants working in Russia decreased by 40% in 2020 if compared to the previous year. It also stated that 5.5 million foreign citizens were registered staying in Russia last year, while the average figure previously ranged between nine and eleven million.

On March 30, 2021, President Vladimir Putin chaired the tenth meeting of the Presidential Council for Interethnic Relations via videoconference, noted that tackling the tasks facing the country needs not only an effective economy but also competent management. For a huge multinational state such as Russia, it is fundamentally, and even crucially important, to ensure public solidarity and a feeling of involvement in the life, and responsibility for its present and future.

At this moment, over 80 percent of Russian citizens have a positive view on interethnic relations, and it is important in harmonizing interethnic relations in the country, Putin noted during the meeting, and added Russia has a unique and original heritage of its peoples. It is part of our common wealth, it should be accessible to every resident of our country, every citizen, everyone who lives on this land. Of course, we will need to review the proposal to extend the terms for temporary stay of minors of foreign citizens in the Russian Federation.

President Vladimir Putin has already approved a list of instructions aimed at reforming the migration requirements and the institution of citizenship in Russia based on the proposals drafted by the working group for implementation of the State Migration Policy Concept of the Russian Federation for 2019-2025.

“Within the framework of the working group for implementation of the State Migration Policy Concept of the Russian Federation for 2019-2025, the Presidential Executive Office of the Russian Federation shall organize work aimed at reforming the migration requirements and the institution of citizenship of the Russian Federation,” an official statement posted to Kremlin website.

In addition, the president ordered the Government, the Interior and Foreign Ministries, the Federal Security Service (FSB), and the Justice Ministry alongside the Presidential Executive Office to make amendments to the plan of action for 2019-2021, aimed at implementing the State Migration Policy Concept of the Russian Federation for 2019-2025.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Kremlin.ru

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

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On Sunday 11 April 2021, Dr Beate Bahner, a lawyer, member of the Lawyers for Medical Law and member of the Lawyers for the Right to Enlightenment, made an urgent video appeal to all Germans. Quote:

“If one in 1,000 tests positive – or 100 in 100,000 – then there is a threat of total lockdown. Do you know what that means? – Everything closed: schools, restaurants, shops, factories, playgrounds, cinemas, museums…. Everything. You can no longer meet, neither with family nor with friends. You are locked in – watching the world on a screen, behind your computer or TV. Your life is being taken away from you by the government, by Frau Merkel.

There hasn’t been anything like this since the Second World War.

Do you know what that means? Even if 100 out of 100,000 test positive, it doesn’t mean that the 100 are sick. On the contrary. 99.9% are healthy, don’t notice their “infection”. Moreover, PCR tests are totally unsuitable for detecting a corona virus. All doctors, all virologists, all scientists worthy of the name know this by now. Mrs Merkel and her government know this too. But they lie to scare you – to restrict you, to steal your freedom, what is left.

Germany – Wake Up! If you let them do this to you, it’s over. Then you – Germany – will never know freedom again. Germany – Wake Up!”

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Is the once flourishing fatherland – the land of poets and thinkers – being dealt the death blow?

There is no doubt that the so-called world elite is already in the process of destroying the previous world order in order to replace it with a new one – a satanic one. And with the help of compulsory mass vaccinations, according to ex-Pfizer vice-president Dr Mike Yeadon, a mass depopulation is also being prepared (1). Only the thoughts are still free. The general digitalisation mania has not yet robbed us of all humanity and degraded us to totally monitored robot people.

Therefore, we should spread the appeal of the courageous lawyer Dr. Beate Bahner and have it translated into our national language – as long as it is not too late. Let us live up to our responsibility and stop playing the diabolical game of fear! Let’s say NO loudly!

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

(1) https://unser-mitteleuropa.com/ex-pfizer-vizepraesident-die-regierungen-luegen-euch-an-und-bereiten-eine-massenentvoelkerung-vor/

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

“The Free World” Died of COVID-19

April 13th, 2021 by Jordan Schachtel

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).

***

As someone with a background in foreign policy and international affairs, I am often asked to discuss the ramifications of having Joe Biden as the so-called leader of the Free World.

While it is easy to get carried away debating the merits of a heavily compromised man being the physical representation of the Free World, and how cringeworthy and depressing that is, I can’t help but get stuck on the possibility that the term itself is no longer viable.

“What Free World?”

The Free World is a term that was originally used to describe the Allied powers during WWII, but it is most applicable here when discussing what united the anti-Soviet bloc to the United States during the Cold War. It was these “Western world” values of free speech, free media, the freedom of assembly, and freedom of association that united our sovereign states against the evils of Communism.

COVID Mania has turned the world’s sovereign states into one tyranny after another. And the authoritarian forces of the world won this second “Cold War” against its citizens without firing a shot. Some appear to be under the impression that the ruling class, which just finished the fastest roll up of power in human history, will simply return these stolen liberties when the “national emergency” comes to an end. I’m not particularly convinced that this is the case.

As John Adams once said, “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

In the United States, our federalist system allows for pockets of freedom in places like Florida, Texas, South Dakota and the like. But dare to protest in the Nation’s Capital today and you’ll quickly find yourself on an FBI watchlist, and almost certainly, with a future date in our nation’s kangaroo court system. We continue to see authoritarian states implementing “vaccine passports” and other discriminatory measures in the name of a virus. Throughout most population centers in the United States, there are still heavy “COVID restrictions” on society and the economy. Our nation is no longer united behind these “Free World” concepts, and they are now only considered virtuous ideas in the aforementioned pockets of freedom in America. In the rest of the country, it has been made crystal-clear that your rights do not supersede a disease with a 99.8% recovery rate.

Now observe the devastation in the rest of the Anglosphere:

The United Kingdom has placed its citizens under indefinite confinement. Their “COVID restrictions” have lasted well over a year, and there is no end in sight.

Canada, which has also been under a strict lockdown for over a year, has mutilated the free press while simultaneously transforming into a Chinese state colony. Under the “leadership” of Justin Trudeau, Canada has essentially outlawed freedom of movement, free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of assembly in the name of a virus.

New Zealand, another nation that is cozying up to Beijing, is committed to a “Zero COVID” self-siege that has blockaded the island nation from the world for over a year. Citizens who test positive for COVID-19 are forcibly sent to quarantine camps. The government has recently considered legislation punishing people for the act of acquiring COVID-19.

States in Australia have implemented some of the most intrusive lockdowns in the world. In Victoria, lockdowns meant citizens were only allowed to leave their homes for one hour a day, and they were not allowed to travel outside of a certain radius from their homes. The act of protesting is illegal, and it will be met by riot police.

As for other NATO members, and other bumper sticker labeled liberal democracies in the “Free World,” actual freedoms remain difficult to identify. Germany, France, and Italy just entered another round of rights restricting lockdowns, and countless more “Free World” nations continue chipping away at personal freedoms.

Making things all the more confusing (and eye opening), people living in countries long considered adversarial, authoritarian nations (like Russia, China, Belarus, etc) are enjoying more freedoms than your average citizen in the West. Belarus never implemented lockdowns. Russians have treated their restrictions in a very lax manner. China has been open for well over a year.

The Western values that some of us hold near and dear to our hearts are not shared by our ruling class. The Free World, as a united force, was indeed very sick for the better part of the 21st century, but it has finally died from COVID-19. The concept only lives on in our imaginations and memories. The COVID era has exposed that these values that supposedly united the West are nothing more than a facade.

However, there are reasons for optimism. There are millions and millions of us who have witnessed the atrocities committed by governments over the course of the past year, and have become “red-pilled” to the threat posed by these authoritarian forces. Like-minded people can and will build a new coalition that stands behind our unalienable rights. Whether that comes in the form of an alliance of nation states or a more independent movement of citizens around the world remains to be seen. The demand for the recognition of basic human freedoms will soon become too obvious to ignore. There are many paths for a new Free World to emerge, but for now, the old Free World as a uniting force for Western values is a relic of history.

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Featured image is from Xavier Donat

US-Iran Talks Undermined by Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) Presence

April 13th, 2021 by Massoud Khodabandeh

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Iran has said talks will still go ahead in Vienna in spite of an attack on its nuclear facility at Natanz on Sunday. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Israel was behind the cyber-attack but stressed Iran would not fall into the trap of halting talks. Indeed, efforts to move beyond the Trump legacy in relation to the JCPOA last week have been constructive. Shuttle (or rather hotel hopping) diplomacy between Iran and America with France, Germany, UK, China, Russia and EU negotiators acting as go between have brought the sides closer to agreement. All sides have been willing to engage. The Americans – the Biden administration – fronting a deeply divided nation successfully navigated the dangerous rocks of the domestic audience. Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs Abbas Araghchi later reported there were signs that the Americans would be willing to lift all the sanctions in one go to return to the JCPOA. Talks resume this week.

It is inevitable though that as the two sides inch toward making workable compromises that will lead to the reinstatement of the JCPOA, enemies of the deal will do their utmost to derail it. As well as Israel, Saudi Arabia and US neocons are poised to oppose. For this reason, at the outset of the talks the Iranians passed their concerns to the Austrian police and security services, warning that the Albanian based Mojahedin-e Khalq terrorist cult would be sure to lob a symbolic stink bomb or two to toxify the atmosphere. Forewarned, Austrian police were able to curtail MEK activity [People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran] except for one lone MEK protestor who managed to shout at Araghchi and his colleague as they emerged from the building to get into their car.

This alone was such a trivial incident that analysts examining the talks in Vienna may be forgiven for missing the significance of this small detail. But there it was, hidden in plain sight, the west’s go to tool for regime change. The MEK, as ever, threatening to hijack the Iran agenda. It is beyond a joke that this rogue group which is infamous for using violence – whether in terrorist attacks in and beyond Iran, against its own members and former members, in the service of Israeli assassinations and false ops – and which threatens mass suicide whenever it feels existentially threatened, should be free to deploy ‘protesters’ to interrupt these high-level talks in Europe.

How come the MEK is still tolerated?

It’s certain that the Biden administration officials did not want the MEK to interfere in these efforts to engage Iran in talks. It’s even likely that that the majority of Republicans would not condone this. The MEK has become synonymous with Donald Trump’s approach to Iran – fabricate and inflate the threat posed by Iran to the Middle East (read Israel and Saudi Arabia), and threaten war and punish the whole country with extreme sanctions. This cannot be and was not the American opening position in Vienna this week.

Even Facebook has tired of them and their ilk. Last week, Facebook blocked 300 MEK-linked accounts; though this is the tip of the iceberg in terms of MEK’s social media presence. After 2017, the MEK took advantage of the Trump administration’s confrontational approach to Iran and built a slave camp in Albania under the auspices of the CIA in which it housed a click farm and troll accounts to unduly influence western opinion on Iran. It was in this camp, remember, that Rudi Giuliani symbolically spat on and tore up a copy of the JCPOA document. However, it is worth noting that the majority of the MEK’s propaganda sites and social media accounts are in English.

Their Farsi presence is negligible. The few Farsi sites they have are only viewed in the hundreds by their own supporters. Among the 80 million population of Iran the MEK are either unknown or hated as a treacherous group that sided with Saddam Hussein to attack their homeland in the 80-88 war. For a group which has spent millions of dollars and uses click farm slaves to convince western policy makers that the group is the vanguard of regime change, they have not shown any evidence that anyone in Iran is behind them – or even aware of them. So, to answer the question, ‘why are the MEK still here in 2021?’ It’s not because they are successful, it’s because no one has chosen to stop them.

As the Vienna talks demonstrate, rolling back the Trump administration’s errors in relation to Iran can be difficult. In some cases, such as the assassination of general Qasem Soleimani, impossible. But direct talks are not the only means to that end. We wrote in January that a quick, effective and pain free policy win for Biden on Iran would be to return to the Obama administration’s plan to dismantle the MEK in Albania. This would achieve several outcomes. It would signal to the Iranian people that America will not pursue a foreign policy based on terrorism and violence against them. It would free the two thousand slave members of the MEK in Albania and allow them to return to their families and civilian life. It would help stem an inflow of some foreign funds into America that is used to skew analysis and policy making on Iran. (The MEK is funded largely by Saudi Arabia and amplifies its anti-Iran propaganda.) It would also, and this is relevant at this moment, rob the Iranian hardliners of their weapon; the MEK is used as the stick to beat the west over ‘terrorist interference’ in the country, as indeed happened in Vienna. If compromise is to be reached, the Iranians should at least not be given grounds by the MEK presence there to complain of American double standards.

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Massoud Khodabandeh is a Director of Middle East Strategy Consultants. Born in Tehran, he gained a MSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering in the U.K. where he became politically active for the Mojahedin-e Khalq before the Iranian Revolution. He rose to the top levels of the MEK and was Massoud Rajavi’s personal assistant and chief of security and member of the NCRI before leaving the MEK in 1996. After 2003 he began working with the authorities in Iraq to bring about a peaceful solution to the impasse at Camp Liberty and help rescue other victims of the Mojahedin-e Khalq cult. Since the MEK transferred to Albania in 2016, his activity has been focused on Albania and the European Union where he has been consulted by committees and political groups and parties. As an acknowledged expert on the MEK, Khodabandeh is a regular writer and contributor on Middle East issues in print, broadcast and documentaries. He co-authored the book ‘The Life of Camp Ashraf – Victims of Many Masters” with his wife Anne Singleton, who was also involved with the MEK as a foreign national.

Sweden Axes Gates’s Mad Global Warming Scheme

April 13th, 2021 by F. William Engdahl

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For more than a decade Bill Gates has funneled millions of dollars into a scientifically mad scheme allegedly to study the possibility of “manmade global cooling.” The project, led by a Harvard physicist, proposes to send satellites into the atmosphere in order to drop tons of chemicals in an attempt to block the sun. Now a strong resistance within Sweden has forced Gates & co. to abandon the planned Swedish satellite launch. This latest adventure in geoengineering by Gates shows what an unscientific enterprise the global warming charade is. As Gates no doubt well knows, in fact the Earth has slowly been cooling as we enter what some astrophysicists estimate could be several decades of global cooling caused by a Grand Solar Minimum cycle we entered in 2020.

On April 2 the Swedish Space Agency, announced that the program, the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), funded by Bill Gates, has “divided the scientific community” and will therefore not be carried out. SCoPEx was a scheme funded for several years by personal funds from Gates to test the feasibility of dimming the sun via manmade geoengineering.

The plan is to drop sulphate aerosolor calcium carbonate dust into the atmosphere from high altitude balloons in a madcap scheme to try blocking the sun and thereby “prevent “ global warming. The Swedish agency decided to cancel the experiment because of a major opposition from not only the scientific and environmentalist community, but also indigenous Swedish Saame or Laplander people who are reindeer herdsmen and feared the particles could cause severe or unknown environmental pollution to their herds. Notably, the Saami Council warned that the Gates experiment “essentially attempts to mimic volcanic eruptions by continuously spewing the sky with sun-dimming particles.”

Since at least 2010 Gates has called for manmade dimming of the sun. He has given a reported $4.6 million to Harvard physicist David Keith to advance the scheme. Keith has been an advisor to Gates since 2005. Along with Chevron, Gates is also a major investor in Keith’s company, Carbon Engineering, a Canada-based Direct Air Capture firm. Direct Air Capture is another mad scheme, a process of capturing carbon dioxide (CO2) directly from the ambient air, using large fans to push ambient air through a filter where it is treated with caustic solvent to extract CO2. It involves staggering amounts of water and energy, and a land area the size of India by some estimates. By conservative estimates carbon capture to reach zero CO2 from fossil fuels would run more than $5 trillion yearly even if it was possible on a mass scale. Keith seems happy to play with such bizarre projects on the tab of billionaire pseudo-scientist Gates.

In a 2010 TED talk, Gates answered a question on solar blocking to try to offset global warming. He stated then,

“Do we have to start taking emergency measures to keep the temperature of the earth stable?… There is a line of research on what’s called geoengineering, which are various techniques that would delay the heating to buy us 20 or 30 years to get our act together.”

Keith said despite the Swedish setback the group will look for support in the Biden Administration to do the tests in the US. The USA National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine recently published a report calling for $100-200 million to be pumped into “solar geo-engineering” over the next five years.

Geo-engineering very real

Until recently the US Government has denied conducting geo-engineering and has labelled any discussion of such projects as “chemtrail” spraying of the skies as “conspiracy theory.” Now they seem to be more open about what have been highly classified geo-engineering projects. In November 2017 the Republican-dominated US House of Representatives held the first hearings on “Geo-engineering: Innovation, Research, and Technology.” The panel discussed the need for further research into solar reflection geo-engineering, known as stratospheric aerosol injection.

One substance being considered for the Gates project and other such sun blocking schemes is what is called coal fly ash, the residue left in a coal power plant after burning coal. However, coal fly ash, which in modern coal plants is captured and disposed safely, if seeded in clouds to dim the sun, could bring a toxic acid rain to Earth.

According to the Physicians for Social Responsibility,

“Depending on where the coal was mined, coal ash typically contains heavy metals including arsenic, lead, mercury, cadmium, chromium and selenium, as well as aluminum, antimony, barium, beryllium, boron, chlorine, cobalt, manganese, molybdenum, nickel, thallium, vanadium, and zinc.”

The group notes that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has found that,“If eaten, drunk or inhaled, these toxicants can cause cancer and nervous system impacts such as cognitive deficits, developmental delays and behavioral problems. They can also cause heart damage, lung disease, respiratory distress, kidney disease, reproductive problems, gastrointestinal illness, birth defects, and impaired bone growth in children.” That is not minor.

Grand Solar Minimum

There is much that can be said against the Gates-Harvard project. The statement by the Saami Council that the Gates-Keith sun-blocking enterprise is an attempt “to mimic volcanic eruptions by continuously spewing the sky with sun-dimming particles,” is the most relevant, and for reasons not being discussed as widely as it should.

What the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) refuses to discuss is the relation between the sun and climate changes on Earth. By far the greatest factor in Earth climate change and weather is the sun and its cycles of solar eruptions and cyclically also lack of same.

The  fundamental point about changes today in climate is that the Earth is in the early stage not of global warming, but of a global cooling period, called by astrophysicists a Grand Solar Minimum. If this is correct, it portends the most dramatic and by far most dangerous climate change imaginable. According to NASA our planet entered what they estimate will be the strongest solar minimum cycle in some 200 years.

What Al Gore and others try to keep hidden is the fact that the Earth is not warming since around 2000, and since summer 2020, has entered what will be a cooling phase lasting some predict until around 2055. Historically periods of Grand Solar Minimum, taking place every 200 years or so, create highly unstable weather patterns, prolonged major floods, massive crop failures and wild swings in temperature (both up and down),as well as jet stream disturbances, which create singular heat waves and wild fires among other extreme events. These effects have also all been registered during periods at least a century before invention of the internal combustion engine.

What no Global Warming computer model is capable of is to incorporate the effects of our sun on Earth’s climate, this despite well-documented scientific evidence that solar cycles are the greatest factor in changing climate over years. In fact they do not even try to.

Solar eruptions known popularly as sunspots rise and decline in 11-and 22-year cycles roughly. On top of these cycles are 100-year and 200-year grand cycles. Since June 2020 we have begun such a Grand Solar Minimum, one in which sunspot activity could likely decline to zero for several decades.

Volcanoes and the Sun

Increasing scientific research is finding  that while the driving mechanism is not entirely clear, periods of solar minimum and, especially of Grand Solar Minima, are also associated with dramatic increase in earthquakes and of volcanic activity.

A group of Japanese scientists led by Toshikazu Ebisuzaki examined the timing of 11 eruptive volcanic events that produced silica-rich magma from four volcanoes in Japan. They found that “Nine of the 11 events occurred during inactive phases of solar magnetic activity (solar minimum), which is well indexed by the group sunspot number. This strong association between eruption timing and the solar minimum is statistically significant to a confidence level of 96.7.” That is a very high correlation.

Some 200 years ago we had the last Grand Solar Minimum period, known to scientists as the Dalton Minimum, in the beginning of the 19th century. In 1816, the cloud cover across the planet was so severe that it was known  as the Year With No Summer.The Dalton Minimum lasted from circa 1790 – 1820. In 1815 a huge volcanic eruption at Mount Tambora in Indonesia, the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded human history, spewed so much volcanic ash into the atmosphere that in 1816 Thomas Jefferson recorded in his weather diary in Virginia the absence of summer sun.  It triggered extreme weather and harvest failures in many areas around the world. Frost and snow in North America during June 1816 destroyed most agriculture crops. Globally it was the worst famine of the 19th Century. The huge volumes of volcanic ash in the atmosphere lasting more than one year from Tambora reflected significant amounts of solar radiation, causing unseasonably cool summers that contributed to food shortages.

The evidence that we are in the early stages of a Grand Solar Minimum similar to that of the 19th Century or worse is compelling. Sumatra’s incredibly active Sinabung Volcano has exploded in spectacular fashion March 2, sending volcanic ash 40,000 feet high into the atmosphere.Particulates ejected to altitudes above 32,800 feet (10 km) –and into the stratosphere– have a direct cooling effect on the planet. Iceland, the Caribbean island of St. Vincent, and other eruptions in recent weeks suggest we may be in for far more dramatic climate shocks than the self-appointed global climate czar Bill Gates admits. Gates, the Davos World Economic Forum and countless grant-hungry climate “scientists” refuse to consider the solar reality, instead pursuing such mad projects as chemical dimming of the sun. The trillions of dollars projected to be spent on inefficient solar and wind energy, indicates their agenda has nothing to do with health of the planet, nor of us. We can be sure those scientists who advise Gates re fully aware of solar cycles.Give them credit on one point, they are masters of deception.

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

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

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook


seeds_2.jpg

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

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

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

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

First published on Global Research on February 7, 2021

In March 2015, Bill Gates showed an image of the coronavirus during a TED Talk and told the audience that it was what the greatest catastrophe of our time would look like. The real threat to life, he said, is ‘not missiles, but microbes.’ When the coronavirus pandemic swept over the earth like a tsunami five years later, he revived the war language, describing the pandemic as ‘a world war’.

‘The coronavirus pandemic pits all of humanity against the virus,’ he said.

In fact, the pandemic is not a war. The pandemic is a consequence of war. A war against life. The mechanical mind connected to the money machine of extraction has created the illusion of humans as separate from nature, and nature as dead, inert raw material to be exploited. But, in fact, we are part of the biome. And we are part of the virome. The biome and the virome are us. When we wage war on the biodiversity of our forests, our farms, and in our guts, we wage war on ourselves.

The health emergency of the coronavirus is inseparable from the health emergency of extinction, the health emergency of biodiversity loss, and the health emergency of the climate crisis. All of these emergencies are rooted in a mechanistic, militaristic, anthropocentric worldview that considers humans separate from—and superior to—other beings. Beings we can own, manipulate, and control. All of these emergencies are rooted in an economic model based on the illusion of limitless growth and limitless greed, which violate planetary boundaries, and destroy the integrity of ecosystems and individual species.

New diseases arise because a globalized, industrialized, inefficient agriculture invades habitats, destroys ecosystems, and manipulates animals, plants, and other organisms with no respect for their integrity or their health. We are linked worldwide through the spread of diseases like the coronavirus because we have invaded the homes of other species, manipulated plants and animals for commercial profits and greed, and cultivated monocultures. As we clear-cut forests, as we turn farms into industrial monocultures that produce toxic, nutritionally empty commodities, as our diets become degraded through industrial processing with synthetic chemicals and genetic engineering, and as we perpetuate the illusion that earth and life are raw materials to be exploited for profits, we are indeed connecting. But instead of connecting on a continuum of health by protecting biodiversity, integrity, and self-organization of all living beings, including humans, we are connected through disease.

According to the International Labour Organization,

‘1.6 billion informal economy workers (representing the most vulnerable in the labour market), out of a worldwide total of two billion and a global workforce of 3.3 billion, have suffered massive damage to their capacity to earn a living. This is due to lockdown measures and/or because they work in the hardest-hit sectors.’

According to the World Food Programme, a quarter of a billion additional people will be pushed to hunger and 300,000 could die every day. These, too, are pandemics that are killing people. Killing cannot be a prescription for saving lives.

Health is about life and living systems. There is no ‘life’ in the paradigm of health that Bill Gates and his ilk are promoting and imposing on the entire world.

Gates has created global alliances to impose top-down analysis and prescriptions for health problems. He gives money to define the problems, and then he uses his influence and money to impose the solutions.

And in the process, he gets richer. His ‘funding’ results in an erasure of democracy and biodiversity, of nature and culture. His ‘philanthropy’ is not just philanthrocapitalism. It is philanthro-imperialism.

The coronavirus pandemic and lockdown have revealed even more clearly how we are being reduced to objects to be controlled, with our bodies and minds as the new colonies to be invaded. Empires create colonies, colonies enclose the commons of the indigenous living communities and turn them into sources of raw material to be extracted for profits. This linear, extractive logic is unable to see the intimate relations that sustain life in the natural world. It is blind to diversity, cycles of renewal, values of giving and sharing, and the power and potential of self-organising and mutuality. It is blind to the waste it creates and to the violence it unleashes. The extended coronavirus lockdown has been a lab experiment for a future without humanity.

On March 26, 2020, at a peak of the coronavirus pandemic and in the midst of the lockdown, Microsoft was granted a patent by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). Patent WO 060606 declares that

‘Human Body Activity associated with a task provided to a user may be used in a mining process of a cryptocurrency system….’

The ‘body activity’ that Microsoft wants to mine includes radiation emitted from the human body, brain activities, body fluid flow, blood flow, organ activity, body movement such as eye movement, facial movement, and muscle movement, as well as any other activities that can be sensed and represented by images, waves, signals, texts, numbers, degrees, or any other information or data.

The patent is an intellectual property claim over our bodies and minds.

In colonialism, colonisers assign themselves the right to take the land and resources of indigenous people, extinguish their cultures and sovereignty, and in extreme cases exterminate them. Patent WO 060606 is a declaration by Microsoft that our bodies and minds are its new colonies.

We are mines of ‘raw material’—the data extracted from our bodies. Rather than sovereign, spiritual, conscious, intelligent beings making decisions and choices with wisdom and ethical values about the impacts of our actions on the natural and social world of which we are a part, and to which we are inextricably related, we are ‘users.’ A ‘user’ is a consumer without choice in the digital empire.

But that’s not the totality of Gates’ vision. In fact, it is even more sinister—to colonise the minds, bodies, and spirits of our children before they even have the opportunity to understand what freedom and sovereignty look and feel like, beginning with the most vulnerable.

In May 2020, Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York announced a partnership with the Gates Foundation to ‘reinvent education.’ Cuomo called Gates a visionary and argued that the pandemic has created ‘a moment in history when we can actually incorporate and advance [Gates’] ideas…all these buildings, all these physical classrooms—why with all the technology you have?’

In fact, Gates has been trying to dismantle the public education system of the United States for two decades. For him students are mines for data. That is why the indicators he promotes are attendance, college enrollment, and scores on a math and reading test, because these can be easily quantified and mined. In reimagining education, children will be monitored through surveillance systems to check if they are attentive while they are forced to take classes remotely, alone at home. The dystopia is one where children never return to schools, do not have a chance to play, do not have friends. It is a world without society, without relationships, without love and friendship.

As I look to the future in a world of Gates and Tech Barons, I see a humanity that is further polarized into large numbers of ‘throw away’ people who have no place in the new Empire. Those who are included in the new Empire will be little more than digital slaves.

Or, we can resist. We can seed another future, deepen our democracies, reclaim our commons, regenerate the earth as living members of a One Earth Family, rich in our diversity and freedom, one in our unity and interconnectedness. It is a healthier future. It is one we must fight for. It is one we must claim.

We stand at a precipice of extinction. Will we allow our humanity as living, conscious, intelligent, autonomous beings to be extinguished by a greed machine that does not know limits and is unable to put a break on its colonisation and destruction? Or will we stop the machine and defend our humanity, freedom, and autonomy to protect life on earth?

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The above is excerpted from Vandana Shiva’s book Oneness vs. the 1%: Shattering Illusions, Seeding Freedom (Chelsea Green Publishing, August 2020) and is reprinted with permission from the publisher.

Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned environmental thinker and activist, a leader in the International Forum on Globalisation, and of the Slow Food Movement. Director of Navdanya and of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and a tireless crusader for farmers’, peasants’, and women’s rights, she is the author and editor of a score of influential books, among them Making Peace with the Earth; Soil Not Oil; Globalisation’s New Wars; Seed Sovereignty, Food Security: Women in the Vanguard; and Who Really Feeds the World?. Her latest book is Oneness vs the 1% (Chelsea Green Publishing, August 2020).

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In official documents released by the U.K. government, models for the planned “third wave” of COVID-19 predicted that any hospitalizations and deaths would be “dominated” by people who had already been vaccinated.

On March 31, the U.K. Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, Operational sub-group (SPI-M-O), released the latest document containing modeling predictions about the effect that the gradual easing of restrictions would have on the spread of infection, and subsequent hospitalizations and deaths. The data are taken from forecasts provided by Warwick University, Imperial College London, and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

A surprising statement was contained in the document, as the various institutions predicted the impact of a “third wave” of the virus upon the country’s health service, and the result on the population.

“The resurgence in both hospitalizations and deaths is dominated by those that have received two doses of the vaccine, comprising around 60 percent and 70 percent of the wave respectively. This can be attributed to the high levels of uptake in the most at-risk age groups, such that immunisation failures account for more serious illness than unvaccinated individuals.”

A subsequent paragraph reaffirmed this admission, noting that in the predicted third wave, “most deaths and admissions in a post-Roadmap resurgence are in people who have received two vaccine doses.”

The document attempted to explain its prediction of how “vaccinated” individuals could account for a substantial majority of predicted hospital admission and deaths, by blaming these statistics on age, and the probability of 10 percent of people being left without protection against infection after the virus: “This is because vaccine uptake has been so high in the oldest age groups (modeled here at 95 percent in the over 50-year-olds). There are therefore 5 percent of over 50-year-olds who have not been vaccinated, and 95 percent x 10 percent = 9.5 percent of over 50-year-olds who are vaccinated but, nevertheless, not protected against death.”

However, despite this, SPI-M-O did not cast any aspersions on the injections themselves: “This is not the result of vaccines being ineffective, merely uptake being so high.”

The reasoning used in this line appears in stark contrast to that used throughout the majority of the last 12 months, when deaths occurring in 28 days after a positive COVID-19 test (which incidentally have been widely decried as completely unreliable), are deemed to be due to the virus, yet SPI-M-O decided not to make any correlation between the injections and the predicted deaths.

Sharing SPI-M-O’s document on Twitter, Joel Smalley of the anti-lockdown research group HART commented:

“In their forecast, the key metrics of hospitalisations and deaths are dominated (60 percent-70 percent) by those who are fully vaccinated. Yeah, no typo. Because vaccine failure in the most at-risk where uptake is high will be more serious than susceptibility of the lower-risk unvaccinated.”

While these paragraphs (32, 55, and 56) seem to suggest that the elderly who have had the injections would account for the majority of hospitalizations and deaths, in paragraph 31, SPI-M-O differentiated between the causation of potential new infections, and those affected by the third wave.

The section in question blamed the “resurgence” on “some people (mostly children) being ineligible for vaccination; others choosing not to receive the vaccine; and others being vaccinated but not perfectly protected (including those who have only received one dose, rather than two).”

Although the worrying statement amount the majority of deaths found among the injected populace comes as part of modeling, SPI-M-O’s statement reflects the growing discussion on the significant amount of adverse effects and deaths after COVID-19 injections.

In a strongly worded letter to the British Medical Journal (BMJ), a London-based consultant warned about the “unprecedented” levels of sickness among health care staff after the injection.

In addition to mentioning the high levels of staff falling sick, Dr. K. Polyakova mentioned how some were developing “neurological symptoms which is having a huge impact on the health service function. Even the young and healthy are off for days, some for weeks, and some requiring medical treatment. Whole teams are being taken out as they went to get vaccinated together.”

“What is to say that there are no longitudinal adverse effects that we may face that may put the entire health sector at risk?” she asked.

Her warning is seemingly being proved increasingly and sadly true, as disproportionately numerous reports of deaths after injections are quietly amassing.

By March 28, there were over 556,609 adverse side effects reported in the U.K. after the injection since the rollout began December 8. A total of 786 people had died after the injections, with some 5,899 cardiac disorders and 116 cardiac arrests also occurring.

An additional 92 people became blind, 55 spontaneous abortions occurred, and 9,998 psychiatric disorders were recorded.

There were 6,740 blood disorders, 608 cases of anaphylactic reactions, with 77 instances of anaphylactic shock, and 2,003 immune system disorders.

Indeed, as data from the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) shows, 2,342 people have died after the injections in the United States by April 1. A total of 56,869 adverse reactions were reported, with 4,872 of them requiring a hospital visit.

Given that only 11,050 deaths after injections have been reported to VAERS since records began in 1990s, this means that since the rollout began December 14, deaths after COVID-19 injections have already accounted for more than 20 percent of the 21-year records.

With figures such as these, the COVID-19 injections are seemingly far more harmful and deadly than the initial polio vaccines launched in 1955. After the administration of the Cutter Polio vaccine, 51 children were paralyzed and five died, prompting the vaccine recall.

Similar prompt action was seen in 1976 in response to Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS) that came following a Swine Flu vaccine.

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention records that the “increased risk was approximately one additional case of GBS for every 100,000 people who got the swine flu vaccine.” Given that more than 40 million people were having the swine flu jab, “federal health officials decided that the possibility of an association of GBS with the vaccine, however small, necessitated stopping immunization until the issue could be explored.”

So far, there have been 90 instances of GBS reported in the U.K. after COVID-19 injections, meaning that there is one reported case of GBS in every 6,185 reactions.

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Over the weekend, Iran marked National Nuclear Technology Day.  The stars of the show were going to be new advanced centrifuges at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant.  Unfortunately, the stars did not shine and President Hassan Rouhani and his officials were left with a reminder of the previous time the centrifuges at Natanz crashed.  In 2010, a joint US-Israeli operation against Iran’s nuclear program is said to have destroyed a fifth of the Iranian centrifuges, using the Stuxnet virus. 

A sequence of events have been viewed cumulatively as suggesting that this was no error of engineering so much as plain sabotage.  Israel was again the central agent of perpetration, a not implausible accusation given its relentless efforts to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions.  The latest came last November, when Iran’s chief nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was slain by a gun operated by artificial intelligence.  At this feat, Brigadier-General Ali Fadavi was almost admiring in description: the gun had “focused only on martyr Fakhrizadeh’s face in a way that his wife, despite being only 25 cm away, was not shot.”

Itamar Eichner of YNet was happy to indulge in questions regarding the latest incident at Natanz.  Was the politically troubled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raising a toast with officials of Mossad, the IDF and Shin Bet ahead of Independence Day auspicious?  And why did US Defence Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III pay a visit to Israel on April 11, the day the attack took place?  Defence analyst Ron Ben-Yishai, also of YNet, suggested that it was “reasonable to assume that the problem … might not have been caused by an accident, but by deliberate sabotage intended to slow the nuclear race accelerated by the negotiations with the US on removing sanctions”.

Israeli and US officials have confirmed that Israel did play a role, though the speculation as to what actually happened at Natanz remains a feast of various courses.  The Times of Israel provided some detail: a bomb had been planted in advance at the nuclear enrichment facility near the main electricity line, more than implying that Iran’s nuclear program has been infiltrated and compromised.  According to Channel 13 news, the device went off on Sunday at 4 in the morning, after which the facility was evacuated.  The bomb crippled the entire facility, leading Channel 13 defence analyst Alon Ben-David to conclude that this was “the worst attack that Iran’s nuclear program has suffered … at the most important Iranian nuclear facility.”

An unnamed Israeli intelligence official told the Kan news that the damage to the site was “extensive” in nature, having affected various types of centrifuges. Others read from the same script in their assessments to Channel 13, citing “severe damage at the heart of Iran’s enrichment program.”  In the New York Times, another intelligence official explained that the remotely detonated device had disabled both primary and backup electrical systems.

Behrouz Kamalvandi, a spokesman for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, preferred to minimise the effect of the blast, claiming on April 12 that the explosion had been “small” and took place “at the electricity distribution centre”.  The damage caused could be “quickly repaired.”

But as with the killing of Fakhrizadeh, some officials could not help but be impressed by the manner of execution, inadvertently confessing to the sheer seriousness of it.  “The enemy’s plot was very beautiful,” came the reflection from Fereydoun Abbasi, head of the Iranian Parliament’s energy committee.  “I’m looking at it from a scientific point of view.  They thought about this and used their experts and planned the explosion so both the central power and the emergency power cable would be damaged.”

Such violent behaviour on Israel’s part is heavily leveraged against the relationship with the US.  While the Biden administration moves in a constipated fashion towards re-establishing a patchy dialogue with Tehran over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) talks, Israel persists in remaining a spoiler. The nagging question was whether Israel was unilaterally roguish in order to purposely disrupt such incipient diplomacy, or whether the White House had given a barely noticeable nod of approval for the operation.  Doing so would make Israel the agent of disposition, thereby weakening Tehran’s future discussions on the nuclear agreement.

The White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, for her part, was not giving much away, showing that transparency remains, at least in certain areas of the Biden administration, aspirational.  “The US was not involved in any manner,” she stated during her April 12 press conference.  “We have nothing to add on speculation about the causes or the impacts.”  As for planned talks to re-establish the nuclear deal, the Press Secretary claimed that discussions would still proceed on Wednesday in Vienna, expected “to be difficult and long.  We have not been given any indication about a change in participation for these discussions.”

Iranian legislators have been none too impressed, insisting that the country’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suspend talks.  Abbas Moghtadaei, deputy chairman of the Parliament’s national security and foreign policy committee, suggested that talks undertaken “under pressure have no meaning.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh did not shy back from calling the attack “a crime against humanity” though it was not a crime with much effect.  “All decommissioned centrifuges are IR1 and will be replaced with new centrifuges.”  Such an act of “nuclear terrorism” triggered Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which permits sovereign states to defend its territory when attacked.

Revenge will come in cold and calculated doses: an assault on Israeli-owned shipping; harrying missile fire from bases in Yemen or Syria; the use of drones on specific Israeli targets.  On this, Ben-David had a bland observation to make.  “Yesterday signifies that the faceoff between Israel and Iran has escalated to a higher level.”  Of even greater concern to Tehran is the obvious point, openly admitted by Moghtadaei, that there have been “very obvious security infiltrations.”  Charges of incompetence and treason have begun to thicken the atmosphere.

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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]

Ramsey Clark, Human Rights Fighter – 1927-2021

April 13th, 2021 by Sara Flounders

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Ramsey Clark was a founder of the International Action Center and inspired the political activists who used its structure to defend liberation struggles, oppose U.S. wars of aggression, defend political prisoners whether in U.S. prison-industrial complex or in the U.S.-backed dictatorships worldwide. IAC militants joined international delegations that defied the blockade of Cuba and sanctions on Iraq, contested the U.S.-NATO war on Yugoslavia or joined the wave of resistance then sweeping Laten America. 

He guided the production of hundreds of books and videos, mass meetings, internet campaigns and demonstrations the IAC organized.

The IAC is collecting tributes and statements about Ramsey Clark’s contribution. 

Please send your memories to: [email protected]

We salute Ramsey Clark, who died April 9, 2021, an outspoken defender of all forms of popular resistance to oppression, a leader always willing to challenge the crimes of U.S. militarism and global arrogance. He remained optimistic that the power of people could determine history. His courageous voice will be missed.

Ramsey Clark will be remembered by people and struggles around the world as a prominent  individual who used his name, reputation and legal skills to defend people’s movements and leaders who the corporate media had thoroughly demonized.

Clark’s early belief in the U.S. role turned, through harsh experience and observation of what he considered U.S. war crimes, to a determination to challenge U.S. policy and defend the victims of U.S. aggressions regardless of personal cost. His actions, leadership and writings showed his political development over the past 60 years, above all, his actions.

Born into a prominent Texas family in 1927, his father Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark, Ramsey was raised to believe in the power of U.S. laws. He came of age at the apex of U.S. power at the end of World War II and experienced the U.S. empire’s long decline and decay. He was appointed assistant attorney general in 1961 during the John F. Kennedy administration and attorney general during the Lyndon Johnson administration in 1967.

The 1960s power of the Civil Rights Movement and Black liberation struggle demanded sweeping change in government. As attorney general Clark enforced desegregation of schools across the South and  supervised the drafting of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Civil Rights Act of 1968. He drafted housing legislation and enforcement of Indigenous Nations Treaty rights.

Unlike nearly every other Cabinet level official, who leveraged their post into a multi-million dollar career after leaving government, Ramsey Clark leveraged his role as former attorney general to act for the impoverished and voiceless.

Vietnam, Iran, Cuba, Venezuela 

In 1972 he traveled to North Vietnam during President Richard Nixon’s bombing campaign. He was in Tehran, Iran in 1979 on days when millions of Iranians braved machine guns of the Savak Police and overturned the brutal U.S. backed shah and his whole regime. He visited Cuba numerous times to challenge the U.S. blockade and express deep admiration for the dramatic changes the Cuban Revolution made possible.

Along with demonstrations of tens of thousands against U.S. wars in 1991 and 2003, Ramsey Clark headed significant mass meetings in Solidarity with Cuba at Javits Convention Center in 1992 and with Bolivarian Venezuela at Town Hall in 2005,

Clark stood by the 1979 Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and the struggle for liberation of El Salvador in the 1980s against a U.S. backed dictatorship. He traveled to Panama after the December 1989 U.S. invasion to document the enormous toll in life.

While many embraced the collapse of the Soviet Union as ending the Cold War and ushering in an era of peace and prosperity, Clark held the view that this would lead to endless wars of U.S. expansion and an effort to recolonize many countries.

Opposed U.S. war on Iraq

At great personal risk Ramsey Clark traveled to Iraq during the height of the 1991 U.S. bombing. Extending personal courage to political and legal skill, he wrote a 19-point indictment of the Bush administration for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity that resonated around the world.

The indictment became the basis of a Commission of Inquiry that held mass popular hearings in 19 countries and 26 U.S. Cities. Ramsey attended every mass hearing. The final tribunal was held in New York City in February 1992 before thousands of people and international delegates. The events drew strong media coverage around the world, and total censorship in the corporate U.S. media.

During the years of the deadliest sanctions on Iraq that caused the death of a half-million Iraqi children within four years, Ramsey brought international delegations each year to challenge and expose the impact of the sanctions.

These fact-finding and human rights delegations almost always included videographers, journalists and photographers to document the impact on defenseless civilian populations. He encouraged others to also organize solidarity delepations.

Following the 2003 U.S.-British invasion and occupation of Iraq and under even more dangerous conditions, Clark traveled to Iraq numerous times. He provided legal defense for Saddam Hussein, Iraq’s captured president, who the U.S. and its Iraqi lackeys put on a show trial.

Though the outcome was inevitable, Clark was determined to expose that the real crime was the U.S. destruction of Iraq and was unapologetic for his defense of Saddam Hussein. Three of his Iraqi defense lawyers were assassinated for their role defending him. Saddam Hussein was executed on Dec. 30, 2006.

Sudan, Yugoslavia

In 1998 the U.S. bombed a small pharmaceutical plant producing the only anti-malaria drugs in Sudan claiming it was a secret VX Nerve gas facility. Ramsey immediately organized doctors, pharmacists and videographers to expose this crime against the civilian population.

In the biggest and most dangerous aggression in European borders since 1945, the U.S., determined to expand the NATO military alliance into the Balkans and Eastern Europe, launched the 1999 war to dismember and destroy Yugoslavia, during the Bill Clinton administration. Ramsey Clark was in Yugoslavia twice during the 78 days of relentless U.S. bombing, expressing solidarity with people under attack documenting that the Pentagon consciously targeted civilians.

Clark gave priority to visiting bombed schools, hospitals, market places, water purification plants, grain silos and pharmaceutical plants, as he did in other countries the U.S. bombed. Following the war, he drew up a public indictment of Clinton and other leaders of NATO countries and inspired a mass People’s Tribunal on U.S. war crimes in Yugoslavia, whose final hearing was in June 2000.

Clark dared to meet with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Yugoslavia during the U.S. bombing and later at the Hague after the kidnapped president faced an international kangaroo court the U.S. established to try Yugoslav leaders. Ramsey’s view was that the wrong leaders were being charged. According to his indictment for the 2000 tribunal, Clinton should have been in the dock, along with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the corresponding leaders of Germany, Britain, France and other NATO powers.

U.S. political prisoners 

While much of Ramsey Clark’s work focused on defense of nations under attack by the U.S., he also defended dozens if not hundreds of political prisoners of the empire, in and outside the United States. These included Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier; Imam Jamil Al-Amin (aka H. Rap Brown), who is held in a Super Max prison. He and Lynne Stewart were willing to defend Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman. (For her role, Stewart was charged and imprisoned).

He supported independence for Puerto Rico and freedom for its many political prisoners. He traveled to Peru to defend U.S. citizen Lori Berenson, held by Peru’s dictatorship and to the Philippines. He defended Jose Maria Sison against “terrorism” charges. Clark publicly supported Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani woman tortured in Afghanistan and serving 86-year sentence in U.S. Federal prison as well as Mumia Abu-Jamal Pennsylvania State Prison.

He traveled to Nepal when a revolutionary upheaval brought in a new government and to DPRK North Korea to protest against U.S. war games and nuclear threats.

Solidarity with Palestine

When Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was targeted by U.S. and Israeli forces, Clark met with him in Lebanon, and later traveled to Gaza under total Israeli shutdown and met with Hamas leadership.

Clark’s long years of support of the Palestinian struggle for liberation meant Zionist forces always denounced him.

Clark denounced every aspect of the “U.S. War on Terror” as a War Against Islam with endless military operations, sanctions, drone strikes, regime change operations, assassinations, secret detentions and a series of bases throughout Africa to Central Asia and the Gulf States.

In 2011, NATO imperialists took advantage of an opening provided by the Arab Spring and the mass upsurge that overthrew the dictatorships in Tunisia and Egypt, to open a 220-day bombing of Libya and murder Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. This destroyed the country with the highest standard of living in Africa.

U.S. imperialism then turned its full efforts into pulling down the government of Syria. Ramsey traveled to Syria several times in an effort to again focus attention on the impact of U.S. subversion on civilians. Traveling at personal risk, Clark exposed what U.S. sanctions, the arming of tens of thousands of mercenaries and then bombing vital infrastructure was doing to whole countries.

Even as decades rolled by Ramsey maintained an intense schedule of listening to and involving activists in challenging projects, along with speaking, traveling and consulting with peoples under attack.

 

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Sara Flounders is Co-Director of the International Action Center where this article was originally published. 

Featured image: Ramsey Clark was renowned for being a strong advocate in defense of people at disadvantage against the U.S. establishment at home and abroad. | Photo: Twitter/@NehandaRadio

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Concerns over adverse reactions, blood clots, reports of breakthrough COVID cases in vaccinated people, vaccine contamination and scrutiny over CEO pay have plagued the roll-out of the company’s COVID vaccine.

It’s been a bumpy ride for Johnson & Johnson’s (J&J) COVID vaccine rollout.

At the beginning of the month, the vaccine maker had to throw out 15 million doses of its vaccine after they were contaminated with AstraZeneca vaccine ingredients at an unapproved manufacturing plant. The setback contributed to last week’s announcement that the company won’t be able to deliver on its promise of 24 million additional doses of its one-shot vaccine by the end of April.

Those weren’t the only negative headlines. Last week, J&J vaccine sites in four states had to shut down after reports of adverse reactions. There also were multiple reports of COVID breakthrough cases in people who received the vaccine, marketed under its subsidiary, Janssen.

J&J is on notice regarding investigations by European and U.S. regulators for reports of blood clots in individuals who received the vaccine.

And today, the company faced more backlash from investors after its CEO was awarded a 17% pay raise while billions are being paid out for the company’s role in the nation’s opioid epidemic.

Here’s a breakdown of the five reasons J&J is having a very bad month:

1. Vaccination sites shut down in four states after more than 45 people suffer adverse reactions.

A vaccination site in Colorado, three sites in North Carolina, one in Georgia and one in Iowa shut down last week after more than 45 people suffered adverse reactions to the J&J shot.

As The Defender reported April 8, more than 600 people with appointments were turned away from a J&J mass vaccination site in Colorado after several vaccine recipients suffered adverse reactions.

Centura Health, which helped run the community vaccination center at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park, said in a statement that 11 patients who received the vaccine experienced reactions. Two people were transferred to the hospital after medical staff determined they required additional observation. Centura officials did not specify what reactions were observed or their severity.

Health officials in Wake County, North Carolina, paused COVID vaccinations on Thursday after 18 people at the PNC Arena experienced adverse reactions and four were transferred to area hospitals. A few hours later, UNC Health’s Friday Center and Hillsborough Campus vaccination sites also stopped administering J&J’s vaccine.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) analyzed the vaccine lot used at the PNC Arena and UNC sites and recommended J&J vaccinations continue.

Georgia was the third state to temporarily pause vaccinations after the Georgia Department of Public Health said eight people suffered adverse reactions at the Cumming Fairground site Wednesday. The CDC said it analyzed the vaccine lots and found no concerns.

The Pottawattamie County Health Department in Iowa paused operations April 7 after three of 35 people who received J&J’s COVID vaccine experienced adverse reactions. The site consulted with the CDC and determined the shot was safe.

Operations resumed on Thursday but the county now requires people to stay for 30 minutes instead of 15 minutes after their appointment to be monitored, KCCI News reported.

2. Reports of COVID in people fully vaccinated with J&J’s vaccine continue to mount.

A New Jersey man is in the hospital fighting for his life after being fully vaccinated against COVID, reported ABC7 NY. A woman reported she and her husband got J&J’s vaccine on March 6, but tested positive for COVID on April 1. The husband is hospitalized in critical condition and is also being treated for pneumonia.

According to the CDC, J&J’s vaccine was 66.3% effective in clinical trials, with people having the most protection two weeks after receiving the shot. Clinical trial data also indicated the vaccine was highly effective at preventing hospitalization in those who did get sick, according to the company.

Chief Health and Science Officer for the American Medical Association, Dr. Mira Irons, said on March 26 J&J’s COVID vaccine has “100% efficacy against hospitalization and death from the virus.”

Irons noted that White House Chief Medical Adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci, among other top experts said “it’s really important to focus on the severe end of the spectrum, preventing hospitalization and death.”

A Brooklyn woman, Ashley Allen, managed to avoid catching COVID during 2020, but was diagnosed with the disease three weeks after being vaccinated with J&J’s vaccine. Even after getting the one-shot vaccine, Allen said she continued to take precautions against the virus — masking up and washing her hands frequently.

“I definitely was very confused by it,” Allen said Monday, thinking perhaps it was a false positive.

As The Defender reported March 31, an increasing number of “breakthrough cases” of COVID in fully vaccinated people (including people vaccinated with Pfizer, Moderna and J&J vaccines) have been reported in Washington, Florida, South Carolina, Texas, New York, California and Minnesota. The cases included some people who required hospitalization, including at least three who died.

3. U.S. and European regulators are reviewing cases of blood clots in people who received J&J’s vaccine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is investigating rare blood clots in people who received the J&J vaccine, Fierce Pharma reported today.

The news came after Europe’s drug regulator said Friday it is reviewing reports of blood clots in people who received J&J’s COVID vaccine, Reuters reported.

The European Medicines Agency (EMA) said three serious cases of clotting and low platelets occurred in the U.S. during the rollout of J&J’s vaccine, and one person died from a clotting disorder reported during a clinical trial.

On April 7, the EMA confirmed a “possible link” between AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine and blood clots. Like AstraZeneca, J&J uses a modified adenovirus vector as opposed to the mRNA technology used in the Moderna and Pfizer’s COVID vaccines.

J&J said it was aware of the reports of rare blood clots in individuals given its COVID vaccine and was working with regulators to assess the data and provide relevant information. The company also noted there was no causal relationship between these “rare events and the Janssen COVID-19 vaccine,” in a statement to Reuters.

4. J&J vaccine output dropped by 85% after 15 million doses were contaminated with AstraZeneca ingredients.

ABC News reported the U.S. will experience an 85% drop in availability of J&J’s COVID vaccine, and is unlikely to see a steady output from the vaccine maker until the company resolves production issues at a facility in Baltimore, Maryland, according to federal officials and data.

As The Defender reported April 1, 15 million doses of J&J’s COVID vaccine failed quality controlafter workers at a plant 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 — were contaminated with AstraZeneca ingredients.

The mix-up forced regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines and prompted an investigation by the FDA.

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.

Records obtained through the Freedom of Information Act by the Associated Press showed 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 The Washington Post, the Biden administration put J&J in control of manufacturing at the Emergent BioSolutions after the incident. Jeff Zients, the White House coronavirus coordinator, told reporters on Friday J&J is still working to address issues with Emergent Biosolutions, but expects the plant to be certified by the FDA.

5. Critics take shots at J&J over CEO’s $30 million pay package while the company pays out billions for its role in the opioid epidemic.

Proxy adviser Glass Lewis recommended investors reject the nearly $30 million pay package for J&J Chief Executive Officer Alex Gorsky, arguing the healthcare company is shielding its top executives from the legal cost of poor business decisions, Reuters reported.

J&J is attracting investor scrutiny because it excluded from its calculation of stock awards to its top executives costs related to lawsuits, including $4 billion tied to J&J’s role in the nation’s opioid epidemic and damages related to asbestos in its talc baby powder that caused cancer.

Gorsky’s compensation, which totaled $29.6 million in 2020, was up 17% from the previous year –– 365 times the company’s median annual employee pay of $81,000, according to International Shareholder Services (ISS) estimates.

Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) joined rival advisory firm Lewis in recommending that J&J investors vote to reject Gorsky’s compensation deal. ISS said J&J’s corporate governance was poor, giving it a 7 rating on a scale of 1-10, where 10 is the worst. On compensation, ISS gave J&J a rating of 9, reported CBS News.

“In our opinion, the adjustments related to well-documented legal actions essentially shield executives’ compensation from the detrimental impact of their decisions for the company,” Lewis said.

Gorsky became CEO in 2012, and was at the helm of J&J during the opioid crisis which according to the CDC, claimed nearly 450,000 lives in the U.S. between 1999 and 2018. In 2019, 50,000 people died in the U.S. from opioid related overdoses, according to the National Institutes of Health.

“I think [Gorsky’s] pay was excessive,” said Rosanna Landis Weaver, who analyzes executive compensation at As You Sow, a nonprofit that promotes shareholder advocacy on inequality, the environment and other issues.

“You have to treat one-off events whether they are positive or negative in the same way,” she said. “He’s going to want credit for the extraordinarily good things that happen, like developing a COVID-19 vaccine, but that means he should also get a penalty for the extraordinarily bad things that happen as well.”

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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.

Forecasting Biden’s Policy in Southeast Asia

April 13th, 2021 by Benjamin Zawacki

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“Symbolic Naval War” Is Emerging Between Israel and Iran

April 13th, 2021 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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In the Middle East, tensions between Israel and Iran are escalating, but at the same time changing their focus. Recently, both countries have faced each other more frequently at sea, carrying out dangerous maneuvers and reporting the occurrence of several attacks against vessels on both sides, with emphasis on the Israeli attacks, which become more powerful day after day. Apparently, what was previously a conflict focused on aerial bombing and intelligence and espionage operations is becoming a naval war, marked by constant displays of force.

Last Tuesday, April 6, an Iranian ship was attacked in the Red Sea with an Israeli mine in an unusual operation, totally atypical by the standards of the Iran-Israel conflict. The ship hit in the operation was called “Saviz”, a commercial civilian vessel that did not pose any danger to maritime security in the region and was not spared from Israeli reprisals, whose levels of aggressiveness rise quickly.

The purpose of these operations is to implement a policy that Tel Aviv has been adopting in recent times with regard to its relations with Iran: to show strength whenever possible and to warn the enemy country that at any moment Israel can hit it. At sea, where violence has increased recently, this tends to generate more violence precisely against vessels with no offensive potential, such as commercial ships, as the objective is no longer to neutralize the enemy country, but to intimidate it in all ways.

For years, the Israeli Navy’s stance on Iran has been to maintain a systematic interception of all vessels transporting military material in support of Tehran-friendly organizations abroad, such as Hezbollah and other Shi’ite militias. However, the stance has become a little different since 2017, when Israel decided to adopt the policy called “war between wars”, a military tactic where low-intensity operations are carried out more frequently, the purpose of which is to issue constant warnings to enemy countries – which, it is hoped, will also respond with high frequency and low intensity operations, generating a “mild” and “symbolic” conflict. That is why the targets of the Israeli Navy are currently multiple, as the Tel Aviv plan is no longer to obtain effective military results, but to show Tehran how its vessels are not safe at any time.

Although this type of policy generates great international discomfort, with constant news of destroyed vessels, it is possible that, in practice, tensions will turn into a “symbolic naval war”, where the displays of force are constant, but do not rise to the level of a real conflict. This type of confrontation could at the same time neutralize the threats of war between the two countries and raise tensions, creating a constant uncertainty about the near future.

However, it should be noted that the intensity of the attacks can have serious economic implications. From the moment that Israel encircles Iran by sea, destroying all its commercial vessels, Tehran is more and more threatened. By targeting Iranian maritime trade, Israel is damaging the economic and social stability of Iran and all countries that negotiate with Tehran and this will certainly be responded in an equivalent manner. Therefore, although many experts currently believe in the merely symbolic effect of a naval confrontation, the situation could worsen and the violence could escalate at any time if the structure of Iranian maritime trade is really damaged, creating internal economic problems.

Iran’s future stance in the face of Israeli provocations will depend, above all, on the outcome of the country’s elections, which will take place in June. Until then, it is very unlikely that there will be an increase in violence or an open confrontation, as Tehran will be focused on resolving its internal issues and perhaps the certainty that it will not have responses with an equivalent strength is why Israel has been tightening its operations recently.

But that will certainly change. Having consolidated the new government, nothing will prevent Teheran from seeking retaliation for its vessels and this is something that is already in the forecasts of Israeli strategists, who may advise their military to decrease the frequency of attacks. With that, little is likely to change in practical effects, but until the elections take place in Tehran, Israel will progressively surround Iran by sea.

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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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Blinken’s Winking and Nodding to the Neocons

April 13th, 2021 by Wayne Madsen

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Like proverbial bad pennies, the neocon imperialists who plagued the Barack Obama administration have turned up in force in Joe Biden’s State Department. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has given more than winks and nods to the dastardly duo of Victoria Nuland, slated to become Blinken’s Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the number three position at the State Department, and Samantha Power, nominated to become the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).

Nuland and Power both have problematic spouses who do not fail to offer their imperialistic opinions regardless of the appearance of conflicts-of-interest. Nuland’s husband is the claptrappy neocon warmonger Robert Kagan, someone who has never failed to urge to prod the United States into wars that only benefit Israel. Power’s husband is the totally creepy Cass Sunstein, who served as Obama’s White House “information czar” and advocated government infiltration of non-governmental organizations and news media outlets to wage psychological warfare campaigns.

True to form, Blinken’s State Department has already come to the aid of Venezuela’s right-wing self-appointed “opposition leader” Juan Guaido, whose actual constituency is found in the wealthy gated communities of Venezuelan and Cuban expatriates in south Florida and not in the barrios of Caracas or Maracaibo.

Blinken and his team of old school yanqui imperialists have also criticized the constitutional and judicially-warranted detention of former interim president Jeanine Áñez, who became president in 2019 after the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) government of President Evo Morales was overthrown in a Central Intelligence Agency-inspired and -directed military coup. The far-right forces backing Áñez were roundly defeated in the October 2020 election that swept MAS and Morales’s chosen presidential candidate, Luis Arce, back into power. It seems that for Blinken and his ilk, a decisive victory in an election only applies to Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, not to Arce and MAS in Bolivia.

It should be recalled that while Blinken was national security adviser to then-Vice President Biden in the Obama administration, every sort of deception and trickery was used by the CIA to depose Morales in Bolivia and President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. In fact, the Obama administration, with Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State, claimed its first Latin American political victim when a CIA coup was launched against progressive President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras. Today, Honduras is ruled by a right-wing kleptocratic narco-president, Juan Orlando Hernández, whose brother, Tony Hernández, is currently serving life in federal prison in the United States for drug trafficking. For the likes of Blinken, Power, Nuland, and former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice, who currently serves as “domestic policy adviser” to Biden, suppression of progressive governments and support for right-wing dictators and autocrats have always been the preferred foreign policy, particularly for the Western Hemisphere.

For example, while the Biden administration remains quiet on right-wing regimes in Central America that are responsible for the outflow of thousands of beleaguered Mayan Indians to the southern U.S. border with Mexico, it has announced that Trump era sanctions on 24 Nicaraguan government officials, including President Daniel Ortega’s wife and Nicaragua’s vice president, Rosario Murillo, as well as three of their sons – Laureano, Rafael, and Juan Carlos – will continue.

Biden’s Western Hemisphere foreign policy is not much different from that of Obama’s. Biden and Brazilian far-right, Adolf Hitler-loving, and Covid pandemic-denying President Jair Bolsonaro are said to have struck a deal on environmental protection of the Amazon Basin ahead of an April 22 global climate change virtual summit called by the White House. A coalition of 198 Brazilian NGOs, representing environmental, indigenous rights, and other groups, has appealed to Biden not to engage in any rain forest protection agreement with the untrustworthy Bolsonaro. The Brazilian president has repeatedly advocated the wholesale deforestation of the Amazon region. Meanwhile, while Biden urges Americans to maintain Covid public health measures, Bolsonaro continues to downplay the virus threat as Brazil’s overall death count approaches that of the United States.

Blinken’s State Department has been relatively quiet on the Northern Triangle of Central America fascist troika of Presidents Orlando of Honduras, Alejandro Giammattei of Guatemala, and Nayib Bukele of El Salvador. Instead of pressuring these fascistas to democratize and stop their genocidal policies toward the indigenous peoples of their nations, Biden told Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador that he would pump $4 billion into supposed “assistance” to those countries to stop the flow of migrants. Biden is repeating the same old American gambits of the past. Any U.S. assistance to kleptocratic countries like those of the Northern Triangle has and will line the pockets of their corrupt leaders. Flush with U.S. aid cash, Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador will be sure to grant contracts to greedy Israeli counter-insurgency contractors always at the ready to commit more human rights abuses against the workers, students, and indigenous peoples of Central America.

Biden is also in no hurry to reverse the freeze imposed by Donald Trump on U.S.-Cuban relations. Biden, whose policy toward Cuba represents a fossilized relic of the Cold War, intends to maintain Trump’s freeze on U.S. commercial, trade, and tourism relations with Cuba. Biden’s Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, a Jewish Cuban-American expatriate, is expected to reach out to right-wing Cuban-Americans in south Florida in order to ensure Democratic Party inroads in the 2022 and 2024 U.S. elections. Therefore, even restoring the status quo ante established by Barack Obama is off-the-table for Biden, Blinken, and Mayorkas. The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the Cuban-American and ethically-challenged Democrat Bob Menendez, has stated there will be no normalization of pre-Trump relations with Cuba until his “regime change” whims are satisfied. Regurgitating typical right-wing Cuban-American drivel, Mayorkas has proclaimed after he was announced as the new Homeland Security Secretary, “I have been nominated to be the DHS Secretary and oversee the protection of all Americans and those who flee persecution in search of a better life for themselves and their loved ones.” The last part of that statement was directed toward the solidly Republican bloc of moneyed Cuban, Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, and Bolivian interests in south Florida.

While Blinken hurls his neocon invectives at Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Cuba, he remains silent on the repeated foot-dragging by embattled and highly unpopular right-wing Chilean President Sebastian Pinera on implementing a new Constitution to replace that put into place in 1973 by the fascist military dictator General Augusto Pinochet. The current Chilean Constitution is courtesy of Richard Nixon’s foreign policy “Svengali,” the duplicitous Henry Kissinger, an individual who obviously shares Blinken’s taste for “realpolitik” adventurism on a global scale.

While Blinken has weighed in on the domestic politics of Bolivia, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, he has had no comment on the anti-constitutional moves by Colombian far-right authoritarian President Ivan Duque, the front man for that nation’s Medellin narcotics cartel. It would also come as no surprise if Blinken, Nuland, and Power have quietly buttressed the candidacy of right-wing banker, Guillermo Lasso, who is running against the progressive socialist candidate Andrés Arauz, the protegé of former president Rafael Correa. Blinken can be expected to question the results of the April 11 if Lasso cries fraud in the event of an Arauz victory. Conversely, Blinken will remain silent if Lasso wins and Arauz cries foul. That has always been the nature of U.S. Western Hemisphere policy, regardless of what party controls the White House.

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Wayne Madsen is an investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. He is a member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club.

Featured image: Then-Deputy Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before a Senate appropriations subcommittee on April 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. PAUL MORIGI/WIREIMAGE

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We met before sunrise, just Richy, the cameraman, myself and Sousath, my Lao contact. We’d only packed the most essential gear to film, loaded everything in the car and set off. Our destination: the former CIA air base of Long Cheng. Between 1962 and 1975, Long Cheng became one of the busiest airports in the world and had a population of more than 50.000 people. It was the heart of the Secret War, waged by the US against communist forces in Laos. Yet Long Cheng was never marked on any map.

Today, Long Cheng lies inside the Xaisomboun Special Zone, a restricted military area which is off-limits to outsiders.

It wasn’t until 2003 that it emerged that small scale fighting between remnants of a former CIA secret army of Hmong hill tribe fighters and the Laotian military had continued around Long Cheng since US withdrawal from southeast Asia in 1975.

TIME Asia first reported the disastrous fate of the CIA’s forgotten army holed up in the Lao jungles for over 30 years. Philip Blenkinsop, the first photojournalist to meet the rebels, won a World Press Photo Award for his images, yet the US media failed to pick up the story and it was largely ignored elsewhere.

Instead of opening Long Cheng in order to explain what was triggering current events, the Laotians kept access to the zone restricted.

It seemed neither the US nor Laos wanted to be reminded of the war, as its last scenes played out virtually unnoticed. The war, which had been secret in its inception, seemed destined to remain largely just so.

In April 2008 the National Security Archives published further details of how the American Special Forces began training Laotian tribesmen in unconventional warfare as early as 1959. The US Air Force even considered using nuclear bombs during the first Laos crisis in 1960. In 1965 an inner circle at the US State Department vetoed a plan to use Air America planes in an active combat role for fear that pilots “would confirm to the Communists the company’s paramilitary nature”.

By making a film about Long Cheng, once the biggest secret site of the CIA, I wanted to shed some light on a dark chapter of America’s involvement in Indochina.

On my journey through the United States, Thailand and Laos I met many former CIA agents, US pilots, aid workers, Hmong fighters, journalists and historians who told me of their time in Laos in the 60s and early 70s.

Without exception they shared the view that the war in Laos is a forgotten war.

But this is not the only tragedy, this small landlocked southeast Asian country had to suffer in its recent past.

Laos was the victim of the biggest air war in history, making it the most bombed country on the planet per capita, with 2,1 million tons of bombs– more than the entire payload dropped on Germany, Japan and the Pacific theatre combined during WWII.

What’s more, most of the bombs were dropped in secret. During the war, even the name of the country in which it took place was classified and referred to as ‘the other theatre’.

For five years, Congress and the American people knew nothing of their government’s executive branch doings.

When it was finally revealed in 1971, that two consecutive presidents, the State Department, the CIA and parts of the US Air Force had been waging a massive air war in a country next to Vietnam, a country which most Americans had never heard of, the news was overshadowed by Nixon’s illegal bombing of Cambodia and US death tolls in South Vietnam. The war wasn’t secret anymore, but “officially unacknowledged”.

At that time large parts of Laos had already been destroyed, yet it took another 4 years for the war to stop. Subsequently, following the communist victory in 1975, the country disappeared from the world map. Isolated from the outside world for almost 20 years, few stories had emerged from behind the Laotian bamboo curtain until 2003.

It was the big day, the day I had been waiting for three years. Just before we left, we snapped a picture of ourselves.

‘I hope it won’t be the last one’, I caught myself thinking.

You never knew. Even with the right contacts things could go wrong.

The last film team that had tried to enter the Xaisomboun Zone were caught up in a shoot-out between Hmong resistance fighters and the Lao authorities and were sentenced to 15 years in Lao prison.

Not a nice thought. Luckily, their embassies and Reporters without Borders put pressure on the Lao authorities and they were freed after two weeks.

But even a fortnight in a Lao prison was nothing to look forward to, and I had to take any footage we were about to shoot back out safely, otherwise there would be no film.

Nobody spoke for the first half hour of the trip. Even Sousath, usually a talkative man, was subdued. He had told me the night before, that he couldn’t be hundred per cent sure that we’d make it to Long Cheng.

Ever since Long Cheng was built, the air base has been off-limits to the outside world. “For a period in history it was the most secret place on earth”, Chris Robbins writes in his account of the Secret War, The Ravens.

Long Cheng was the physical heart of the largest covert operation the CIA had ever conducted. In its heyday, the remote valley served as the main air hub for clandestine supply and bombing missions against the communist Pathet Lao and North Vietnamese Army which the CIA ran with a proxy army of 30,000 Hmong guerrillas commanded by a young Hmong general, Vang Pao.

Image on the right: Bomb craters in northern Laos (Source: Legacies of War)

What’s more, Long Cheng became a major distribution centre of the international opium and heroin traffic.

“Hmm. Maybe difficult to go there,” Sousath had said when I’d first met him in 2002 to ask for his help.

“You have to wait for the right time.”

Finally, after many attempts to make contact with the right person at the right desk in the Laotian administration, the time had come and we were on the road.

Today, the scars of war are visible everywhere in northern and eastern Laos. Huge bomb craters dot the landscape; houses are built from war scrap. People continue to be killed and maimed by UXO. Many decades after the war ended, its leftovers still take their toll.

“What had started as a low-key air supported guerrilla war turned into something completely different,” claims Fred Branfman.

In 1969 Branfman was an aid worker for USAID in Laos when he heard about the secret US bombing campaign from refugees who had come to the Laotian capital from the Plain of Jars in northern Laos.

Shocked that an entire air campaign could be kept secret from the world for five years Branfman interviewed over 2,000 refugees from the Plain of Jars and the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

His collection of eyewitness accounts was later published as Voices from the Plain of Jars and is a collection of essays and drawings that tell about unimaginable atrocities.

In order to verify the refugees’ accounts, Branfman visited the war room of the US airbase in Nakhon Phanom, Thailand. Here he spoke to the bombing officer in charge, who admitted that the Air Force didn’t always check for civilians before they gave permission to bomb.

Collecting evidence, Branfman recorded pilot radio frequencies with conversations that backed up his claims and journalist Sydney Shanberg published Branfman’s account in The New York Times

Yet, the bombing continued.

Branfman is still angry, when he talks about events that happened over 40 years ago: “The stories I was hearing from the refugees, reminded me of an aerial hunting safari, only that we slaughtered herds of people instead of animals! In many ways the secret war in Laos is the progenitor of warfare in the 21st century. Think about it, an automated air war of a high-tech battlefield in the sky above one of the least developed nations on earth. The executive branch of the US taking war making into its own hands, excluding Congress and the press and the American people, outsourcing the war effort so as not to be accountable for their actions.“

Image below: Fences made of clusterbomb casings (Source: Legacies of War)

During the film shoot I spoke to many Laotians who expressed with calm voices what they had seen.

“The bombs fell like the monsoon, we could only farm at night” remembers a farmer from Phonsavan.

“The first time I saw a plane I thought it was a god, and then it spew fire and I was very scared. There was even fire in the river and all the fish were dead.”

One grandmother, involuntarily mimicking a weapons buff, tells me of T-28 training bombers, supersonic F-4 Phantom jets, cluster bombs, napalm, 500 pound bombs, 750 pound bombs, and the ultimate horror, B52 arclight strikes. “You cannot hear the bombers, but suddenly the whole world around you explodes. At first we didn’t even know who was doing this to us, where they were coming from, and why they wanted to kill us.”

In the first years of John F Kennedy’s presidency, few people saw Vietnam as the source of any major international crisis. Instead, it was Laos that seemed the mostly likely scene of superpower conflict and regional unrest. In 1954, after the Indochina war had ended and the French had left, Laos was declared neutral in Geneva. However, the left wing forces of the Pathet Lao, who had withdrawn to two northern provinces under the Geneva Agreement, were still armed and regarded a potential threat to US security.

At the heart of Kennedy’s doctrine lay the US mission to fight for freedom and keep a perceived global onslaught by the communist bloc at bay. In order to be able to gain political leverage on the global stage, intelligence was spiced up and distorted by the US executive branch. Kennedy devoted an entire press conference on Laos during which he presented a fake map which omitted CIA allied Hmong forces in the hills around Long Cheng and alleged an illegal takeover of northeast Laos by North Vietnamese troops.

In 1962 Laos was declared neutral once more and both the US and the Soviet Union withdrew all military advisors. From then on, stories in the US media about Laos’ military struggles were supplemented by reports about the human aid program the US was conducting in Laos and the war unfolded in secret.

As early as 1960, the CIA had started secretly supplying and training a guerrilla army of ethnic Hmong in the hills around the Plain of Jars, confirms Hmong General Vang Pao.

“Bill Lair and a Thai general came to see me and asked me what I needed to fight the communists. I told them 5000 guns and food and radios. We didn’t even talk about money then! We hated the communists, we embraced democracy.”

Until June 4, 2007 Vang Pao, who was evacuated from Long Cheng in 1975 and later emigrated to the US, preached the Hmong dream of a return to a Laos free of communism to thousands of his expatriate fellow fighters.

Then Federal agents arrested the former general and eight other Hmong in California, along with a former US Army Ranger who had once been involved in covert operations in Vietnam, and charged them with plotting terrorist attacks.

Allegedly the group had conspired to smuggle hundreds of AK-47s, C-4 plastic explosives and Stinger missiles to Vang Pao’s Hmong insurgents into Laos in order to overthrow the Laotian government. In a spectacular assault, the carnage of which would have rivaled 9/11, their operation manuals claimed, government buildings in the Laotian capital were to be bombed.

Up to this point, the US media have presented Hmong general Vang Pao as a decorated war hero, who had helped America during the Vietnam War.

Earlier last year, the school board of Madison named an elementary school after the Hmong General, only to reverse their decision after the arrest.

Five years ago when a park in Madison, Wisconsin was to be named after Vang Pao, a University Professor objected publicly: Alfred McCoy, whose book, The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade is considered a landmark study, in part on the Secret War in Laos. Vang Pao happens to be a major character in McCoy’s book, which suggests that the Hmong leader had once played a central role in the international heroin trade, trafficking opium and heroin from laboratories in Long Cheng to South Vietnam. Towards the end of the war one third of the entire US army in South Vietnam had become addicted to heroin.

In Laos, while researching the narcotics trail, McCoy witnessed how Vang Pao recruited children for his secret army by starving their villages or threatening to bomb them, if parents would not provide their boys.

“Vang Pao had the power to do so, because he controlled all the air power out of Long Cheng,” says McCoy.

Air America – at the time the biggest commercial airline in the world – was officially running the aid mission in Laos and was secretly owned by the CIA – a fact unknown at the time. Working closely with Vang Pao, Air America provided the rice and weapons drops for the Hmong villages across Laos and flew soldiers of the CIA’s secret army into battle. CIA agents under USAID and Air America cover oversaw and coordinated the fighting. Towards the end of the war, when most Hmong men of fighting age had been killed, 30,000 Thai mercenaries were flown into Laos by the CIA.

Because of his strong ties to the agency, however, Vang Pao never faced any threat of arrest for his ties to the drug trade, McCoy writes. Perhaps the former general’s legendary impunity explains why he might have gotten involved in a harebrained scheme to overthrow the Communist regime in Laos, an effort that US federal agents posing as gun dealers immediately infiltrated. Had the scheme gone forward, it would have stood virtually no chance of succeeding. During an interview with Vang Pao several months before his arrest, I told him of my plan to go to Long Cheng. A brief smile crosses his hardened face. “I’d like to go back there myself, but I can’t, nobody can go, there is still fighting there. The Lao government won’t let any outsider see it.”

When we reach Xaisomboun, the capital of the former military zone, soldiers with AK 47s patrol the market square, surrounded by dilapidated wooden shacks. The ground is muddy.

“Just like Texas some time ago.” Sousath remarks half-seriously. Trucks of soldiers come and go, buses leave for surrounding villages, and it feels as if we have reached a frontier of some sorts.

In Xaisomboun, electricity is readily available, but in the hinterland there is only rural Laos. As it gets dark, we meet the regional army commander for drinks. He confirms that there are still renegade Hmong hiding in the surrounding hills and claims that the Lao army does not shoot at them.

“Why should we kill our own people? I am Hmong myself.”

We both know that the refugees in the camps behind the Thai border tell a different story.

The governor of the Xaisomboun Zone joins us. A small soft-spoken lowland Lao in his mid-fifties, he happily chats away in a low voice and offers to guide us into Long Cheng with an armed escort, just to make sure.

At the crack of dawn we’re on the road. The sky is gunmetal grey and we are speeding along a bumpy dirt road. Long Cheng lies 80 km further into the jungle.

I was surprised how candidly some former CIA agents spoke to me about the political and covert moves of the US government in the 50s and 60s in order to bring Lao politics under American control. Such moves included the rigging of elections and supporting coup d’états by secretly providing weapons to competing army generals. Even competing schemes of the CIA and State Department about who should be Prime Minister in Laos were layed out before me. In no time, the formerly neutralist Laotian Prime Minister was leaning so far to the US side, that Laotian neutrality had become a farce.

Declassified memos show that in 1964 President Lyndon Johnson demanded jets of the US Air Force to fly lower on their “aerial reconnaissance flights” over Laos in order to provoke ground fire.

“What has become clear and was admitted publicly by US embassy officials in Laos later on, is that the aerial reconnaissance flights were just a military euphemism for bombing runs in search of targets of opportunity” says Fred Branfman.

“There was a gradual build up and the real heavy bombardments started after President Johnson had declared a bombing halt over North Vietnam in November 1968 and diverted the planes into Laos because, to quote Monteagle Sterns, a U.S. Embassy official, ‘we couldn’t just let the planes sit there.’”

The ugly truth is, that during the war the US used Laos as a testing ground for their new weapons arsenal: All kinds of cluster bombs, millions of galloons of defoliants, laser guided missiles to hit people hiding in caves, helicopter gun ships with electronic mini-guns that fired 5,000 rounds a minute, equipped with people sniffers, which detected mammal urine on the ground and shoot at everything that moves in the night – buffaloes, refugees and soldiers alike. The aerial bombardment carried on for five years around the clock, until Congress learned about its own government’s activities. It took two more years for Congress to realise that over 100,000 refugees from northern Laos were the result of secret US bombings and it took another two years until 1973, when the large scale bombing was stopped. By then, 700,000 people had become refugees and hundreds of thousands had been killed and wounded – out of a population of 3 million. For Laos, this meant total catastrophe.

When we get to Long Cheng, it’s plain to see that the CIA’s golden age has passed. Once a high-tech oasis in the jungle with allegedly more antennas than trees, the village is now derelict. A few Lao troops are stationed here in what looks like another village in the middle of nowhere. The CIA buildings lie in ruins and a few cows feed off overgrown parts of the runway. Vang Pao’s house is sealed off.

We drive to the end of the runway. From here the landing strip looks like an aircraft carrier rammed right into the mountain. It’s a sight that I have come across many times studying old photos in US archives. In my mind, the runway has become an icon of the covert war. Dark clouds hang low over the karst formations.

As I look back over the tarmac across the valley of Long Cheng Alfred McCoy’s words echo in my mind:” If the United States is guilty of war crimes, not just mad minutes of soldiers in Vietnam breaking down under stress, but systemic war crimes of policy by commanders, that war crime was the bombing of northern Laos. We destroyed a whole civilization; we wiped it off the map. We incinerated, atomised human remains in this air war and what happened in the end? We lost!” 

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All images in this article are from Legacies of War

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CHD Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Dr. Joseph Mercola discuss how the narrative perpetuated by Big Pharma and Big Tech — that “vaccines are the only way to restore normalcy” — is leading to the destruction of our Constitutional rights.

In the latest episode of “TRUTH” with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Kennedy interviews Dr. Joseph Mercola on the fear-driven COVID-19 narrative, ongoing efforts to resist government restrictions and the loss of freedom seen around the world.

Highlights from their wide-ranging discussion include:

  • Notes about the soon-to-be-released book “The Truth About COVID-19,” by Mercola and Ronnie Cummins. Kennedy, who wrote the forward to the book, says the pandemic is being used to shift wealth upwards, abolish civil rights and destroy democracy. The official release of the book is April 29.
  • The massive effort from the get-go to sell the idea that the only possible way to control COVID was through masks and lockdowns.
  • How the public was largely conditioned to believe the world needed to wait on a vaccine for any meaningful intervention against COVID.
  • How government officials and the media suppressed information about potential treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.
  • How personal data collected by Google over the past nearly two decades is being used to manipulate public behavior.
  • How Google searches steer people away from anything that goes against Pharma’s narrative including natural health, chiropractors and nutrition.

Click here to watch the interview.

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Global Taxes – Global Stagnation

April 13th, 2021 by Rep. Ron Paul

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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has proposed that governments around the world require payment of at least a uniform “global minimum corporate tax.” A motivation for Yellen’s push for a global minimum corporate tax is fear that the Biden administration’s proposed increase in the US corporate tax will cause some American corporations to flee the US for countries with lower corporate taxes.

President Biden wants to increase corporate taxes to help pay for his so-called infrastructure plan. The plan actually spends more on “progressive” priorities, including a down payment on the Green New Deal, than on infrastructure.

Much of the spending will benefit state-favored businesses. For example, the plan provides money to promote manufacturing and electric vehicles. So, the idea is to raise taxes on all corporations and then use some of the received tax payments to subsidize government-favored businesses and industries.

The only way to know the highest valued use of resources is by seeing what goods and services consumers voluntary choose to spend their money on. A system where the allocation of resources is based on the preferences of politicians and bureaucrats — who use force to get their way — will be less efficient than a system where consumers control the allocation of resources.

Thus, the greater role government plays in the economy the less prosperous the people will be — with the possible exception of the governing class and those who make their living currying favor with the rulers.

Yellen’s global corporate tax proposal will no doubt be supported by governments of many European Union (EU) countries, as well as the globalist bureaucrats at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). For years, these governments and their power-hungry OECD allies have sought to create a global tax cartel.

The goal of those supporting global minimum taxes enforced by a global tax agency is to prevent countries from lowering their taxes. Lowering corporate and other taxes is one way countries are able to attract new businesses and grow their economies. For example, after Ireland lowered its corporate taxes, it moved from being one of the poorest countries in the EU to having one of the EU’s strongest economies. Also, American workers and investors benefited from the 2017 tax reform’s reduction of corporate taxes from 35 percent to 21 percent.

Yellen and her pro-global tax counterparts deride tax competition between countries as a “race to the bottom.” In fact, tax competition is a race to the top for the countries whose economies benefit from new investments, and for the workers and consumers who benefit from new job opportunities and new products. In contrast, a global minimum corporate tax will raise prices and lower wages, while incentivizing politicians to further increase the minimum.

A global minimum corporate tax will also set a precedent for imposition of other global minimum taxes on individuals. This scheme may even advance the old Keynesian dream of a global currency. The Biden administration is already taking steps toward a global currency by asking the International Monetary Fund to issue more special drawing rights (SDRs).

Global tax and fiat currency systems will only benefit the world’s political and financial elites. In contrast, regular people across the world benefit from limited government, free markets, sound money, and reduced or eliminated taxes.

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