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Read part I here:

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

By Richard Sanders, March 31, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coup in Brazil, 1964

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Source: coat.ncf.ca]

Invasion in the Dominican Republic, 1965

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Supporting U.S. Nuclear War Policies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Imperialist Pro-NATO Propaganda

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

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

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

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

[Source: coldwarteamprojectfall2014]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vive le Ukraine Libre

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

[2] Ibid.

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

[4] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[16] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

[23] Ibid.

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

[25] Ibid., p. 70.

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

[27] Ibid.

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

[29] Ibid.

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

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

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

[33] Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Search for Knowledge as a Whole

Watch the video here.

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

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

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

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

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

The Tree Hugging Movement Is Born

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

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

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

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

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

1982: The Water Wars

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

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

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

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

The Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology

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

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

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

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

The Violence of the Green Revolution

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putting Patents on Life

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

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

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

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

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

Navdanya: The Right to Save Seeds

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

*

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Excerpts:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Read the full press release here.

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

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

Total reactions for the COVID-19 mRNA Pfizer- BioNTech vaccine: 283 deaths and 116,627 injuries

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

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

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

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

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

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

The UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency concludes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Microfibre concern

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

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

Textiles preferable to nonwovens?

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

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

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

Potential litigation risks?

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

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

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

Big brands

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Box 1

How does mass testing of students work?

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

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

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

Read the full article on the BMJ.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

An Analysis of the Call for an International Pandemic Treaty

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

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

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

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

Fourthly, notice how the writers appeal to humanity’s commonality (“nobody’s safe until everyone is safe”) which echoes another idea that has been used as nauseam by officials during this scamdemic (“we are all in this together”). The idea is based on pretending they care about the common welfare of society and humanity while systematically exploiting the average person’s compassion to gain power. It also blatantly ignores the obvious truth that each person, being bestowed with an immune system, is responsible for their own health. As an aside, since those exposing the COVID scamdemic are being labeled as COVID deniers, I wonder if all those pushing the COVID cult could justly be labeled immune system deniers?

Fifthly, such a treaty, if it ever became a reality, would pave the way for even more shared surveillance so that there is literally nowhere you can go in the world without some authority knowing everything about you: “… greatly enhancing international cooperation to improve, for example, alert systems, data-sharing …”

Sixthly, the idea of such a treaty is also to make vaccines mandatory worldwide and reduce or eliminate vaccine hesitancy: “research, and local, regional and global production and distribution of medical and public health counter measures, such as vaccines, medicines, diagnostics and personal protective equipment.”

In the sentence “The main goal of this treaty would be to foster an all-of-government and all-of-society approach, strengthening national, regional and global capacities and resilience to future pandemics” the underlying idea is to make sure everyone is forcibly included in the governmental remedy. It’s “all-of-society” which means mandatory rules for everyone (except the rulemakers who can break the rules with contempt). You don’t want to wear a mask, take a vaccine or stay under house arrest? Tough! We are all in this together, so do what you’re told, you filthy peon.

Lastly, the letter finishes by appealing to “solidarity, fairness, transparency, inclusiveness and equity”which just goes to show that the politically correct woke mentality is everywhere and that you must submit to the religion of inclusivity, even if you don’t want to be included.

Final Thoughts

We need to be hyper-aware of such attempts to make order out of chaos and to exploit people’s fear and ignorance to centralize power. This idea of an international pandemic treaty is yet another steppping stone on the way to a NWO One World Government. We would do well to remain vigilant in the face of any further calls for consolidation of decision-making, regardless of whether they are draped in peace, protection, prosperity, sustainability, solidarity, fairness, transparency, inclusiveness or equity – or whatever other sparkly and glittery garb the NWO manipuators use to disguise their nefarious agenda.

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Makia Freeman is the editor of alternative media / independent news site The Freedom Articles, author of the book Cancer: The Lies, the Truth and the Solutions and senior researcher at ToolsForFreedom.com. Makia is on Steemit and LBRY.

Sources

https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/op-ed—covid-19-shows-why-united-action-is-needed-for-more-robust-international-health-architecture

https://thefreedomarticles.com/covid-cult-and-the-10-stages-of-genocide/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/operation-coronavirus-next-phases-resurgence-prediction-bioterror-attack/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/political-correctness-language-thought-control/

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At this hour, more Russian military forces are massed near Ukraine’s borders than we have ever seen before.  Western military leaders say that they are concerned that the troop movements that we have witnessed in recent days may be leading up to an invasion, and if an invasion does happen it will greatly test the resolve of the Biden administration, EU leaders and NATO brass.  In particular, the hawks in the Biden administration would almost certainly not be willing to just sit back and let the Russians conquer all of Ukraine.  There would likely be a major response by the United States, and that could set off a chain reaction that could ultimately spark World War 3.

So what made the Russians suddenly move a massive invasion force toward Ukraine?

Well, it turns out that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky essentially signed a declaration of war against Russia on March 24th.  The document that he signed is known as Decree No. 117/2021, and you won’t read anything about it in the corporate media.

I really had to dig to find Decree No. 117/2021, but eventually I found it.  I took several of the paragraphs at the beginning of the document and I ran them through Google translate…

In accordance with Article 107 of the Constitution of Ukraine, I decree:

1. To put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine of March 11, 2021 “On the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol” (attached).

2. To approve the Strategy of deoccupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (attached).

3. Control over the implementation of the decision of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, enacted by this Decree, shall be vested in the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

4. This Decree shall enter into force on the day of its publication.

President of Ukraine V.ZELENSKY

March 24, 2021

Basically, this decree makes it the official policy of the government of Ukraine to retake Crimea from Russia.

Of course the Russians will never hand over Crimea willingly because they consider it to be Russian territory, and so Ukraine would have to take it by force.

This is essentially a declaration of war against Russia, and Zelensky would have never signed such a document without the approval of the Biden administration.

Following the signing of Decree No. 117/2021, we started to see Russian forces pour into Crimea and into separatist-held areas of eastern Ukraine at a staggering rate.

For example, you can watch a column of Russian tanks being transported by rail right here.

Крым, 30 марта pic.twitter.com/yaMoN7leio

— IgorGirkin (@GirkinGirkin) March 30, 2021

And you can see a massive column of Russian forces on the Crimea bridge right here.

Russian military equipment on the Crimean Bridge. 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzers, various trucks, BMP-3 IFVs.

29.03.21 pic.twitter.com/c4W2aNqp5M

— Status-6 (@Archer83Able) March 31, 2021

In addition, it is being reported that the 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade is on the move, and that is not a good sign at all.

For those who don’t know, this isn’t the brigade you want to see on the move.

The 56th Guards Air Assault Brigade is an airborne brigade of the Russian Airborne Troops. The brigade was first formed in 1979 and fought in the Soviet–Afghan War, the 1st & 2nd Chechen War. https://t.co/lAthOpiIvw

— ASB News / MILITARY〽️ (@ASBMilitary) March 31, 2021

The Russians are taking Zelensky’s declaration of war very seriously, but the corporate media in the western world is blaming “Russian aggression” for the increase in tensions in the region.

But the truth is that the Russians never would have made any of these moves if warmongers in the Biden administration had not given Zelensky the green light to sign Decree No. 117/2021.

And what most people in the western world don’t know is that fighting has already begun in Ukraine.  The ceasefire that was agreed to in July 2020 has been violated hundreds of times over the past week…

The OSCE’s civilian Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine has reported hundreds of cease-fire violations in recent days. On March 26, four Ukrainian soldiers were killed and two others injured in the eastern part of the country.

The Ukrainian military said its soldiers were hit by a mortar attack it blamed on Russian troops. Russia denies having a military presence in eastern Ukraine, where it backs separatist forces.

At this point, the ceasefire of July 2020 is completely dead.

In response to the renewed fighting, U.S. European Command “has raised its alert status to the highest level”…

U.S. European Command has raised its alert status to the highest level after fighting resumed between Russian-backed separatists and Ukrainian soldiers in the Donetsk Region of eastern Ukraine, marking the end of a June 2020 ceasefire, and Russian forces began building up military equipment along the border.

And we just learned that the chairman of the joint chiefs actually had a telephone call with his counterpart in Russia on Wednesday to address the escalating situation…

In a statement on Facebook on Wednesday, the Russian Ministry of Defense said that at the initiative of the U.S., chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, had a telephone conversation with his counterpart. “Issues of mutual interest were discussed,” the statement said.

In the days ahead, the corporate media in the western world is going to continue talking about “Russian aggression”, and the Russians are going to continue to blame Zelensky and the Biden administration for the rise of tensions in the region.

Ultimately, we could spend countless hours debating who is in the right and who is in the wrong.

But what really matters is keeping this from escalating into a global conflict.  Because if someone does something really stupid and the Russians feel a need to send their invasion force into Ukraine, there will be no going back ever.

I have been warning about a future conflict between the United States and Russia for a very long time, and we have never been closer than we are right now.

With Trump in the White House, relations with Russia were relatively stable, but now Joe Biden is in charge.

Biden is a hothead that is showing signs of advanced cognitive decline, and he is surrounded by a team of warmongers that are determined to put Russian President Vladimir Putin in his place.

The inmates are running the asylum, and it won’t take much of a mistake at all for things to go horribly, horribly wrong.

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When you ask somebody why they are choosing to take the covid vaccine or why they are wearing a mask, they may respond, “because science.” The next question to ask is, how many of these people have actually gone through the science of vaccines and whether or not masks may be an effective tool for limiting the spread of COVID?

From what I see, the majority of people receive their information from mainstream media organizations, which are organizations that have strong ties to pharmaceutical corporations and governments, and are known for presenting one perspective that favours a particular agenda while completely ridiculing the other. They sometimes go as far as labelling another perspective as a “conspiracy theory” despite the fact that there is ample, credible evidence to support the claims of that perspective. Do people simply believe things because they feel that everybody else believes it too? What are the social and cultural implications of not being in alignment with the majority?

Due to reliance on a single media source, many people are not shown information and perspectives that tell a different or more complete story, especially when it comes to “controversial” topics. Often times, these topics are avoided using ridicule in place of addressing points brought up from other perspectives. We’ve seen a lot of this with COVID, an unprecedented amount of censorship of science has taken place with regards to all things COVID, and many academics have been speaking up about it for quite some time.

A quote I often like to use to demonstrate this, and one I’ve used many times before, comes from Dr. Kamran Abbasi, a recent executive editor of the prestigious British Medical Journal, editor of the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, and a consultant editor for PLOS Medicine. He is editor of the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine and JRSM Open. He recently published a piece in the BMJ, titled “Covid-19: politicization, “corruption,” and suppression of science.”

Science is being suppressed for political and financial gain. Covid-19 has unleashed state corruption on a grand scale, and it is harmful to public health. Politicians and industry are responsible for this opportunistic embezzlement. So too are scientists and health experts. The pandemic has revealed how the medical-political complex can be manipulated in an emergency—a time when it is even more important to safeguard science.

I also recently wrote an article about Vinay Prasad MD MPH, an associate professor at the University of California San Francisco. He is one of many experts in the field during this pandemic who has been criticizing Facebook fact-checkers for their missteps in claiming content is false when it is not.

One of the best examples of suppression is “anti-lockdown” rhetoric. Multiple dozens of studies have shown and concluded that lockdowns do not reduce COVID infection, will kill more people than COVID due to lack of access to health care, starvation and more, and cause a wide range of other health and economical issues. Regardless, the experts who have been publishing and sharing this information have been heavily censored. And culturally, we’re pretending that there’s no science to oppose lockdowns.

I recently wrote an article by Dr. Sunetra Gupta, an Oxford professor who is regarded by many as the world’s pre-eminent infectious disease epidemiologist. She is one of many who explains that lockdowns have done nothing to protect people from COVID, and that they have caused a great deal of harm.

Why is it that such an alarming amount of respected experts who oppose the measures being taken to combat COVID, are being ridiculed, ignored, and unacknowledged, yet a political doctor, somebody like Anthony Fauci, can get all of the air time he pleases? Why aren’t all perspectives, science and data shared equally? Why have effective “alternative” treatments been ignored and the vaccine made out to be the only option?

Below are the top four reasons why COVID vaccine hesitancy is at an all time high among people of all backgrounds.

1. A Lack of Trust In Government & Pharmaceutical Companies.

First I’d like to draw your attention to a quote taken from a paper published in the International Journal for Crime, Justice and Social Democracy by professor Paddy Rawlinson, from Western Sydney University.

Critical criminology repeatedly has drawn attention to the state-corporate nexus as a site of corruption and other forms of criminality, a scenario exacerbated by the intensification of neoliberalism in areas such as health. The state-pharmaceutical relationship, which increasingly influences health policy, is no exception. That is especially so when pharmaceutical products such as vaccines, a burgeoning sector of the industry, are mandated in direct violation of the principle of informed consent. Such policies have provoked suspicion and dissent as critics question the integrity of the state-pharma alliance and its impact on vaccine safety. However, rather than encouraging open debate, draconian modes of governance have been implemented to repress and silence any form of criticism, thereby protecting the activities of the state and pharmaceutical industry from independent scrutiny. The article examines this relationship in the context of recent legislation in Australia to intensify its mandatory regime around vaccines. It argues that attempts to undermine freedom of speech, and to systematically excoriate those who criticise or dissent from mandatory vaccine programs, function as a corrupting process and, by extension, serve to provoke the notion that corruption does indeed exist within the state-pharma alliance.

There are many examples that illustrate why so many people simply cannot trust these institutions when it comes to anything, let alone health. Another one comes from comes from a paper published in 2010 by Robert G. Evans, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Vancouver School of Economics, UBC.  The paper, titled “Tough on Crime? Pfizer and the CIHR”  is accessible through the National Library of Medicine (PubMed), and it outlines how Pfizer has been a “habitual offender” constantly engaging in illegal and criminal activities. This particular paper points out that from 2002 to 2010, Pfizer has been “assessed $3 billion in criminal convictions, civil penalties and jury awards” and has set records for both criminal fines and total penalties. Keep in mind we are now in 2021, that number is likely much higher.

A fairly recent article published in the New England Journal of Medicine focuses on outlining why those injured by the COVID-19 vaccine won’t be eligible for compensation from the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) because COVID is still an “emergency.” It also brings up the topic of vaccine hesitancy.

It mentions that among African Americans, many are hesitant to get their COVID vaccine because of events like the Tuskegee syphilis study. The study used African Americans to see how syphilis progressed. The people with syphilis were told they were receiving free treatment, but they were really receiving nothing. This also happened after the discovery of a cure, the people were still not given the cure or any other known treatment. They were lied to.

It wasn’t until a whistleblower, Peter Buxtun, leaked information about the study to the New York Times and the paper published it on the front page on November 16^th, 1972, that the Tuskegee study finally ended. By this time only 74 of the test subjects were still alive. 128 patients had died of syphilis or its complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had acquired congenital syphilis.

The study in the NEJM points out:

In a Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted in August and September 2020, it was found that 49%of Black respondents would probably not or definitely not take a Covid-19 vaccine, as compared with 33% of White respondents. Similarly, a Pew Research Center poll from November found that although 71% of Black respondents knew someone who had been hospitalized or died from Covid-19, only 42% intended to get a Covid-19 vaccine when it became available. These findings indicate a need to provide strong safety nets and supports to encourage Covid-19 vaccine adoption in vulnerable communities, including adequate injury compensation.

One study estimates up to 31 percent of  surveyed Americans may not take the vaccine. That’s a lot of people if you extrapolate it out to the entire population. And it’s hard to really know how many people won’t. CNN has made it seem as if Donald Trump supporters will not be taking the shot, if this is the case that could be more than 50 percent of Americans, or at least all those who voted for Trump, which is a big number.

There are countless examples, it’s not just within the black community. Multiple polls in Canada and the United States have shown that what seem to be quite a large minority will not be getting the vaccine. This also includes medical professionals. For example 50 percent of healthcare workers and hospital staff in Riverside County are refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Keep in mind that Riverside County, California has a population of approximately 2.4 million. A survey conducted at Chicago’s Loretto Hospital shows that 40 percent of healthcare workers will not take the COVID-19 vaccine once it’s available to them.

Vaccine hesitancy among physicians and academics is nothing new. To illustrate this I often point to a conference held at the end of 2019 put on by the World Health Organization (WHO). At the conference, Dr. Heidi Larson a Professor of Anthropology and the Risk and Decision Scientist Director at the Vaccine Confidence Project Emphasized this point, having  stated,

The other thing that’s a trend, and an issue, is not just confidence in providers but confidence of health care providers. We have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. That’s a huge problem, because to this day any study I’ve seen…still, the most trusted person on any study I’ve seen globally is the health care provider.

2. The Virus Has A 99.95 Survival Rate.

Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD, from the Stanford University School of Medicine recently shared that the survival rate for people under 70 years of age is about 99.95 percent. He also said that COVID is less dangerous than the flu for children.  This comes based on approximately 50 studies that have been published, and information showing that more children in the U.S. have died from the flu than COVID. This correlates with data from Sweden as well.

Jonas F Ludvigsson a paediatrician at Örebro University Hospital and professor of clinical epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute has published research showing that out of nearly 2 million school children, zero died from covid despite no lockdowns, school closings or mask mandates during the first wave of the pandemic.

There is a perception out there that COVID is no more dangerous that other severe respiratory illnesses, which are the second leading cause of death worldwide, and that covid is similar to already existing coronaviruses that have circled the global for decades affecting hundreds of millions of people a year and killing tens of millions.

Another issue raised by many, which is a matter of public record now, is the fact that it’s very unclear as to how many deaths marked as COVID are, and were, actually a result of COVID.

These are reasons why people view the vaccine as unnecessary. In some cases, people feel that the risk of vaccine injury is greater than the risk of dying from COVID, which may actually be quite true. This is a completely separate debate, but here is data from the (US) Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS):

This system (VAERS) has been known to only capture about 1 percent of vaccine injuries. A 2010 HHS pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) in the United States found that 1 in every 39 vaccines causes injury, a shocking comparison to the claims from the CDC of 1 in every million. For example, From 1990 to 2007 there were about 80,000 US cases of Kawasaki disease; during the same period just 56 US cases were reported to VAERS–0.07%. (Hua et al, Pediatr Inf Dis J 2009: 28:943-947) The cause of KD is unknown; it is rare, it is very serious, and it is prevalent among young and frequently vaccinated children. If any event deserves prompt reporting to VAERS it is Kawasaki disease, but this does not happen.

Keep in mind that approximately 100 million people in the U.S. have had at least one shot.

On top of this you have reports of deaths all over social media. There seem to be hundreds of examples but at the end of the day, there is not a proper system in place to properly track adverse reactions and deaths. The mainstream is not at all interested in that conversation either.

3. Some People Don’t Know How Safe And Effective The Vaccine Is

Dr. Peter Doshi, an associate editor at the British Medical Journal published a piece in the journal issuing a word of caution about the supposed “95% Effective” COVID vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. It outlines multiple reasons why the effectiveness claimed by the pharmaceutical companies is called into question.

You can also read a piece that dives deeper into this question that we recently published, here.

The vaccine is being heavily marketed as a saviour, which is the case with almost all vaccines despite many concerns being raised over the years. One great example is with regards to aluminum containing vaccines. Scientists have discovered that injected aluminum is very different from ingested aluminum. Injected aluminum doesn’t exit the body, and can be detected within the brain years after injection. Is this “anti-vax”? No, it’s just science, these are legitimate concerns.

When it comes to the COVID vaccine, there are concerns, especially since the mRNA technology used in many of the vaccines is new.

A few other papers have raised concerns, for example. A study published in October of 2020 in the International Journal of Clinical Practice states:

COVID-19 vaccines designed to elicit neutralising antibodies may sensitise vaccine recipients to more severe disease than if they were not vaccinated. Vaccines for SARS, MERS and RSV have never been approved, and the data generated in the development and testing of these vaccines suggest a serious mechanistic concern: that vaccines designed empirically using the traditional approach (consisting of the unmodified or minimally modified coronavirus viral spike to elicit neutralising antibodies), be they composed of protein, viral vector, DNA or RNA and irrespective of delivery method, may worsen COVID-19 disease via antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE). This risk is sufficiently obscured in clinical trial protocols and consent forms for ongoing COVID-19 vaccine trials that adequate patient comprehension of this risk is unlikely to occur, obviating truly informed consent by subjects in these trials.

In a new research article published in Microbiology & Infectious Diseases, veteran immunologist J. Bart Classen expresses similar concerns and writes that “RNA-based COVID vaccines have the potential to cause more disease than the epidemic of COVID-19.”

For decades, Classen has published papers exploring how vaccination can give rise to chronic conditions such as Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes — not right away, but three or four years down the road. In this latest paper, Classen warns that the RNA-based vaccine technology could create “new potential mechanisms” of vaccine adverse events that may take years to come to light.

A few years ago, a team of Scandinavian scientists conducted a study and found that African children inoculated with the DTP (diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis) vaccine, during the early 1980s had a 5-10 times greater mortality than their unvaccinated peers.

They state:

It should be of concern that the effect of routine vaccinations on all-cause mortality was not tested in randomized trials. All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis.Though a vaccine protects children against the target disease it may simultaneously increase susceptibility to unrelated infections.

I’m placing this study here to show that some vaccines may have unknown long term health consequences, even if they do offer some protection to the targeted disease.

4. There May Be Protection From Infection

As with most viruses, the host gains immunity from infection. Take the measles virus. A child has a 0.01 chance of dying from the measles, yet if they survive the virus, they have lifetime protection against the virus, a strengthened and more evolved immune system, and may even have more possible protection from a select few cancers.

Furthermore, it’s very questionable whether the MMR vaccine is effective. There is a long history of measles outbreaks in highly vaccinated populations. Children are required to get one shot, then the antibodies run out so they are required to get a second. A third one seems to be in the works. It’s not even clear if the vaccine is more dangerous than the measles or not.

Martin Kulldorff, a medical professor at Harvard university and vaccine safety expert recently tweeted,

After having protecting themselves while working class were exposed to the virus, the vaccinated #Zoomers now want #VaccinePassports where immunity from prior infection does not count, despite stronger evidence for protection. One more assault on working people. 

He also recently tweeted:

Trust in #vaccines is declining, but don’t blame the tiny group of anti-vaxxers. It is those pushing #VaccinePassports, arguing that all must be vaccinated, and those censoring vaccine discussions that are undermining trust in vaccines.

There are multiple studies hinting at the point the professor makes, that those who have been infected with covid may have immunity for years, and possibly even decades. For example, according to a new study authored by respected scientists at leading labs, individuals who recovered from the coronavirus developed “robust” levels of B cells and T cells (necessary for fighting off the virus) and “these cells may persist in the body for a very, very long time.” This is just one of many examples. There are studies that suggest infection to prior coronaviruses, which prior to COVID-19 circled the globe infecting hundreds of millions of people every single year, can also provide protection from COVID-19.

The Takeaway

At the end of the day, there are ample concerns about the COVID vaccine, its effectiveness, the safety of it in the short term and in the long term. Despite these concerns, the vaccine is heavily marketed as unquestionably safe and effective. A fifth category could have been added to this article, and that’s the ridicule and acknowledgments of other, cheap effective treatments that have shown to have a tremendous amount of success. It seems these treatments would have rendered the vaccine useless and unnecessary, but the vaccine is a multiple billion dollar product.

We have to consider these things in this day and age. Would the “powers that be” really prevent and ridicule treatments that could have saved many lives, and can save many lives and render it useless and dangerous, despite so much evidence that says otherwise, to make the vaccine perceived as the only solution.

Do we really want to live in a world where we give a small group of people the ability to mandate vaccines in order to have access to certain freedoms we enjoyed prior to COVID? Is this right? Is this ethical? If we allow them to do this, what else will we allow them to do in the future?

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Fifteen million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J’s) vaccine failed quality control after workers at a Baltimore manufacturing plant negligently combined ingredients from AstraZeneca and J&J’s COVID vaccine.

The mix-up forced regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines and prompted an investigation by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

According to The New York Times, the plant is run by Emergent BioSolutions, a manufacturing partner with J&J and AstraZeneca, whose vaccine has yet to be authorized for use in the U.S.

Emergent has been cited repeatedly by the FDA for problems such as poorly trained employees, cracked vials and mold around one of its facilities, according to records obtained by the Associated Press through the Freedom of Information Act.

AstraZeneca and J&J’s COVID vaccines employ the same technology which uses a version of a virus — known as a vector — that is transmitted into cells to make a protein that then stimulates the immune system to produce antibodies.

However, J&J’s and AstraZeneca’s vectors are biologically different and not interchangeable.

Federal officials said Emergent’s mistake was human error that went undiscovered for days until J&J’s quality control checks uncovered it, according to people familiar with the situation. By then, up to 15 million doses had been contaminated, reported The Indian Express.

The error does not affect any J&J doses currently being distributed and administered in the U.S., as those were produced in the Netherlands where operations have been fully approved by federal regulators.

“As with the manufacturing of any complex biologic medication or vaccine, the start-up for a new process includes test runs and quality checks to ensure manufacturing is validated and the end product meets our high-quality standards,” J&J said in a statement Wednesday. “This approach includes having dedicated specialists on the ground at the companies that are part of our global manufacturing network to support safety and quality.”

Details of the issue were identified and addressed with Emergent and the FDA, J&J said.

An FDA spokesperson told news outlets:

“FDA is aware of the situation, but we are unable to comment further. Questions about a firm’s manufacturing facilities should be directed to that firm.”

As reported by The Defender, J&J has never made a vaccine, but since entering the pharmaceutical market in 1959, the company has made a lot of headlines and has been fined billions of dollars for bad, including some illegal, behavior.

Developing a vaccine requires many years and necessitates the establishment of an R&D infrastructure vastly different than the structure required for conventional drug development. Yet the company was able to rush to market its first vaccine for a viral strain identified just 14 months ago.

J&J has a relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations and has a $1 billion deal with the U.S. government to provide 100 million doses of its Emergency Use Authorization experimental vaccine.

According to the FDA, J&J’s vaccine consists of a “replication-incompetent recombinant adenovirus type 26, a SARS-CoV-2 spike protein, and contains the following inactive ingredients: citric acid monohydrate, trisodium citrate dihydrate, ethanol, 2-hydroxypropyl-β-cyclodextrin (HBCD), polysorbate 80, sodium chloride, sodium hydroxide and hydrochloric acid. The adenovirus is also grown in the PER.C6® aborted fetal cell line.

Polysorbate 80, an ingredient in J&J’s vaccine, is a suspected underlying cause of anaphylactic COVID vaccine adverse reactions. Studies show that polysorbate 80 disrupts the normally protective blood-brain barrier.

As The Defender Reported, the FDA authorized J&J’s single-dose COVID vaccine in late February with a reported overall efficacy rating of 66% for preventing “moderate to severe COVID-19.” The vaccine was only 42.3% effective about a month after getting the shot in people 60 or older who had comorbidities.

Although the FDA identified no safety concerns with J&J’s COVID vaccine, suspected vaccine injuries associated with the vaccine have been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System since March 2 — the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

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Once again, tensions are rising on the border between Venezuela and Colombia. Colombian paramilitary groups continue to use force to provoke, intimidate and encircle the Venezuelan government, serving the interests not only of Bogota, but of NATO – of which Colombia is an international partner.

On Thursday, two Venezuelan soldiers died after being hit by a landmine explosion during an operation near the border with Colombia. On the same occasion, nine Venezuelan combatants were injured and are being treated at a military hospital. The Venezuelan government has classified the case as a terrorist attack. Interestingly, the incident comes just after the Venezuelan Ministry of Defense announced the death and arrest of several Colombian paramilitaries in the border region, last Saturday.

These paramilitaries were members of irregular armed militias supported and financed both by the Colombian government and by its international partners (US and NATO) and since the beginning of the American crusade against the Maduro government, they have acted strongly on the border, carrying out attacks on soldiers of the Venezuelan armed forces and rehearsing a major invasion against the Bolivarian country. In response to Colombian provocations, the Maduro government launched the so-called “Operación Escudo Bolivariano 2021” (Operation Bolivarian Shield 2021), in March this year. According to official government data, the Operation has been successful in controlling the advance of the militias, but says it has difficulty mainly due to the ample aid received by these groups, which are financially and logistically supported by Bogota and Washington.

The Operation’s activities began on March 21 and have already killed 13 Colombians and four Venezuelans. Maduro says Bogotá has an interest in raising the confrontation to a conflict between the regular forces of both countries, which would be supported by the US Southern Command. Although these allegations are speculative, it is a statement that is consistent with the concrete data, considering the high degree of violence in the attacks by Colombian militias and the multifaceted military nature of Colombia.

It is necessary to understand that Colombia is a great military pluriverse, where regular and irregular armed forces coexist. Irregular forces are divided into paramilitary groups, guerrillas, criminal factions, drug cartels, mercenaries, political parties’ militias, among others. All of these organizations operate in parallel, controlling different regions and sometimes collaborating or fighting each other or the regular forces. With all this diversity of armed groups, the Colombian government does not immediately use its regular armed forces to serve its interests but calls the militias to carry out activities in an irregular manner, disguising the real intentions of the government.

These militias have ample firepower and receive abundant material aid, so that they manage to provoke their enemies strongly, however, they maintain an atmosphere of instability and uncertainties about the government’s plans, considering that it is not the regular armed forces that are in action. And this can be interpreted as a form of rehearsal for the future use of the armed forces. The mercenaries provoke Venezuela expecting responses at the same level of violence, so that Bogota then hardens the measures and can “justify” the use of its armed forces. Maduro, in denouncing this, demonstrates great strategic expertise and precisely for that reason the Venezuelan president has asked extreme caution to the forces of his country, so that they do not act with intensity beyond what is necessary and do not encourage a direct confrontation.

The fact that these tensions have been rising steadily in recent months shows that analysts who predicted a relief in anti-Venezuela policies (which were one of the marks of the Trump administration) with Biden’s election were wrong. The Democrat changed his speech in relation to the South American country and remains inert in the face of the unmeasured and unnecessary violence with which NATO-supported Colombian mercenaries have been working in the border areas, invading villages, and attacking Venezuelan military bases. Biden previously promised to try to negotiate a deal with Maduro so that new elections could be called in exchange for easing sanctions, however, after his election, the new president said he would not talk with Maduro in the short term, breaking his previous promise.

On American action in Colombia and support for irregular groups, Washington remains silent, when it should be held responsible internationally for stimulating conflicts and violating national sovereignty – which would be even more serious if investigations on the relations between groups supported by Bogota and Washington and the drug trafficking in South America were carried out, but it is something Washington tries to ignore in order to keep its accusation against Maduro of being a drug trafficker coherent.

Finally, as long as there is support from Washington and Bogota for mercenary groups, the violence will continue to escalate. Tensions are likely to reach an almost irreversible point in the near future, but it is too early to talk about a direct confrontation with regular forces.

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

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“Defender Europe 21”: The US Militarization of the Balkans. A Threat Against Russia and Serbia?

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, April 02 2021

24 March 2021 marks the commemoration of the illegal US-NATO war of aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. In a bitter irony, a few days prior to March 24th, reports confirmed that the US army and NATO are once again beating the drums of war near the Russian border as well as in and around Serbia.

The Pending Collapse of the ‘Rules-based International Order’ Is an Existential Threat to the United States

By Scott Ritter, April 01 2021

For decades, America styled itself the ‘indispensable nation’ that led the world & it’s now seeking to sustain that role by emphasizing a new Cold War-style battle against ‘authoritarianism’. But it’s a dangerous fantasy.

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

By Dr. Mike Yeadon, April 02 2021

In Spring 2020 a novel coronavirus swept across the world: novel, but related to other viruses. In the UK, unknown at the time, around 50% of the population were already immune.

Tanzania’s Late President Magufuli: ‘Science Denier’ or Threat to Empire?

By Jeremy Loffredo and Whitney Webb, April 02 2021

While his COVID-19 policies have dominated media coverage regarding his disappearance and suspicious death, Tanzania’s John Magufuli was hated by the Western elites for much more than his rebuke of lockdowns and mask mandates.

Doctors and Scientists Accuse Medical Regulator of Downplaying COVID-19 Vaccine Dangers

By Doctors for COVID Ethics, April 01 2021

A group of scientists and doctors has today issued an open letter calling on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to answer urgent safety questions regarding COVID-19 vaccines, or withdraw the vaccines’ authorisation.

Belgium Must Lift ‘All COVID-19 Measures’ within 30 Days, Brussels Court Rules

By Maïthé Chini and Lauren Walker, April 02 2021

The Belgian State has been ordered to lift “all coronavirus measures” within 30 days, as the legal basis for them is insufficient, a Brussels court ruled on Wednesday.

Human Rights for Children: Beyond a Crime, Worldwide: The Immoral, Destructive Impacts of the Covid Measures on Our Children

By Peter Koenig, April 02 2021

What the absurd COVID measures do to the world is a crime but what they are doing to children is beyond a crime; it is totally immoral, destructive for our powerless children, and for the future of these children, as well as for society as a whole, as children are our societies’ future.

Syndrome of Thrombosis and Thrombocytopenia Occurring after Coronavirus Vaccination

By British Society for Haematology, April 02 2021

An expert team of our peers have recently been involved in diagnosing and managing a rare syndrome of thrombosis associated with low platelets which have been reported in a few cases.

‘What Other Country Would Do this to Its People?’ Cambodian Land Grab Victims Seek International Justice

By Gerald Flynn and Phoung Vantha, April 02 2021

“It started when some people from the government came around the community telling us that we were illegally occupying the land,” Chhae Kimsrour said in June 2020. “I’ve lived here since 1995, but six months later they came back and started filling in my lake. They said it was their land now”

GM Waxy Maize: The Gene-Edited Trojan Horse Is Moving Through the Gates

By Grain, April 02 2021

At least five countries– Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile and the US– have approved a variety of maize genetically modified (GM) with a genome editing technique called CRISPR, without subjecting the crop to the risk assessments and regulations for GM crops. Other countries could soon follow.

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At least five countries– Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile and the US– have approved a variety of maize genetically modified (GM) with a genome editing technique called CRISPR, without subjecting the crop to the risk assessments and regulations for GM crops. Other countries could soon follow.

The GM maize is produced by US-based Corteva, the world’s second largest seed company and fourth largest pesticides company. Corteva describes the variety as a “waxy corn” which, like conventional waxy corn varieties, produces a starch high in amylopectin and low in amylose. In this case, Corteva used genetic engineering to knock out the genes responsible for producing amylose from its non-waxy hybrid maize varieties.

A detailed profile of Corteva’s GM waxy corn was published this week by the Canadian Biotechnology Action Network (CBAN).

Sign from field trial of Corteva’s GM waxy maize in Johnston, Indiana, US, 2017

Although Corteva uses transgenes and particle bombardment to develop its GM waxy maize, it claims that the crop should not be regulated as a GMO since the transgenic material is, according to the company, no longer present in the seeds that are sold. So far the relevant authorities in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile and the US have cleared the crop for commercial release on this basis, without subjecting it to safety assessments required of other GM crops. On the other hand, as noted by CBAN, “Corteva appears not to have applied for approval in the European Union where a 2018 ruling by the Court of Justice of the European Union requires genome edited crops to be subjected to the same stringent regulations as all genetically modified (GM) organisms.”

Corteva, which was created through the merger of Dow and DuPont’s agricultural divisions, has openly stated that it is using GM waxy corn to clear the way for the introduction of more GM crops produced with genome editing techniques (also known as “gene editing”). The CBAN profile highlights multiple documents and quotes from company executives that show that it deliberately chose a crop that it could bring to market without much attention or risks of liability.

“The reason we are working on waxy corn is to have this conversation, because [we needed] to come forward with something that had a long history of safe use as a trait, [that] has important industrial uses both in food […], and in [other] industrial application, as well as ethanol,” Robert Meeley, Senior Research Scientist at Corteva, told delegates of the OECD Conference on Genome Editing in 2018. “We needed to make something quick and have this conversation now, in order to get it out on the market.”

In the US, where Corteva intends to start commercial cultivation, waxy maize is a minor crop grown almost entirely for food starch and some industrial products under identity preservation contracts with buyers. For the company, therefore, there is minimal risk that the introduction of its GM waxy maize will generate a public backlash or result in lawsuits from contamination. A successful introduction in the US will set the stage for commercial cultivation and imports in other countries where regulations on GM crops and the new genome edited GM crops are still in flux. This includes neighbouring Mexico where it is not clear if the government’s ambiguous decree on glyphosate and GM maize will put any restrictions on genome edited maize varieties. Corteva currently sells conventional waxy maize hybrid seeds in Mexico through its Pioneer Hi-Bred subsidiary.

Another major reason why Corteva chose to start its genome edited crop rollout with “waxy corn” is because it is a maize, and maize is by far the most lucrative crop for seed sales in the world. Even the market for waxy maize seeds is significant and growing, especially in China and other parts of East and Southeast Asia where waxy maize, also known as sticky maize, is a major food crop, and the main type of maize that people consume directly. Last year, Chinese researchers used a similar technique to develop their own CRISPR waxy maize hybrids.

Farmers in China developed waxy maize hundreds of years ago and today there are thousands of farmer seed varieties of waxy maize grown across Asia. But seed companies like Corteva are not interested in these open-pollinated farmer varieties. Their only interest is in selling hybrid maize seeds that cannot be saved by farmers. The problem for seed companies, however, is that waxy maize is not easy to breed as a hybrid. The process is complicated, time consuming and tends to result in a “yield drag” when compared with their non-waxy counterparts.

Corteva’s only innovation with its GM waxy maize is that it used genome editing to avoid a “yield drag” and to shave a year off of the time it would have taken to achieve the same results through conventional hybrid breeding. This is hardly a big game changer for farmers. But it’s huge for seed companies, particularly those that control the patent rights over the technology. It means that they can churn out new hybrid varieties of maize and other crops more quickly and at less cost than their competitors, especially if they can avoid the regulations and segregation requirements that exist for the first wave of GM crops. In this way, Corteva and other corporations investing heavily in genome editing are banking on another round of consolidation, similar to what happened with the first wave of GM crops, that will give them even greater control over global seed markets.

But waxy maize is unlikely to convince a sceptical public of the benefits of genome editing. For this, Corteva has another PR trick up its sleeve. Over the past five years it has been partnering with the International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT) in Mexico to develop hybrid maize varieties for Africa through genome editing. The programme is funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and there is a revolving door tightly integrating all three institutions.¹ Corteva and CIMMYT claim genome editing can cut the time required to breed hybrids in half and they plan to release a first batch of GM hybrids resistant to maize lethal necrosis in Kenya by 2025. Kenya is currently drafting legislation to regulate genome edited crops “using procedures in Argentina as a model”.

For a technology that’s being sold by the seed giants as non-GMO, it’s hard to see any difference from their old GMO playbook.

The CBAN profile on Corteva’s GM waxy corn is here and CBAN’s July 2020 report on the risks and unexpected consequences from genome edited crops is here. For more on the particular risks for Africa, see African Centre for Biodiversity, “Genome editing — The next GM techno fix doomed to fail“.

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The UK’s prestigious Keele University is suddenly shutting down the work of world-renowned aluminum expert, Christopher Exley, Ph.D. Keele is aggressively blocking donations for aluminum research and suppressing any science that exposes the toxic side of the vaccine industry.

University officials shut down Exley’s website and are actively blocking any charitable funds to his research team. These philanthropic funds have been used for nearly four decades to support Exley’s research on the bio-inorganic chemistry of aluminum and to better understand aluminum’s role in neurodegenerative diseases. Exley’s passion is “to understand aluminum in all living things” and to show how aluminum’s impact on human health represents “the greatest untold story of science.” Exley’s work has been cited in Alzheimer’s research, among other important public health issues. His research group has published important scientific insights in more than 200 peer-reviewed publications.

Brave researcher is targeted and suppressed for work on aluminum toxicity and vaccines

Aluminum is Christopher Exley’s life work, and Keele University has supported it for multiple decades, but something has been changing over the past five years. According to a chapter in Exley’s 2020 book, “Imagine You Are an Aluminum Atom: Discussions with Mr. Aluminum,” the institutional environment at Keele University shifted “abruptly” about five years ago. Along with a major overhaul in the senior management, the University began to accept major donations from new sources and gave the pharmaceutical industry power over the science department.

In 2021, Keele University’s dean of natural sciences wrote to Exley and explained that “the university will no longer provide facilities to solicit or enable restricted charitable donations” to Exley’s research group, effectively banning any research on “the bio-inorganic chemistry of aluminum and its links to neurodegenerative disease.” The ban includes a stoppage of all “donations from individuals, groups, charities and foundations.” The University most recently refused a $15,000 donation from Children’s Health Defense Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

For years, Exley has studied various routes of aluminum exposure in humans, from dietary intake to topical application to inhalation and most notably, injected aluminum (from vaccines). Children’s Health Defense supports Exley’s research efforts, for this science can be used to improve consumer products, cosmetics, vaccines, and help protect children from aluminum toxicity.

The University rejected Robert F. Kennedy’s Jr.’s donation because “prominent public figures or foundations could place the institution in an ethical and reputational predicament.” The University’s vice chancellor for research and enterprise wrote that this “could generate potentially negative media coverage and may also jeopardize the strong relationships it holds with its existing major funders and partners.”

Bill Gate’s money and influence is infiltrating university research, shutting down scientific progress on vaccine safety

After Keele University shut down Exley’s research and confessed it was done to appease their major funders; it became clear who was pulling the strings at the University. Over the past five years, the university adopted new priorities and “strategic research areas” that support “Global Health.” The major funder behind this new push is none other than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. As the Gates priorities kicked in, Keele University partnered up with UK’s largest pharmacy company (Well Pharmacy), and gave them a special place on campus.

The University’s Pharmacy School was radically transformed in 2019 as well, and was reconfigured as the School of Pharmacy and Bioengineering. The pharmaceutical and biotech industries were given precedence and exclusive influence over the science and technology department at Keele.

Exley’s research was quickly targeted by the growing pharmaceutical influence at the university because Exley’s research team was brave enough to study the health impacts of aluminum adjuvants in vaccines. A 2021 hit-piece published in the Guardian labeled Exley as “anti-vaccine” for wanting more research on the safety of aluminum in vaccines. No stranger to these Big Pharma attacks, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote to Keele in 2020: “Allowing industry to quash science for fear that it might expose profitable practices as harmful to public health is offensive to every tenet of academic freedom, scientific integrity, ethics and morality.”

Exley’s brave research team is currently set to be disbanded and disposed by Aug. 31, 2021, as powerful pharmaceutical interests and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation continue to bully scientists and shut down scientific progress on vaccine safety.

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The Belgian State has been ordered to lift “all coronavirus measures” within 30 days, as the legal basis for them is insufficient, a Brussels court ruled on Wednesday.

The League for Human Rights had filed the lawsuit several weeks ago and challenged Belgium’s system of implementing the measures using Ministerial Decrees, which means it is done without any input from parliament.

The judge gave the Belgian State 30 days to provide a sound legal basis, or face a penalty of €5,000 per day that this period is exceeded, with a maximum limit of €200,000, reports Le Soir.

The current coronavirus measures are based on the Civil Safety Act of 2007, which enable the State to react quickly in “exceptional circumstances,” but the judge has now ruled that these laws cannot serve as a basis for the Ministerial Decrees.

“The judge ruled that the principle of legality has been violated because the current way of working is not foreseeable enough,” Kati Verstrepen of the Human Rights League confirmed to VRT, adding the consequences are “not so dramatic” that from one day to the next, the measures would no longer be valid.

For the time being, the current coronavirus measures will not change, and the verdict is currently being studied by the office of Interior Minister Annelies Verlinden, reports De Standaard.

Appealing against the court ruling is still possible, but as it concerns a summary judgment, an appeal would not suspend the execution of the judgment.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Chamber will debate Belgium’s upcoming pandemic law, which is supposed to provide “a permanent legal basis, for taking this kind of restrictive measures during a pandemic.”

Several legal experts already pressed the Belgian State to bring forward the law as soon as possible to avoid judges cancelling fines written out for violations of the measures, and this ruling only increases the pressure to quickly adopt it.

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Official data from the U.S. Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) shows that so far in 2021, 1,755 people died from the Chinese virus vaccine, a figure that well exceeds the 994 people who died in the last 10 years as a result of vaccination.

The data was released by the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a database that contains “information on unverified reports of adverse events (illnesses, health problems, and/or symptoms) following immunization with vaccines licensed in the U.S.”

Of the 1,755 deaths, 1,431 were reported in persons older than 65 years of age.

The Moderna vaccine was responsible for 938 deaths and 822 deaths were attributed to the Johnson & Johnson laboratory.

According to the CDC, more than 55 million people in the United States have received the CCP Virus vaccine.

Although the number of deaths represents only 0.003% of the total number of people vaccinated, it is 71 times more compared to the number of deaths in the last 10 years.

The European Medicines Agency reported more than 2,700 deaths from the vaccine.

In addition to direct deaths caused by vaccines, thousands of other adverse effects are also periodically reported.

Earlier this month, Richard Terrel, a man from Goochland County, Virginia, showed a local media outlet how a few days after getting the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, he had a severe allergic reaction.

“It all just happened so fast. My skin peeled off,” Terrell said. “It’s still coming off on my hands now.”

“I began to feel a little discomfort in my armpit and then a few days later I began to get an itchy rash, and then after that I began to swell and my skin turned red,” Terrell explained.

The images are truly frightening.

“It was stinging, burning and itching,” Terrell said as he described the pain. “Whenever I bent my arms or legs, like the inside of my knee, it was very painful where the skin was swollen and was rubbing against itself.”

Despite these genuine concerns about the adverse effects of the CCP Virus vaccines, governments around the world continue to insist on making vaccination mandatory, with the most recent proposal for a vaccine passport that will force people to be vaccinated in order to lead a normal life.

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We bring to the attention of our readers an important article by CNBC, with link to the complete article.

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Key Points

• Mutations of the coronavirus could render current vaccines ineffective within a year, according to a survey of experts in 28 countries.
• Of those surveyed, almost a third gave a time frame of nine months or less.
• Fewer than 1 in 8 said they believed that mutations would never render the current vaccines ineffective.

Mutations of the coronavirus could render current vaccines ineffective within a year, according to a majority of epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists surveyed by the People’s Vaccine Alliance.

The survey of 77 experts from some of the world’s leading academic institutions across 28 countries found that almost a third gave a time frame of nine months or less. Fewer than 1 in 8 said they believed that mutations would never render the current vaccines ineffective.

Continue reading the CNBC article here.

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An expert team of our peers have recently been involved in diagnosing and managing a rare syndrome of thrombosis associated with low platelets which have been reported in a few cases. At the moment, any causal association with coronavirus vaccination has not been established. However, if you identify patients with this syndrome in proximity to coronavirus vaccination, it is very important that you complete the online yellow card – this will trigger a request from MHRA for further details.

The cases are unusual because, despite the thrombocytopenia, there is progressive thrombosis, primarily venous, with a high preponderance of cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. Some arterial thrombotic events have also been noted. Testing typically reveals low fibrinogen and very raised D-Dimer levels above the level typically expected in venous thromboembolism. Antibodies to platelet factor 4 (PF4) have been identified, hence there are similarities to heparin-induced thrombocytopenia despite the absence of prior exposure to heparin treatment. The anti PF4 antibodies can be detected by the ELISA HIT assay but not always by the AccuStar assay.

It is important that the correct management is applied to prevent the progression of thrombosis. Of critical note, platelet transfusions should be avoided. Interim guidance on diagnosis and management can be found here, as can contact details for advice from the Expert Haematology Panel.

As this is an emerging area of practice, please continue to check back for updates and to monitor the literature for publications.

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While his COVID-19 policies have dominated media coverage regarding his disappearance and suspicious death, Tanzania’s John Magufuli was hated by the Western elites for much more than his rebuke of lockdowns and mask mandates. In particular, his efforts towards nationalizing the country’s mineral wealth threatened to deprive the West of control over resources deemed essential to the new green economy.

Less than 2 weeks ago, Tanzanian Vice President Samia Suluhu Hassan delivered the news that her country’s president, John Pombe Magufuli, had died of heart failure. President Magufuli had been described as missing since the end of February, with several anti-government parties circulating stories that he had fallen ill with COVID-19. During his presidency, Magufuli had consistently challenged neocolonialism in Tanzania, whether it manifested through the exploitation of his country’s natural resources by predatory multinationals or the West’s influence over his country’s food supply.

In the months leading up to his death, Magufuli had become better known and particularly demonized in the West for opposing the authority of international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) in determining his government’s response to the COVID-19 crisis. However, Magufuli had spurned many of the same interests and organizations angered by his response to COVID for years, having kicked out Bill Gates-funded trials of genetically-modified crops and more recently angering some of the most powerful mining companies in the West, companies with ties to the World Economic Forum and the Forum’s efforts to guide the course of the 4^th industrial revolution.

Indeed, more threatening than his recent COVID controversies was the threat Magufuli posed to foreign control over the world’s largest, ready-to-develop nickel deposit, a metal essential to electric car batteries and thus the current effort to usher in an electric, autonomous vehicle revolution. For instance, just a month before he disappeared, Magufuli had signed an agreement to begin developing that nickel deposit, a deposit that had been previously co-owned by Barrick Gold and Glencore, the commodity giant deeply tied to Israel’s Mossad, until Magufuli revoked their licenses for the project in 2018.

Running afoul of the most powerful corporate and banking cartels followed then by the mysterious onset of sudden regime change would normally garner considerable coverage from anti-imperialist independent media outlets, which recently covered similar events in Bolivia that led to the removal of Evo Morales from power. However, the very outlets that have extensively covered Western-backed regime change efforts for years have been entirely silent on the very convenient death of Magufuli. Presumably, their silence is related to Magufuli’s flouting of COVID-19 narrative orthodoxy, as these same outlets have largely promoted the official narrative of the pandemic.

Yet, regardless of whether one agrees with Magufuli’s response to COVID, his sudden departure and Tanzania’s new leadership is a defeat for a widely popular domestic movement that sought to mitigate and reverse the centuries-long exploitation of Tanzania by the West. Now, with Magufuli’s lengthy disappearance followed by his apparent sudden death from heart failure, the country’s future is now set to be determined by Tanzanian politicians with deep ties to the oligarch-beholden United Nations and the World Economic Forum.

In contrast to Magufuli, who routinely stood up to predatory corporations and imperialist designs on his country, Samia Suhulhu and Tanzanian opposition politician Tundu Lissu are poised to offer up their country’s resources, and their population, on the altar of the Western elite-driven 4^th industrial revolution.

Magufuli’s celebrated rise and his clashes with the West

Magufuli was first elected with his running mate and now president of Tanzania, Samia Suhulu, back in 2015 with 58% of the vote. At first, the president was met with lavish praise from the same Western media outlets that would later seek to demonize him. For instance, a BBC report from 2016 reflected on Magufuli’s first year in office and noted his 96% approval rating. The report also quoted political analyst Kitila Mumbo, who remarked, “there is no doubt that President Magufuli is very popular among many ordinary Tanzanians” and added that “the president’s main promise of extending free education to secondary school, which came into effect in January, has been well received.”

Image on the right: Running mates John Magufuli and Samia Suhulu on a 2015 campaign flier. Source: 2015 FILE PHOTO

Also in 2016, CNN had reported that “the Tanzanian public has gone wild for its new President John Magufuli” and that “after sweeping to victory in October 2015, Magufuli has embarked on a remorseless purge of corruption.” The article reported that Magufuli had inspired a new term, as seen in Tanzanians’ social media posts:

“ … ‘Magufulify’ – defined as: ‘To render or declare an action faster or cheaper; 2. to deprive [public officials] of their capacity to enjoy life at taxpayers’ expense; 3. to terrorize lazy and corrupt individuals in society.’”

Indeed, Magufuli’s term was characterized by making decisions that benefited the majority of Tanzanians, largely at the expense of foreign corporations but also by overhauling a government known for its entrenched corruption and absenteeism prior to Magufuli’s rise. His administration cut the salaries of the executives at state-owned companies, as well as his own salary, from $15,000 to $4,000 USD. Some State parades and celebrations were reduced or cancelled to cover the expenses of public hospitals.

Healthcare had long been one of Magufuli’s priorities, and the life expectancy of the country significantly increased every year he was in office. In addition, in the previous 50 years of Tanzanian independence, only 77 district hospitals were constructed, whereas during the past 4 years alone, 101 such hospitals were constructed and equipped with local funds. By July 2020, the country had grown from a so-called lower income country to a middle income country, per the World Bank.

A recent report by the hawkish, US establishment think tank, the Center for Strategic International Studies (CSIS), was highly critical of Magufuli, but noted the following about his political philosophy:

“Magufuli, who subscribes to his own homegrown “Tanzania first” philosophy, believes that Tanzania has been cheated out of profit and wealth by exploitative mabeberu (“imperialists”) since independence. To secure populist support, Magufuli has fashioned his agenda as a continuation of the socialist vision of Tanzania’s first president, Mwalimu Julius Nyerere, who advocated self-reliance, an intolerance to corruption, and a strong nationalist character.”

Magufuli’s various conflicts with the mabeberu transpired throughout his presidency, targeting various projects and business ventures of corporations and oligarchs that have worked to exploit much of the Global South for decades. For example, in late 2018, Tanzania’s government ordered a stop to all ongoing field trials on genetically modified (GM) crops and the destruction of all plants grown as part of those trials. Those trials were being conducted by a partnership called the Water Efficient Maize for Africa (WEMA) project, which was a collaboration between Monsanto and the African Agricultural Technology Foundation, a non-profit funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, GM seed/agrochemical giant Syngenta, PepsiCo and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), long known to be a cut-out for the CIA. Then, in January of 2021, a month before Magufuli’s disappearance, Tanzania’s agriculture ministry not only announced a cancellation of all “research trials involving genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the country” for the second time, it also announced plans to institute new biosafety regulations aimed at protecting Tanzania’s food sovereignty by scrutinizing western GM seed imports.

Historically, the US has been particularly harsh to countries that resist the integration of GM biotech into their food systems. According to a State Department cable from 2007 published by Wikileaks, Craig Stapleton, then-US Ambassador to France, advised the US to prepare for economic war with countries unwilling to introduce Monsanto’s GM corn seeds into their agricultural sectors. He recommended the US “calibrate a target retaliation list that causes some pain across the E.U.” for the bloc’s resistance to approving some GM products. In another cable from 2009, a US diplomat stationed in Germany relayed intelligence on Bavarian political parties to several US federal agencies and the US Secretary of Defense, telling them which parties opposed Monsanto’s M810 corn seed and spoke of “tactics that the US could impose to resolve the opposition.”

The US government’s use of food as a weapon for imperialist agendas became de factopolicy when Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State during the Nixon administration. During that period, a classified report was produced by the State Department that argued that the population of the developing world threatened US national security and posited that food aid be used as an “instrument of national power” to advance US empire.

A roadblock for the Ruling Class’ “green” future

Magufuli’s role in robbing Big Ag of a foothold in Tanzania a month before his disappearance and death certainly casts suspicion on the circumstances surrounding his demise. Yet, if that weren’t enough, Magufuli, during the exact same time frame, greatly angered the most powerful commodity corporations in the world across the sectors of mining, oil and natural gas.

Particularly damaging to foreign corporate interests and agendas was Magufuli’s targeting of the foreign-dominated mining sector in Tanzania, which contains some of the world’s largest deposits of minerals essential to 4^th industrial revolution-related technologies. With 500,000 tonnes of nickel, 75,000 tonnes of copper, and 45,000 tonnes of cobalt, Tanzania sits on a mountain of mineral wealth and, more specifically, minerals needed for next-generation batteries and hardware that are themselves essential to the effort to rapidly implement “smart” infrastructure and automation globally. Within Africa, Tanzania has the continent’s second largest mining sector, second only to South Africa.

In the years prior to Magufuli’s rise, Tanzania had offered relatively low tax rates and little regulatory oversight for mining companies. Yet, in 2017, Magufuli declared “economic warfare” on foreign mining companies and his administration followed through on the declaration, passing two laws that provided the government with a much greater share of the revenue from the exploitation of Tanzania’s natural resources. This, of course, came at the expense of foreign mining conglomerates. The new legislation also gave the government the right to renegotiate and/or revoke existing mining licenses that had been awarded prior to Magufuli’s presidency.

Soon after, Tanzania’s government took aim at Acacia Mining, which is now owned by Canadian mining giant Barrick Gold, and slapped them with $190 billion in fines for unpaid taxes and penalties. “It shouldn’t happen that we have all this wealth, sit on it, while others come and benefit from it by cheating us,” Magufuli said of the decision. “We needinvestors, but not this kind of exploitation. We are supposed to share profits.” In 2018, the administration went after Acacia again, fining them $2.4 million for contaminating local water supplies in residential areas.

The signing of the Kabanga Nickel Framework Agreement in January 2021. Source: https://www.kabanganickel.com/

2018 was also the year that Magufuli’s biggest rift with powerful mining corporations took place, one that potentially influenced his disappearance and subsequent death. The Kabanga nickel project, the largest, development-ready nickel deposit in the world, had been owned jointly by Canada’s Barrick Gold and commodities giant Glencore. In May 2018, Magufuli’s administration revoked the Barrick-Glencore license for the project, along with several others that included other nickel, gold, silver, copper and rare earth mining projects.

Angering Glencore in particular is a risky business. The commodities giant was originally founded by Marc Rich, an infamous asset for Israel’s Mossad who allowed Glencore profits to be used to finance covert intelligence activities. Rich and Glencore’s intelligence ties are discussed in greater detail in Part IV of Whitney Webb’s series on the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Today, Glencore is closely linked with Nat Rothschild, the son and heir of the scion of the British-based branch of the elite banking family, who purchased a $40 million stake in the company and was largely responsible for orchestrating Simon Murray’s appointment as Glencore’s chairman as well as his close relationship with Glencore CEO Ivan Glasenberg.

Then, in January 2021, a month before Magufuli disappeared, the Kabanga Nickel project went forward without Glencore and Barrick Gold, with Tanzania successfully negotiating joint ownership of the mine with a company set up by Norwegian millionaire Peter Smedvig and two of his associates. Unlike the Barrick-Glencore project, in which Tanzania’s government had no financial stake, the new project gave Tanzania a 16% ownership stake in the mine, which is now required by law following Magufuli’s reform of the country’s mining sector.

The loss of Kabanga was clearly a grave one for Barrick Gold and Glencore given the central role nickel and this specific deposit in Tanzania are set to play in the production and implementation of “smart” technologies. Nickel, among other uses, is a key component of the next-generation batteries used in “smart” technologies, specifically in electric vehicles. As a result, the demand for nickel is projected to rise dramatically in the next few years, in part due to the current effort to phase out most motor vehicles and replace them with ones that are both electric and self-driving. The importance of nickel to the so-called 4th Industrial Revolution has been underscored by the World Economic Forum, which estimates that demand for high-purity nickel for EV battery production “will increase by a factor of 24 in 2030 compared to 2018 levels.” In addition, last month, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that “nickel is the biggest concern for electric car batteries.”

In addition to Tanzania’s valuable nickel reserves, it can be argued that Tanzania’s other most significant mineral wealth lies in its graphite reserves, which rank as the 5th largest in the world. In 2018, Oxford Business Group estimated that Tanzania would become one of the top three graphite producers on the planet. With the World Bank estimating that graphite demand will increase 500% in the next 30 years, Tanzania now holds a strong bargaining position in the global market. The global lithium-ion battery market is “expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.0% from 2020 to 2027,” and these batteries usually require both nickel and graphite, both of which are plentiful under Tanzania. As Elon Musk has put it, “lithium-ion batteries should be called nickel graphite batteries.”

Last year, Musk had tweeted that “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it,” in response to accusations that the US government had backed the 2019 coup in Bolivia so that Musk’s Tesla could acquire rights to the world’s largest lithium reserves, another mineral critical to electric vehicle battery production. A few months before Musk’s infamous tweet, the foreign minister of Bolivia’s coup government had written a letter to Musk that stated that “any corporation that you or your company can provide to our country will be gratefully welcomed” in relation to the country’s mining sector. These incidents underscore US empire’s current willingness to engage in regime change to ensure control of mineral deposits considered essential to emerging technologies and the 4th Industrial Revolution.

Image below: Logo for the latest iteration of the Kabanga Nickel mining project. Source: https://www.kabanganickel.com/

In the case of Tanzania, it is worth noting that Glencore, which had its ownership of the Kabanga nickel deposit revoked by Magufuli, is closely tied to the World Economic Forum and is part of the Forum’s Global Battery Alliance as well as its Mining and Metals Blockchain Initiative, both of which focus on supply chains for minerals deemed essential to the 4^th Industrial Revolution. Also of interest is the fact that Tundu Lissu, the Magufuli government’s most vocal critic and a main source for all mainstream media Tanzania reporting, was formerly employed by the World Resources Institute (WRI), a US-based non-profit and “strategic partner” of the World Economic Forum. The WRI aims to build “clean energy markets” and “value supply chains,” supply chains which will inevitably depend on cheaply sourced raw materials like nickel, graphite, and cobalt.

The World Resource Institute has received no less than $7.1 million from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and, according to the WRI donor page, they’ve received no less than $750,000 from the West’s most powerful corporate actors including Shell, Citibank, The Rockefeller Foundation, Google, Microsoft, The Open Society Foundation, USAID, and the World Bank. Lissu praised news of Magufuli’s sudden death as a “relief” and an “opportunity for a new beginning” in Tanzania. Tellingly, he also spoke very positively of the country’s future under Magufuli’s Vice President and current President Samia Suhulu, suggesting that she will take the country in a direction very different than that of her predecessor.

Thabit Jacob, a Tanzanian academic at Denmark’s Roskilde University was quoted in UpStream as saying that Rostam Aziz — one of Tanzania’s wealthiest businessmen and ex-parliament member who had a major falling out with Magufuli over tax policy— could soon become a key player in the new government, “meaning big business will play a bigger role” in the country’s future. Rostam owns Caspian Mining, the single largest Tanzanian mining firm and a frequent contractor for Barrick Gold.

COVID-19 response met with foreign hostility 

Under the Magufuli administration, Tanzania’s COVID-19 response policies ran counter to the international consensus, with the country declining to implement any major lockdowns or mask mandates. It should be noted that even the CFR relayed that these decisions had the democratic support of the masses, writing that “on-the-street sentiment suggests many Tanzanians agree with the government’s light-touch approach.”

Magufuli was also skeptical of adopting COVID-19 vaccines before they could be investigated and certified by Tanzania’s own experts, warning that they could pose safety concerns due to their rushed development. “The Ministry of Health should be careful, they should not hurry to try these vaccines without doing research … We should not be used as ‘guinea pigs’”, Magufuli had stated in January. “We are not yet satisfied that those vaccines have been clinically proven safe,” Tanzanian Health Minister Dr. Dorothy Gwajima later remarked at a news conference.

Magufuli refused to immediately agree to receive COVID-19 vaccines from COVAX, a public-private partnership between Gates’ GAVI and the World Health Organization which aims to deliver 270 million COVID vaccines – with 269 million of them being the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine – to the world “as soon as they’re available.” In recent weeks, major safety issues with the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine have been identified by national regulatory bodies across Europe and Asia and numerous countries have suspended its use.

However, such nuance regarding the safety of “vaccine aid” was absent from the now ubiquitous mainstream narrative of Magufuli being “anti-science.” That narrative was first established as early as May 2020, when Magufuli exposed the inaccuracy of imported PCR testing kits after a goat, a piece of fruit, and motor oil all received ‘positive’ test results from the supplied kits. “There is something happening … we should not accept that every aid is meant to be good for this nation,” he proclaimed in a national address.

After this address, Bloomberg called Magufuli the “COVID-denying president.” Foreign Policy went as far as to dub the President as “Denialist in Chief” and asked if he was even “more dangerous than COVID-19.” Magufuli became the Western press’s poster boy for “COVID denial” while Tanzania became “the country that’s rejecting the vaccine.”

However, in the months that followed May 2020, the accuracy of PCR testing kits have been called into question, not only by mainstream media, but also “authoritative” global health bodies like the World Health Organization, thereby validating Magufuli’s initial critique. In a story titled “Your Coronavirus Test Is Positive. Maybe It Shouldn’t Be”, the New York Times reported that the “standard [PCR] tests are diagnosing huge numbers of people who may be carrying relatively insignificant amounts of the virus. . . and are not likely contagious.”

In November 2020, a landmark court case in Portugal ruled that the PCR test used to diagnose COVID-19 was not fit for that purpose, ruling that “a single positive PCR test cannot be used as an effective diagnosis of infection.” In their ruling, judges Margarida Ramos de Almeida and Ana Paramés referred to a study by Jaafar et al., which found that the accuracy of some PCR tests was only about 3%, meaning up to 97% of positive results could be false positives.

By December 2020, the World Health Organization had confirmed that the PCR test was ripe for false positives, warning that they could easily lead to COVID-free individuals receiving positive test results. The position that PCR testing kits are unreliable is not new science, as a 2007 New York Times article titled “Faith in Quick Test Leads to Epidemic that Wasn’t” wrote that the sensitivity of PCR testing kits “makes false positives likely, and when hundreds or thousands of people are tested, false positives can make it seem like there is an epidemic.” In addition, large batches of PCR test kits in the early phase of the COVID-19 crisis were contaminated with COVID-19 prior to their use, which was later found to have significantly skewed the number of cases reported in the early phases of the pandemic in the US and beyond.

Numerous examples of vaccines with severe adverse effects being pushed onto the Tanzanian people, combined with the widely reported safety issues surrounding the AstraZeneca/ Oxford vaccine that Tanzania would receive through COVAX, make the Western media’s “anti-science” characterization of Magufuli particularly inappropriate.

For example, as far back as 1977, studies published in The Lancet established that the risks of the diphtheria tetanus pertussis (DTP) vaccine are greater than the risks associated with contracting wild pertussis. After mounting evidence linking the drug to braindamage, seizures, and even death, the U.S. phased it out in the 1990s and replaced it with a safer version called DTaP.  A 2017 study funded by the Danish government concluded that more African children were dying at the hands of the deadly DTP vaccinethan by the diseases it prevented. Researchers examined data from Guinea Bissau and concluded that boys were dying at 3.9 times the rate of those who had not received the shot, while girls suffered almost 10 times (9.98) the death rate. GAVI, subsidized by USAID and the Gates Foundation, has dumped over $27 million worth of the dangerously outdated DTP vaccine onto the Tanzanian health system as of today.

Furthermore, as detailed by Unlimited Hangout in December, the developers of the Oxford vaccine (the vaccine Tanzania would receive under COVAX), are deeply entangled with the eugenics movement and engage in ethically questionable activities regarding the intersection of race and science to this day. In 2020, The Wellcome Trust, the research institute where both of the lead developers of the Oxford vaccine work, was accused by the University of Cape Town of illegally exploiting hundreds of Africans by stealing their DNA without consent.

Also concerning is the fact that more than 20 European countries have halted use of the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine due to a possible link to blood clot disorders and strokes. Even the New York Times has questioned if the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is a viable candidate, particularly for Africa. According to a Times article from February, South Africa halted use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford coronavirus vaccine after evidence emerged that the vaccine did not protect clinical trial volunteers from mild or moderate illness.”

A recent election victory “amid claims of fraud” 

In October 2020, Magufuli was reelected to a second, five year term, this time gaining a resounding 84.39% of vote. At the time, the US government-funded outlet Voice of America (VOA) quoted one Tanzanian, Edward Mbise, who told the outlet that “[they] all expected [Magufuli] to win due to what he has done … he has accomplished so many things that you can’t even finish listing all of them.”

However, Tundu Lissu, the leader of Magufuli’s main opposition party, alleged that the election had been fraudulent, but provided no evidence. According to the same VOA article, Lissu called for “citizens [to] take action to ensure all election results are changed.”

Lissu’s accusations of fraud were widely reprinted by Western media despite the lack of evidence. A BBC article was titled “President Magufuli Wins Election Amid Fraud Claims.” The Guardian, funded heavily by the Gates Foundation, similarly claimed that “Tanzania’s President wins re-election Amid Claims of Fraud.” In the US, the New York Timespublished a story called, “As Tanzania’s President Wins a Second Term, Opposition Calls for Protests.”

Neither mention of Magufuli’s approval ratings nor quotes from actual Tanzanian people were anywhere to be found in these articles, details which had been plentiful in Western mainstream media coverage of his first election victory. Quotes that did appear were usually from Lissu, now exiled in Belgium, or other members of his party.

Not long after Lissu’s claims had been uncritically repeated by major Western media outlets, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced sanctions on his last day in charge of the State Department that targeted Tanzanian officials who had allegedly been “responsible for or complicit in undermining the 2020 Tanzanian general election”. It is worth pointing out that the similarities between the election fraud accusations in Tanzania and those made in Bolivia just prior to the US-backed November 2019 coup are considerable.

Two weeks later, on February 5^th, 2021, the Center for Strategic & International Studiessuggested that the US might, as it often does, fund Magufuli’s political opposition, openly suggesting that the “the Biden administration has an opportunity to increase direct engagement with Tanzanian opposition politicians and civil society groups,”  using Magufuli’s “dangerous” approach to COVID-19 as public justification.

That same week, the Guardian’s Global Development section (made possible through a partnership with The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) published an article titled, “It’s time for Africa to rein in Tanzania’s anti-vaxxer president.” Predictably, this article, and others like it, sought to paint the African leader as a crazy conspiracy theorist, but left out the fact that Magufuli had earned his master’s and doctorate degrees in Chemistry before being elected president in 2015.

On March 9th, Tundu Lissu, the opposition leader formerly employed by the Washington-based and Wall Street-funded World Resource Institute, contended that Magufuli was critically ill with COVID-19. In a series of tweets, Lissu asserted that the then-president had been flown first to Kenya and then India to be treated for the virus. “We urge the government to come out publicly and say where is the president and what is his condition,” John Mnyika, another opposition leader, also publicly stated similar claims. The very first paper to run the story that Magufuli had COVID-19 was The Nation, a relatively new Kenyan newspaper that has received $4 million from the US-based Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Meanwhile, the Magufuli government repeatedly dismissed these claims as fake news. “He is fine and doing his responsibilities,” insisted Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa on March 12. “A head of state is not a head of a jogging club who should always be around taking selfies,” Constitutional Affairs Minister Mwigulu Nchemba had said at the time.

On March 11, just days before the announcement of Magufuli’s death and Suhulu’s appointment to the post of President, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the influential think tank closely tied to the Rockefeller family and the US political elite, suggested that a “bold figure within the ruling party [i.e. Magufuli’s party] could capitalize on the current episode to gain popularity and begin to reverse course …”

While a swift leadership transition in Tanzania might seem like an unexpected surprise to western financial interests, groups in the US who specialize in foreign meddling and regime change operations had been at work in Tanzania ever since Magufuli’s initial election victory.  The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government think/do tank which aims to “support freedom around the world,” pumped $1.1 million into different Tanzanian opposition groups and causes over the last few years. One co-founder of NED, Allen Weinstein, once disclosed to the Washington Post that “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” Carl Gershman, NED’s other co-founder, once told the New York Times that “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA . . .and that’s why the endowment was created.”

NED’s recent operations in Tanzania included projects to “organize young people to promote reform, and introduce them to new media tools that can assist in their efforts”, “recruit and train young artists to convey stories about governance”, financially support an opposition-friendly “satirical” news production that provides humorous commentary on current events to “encourage conversations”, as well as financially supporting the production of a “comprehensive televised civic education campaign” aimed at both COVID-related public awareness and “voter education.” The grantee for the funds, the Tanzania Bora Initiative, whose slogan is “transforming mindsets, influencing cultures” boasts of “empowering over 50 young Tanzanian political candidates.” The Tanzania Bora Initiative was also heavily supported by USAID while Magufuli was in office.

One wonders what effects these NED and USAID-funded efforts would have had on the country if Magufuli had not died in office. In January, the CIA-filled Jamestown Foundation began reporting on Tanzania’s “creeping radicalization issue” and eerily put forward the idea that “Tanzania could be primed to experience an increase in violence directed inward…” Though this thankfully never came to fruition, in other cases of Western-backed regime change, opposition groups funded by these same organizations have been known to stoke or create violence in order to justify Western intervention.

The Magufuli Administration wasn’t oblivious to the West’s regime change efforts. In the years following his election victory, Tanzanian police forces had raided meetingsorganized by the Open Society Foundations, a group infamous for their meddling initiatives in states targeted by the US’ foreign policy establishment.

Yet, despite his strong stands against the West, something about Magufuli’s approach had changed the day of his last public appearance on February 24^th, 2021. That morning, the Tanzanian President had begun urging his countrymen to wear masks, something he had resisted doing for nearly a year after the WHO declared a pandemic, and urged them to begin taking health precautions.

A new President, to Western applause 

Convenient for the powers that Magufuli had angered, his successor and VP, Samia Suluhu, hails from the United Nations’ World Food Programme and has a profile listed on the website of the World Economic Forum, suggesting a closeness with the circles her predecessor had rebuked. It still remains unclear if she has already reversed any of Magufuli’s policies, either economic or COVID-related, but some shifts seem likely given that her appointment has been met with pure celebration by the same institutional actors that actively worked to undermine President Magufuli.

Another potential indicator is the dubious discovery of a new COVID variant in Tanzania that reportedly has more mutations than any other variant. That variant’s discovery was announced just over a week following the announcement of Magufuli’s death and seems tailor-made to provide a public justification of a reversal of Tanzania’s government approach to COVID. Notably, the Tanzania variant was discovered by Krisp, “a scientific institute that carries out genetic testing for 10 African nations” that is funded by the Gates Foundation, the Wellcome Trust and the governments of the US, the UK and South Africa.

Regarding a potentially imminent reversal of Tanzania’s COVID policy, the reaction of the top official at the World Health Organization may offer a clue. WHO General Director Tedros Ghebreyesus had no time to comment after receiving word of Magufuli’s sudden death, but quickly took to Twitter minutes after Suluhu’s swearing-in ceremony to congratulate the country’s first female president, telling her that he’s “looking forward to working with her to keep people safe from COVID-19, and end the pandemic.” Ghebreyesus was previously on the board of two organizations that Bill Gates had founded, provided seed money for, and continues to fund to this day: GAVI and the Global Fund, where Tedros was chair of the board.

Samia Suluhu Hassan’s WEF profile. Source: https://www.weforum.org/people/samia-suluhu-hassan

A few days before Ghebreyesus’ tweet, the State Department released a statement reaffirming the US’ commitment to supporting Tanzanians as they advocate for respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms and work to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that “We hope that Tanzania can move forward on a democratic and prosperous path.” Vice President Kamala Harris had nothing to say in regards to the popular East African president suddenly dying, yet – like Ghebreyesus, she managed to send her best wishes to the newly sworn in Suluhu Samia on Twitter.

Billionaire-backed Human Rights Watch, whose revolving door with the US government is well documented, welcomed Magufuli’s death, publishing a piece entitled “Tanzania: President Magufuli’s Death Should Open New Chapter,” writing that the African leader’s sudden passing “provides an opportunity.” Notably, the same organization had supported the US-backed military coup in Bolivia as well as the Trump Administration’s regime change efforts in Nicaragua and had called for an increase of deadly U.S. sanctions on Venezeula’s Chavista government, even after the publication of a report by The Center for Economic and Policy Research which found that at least 40,000 Venezuelan civilians had already died due to the such sanctions.

Earlier this month, Judd Devermont, a former CIA senior political analyst on sub-Saharan Africa, in a CSIS piece titled “Will Magufuli’s Death Bring Real Change to Tanzania?,” wrote that, prior to Magufuli’s death, it was “believed that Suluhu was growing increasingly wary of Magufuli’s authoritarian policies. . .” Later in the article, the former CIA analyst accidentally disclosed his working definition of “authoritarianism” when he wrote:  “Magufuli steered Tanzania toward authoritarianism by implementing a nationalist economic agenda characterized by stifled regional and international trade and a blow to foreign direct investment (FDI).”

However, the claim that Magufuli was against all foreign investment is misleading. Perhaps Devermont should have written that Magufuli’s policies were a blow to FDI from the West, as Magufuli, in the last months of his presidency and his life, was directly courting foreign investment from China.

In mid-December 2020, Tanzania Invests reported on a Magufuli meeting with Chinese leadership, after which Magufuli announced that Tanzania “welcomes traders and investors from China in various areas like manufacturing, tourism, construction, and trade for the benefit of both parties.” The report also noted that “Magufuli asked China to cooperate with Tanzania in investing in large projects by providing cheap loans” and that “Tanzania will further develop and enhance its long-standing relationship with China and will continue to support China on various international issues.” China is currently Tanzania’s top trading partner and Tanzania is the largest recipient of Chinese government aid in Africa. It is worth considering that this China pivot, particularly at a time when the US’ new Cold War with China is reaching new heights, played a role in Western-backed regime change efforts targeting Tanzania.

Looking beyond Tanzania

The fate suffered by President John Magufuli and Tanzania is similar to what happened in a neighboring country, Burundi, just six months ago. The president of Burundi, Pierre Nkurunziza, publicly refused to enact top-down mitigation measures in response to COVID-19, and was similarly vilified by US aligned press and think tanks. In May 2020, Nkurunziza expelled the World Health Organization from Burundi and, three weeks later, it was reported that he had died after suddenly going into cardiac arrest.

More recently, Zambia, which borders Tanzania and is set to hold elections this August, is currently angering some of the same actors that Magufuli had challenged in its government’s efforts to nationalize its copper mines and potentially other mining projects. In December, Zambian President Edgar Lungu announced that his government would acquire “a significant stake in some selected mine assets” in order to “create sufficient wealth for the nation.” Echoing Magufuli, Lungu had stated “We shall no longer tolerate mining investors who seek to [profit] from our God-given natural resources, leaving us with empty hands.”

In January, Lungu took a step towards nationalizing the copper mining sector after a protracted dispute with none other than Glencore. Copper, like nickel, graphite and lithium, is a metal critical to the success of the 4^th Industrial Revolution. Western media reports on Lungu’s recent move quoted experts who urged Zambia’s government “to tread carefully” in its efforts to increase the role of the public sector in the nation’s mining industry.

Then, a week after Magufuli’s death was announced, Lungu’s main competitor in the upcoming election publicly accused Lungu of trying to have him murdered while some English language, pro-Western media outlets have already claimed that Lungu plans to rigthe upcoming election in his favor and that the country “may burn” if the election has the “wrong” outcome.

Such examples reveal that the situation that has recently unfolded in Tanzania is hardly unique in today’s Africa. However, the domination of the media landscape with constant COVID coverage has made Western audiences largely unaware of the various regime change efforts that have taken place or are underway in the region. Unlike regime change efforts of the recent past, those targeting Africa, and also Bolivia, seem laser focused on mining assets deemed essential to establishing the supply chains needed to power the 4^th Industrial Revolution.

With many of these countries having recently cozied up to China, it seems the regime change projects and proxy wars of the future are set to revolve, not around fossil fuels and pipelines, but over whether the East or the West will dominate the supplies of minerals needed to produce and maintain next-generation technology.

Not only has COVID kept reporting on these coups for minerals to a minimum, it has also lent a convenient cover for the demonization of leaders and the advancement of regime change in countries that are being targeted for other reasons that have everything to do with resources and little to do with a virus.

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Jeremy Loffredo is a journalist and researcher based in Washington, DC. He is formerly a segment producer for RT AMERICA and is currently an investigative reporter for Children’s Health Defense.

Whitney Webb has been a professional writer, researcher and journalist since 2016. She has written for several websites and, from 2017 to 2020, was a staff writer and senior investigative reporter for Mint Press News. She currently writes for The Last American Vagabond.

Featured image is from Unlimited Hangout

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Dear Mr. Nils Melzer,

My name is Peter Koenig, former economist at World Bank (30 yrs) – now geopolitical analyst – writing regularly on Global Research and other online journals.

My quest today is to call on you, as Human Rights Representative to defend the human rights of children.

What the absurd COVID measures do to the world is a crime but what they are doing to children is beyond a crime; it is totally immoral, destructive for our powerless children, and for the future of these children, as well as for society as a whole, as children are our societies’ future.

Children behind masks, social distancing, lockdown, remote schooling – deprived from meeting, talking and playing with their peers, friends – instead scaring them into losing their personalities, their self-assurance and self-esteem, it’s not only a physical health problem, but also a psychological health issue, which over time has untold, uncountable collateral damage, including total submissiveness for today’s children.

Our children are vulnerable – they are our future.

They need their human rights defended.

Dear Mr. Melzer, please speak up for them, in the UN, in UNICEF, in front of the 193 UN member governments, which follow all more or less the same COVID narrative, the same COVID human rights abuse, and especially the same human rights abuse on children.

Looking forward hearing from you,

thank you,

best regards,

and Happy Easter,

Peter Koenig

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

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

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).

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Twenty two Years Ago. 24 March 2021 marks the commemoration of the illegal US-NATO war of aggression against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia which started in March 1999,

In a bitter irony, a few days prior to March 24th, reports confirmed that the US army and NATO are once again beating the drums of war near the Russian border as well as in and around Serbia (1).

One of the goals of the large-scale military manoeuvre  entitled “Defender Europe 21” is to move an entire US military division from the USA “to a potential battlefield in Europe” in peacetime.

The military training sites which are envisaged will be located in several NATO countries including Romania and Bulgaria, as well as in the US KFOR base Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo. In turn, Germany which is NATO member state will form a “central hub”.

Instead of apologising to the victims of the war crimes committed in 1999 and of the genocide knowingly and willingly brought about with uranium weapons, and instead of compensating them materially and providing them with medical support, a murderous military threat is once again being  built up and deployed against the two “‘brother countries” Russia and Serbia.

After the economy and infrastructure of Serbia were destroyed to a large extent in this 78-day war in 1999 and whole swathes of land were contaminated by the use of highly toxic and radioactive uranium weapons, years later multiple cancers, deformities in newborns and aggressive leukaemia in children increased by leaps and bounds.

In 2020, according to the medical platform “Izis”, there were tens of thousands of new malignant cases in Serbia.

However, due to the transformation of many hospitals into pure “corona outpatient clinics”, these cancer patients only come for urgently needed medical treatment in the final stage. There, they can then only be offered supportive therapy.

In this context, the question also arises as to what the Serbian government has done in the past decades to assist the citizens who have been permanently affected by the US-NATO war and to support the medical doctors, scientific experts and institutions who are sacrificially providing them with help in their time of need?

It is hoped that independent international experts will take up the issue without delay.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

1. https://www.lr-online.de/nachrichten/brandenburg/defender-europe…-manoever-der-usa-_-was-kommt-auf-die-lausitz-zu_-54880745.html; https://pravda.rs/201/3/19/nato-i-amerika-zveckaju-oruzjem-oko-srbije-trajace-sve-do-leta/; www.pravda.rs, 19.03.2021: “Nato and America let weapons clang around Serbia”

Featured image: Consul General Meghan Gregonis, U.S. Consulate Munich welcomes Col. Patrick Disney, 1st Cavalry Division as he arrives at the Nuremberg Airport, Germany, March 5, 2020. Disney and his fellow Soldiers are the first to arrive to Germany for exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20. Exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20 is the deployment of a division-size combat-credible force from the United States to Europe, the drawing of equipment and the movement of personnel and equipment across the theater to various training areas. (U.S. Army photo by Capt. Ellen C. Brabo, 7th Army Training Command)(U.S. Army photo by Capt. Ellen C. Brabo, 7th Army Training Command)

The “Defender-Europe”. US Army Arrives.

By Manlio Dinucci, April 01 2021

Not everything in Europe is paralyzed by the anti-Covid lockdown: in fact, the mammoth annual exercise of the US Army, Defender-Europe, which until June mobilized on European territory, and beyond this, dozens of thousands of soldiers with thousands of tanks and other means, has been set in motion.

Video: The PCR Test Fraud

By BBC Panorama, April 01 2021

BBC Panorama sent an undercover reporter inside one of the biggest UK COVID testing labs. Secret filming uncovered evidence of potential contamination and pressure to hit targets.

Let’s End the Insanity of Colossal Military Spending During a Global Health Emergency

By Sonja Scherndl and Adam Parsons, April 01 2021

If nations had a referendum, asking the public if they want their taxes to go to military weapons that are more efficient in killing than the ones we currently have, or if they would prefer the money to be invested in medical care, social services, education and other critical public needs, what would the response be?

Fallout: US Suppression of Russian Vaccine in Brazil Becomes Diplomatic Incident

By Brasil Wire, April 01 2021

On Sunday March 14 2021, Brasil Wire published an exclusive story on how the United States pressured its ally, Brazil’s Bolsonaro regime, into rejecting Sputnik V, the world’s first approved Covid-19 vaccine, developed by Russia’s Gamaleya institute.

Myanmar, Libya, and Syria: Dangerous Parallels

By Brian Berletic, April 01 2021

When protesters in the streets of Myanmar began waving signs around in English demanding “R2P” or the “responsibility to protect,” the initial reaction should have been for many – a flashback to the last time R2P was invoked – in 2011 by the West regarding Libya.

Indonesia Will Not Join QUAD as It Delicately Balances Relations with All Regional Players

By Paul Antonopoulos, April 01 2021

After Japanese Defense Minister Nobuo Kishi met with his Indonesian counterpart Prabowo Subianto earlier this week, he stated that their two countries agreed to expand defense cooperation and conduct joint military exercises in the South China Sea.

The Great Vaccine Scam: Even Establishment Experts and Scientists Admit the Jabs Are Ineffective

By Vasko Kohlmayer, April 01 2021

“New Covid vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists,” reads the headline of a recent piece in the UK Guardian. The article is based on a survey of pro-vaccine scientists in nearly thirty countries across the globe. Two thirds of these scientists thought that the time frame within which you will need a new shot is less than nine months.

‘Breaking Through’ — States Report Growing Number of COVID Cases Among Fully Vaccinated

By Megan Redshaw, April 01 2021

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) announced Tuesday it is investigating reports of people who tested positive for COVID more than two weeks after being fully vaccinated against the disease.

6000% Increase in Reported Vaccine Deaths 1st Quarter 2021 Compared to 1st Quarter 2020

By Brian Shilhavy, April 01 2021

Reported deaths following the injections of these shots have now skyrocketed in the U.S. population by over 6000% here at the end of the first quarter of 2021, as compared to recorded deaths following FDA-approved vaccines at the end of the first quarter of 2020.

Thousands of Migrant Workers Still Being Held in Detention on the Southern Border

By Abayomi Azikiwe, April 01 2021

Since the advent of the new administration which took office on January 20, the numbers of people seeking admission to the U.S. has continued to increase exponentially.

US-NATO Planned Invasion and Proxy War Against Syria

By Shane Quinn, April 01 2021

The Syrian president Bashar al-Assad must have looked on with some concern, as US-NATO began their attack on Libya in mid-March 2011. There was good reason for Assad to be worried, considering Libya’s close enough proximity to Syria, coupled with the fact that the Americans had designated him for removal years before.

Urgent Open Letter from Doctors and Scientists to the European Medicines Agency regarding COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Concerns

By Doctors for COVID Ethics, April 01 2021

We note that a wide range of side effects is being reported following vaccination of previously healthy younger individuals with the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, there have been numerous media reports from around the world of care homes being struck by COVID-19 within days of vaccination of residents.

Video: A Spring Promise of War Dawns in Eastern Ukraine

By South Front, April 01 2021

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are increasing their grouping of troops in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, as well as in the direction of Crimea, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Ruslan Khomchak announced.

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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Surprisingly, with the financial crisis, the ascendancy of Occupy and the Wikileaks revolution that’s increasingly weakening imperial power, critical thought on the relationship between banking and war policy has never been more absent. You can’t forget, after the repressed information becomes lucid, that banks fund both sides of modern wars – except Palestine- a fact that has been deliberately suppressed.

In the apocalyptic atmosphere of ever triumphalist imperialism, the ruling class fends off revolution by means of the vast resources they possess for social control. All the secretive national security agencies, beneath the mystique, share a surprisingly simple aim: to protect banks, and therefore wars, from threats to their hegemony. The national security agencies are propaganda organs for corporate rule and systematically spread disinformation about socialism, the maligned, revolutionary philosophy associated with Marx that speaks to aspirations to organise society to meet social needs, share public solidarity and stoke international peace.

The malevolent nature of these ideological nerve centres is such that the state grants them the unique, dubious privilege of being exempt from the social contract, as they perpetrate vast crimes against humanity that they aren’t held accountable for.

CIA history:

This impenetrable impunity that the intelligence cartel has, deriving from violations of the constitution, is evident most in their favourite game: ruthless, systematic coups against non-aligned powers, coups that repress indigenous democracy.

Since its foundation, at a time a strong American left were breaking up monopolies, the CIA has sleeplessly bombarded socialists with sanctions, disinformation and murder. The rise of socialist China during the era of military adventurism for US venture capital in the Middle East has dispelled the myth of a unipolar world where America writes the rules, leaving the CIA in existential crisis, with a credible rival and without full spectrum dominance of ideology globally.

As John Lennon and the civil rights movement knew, the CIA exploit vast asymmetries in capabilities with protest movements to organise sophisticated, targeted campaigns of harassment against powerful anti imperialists. They subvert any threats to the centralised capitalist command over political and cultural narrative. All the figures of integrity and virtue from the 60s counterculture were neutralised through COINTELPRO.

A comparable program was Project MKULTRA, a study into hypnotic states of consciousness that probably sought to inaugurate the rule of the status symbol oriented society, and definitely sought to reform people’s thought and behaviour along pro-capitalist lines. If speculation on the web is to be believed there are numerous handlers and victims in politics, academia and the media, and the rumour is that the program harnessed ancient magical techniques known only to those with degrees of initiation into the mysteries.

The public mind is the systematic target of MKULTRA. It’s fed a junk diet of corporate symbols it’s manipulated into forging an affinity with, and the symbols are transmitted through hypnotic institutions like media and telly. The journalist Julian Assange commendably ruptured this matrix with Wikileaks, his experiment in whistleblowing systems engineering. The response from the establishment and imperialist media was to frame Assange for rape entirely without evidence and repress public acknowledgement of his asylum status.

The war machine is an avatar of grand corruption and great secrecy amongst global financial elites, whose fortunes thrive off public disorientation, confusion and apathy. Imperialist media conjures illusions of immoral cultural deviance in targeted nations, as lies are rehearsed and repeated till they’re believed. This is a media that completely inverts reality. The effect on political consciousness is perverse, making a far right fundamentalist agenda of privatisation of foreign infrastructure to ameliorate it into the US economy look normal and rational policy extreme.

The CIA have protected banking monopolies that invest in war, terrorism and global warming from the threat of international human brotherhood. Without the inception of the CIA a strong American left would have broken up banking cartels and brought an end to war. No doubt that this is what 1984 hinted at, the myth it was about Stalin was CIA anti communist strategy. The only hope for freedom today is to remember, and preach, that banks fund both sides of wars.

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Megan Sherman is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

Poland is poised to become a regional economic powerhouse upon the successful completion of six megaprojects: the Baltic Ring rail corridor, Świnoujście deepwater port, Vistula Spit Canal, E40 waterway, Central Communication Port, and Via Carpathia highway network.

Poland’s Six Megaprojects

Poland already enjoys the proud distinction of being the largest economy among the post-communist EU-member states, but it’s poised to become an even more pivotal regional powerhouse upon the successful completion of six megaprojects. These are the

• Baltic Ring rail corridor,
• Świnoujście deepwater port,
• Vistula Spit Canal,
• E40 waterway,
• Central Communication Port, and
• Via Carpathia highway network.

Altogether, they aim to enhance Poland’s transregional connectivity potential as the leader of the “Three Seas Initiative” (3SI), an economic bloc of states that it co-founded together with Croatia in 2015.

The “Three Seas Initiative”

The 3SI’s purpose is to comprehensively improve linkages between the Adriatic, Baltic, and Black Seas. It’s American-backed but could also function as a means of facilitating China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI) access into EU via the Beijing-owned Greek port of Piraeus, which the East Asian country wants to turn into the biggest in the bloc. The 3SI is an enormous undertaking that might very well take many years to bear fruit, but it’s still arguably among the main grand strategic ambitions of the Third Polish Republic. Its success is dependent on the completion of the six earlier identified megaprojects, which will now be concisely summarized.

Baltic Ring

The Baltic Ring rail corridor envisions circling its eponymous sea by bringing together Poland, the Baltic Republics, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany. It would represent the modern-day manifestation of the Medieval Hanseatic League trade bloc. The Mediterranean will always remain the most important body of water in the EU, but the Baltic could quickly become the next most significant one from an economic perspective if these plans come to fruition. Taken to its maximum extent, it could even help create a new center of geopolitical gravity in the bloc.

Świnoujście Deepwater Port

As for the Świnoujście deepwater port, it’s expected to complement the Baltic Ring by enabling the Scandinavian countries and also those in the Western Hemisphere like the US and Brazil to directly connect their freight containers with Poland’s rail network, thus easing transshipment between their regions and the Central & Eastern European (CEE) space. With Poland as the centerpiece of this transregional route, it’s well-placed to handsomely profit as the CEE becomes more important for global trade and investment. It’s noteworthy to mention that Świnoujście also hosts a recently constructed LNG terminal too.

Vistula Spit Canal & “Viking Silk Road”

Moving eastward along Poland’s Baltic coast, its Vistula Spit Canal project will enable the country’s economic partners to directly access the Vistula Bay without having to pass through Russia‘s Baltiysk. This is significant since it improves the viability of its E40 waterway (also known as the “Viking Silk Road”) plans to pioneer a riparian corridor through Belarus and Ukraine en route to the Black Sea. The latter project has some serious environmental concerns, however, because it passes through the Chernobyl exclusion zone. This is the riskiest of all six of Poland’s 3SI megaprojects, but perhaps the most geopolitically exciting if Warsaw can pull it off.

Central Communication Port

Reorienting more towards the center of the country, the Central Communication Port (also called the Hub by some) was recently included alongside the Vistula Spit Canal as an important part of Poland’s National Recovery Plan. The Hub envisions the creation of an integrated air, rail, and road junction to serve as the one of the CEE region’s main connectivity points. It’s absolutely indispensable for actualizing Poland’s 3SI vision, which is why it’s being prioritized. This project will also integrate all parts of the domestic economic more closely, further improving Poland’s attractiveness vis-a-vis its regional peers.

Via Carpathia

Finally, the last of the six megaprojects is the Via Carpathia highway network which intends to connect Poland to the Eastern Balkans. In practice, its pairing with the Baltic Ring will enable the creation of an Arctic-Mediterranean Corridor, which perfectly complements China’s BRI plans. It’ll also result in Poland becoming a leading economic player in this comparatively destitute corner of the continent. Over time, the cumulative influence that the country acquires there could help position the 3SI as a more confident political player in the event that its members more closely integrate with one another in all respects.

Concluding Thoughts

In view of the six examined megaprojects, there are plenty of reasons to be optimistic about Poland’s economic future.

The country is rapidly rising to the fore of European transregional connectivity processes, which makes it triply attractive for the EU, US, and China. With economic weight comes political influence, so it’s taken for granted that Warsaw will attempt to wield more power within the highly strategic 3SI space. It remains to be seen what the strategic impact of this will be, but one can only hope that it’ll increase stability in this part of Western Eurasia and not provoke geopolitical competition with other players such as Russia.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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).

***

Many changes are about to happen in the Brazilian political scenario, mainly in foreign policy. On Monday, the Bolsonaro government announced a large ministerial reform, with changes in six ministries. Among the main changes are the Ministries of Defense and Foreign Affairs, which must mean deep reforms in Brazilian international praxis.

At the Ministry of Defense, Luiz Eduardo Ramos was replaced by General Walter Souza Braga Netto, former Army commander in Eastern Brazil and federal interventionist in Rio de Janeiro between 2018 and 2019, where he stood out in the fight against drug trafficking in one of the most difficult moments of the Brazilian history of the war on drugs. It is difficult to know what Netto’s stance will be in relation to the main topics of his new office, however, he will certainly seek greater investments for the Armed Forces (despite being supported by the military, Bolsonaro’s government has one of the smallest investments in defense in Brazilian history) and it is unlikely that he will follow a policy of automatic alignment with the US, considering the anti-strategic and uninteresting content for Brazil of this orientation adopted by the government until then.

However, the main changes are with regard to the new Brazilian chancellor, Carlos Alberto Franco França, a career diplomat who was working on special advisory to the Presidency of the Republic before and now replaces Ernesto Araújo. The legacy of the last foreign minister is the worst possible: total subservience to Washington and rivalry with China (Brazil’s main trading partner). Carlos França seems ready to face this challenge and certainly has the necessary potential for this, being a highly respected diplomat who has held especially important positions abroad. His specialty is bilateral relations between Brazil and Bolivia (where he has been an ambassador twice). In addition, Carlos has a moderate and neutral stance on political and ideological issues, which is an important posture for Brazil in the current international context.

In order to recover fraternal relations with China, Carlos França will have a great work in the diplomatic sphere, but this will only be feasible if, at the same time, changes occur in the general postures of the federal government in relation to Beijing. Advised by Araújo, who acted in accordance with the interests of the Trump administration, Bolsonaro adopted several measures that hampered Chinese investments in Brazil, such as Huawei’s ban on the Brazilian 5G and reprisals against Coronavac.

It is important to emphasize that China was responsible for saving Brazil from the complete financial collapse in the last two years with its exports of several Brazilian products, mainly in the agribusiness sector. But, with the various anti-China offenses made by Araújo, this policy of cooperation decreased significantly and today the bilateral partnership is severely threatened. However, with the change in the American presidency, Brazil lost diplomatic support from Washington and now Brasilia is alone, without the US or China – something that Carlos França will try to change acting in order to recover ties with China, but that will only be possible if the government, among other measures, revise its decision on 5G and accept medical cooperation with Beijing (which is currently one of the main points of Chinese diplomacy).

Another point that should be highlighted is the possible improvement in regional relations in South America, mainly the bilateral partnership with Bolivia. This country is the center of attention of the new chancellor, who is an expert in Brazilian-Bolivian relations, having written the book “Brazil-Bolivian Electric Integration”. In a context of profound changes in Bolivian political scenario, with the return of MAS, Brazil has a great chance to mediate Bolivia’s dialogue with the rest of the world in a friendly manner and focused on regional interests – it remains to be seen, however, whether the Brazilian authorities will respond positively to the new minister’s projects for Bolivia or whether the extremist right-wing and pro-American stance will remain firm in the government.

In his first attitude as new minister, Carlos França has already demonstrated his willingness to improve the image of Brazil abroad by naming as Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs the diplomat Fernando Simas Magalhães, whose moderate postures and unblemished career reveal himself to be an extremely zealous professional for his country’s international relations. In fact, despite the new minister’s enthusiasm to radically change the foreign policy of the Araújo administration, the changes will only be effective if the government abandons the pro-American policy it has been adopting, but Bolsonaro seems far from wanting this.

The ministerial changes did not occur exactly at the will of the Brazilian president but were the result of strong pressure from several sectors of the Brazilian society. Bolsonaro accepted to change his team because the situation with the former Ministers was terrible and demanded urgent attitudes, but this was not his real aspiration. In other words, despite the changes, Bolsonaro still keeps his ideological stance intact. This, however, will certainly lead him to strong internal isolation, without any ministerial support, which may weaken his government.

Brazil is at a turning point. Without American support, it is time to resume old alliances and seek new partnerships. Bolsonaro has strained relations with Biden, but he does not change his subservience to Washington and that strongly hinders Brazil. Now, with a chancellor focused on improving relations with China and South American countries, Brazil has the main means necessary to overcome the crisis and regain its status of privilege and respect among nations, however, Bolsonaro remains inert in his pro-American zealotry.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image: Araújo (left) meets with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in April 2019 (Public Domain)

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***

On Sunday March 14 2021, Brasil Wire published an exclusive story on how the United States pressured its ally, Brazil’s Bolsonaro regime, into rejecting Sputnik V, the world’s first approved Covid-19 vaccine, developed by Russia’s Gamaleya institute.

The story, by investigative journalist John McEvoy, was based on discovery of a report from the US Department of Health and Human Services, in which they boasted of combatting “malign Russian, Cuban and Venezuelan influence in Latin America”, through persuading governments to refuse offers of medical help, cooperation and technology transfer.

One of the success stories HHS referred to in the 2020 report, was that they had convinced Brazil not to purchase Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine. Another point of US pride was discouraging Panama, which has one of the region’s worst Covid-19 rates, from allowing Cuban doctors into the country to alleviate its own crisis.

US efforts to prevent Brazil deploying Sputnik V in its fight against the world’s second worst Covid-19 outbreak fit into a wider campaign of western propaganda against the vaccine, in which it was depicted as untested, unsafe and ineffective, due to its emergency rollout before the publication of stage 3 trial data.

Sputnik V

Sputnik V was approved for use in August 2020, and began to be offered globally, with Argentina, Venezuela, Palestine, Hungary, UAE, and Iran among the early takers of both the vaccine, and the technology to manufacture it. Medical journal the Lancet later reported that Sputnik V was safe, and had 92% efficacy against the virus.

Dr Julian Tang, clinical virologist, told the BBC:

“Despite the earlier misgivings about the way this Russian Sputnik V vaccine was rolled out more widely – ahead of sufficient Phase 3 trial data – this approach has been justified to some extent now. Such pandemic-related vaccine rollout compromises have, to be fair, been adopted in the UK vaccination programme also – with the extended intervals between the first and second doses. So we should be more careful about being overly critical about other countries’ vaccine designs.”

With Brazil’s death toll approaching 280,000, the new revelations triggered fresh public outrage that Brazil had wasted a golden opportunity to begin its vaccination campaign months earlier, and worse, that it was under duress from the Donald Trump administration.

It was a dead-eyed calculation by the US that denying Brazilians access to Sputnik V was a price worth paying for preventing a Russian soft power victory in the region. It is a decision which could well have caused the deaths of thousands of Brazilians.

Media furore

The day after publication, our story began to filter through to Brazilian and international media.

Independent platforms Brasil 247 and Revista Forum, and Russia’s RT, were followed by Brazil’s largest and most influential newspaper Folha de S.Paulo, which ran the story under the headline: “Trump Government pressured Brazil to reject Russian vaccine Sputnik V”. Folha was followed by Globo’s G1, and then, later that evening, TV Globo’s Jornal Nacional, the country’s flagship news bulletin ran its own segment based on the earlier Brasil Wire revelations:

“A report by the American government from the time when Donald Trump was president shows that the United States tried to persuade Brazil not to buy the Sputnik vaccine, developed by Russia. The document states that the Department of Health used diplomatic relations to combat what it called “the malign influences of countries like Cuba, Venezuela and Russia in Latin America.” Last week, the Brazilian government announced the purchase of ten million doses of the Russian vaccine, after governors in the Northeast negotiated another 37 million doses. Sought out by Jornal Nacional, the American Embassy declared that both it and United States consulates in the country never discouraged Brazil from accepting vaccines against Covid that were authorized by Brazilian regulatory bodies.”

Central to the US Embassy’s flimsy rebuttal of a story based on an official US Health and Human Services document, was that it specified that they never discouraged purchase of Anvisa approved vaccines. In the timeframe covered by the HHS report, there were no approved vaccines in Brazil at all.

Russia responds

By the following morning, the story began to appear across a range of international media platforms, and sparked a response from the Russian government.

Reuters reported:

“The Kremlin said on Tuesday that pressure on some countries to refuse to buy Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine against COVID-19 was at unprecedented levels, but that said such efforts had no chances of success. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov made the remarks when asked to comment on a U.S. government report which appeared to show that the United States had attempted to dissuade Brazil from buying Sputnik V. He said Russia was against politicising the situation around vaccines.”

As the story spread it was also revealed that Russian Premier Vladimir Putin had been in direct contact with former Brazilian President Lula, who held a remote meeting with the Russian Direct Investment Fund, in a personal effort to secure more vaccine doses for the country. Russia later agreed to send 37 million doses of Sputnik V, targeted for the north eastern region of Brazil, whose governors had fought a long legal battle with the federal government for the right to deploy such vaccines.

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Featured image is from Brasil Wire

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***

When protesters in the streets of Myanmar began waving signs around in English demanding “R2P” or the “responsibility to protect,” the initial reaction should have been for many – a flashback to the last time R2P was invoked – in 2011 by the West regarding Libya.

At the time, many – including US Senator John McCain – promised the “Arab Spring” would spread – deliberately and as part of Washington’s desire to encircle, contain, and eventually overthrow the political and economic orders of Iran, Russia, and China.

The Atlantic in a 2011 article titled, “The Arab Spring: ‘A Virus That Will Attack Moscow and Beijing’,” would even note:

…McCain dropped a pretty big zinger on the crowd.

He said, “A year ago, Ben-Ali and Gaddafi were not in power.  Assad won’t be in power this time next year.  This Arab Spring is a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing.” McCain then walked off the stage.

Despite the ultimate failure of the US-engineered Arab Spring to achieve sweeping regime change beyond Libya – it still managed to destabilize or otherwise destroy the regions of North Africa and the Middle East – create a pretext for a permanent US military presence there, including an enduring occupation of Syria’s eastern region, and the creation of a ongoing conflict that could easily be described as a proxy war against Iran – one of the nations the 2011 Arab Spring was ultimately aimed at.

McCain was a stalwart supporter of US military intervention amid the opening phases of the Arab Spring. He met with US-armed and backed terrorists both in Libya and Syria until his death in 2018.

When he declared US-engineered conflict would eventually reach Moscow and Beijing – it was clear even at the time that it would – by necessity – first need to arrive in and erode the stability of nations along the peripheries of both Russia and China.

And this is a process that has continued ever since – with US-backed “color revolution” attacking Ukraine in 2013-2014, Belarus more recently – and both within China and along its peripheries – deadly separatism in China’s Xinjiang region, violent riots in Hong Kong, opposition groups in Thailand openly opposed to close relations between Bangkok and Beijing – and now the crisis in Myanmar.

Myanmar, Libya, and Syria: Dangerous Parallels 

The protests in Myanmar in response to the ousting of the US-backed government of Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) earlier this year – began violently. These were the same political groups that had stormed Rohingya communities years earlier – killing residents and burning homes and businesses to the ground. It is unlikely that since then, they’ve adopted “peaceful” methods.

To help spin the violent nature of the protests – the Western media has depended heavily on faux-human rights groups like Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP) who provides baseless “tallies” of dead and detained. The Western media never mentions that AAPP is funded by the US government via the National Endowment for Democracy and that the AAPP’s founder and and joint secretary – Ko Bo Kyi – is also an NED “fellow.“

Similar fronts were used by the West in Libya and Syria – including the Libyan League for Human Rights and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights respectively.

Videos of protesters with machetes, swords, bows and arrows, Molotov cocktails, and other weapons fighting with police and soldiers were even broadcasted by the Western media – and occasional mention of police and soldiers dying in the violence was also made. But overall – the Western media maintained a narrative of a one-sided “massacre” of “peaceful protesters” by Myanmar’s security forces.

We remember similar narratives told regarding the opening phases of the conflicts in Libya and Syria in 2011.

Western media outlets like the BBC and Reuters attempted to portray the opposition in Libya and Syria as “peaceful” up to and including when footage of opposition groups with war weapons – including tanks – began emerging. Once it became public knowledge of just how heavily armed and organized the opposition was – and when it came time for the US and its allies to openly arm and support them – the Western media began “explaining” why “peaceful protesters” had “no choice” but to take up arms.

The exact same narrative now plays out in Myanmar.

Myanmar Now – funded by the US government via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as revealed in a Columbia Journalism Review article – in a recent pieces titled, “As slaughter of civilians continues, some decide it’s time to take up arms,” would attempt to sell a similar narrative today.

The article claims:

Armed only with slingshots, makeshift shields, and Molotov cocktails, Ko Saung and his comrades could see that they were no match for armed forces equipped with lethal weapons and a license to murder without mercy.

That’s why they decided it was time for them to get real weapons of their own, and to learn how to use them. And to do that, they knew they would have to go to border areas, where ethnic armed groups have fought the Tatmadaw for decades.

The article then explains how – only two months into the crisis – a parallel government has already been formed and a “federal army” is already prepared to fight Myanmar’s military for control of the country.

The article explains:

The Committee Representing the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw (CRPH), formed by MPs from Myanmar’s ousted civilian government, has offered an alternative: a federal army that includes all forces opposed to the regime.

According to the CRPH, the idea is to set up defence plans from the ward/village level to the township level. After it released a statement outlining the proposal, a number of security committees were established in various parts of the country. 

These “forces opposed to the regime” include armed ethnic groups that have for decades received funding, equipment, and weapons from the United States through fronts posing as NGOs – many of them listed on the US government’s own National Endowment for Democracy website.

Just like in Libya and Syria – the Western media and US-funded propaganda outlets like Myanmar Now are attempting to sell the idea of a “pro-democracy” force of “freedom fighters” – that in reality – is clearly composed of armed extremists driven by ethnic identity, used by the US for decades to divide Myanmar – and bound to burn the nation to the ground in deadly, protracted conflict during its fight with Myanmar’s government – and if successful – with each other in the aftermath.

The CRPH – in the days and weeks to come – will undoubtedly be recognized by the US and its allies as the “legitimate” government of Myanmar – making it then possible for the US and others to arm, fund, and otherwise aid them in their bid to seize total power over the country.

There will also likely be the opportunity for the US to propose limited military intervention – citing the use of Myanmar’s air force against opposition groups armed with war weapons – just as the US did in Libya and attempted (and partially did) in Syria.

The proxy regime will be able to “invite” the US military into Myanmar’s territory – a dream scenario for a US desperate to encircle China with its military – especially by placing its troops in a nation that directly borders China as Myanmar does.

The US promised its Arab Spring would spread – like a virus – to the doorsteps of Moscow and Beijing. For China – with Myanmar clearly infected and slowly dying on its border – that day has now come.

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Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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For decades, America styled itself the ‘indispensable nation’ that led the world & it’s now seeking to sustain that role by emphasizing a new Cold War-style battle against ‘authoritarianism’. But it’s a dangerous fantasy.

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BBC Panorama sent an undercover reporter inside one of the biggest UK COVID testing labs.

Secret filming uncovered evidence of potential contamination and pressure to hit targets.

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Not everything in Europe is paralyzed by the anti-Covid lockdown: in fact, the mammoth annual exercise of the US Army, Defender-Europe, which until June mobilized on European territory, and beyond this, dozens of thousands of soldiers with thousands of tanks and other means, has been set in motion. The Defender-Europe 21 not only resumes the 2020 program, resized due to Covid, but amplifies it.

Why does the “Europe Defender” come from the other side of the Atlantic? The 30 NATO Foreign Ministers (Luigi Di Maio for Italy), who physically gathered in Brussels on March 23-24 explained: “Russia, with its aggressive behavior undermines and destabilizes its neighbors, and tries to interfere in the Balkan region.” A scenario constructed with the reality overturning technique: for example, by accusing Russia of trying to interfere in the Balkan region, where NATO “interfered” in 1999 by dropping, with 1,100 aircraft, 23,000 bombs, and missiles on Yugoslavia.

Faced with the Allies’ cry for help, the US Army comes to “defend Europe.” Defender-Europe 21, under the US Army Europe and Africa command, mobilizes 28,000 troops from the United States and 25 NATO allies and partners: they will conduct operations in over 30 training areas in 12 countries, including fire and missile exercises. The US Air Force and Navy will also participate.

In March, the transfer of thousands of soldiers and 1,200 armored vehicles and other heavy equipment from the United States to Europe began. They are landing in 13 airports and 4 European ports, including in Italy. In April, over 1,000 heavy equipment pieces will be transferred from three pre-positioned US Army depots – in Italy (probably Camp Darby), Germany, and the Netherlands – to various training areas in Europe, they will be transported by trucks, trains, and ships. In May, four major exercises will take place in 12 countries, including Italy. In one of the war games, more than 5,000 soldiers from 11 countries will spread across Europe for fire exercises.

While Italian and European citizens will still be prohibited to freely move for “security” reasons, this prohibition does not apply to the thousands of soldiers who will move from one European country to another freely. They will have the “Covid passport,” provided not by the EU but by the US Army, which guarantees that they are subjected to “strict Covid prevention and mitigation measures.”

 The United States is not only coming to “defend Europe.” The large exercise – explained the US Army Europe and Africa in its statement – “demonstrates our ability to serve as a strategic security partner in the western Balkans and the Black Sea regions while sustaining our abilities in northern Europe, the Caucasus, Ukraine, and Africa” For this reason, Defender-Europe 21 “utilizes key ground and maritime routes bridging Europe, Asia, and Africa“.

The generous “Defender” does not forget Africa. In June, again within the framework of Defender-Europe 21, it will “defend” Tunisia, Morocco, and Senegal with a vast military operation from North Africa to West Africa, from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic. It will be directed by the US Army through the Southern Europe Task Force with its headquarters in Vicenza  (North Italy). The official statement explains: “African Lion exercise is designed to counter malign activity in North Africa and Southern Europe and to defend the theater from adversary military aggression”. It does not specify who the “maleficents” are, but the reference to Russia and China is evident.

The “Defender of Europe” is not passing through here. The US Army V Corps participates in Defender-Europe 21. The V Corps, after being reactivated at Fort Knox  (Kentucky), has established its advanced headquarters in Poznan (Poland), from where it will command operations along NATO’s Eastern flank. The new Security Forces assistance Brigades, US Army special units  that train and lead NATO partner countries’ forces (such as Ukraine and Georgia) in military operations participate in the exercise.

Even if it is not known how much Defender-Europe 21 will cost, we citizens of the participating countries know we will pay the cost with our public money, while our resources to face the pandemic crisis are scarce. Italian military spending rose this year to 27.5 billion euros, that is 75 million euros a day. However, Italy has the satisfaction of participating in Defender-Europe 21 not only with its own armed forces but as a host country. It will therefore have the honor of hosting the final exercise of the US Command in June, with the participation of the US Army V Corps from Fort Knox.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Featured image: Consul General Meghan Gregonis, U.S. Consulate Munich welcomes Col. Patrick Disney, 1st Cavalry Division as he arrives at the Nuremberg Airport, Germany, March 5, 2020. Disney and his fellow Soldiers are the first to arrive to Germany for exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20. Exercise DEFENDER-Europe 20 is the deployment of a division-size combat-credible force from the United States to Europe, the drawing of equipment and the movement of personnel and equipment across the theater to various training areas. (U.S. Army photo by Capt. Ellen C. Brabo, 7th Army Training Command)(U.S. Army photo by Capt. Ellen C. Brabo, 7th Army Training Command)

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If nations had a referendum, asking the public if they want their taxes to go to military weapons that are more efficient in killing than the ones we currently have, or if they would prefer the money to be invested in medical care, social services, education and other critical public needs, what would the response be? 

Probably the majority of people would not have to think long and hard, since for many life has become an endless struggle. Even in wealthy countries, the most basic social rights can no longer be taken for granted. Social services are increasingly being turned into commodities, and instead of helping ordinary people they must serve shareholders by providing a healthy profit margin.

The United States is a prime example, where seeing a dentist or any medical doctor is only possible if one has health insurance. Around 46 million Americans cannot afford to pay for quality healthcare—and that is in the richest country of the world.

In less developed nations, a large proportion of people find it hard to access even the most basic resources to ensure a healthy and dignified life. One in nine of the world’s population go hungry. And the Covid-19 pandemic has only exacerbated this crisis of poverty amid plenty, with the number of people facing acute hunger more than doubling.

There are now 240 million people requiring emergency humanitarian assistance, while over 34 million people are already on the brink of starvation.

But the United Nations’ funding appeals are far from being met, condemning thousands to unnecessary deaths from hunger this year. With aid funding falling as humanitarian needs rise, aid agencies are being forced to cut back on life-saving services.

Does it make any sense for our governments to spend billions on defence while fragile health systems are being overwhelmed, and the world is facing its worst humanitarian crisis in generations?

Outrageously misplaced priorities

Global military spending continued to reach record levels in 2020, rising almost 4 percent in real terms to US$1.83 trillion, even despite the severe economic contractions caused by the pandemic. The United States spends two-fifths of the world’s total, more than the next ten countries combined, and still cannot afford to prevent 50 million of its own citizens suffering from food insecurity. Most shamefully, the United Kingdom is massively boosting its arms budget—the largest rise in almost 70 years, including a vast increase to its nuclear weapons stockpile—while cutting aid to the world’s poorest by 30 percent.

Consider what a fraction of military budgets could achieve if that public money was diverted to real human needs, instead of sustaining the corrupt and profitable industry of war:

• Meeting Goals 1 and 2 of the Sustainable Development Goals— ‘End poverty in all its forms everywhere’ and ‘Zero hunger’—would barely exceed 3 percent of global annual military spending, according to the UN’s Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs.
• With the U.S. military budget of $750 billion in 2020, it could feed the world’s hungry and still spend twice as much on its military than China, writes peace activist Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK.
• The annual nuclear weapon budget worldwide is 1,000 percent—or 10 times—the combined budget of both the UN and the World Health Organisation (WHO), according to the Global Campaign on Military Spending.
• Just 0.04 percent of global military spending would have funded the WHO’s initial Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund, according to Tipping Point North South in its Transform Defence report.
• It would cost only 0.7 percent of global military spending (an estimated $141.2 billion) to vaccinate all the world’s 7.8 billion inhabitants against Covid-19, according to figures from Oxfam International.

These opportunity costs highlight our outrageously misplaced priorities during an unprecedented global health emergency. The coronavirus pandemic has exposed just how ill-prepared we are to deal with real threats to our societies, and how our ‘national security’ involves a lot more than armies, tanks and bombs. This crisis cannot be addressed by weapons of mass destruction or personnel prepared for war, but only through properly funded healthcare and other public services that protect our collective human security.

It’s time to reallocate bloated defence budgets to basic economic and social needs, as long enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human rights. Article 25 points the way forward, underscoring the necessity of guaranteeing adequate food, shelter, healthcare and social security for all.

There is an imperative need for global cooperation to support all nations in recovering and rebuilding from the pandemic. The United Nations and its frontline agencies are critically placed to avert a growing ‘hunger pandemic’, and yet are struggling to receive even minimal funding from governments.

Imagine what could be achieved if just a portion of the money spent on military expenditures were pooled into a global fund, and redirected towards ending hunger and massively investing in public health systems, especially in the most impoverished and war-torn regions.

The common sense of funding ‘peace and development, not arms!’ has long been proclaimed by campaigners, church groups and engaged citizens the world over. But it will never happen unless countless people in every country unify around such an obvious cause, and together press our public representatives to prioritise human life over pointless wars.

In the words of arms trade campaigner Andrew Feinstein:

“Perhaps this is an opportunity. Let’s embrace our global humanity, which is how we’re going to get through this crisis. Let’s put aside our obsession with enemies, with conflict. This is an opportunity for peace. This is an opportunity to promote our common humanity.”

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This article was originally published on Share the World’s Resources

Sonja Scherndl is the campaigns coordinator at Share The World’s Resources (STWR), a civil society organisation based in London, UK, with consultative status at the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations.

Adam Parsons is STWR’s editor. 

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A group of scientists and doctors has today issued an open letter calling on the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to answer urgent safety questions regarding COVID-19 vaccines, or withdraw the vaccines’ authorisation.

The letter describes serious potential consequences of COVID-19 vaccine technology, warning of possible autoimmune reactions, blood clotting abnormalities, stroke and internal bleeding, “including in the brain, spinal cord and heart”. The authors request evidence that each medical danger outlined “was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.”

“Should all such evidence not be available”, the authors write, “we demand that approval for use of the gene-based vaccines be withdrawn until all the above issues have been properly addressed by the exercise of due diligence by the EMA.”

The letter is addressed to Emer Cooke, Executive Director of the EMA, and was sent on Monday 1 March 2021. The letter was copied to the President of the Council of Europe and the President of the European Commission.

It states:

“We are supportive in principle of the use of new medical interventions.” However, “there are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute ‘human experimentation’, which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.”

Read the letter here.

Video statement by Professor Sucharit Bhakdi, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology and Former Chair, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene. Click screen to view.

For comment contact Professor Sucharit Bhakdi MD: [email protected], or Associate Professor Michael Palmer MD: [email protected]

In a public statement the group said…

“No sooner did we deliver our letter than the Norwegian Medicines Agency warned that COVID-19 vaccines may be too risky for use in the frail elderly, the very group these vaccines are designed to protect. We would add that, by virtue of the mechanisms of action of the vaccines, to stimulate the production of spike protein, which has adverse pathophysiological properties, there may also be vulnerable people who are not old and already ill. New data shows that vaccine side effects are three times as common in those who have previously been infected with coronavirus, for example. None of the vaccines have undergone clinical testing for more than a few months, which is simply too short for establishing safety and efficacy.

“Therefore, as a starting point, we believe it is important to enumerate and evaluate all deaths which have occurred within 28 days of vaccination, and to compare the clinical pictures with those who have not been vaccinated.

“More broadly, with respect to the development of COVID-19 vaccines, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe has stated in their Resolution 2361, on 27th January 2021, that member states must ensure all COVID-19 vaccines are supported by high quality trials that are sound and conducted in an ethical manner. EMA officials, and other regulatory bodies in EU countries, are bound by these criteria. They should be made aware that they may be violating Resolution 2361 by applying medical products still in phase 3 studies.

“Under Resolution 2361, member states must also inform citizens that vaccination is NOT mandatory and ensure that no one is politically, socially, or otherwise pressured to become vaccinated. States are further required to ensure that no one is discriminated against for not receiving the vaccine.”

The letter comes as a petition against UK Government plans for vaccine passports passed 270,000 signatures, more than double that required to compel consideration for debate by MPs. The petition will be debated in the UK Parliament on 15th March 2021.

Doctors and scientists can sign the open letter by sending their name, qualifications, areas of expertise and country of practice to: [email protected].

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“New Covid vaccines needed globally within a year, say scientists,” reads the headline of a recent piece in the UK Guardian.

The article is based on a survey of pro-vaccine scientists in nearly thirty countries across the globe. Two thirds of these scientists thought that the time frame within which you will need a new shot is less than nine months.

Observes the Guardian:

“The grim forecast of a year or less comes from two-thirds of respondents, according to the People’s Vaccine Alliance, a coalition of organisations including Amnesty International, Oxfam, and UNAIDS, who carried out the survey of 77 scientists from 28 countries.”

If you are concerned about the vaccines, please pay close attention.

The Guardian’s report is an important one, because it indirectly reveals the truth about the current crop of the Covid-19 vaccines. Here is the hidden message: the vaccines being administered in millions of doses every day fail to confer adequate protection against Covid-19.

The obvious implication of these scientists’ statements is that the vaccines on offer are ineffective. About this there can now be no doubt, for if the vaccines were effective, these experts would not go around saying that people will have to be re-vaccinated within mere months of receiving their Covid shots. Only a few weeks ago these shots – you may remember – were being promoted as the answer to the pandemic and a ticket back to normality.

To compound the travesty, these scientists fail to tell us that there is every reason to believe that the new vaccines will be as ineffective as those that are being peddled at present.

The reason why the current vaccines are ineffective is because the virus that causes Covid-19 has mutated into a multitude of new variants. Some of these variants are sufficiently removed from the original strain to render the vaccines – which were aimed at that earlier version of the virus – useless. There have already been a number of cases where people came down with Covid even though they had been vaccinated against it. In a number of places around the world, the new variants have already become the dominant strains which makes the current batch of vaccines on the market largely obsolete.

That this type of virus mutates rapidly has always been known, which is why honest scientists have always warned that it is impossible to end this epidemic by vaccinations. Trying to beat this disease with inoculations is like playing cat and mouse, where we can never catch up with ever-new variants of the rapidly morphing virus. In other words, because of its nature, the virus will always be one step ahead in the vaccination game.

But this well-known fact did not dissuade the pharma companies and their allies in the scientific community and government from pursuing this predictably futile course of action. The reason for this is not difficult to see: money. The whole vaccination enterprise has proved to be tremendously profitable for those involved. The Pfizer vaccine, for example, is already the second highest revenue-generating drug in the world. According to an earlier piece in the Guardian, Covid-19 vaccines have “created a global market worth tens of billions of dollars in annual sales for some pharmaceutical companies.”

The effort has produced a bevy of billionaires and we are still only in the relatively early stages. Even though not everyone involved becomes a billionaire, great amounts of money and funding from this enterprise have been flowing to countless so-called experts, scientists and politicians who take part in the racket.

Desirous of keeping their scheme going, the profiteers blame the failure of the vaccines on the slow and uneven progress of the roll-out process. But what they say is just not true.

Rather than being slow, this has been the fastest vaccination development, production and roll-out in history. It normally takes several years to develop and test a vaccine and then it takes a long time to administer it to the population at large. According to Business Insider, “vaccines often take years, and sometimes even decades, to develop, test, and approve for public use.” The first Covid vaccines were being administered barely nine months after the disease was first detected in the West. The speed of the development and administration has been wholly unprecedented.

By claiming that the lack of speed is to blame and that we have to carry out the whole process much faster, the vaccine profiteers are proposing a course of action that is completely unrealizable.

Just think about it. According to Gregg Gonsalves, associate professor of epidemiology at Yale University, “new mutations arise every day. Sometimes they find a niche that makes them more fit than their predecessors. These lucky variants could transmit more efficiently and potentially evade immune responses to previous strains.”

To beat the mutations in the way the manufacturers suggest, we would have to develop, test, produce and roll out the vaccines for the strains in circulation in a very small window of time. As this is a quickly mutating virus, we are talking about a matter of weeks at the most. In this time frame we would not only have to develop an effective vaccine also but to inoculate the majority of the world’s population. This is clearly unachievable. Only a person detached from reality could think such a thing possible.

But even if you could somehow miraculously manage to do all of that within a month, there still would be no guarantee that within this time period new vaccine-eluding strains would not arise.

What the vaccines manufacturers and the experts and scientists on their payrolls publicly advocate is obviously absurd, and they know it. But this does not stop them from pushing this course of action on the frightened public, because of the tremendous profits they will rake up in the process. With each new round of the unwinnable game of cat and mouse being played with the virus, they will increase their wealth to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.

Due to the mutating nature of this virus, it is impossible to defeat this pandemic by vaccinations. In fact, vaccinations are likely to make things worse, because not only are they ineffective in conferring protection, but they apparently also have serious side effects. There have already been thousands of deaths and tens of thousands of vaccine injuries reported in the relatively short time since the mass administration began. The true number is likely far larger, and we still know nothing of the potential long-terms effects of these hastily created pharmaceuticals. According to analysis of data from Israel, one of the world’s most vaccinated countries, “Pfizer’s vaccine killed about 40 times more (elderly) people and 260 times more of the young than what the COVID-19 virus would have claimed in the given time frame.”

By continuing to administer these untested and ineffective concoctions to millions of people on a daily basis the pharma companies and their accomplices in government and the scientific community may be creating the largest health calamity in human history.

We must call upon our elected officials to put an end to this travesty.

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Vasko Kohlmayer [email] was born and grew up in former communist Czechoslovakia. He is the author of The West in Crisis: Civilizations and Their Death Drives.

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The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) announced Tuesday it is investigating reports of people who tested positive for COVID more than two weeks after being fully vaccinated against the disease.

According to Kiro 7 News, a CBS affiliate in Washington, the DOH is investigating reports of the so-called “breakthrough cases,” which it said are expected with any vaccine. Each case was confirmed with a polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test or a positive antigen test more than two weeks after the person had been fully vaccinated.

A majority of people with confirmed vaccine breakthrough experienced mild symptoms, if any. However, since Feb. 1, eight people with vaccine breakthrough cases were hospitalized and the DOH “is investigating two potential vaccine breakthrough cases where the patients died. Both patients were more than 80 years old and suffered underlying health issues,” officials said in a press release.

Washington isn’t the only state reporting breakthrough cases. Florida, South Carolina, Texas, New York, California and Minnesota have also reported cases of fully vaccinated people testing positive and becoming ill with COVID.

The Florida Department of Health in Volusia County had six documented breakthrough cases, Sumter County had six and Lake County had 26 cases, according to emails from each county spokespersons.

Dr. Sunil Joshi, president of the Duval County Medical Foundation, compared the COVID vaccine to the flu vaccine. “It’s like the flu shot, for instance, right. We know, we encourage people to get the flu vaccine. That doesn’t mean that you’re not going to get the flu. But the disease is significantly lessened,” Joshi said. “So remember, the whole goal for this, from the very beginning, has been to keep people out of the hospital. And so anything positive after the vaccine is not unusual, it can happen.”

In Charleston, South Carolina, the Department of Health and Environmental Control (DHEC) identified 134 breakthrough cases in those fully vaccinated across the state. In the past month alone, Roper St. Francis Healthcare treated four patients in the hospital and were aware of 10 other “breakthrough” cases that did not need hospitalization.

The Medical University of South Carolina reported seven COVID cases in fully vaccinated people. Roper Hospital is working with DHEC to analyze positive test results to see if variants may play a role.

“All of these individuals we identify who get infected or even hospitalized despite receiving two doses, that virus will be sent on to DHEC for further analysis,” infectious disease physician Dr. Kent Stock said. “The question is, is that phenomenon influencing these numbers?”

In Wichita Falls, Texas, seven vaccine breakthrough cases were reported Monday in those fully vaccinated against COVID. Of the seven cases, six had the Pfizer vaccine and one had Moderna.

“We’ve been watching that since the very beginning, since vaccinations started and so we started noticing it was just maybe one per week, two per week, now we are currently at seven,” Amy Fagan, assistant health director of the Wichita Falls Wichita County Public Health District, said.

As of March 24, Minnesota had identified 89 “breakthrough” COVID infections with a small number resulting in hospitalization, according to Star Tribune.

Out of caution, the state is reviewing the cases to see if they have anything in common, state infectious disease director Kris Ehresmann said. “A cluster of cases vaccinated at the same site could suggest a handling problem with the vaccine, or that a lot was tainted,” she said.

When asked about Minnesota’s vaccine breakthrough cases during a White House press briefing on March 26, Dr. Anthony Fauci, President Biden’s chief medical advisor, said: “This is something we take seriously and follow closely. You will see breakthrough infections in any vaccination when you’re vaccinating literally tens and tens and tens of millions of people. So in some respects, that’s not surprising.”

According to Fox News, a Long Island, New York woman tested positive for COVID Tuesday — more than a month after receiving her second dose of the Moderna vaccine meant to protect against the virus. “I was shocked,” Rosen said. “I’m the 4.9% that got Moderna and actually got COVID.”

In a March 23 letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, eight physicians reported on a study they conducted on breakthrough cases at the University of California, San Diego and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) health systems.

According to the letter, UCLA instituted an optional testing program on Dec. 26, 2020, for asymptomatic healthcare workers using PCR nasal testing in an effort to detect asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections after vaccination.

From Dec. 16, 2020, through Feb.9, 2021, a total of 36,659 healthcare workers received the first dose of a COVID vaccine, and 28,184 of these persons (77%) received the second dose. Among those vaccinated, 379 people tested positive for COVID at least one day after vaccination, and the majority (71%) tested positive within the first two weeks after the first dose. After receiving both vaccinations, 37 healthcare workers tested positive.

According to the study, the risk of testing positive for COVID after vaccination was between 0.97% and 1.19% –– rates higher than the risks reported in the Moderna and Pfizer vaccine trials.

As The Defender reported in December 2020, one explanation for “breakthrough cases” in the fully vaccinated may be the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in mRNA COVID vaccines like Moderna and Pfizer.

Studies have found approximately 72% of people may have PEG antibodies. In those people, the antibodies may cause an anaphylactic reaction to the vaccine. Or, the antibodies may break down and degrade the PEG-coated mRNA in the vaccine before it gets a chance to get into the cell and start programming the production of spike proteins, resulting in the vaccine being less effective.

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

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NATO is a bad influence. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization strengthens the worst tendencies of our political culture.

Ricochet recently reported on internal government documents regarding a discussion about selling sensors for armed drones to Turkey. Last spring the Trudeau government approved an exemption to an arms export ban to Turkey, allowing Ontario-based L3Harris Wescam to sell its thermal surveillance and laser missile targeting technology. It was subsequently employed in the deadly conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno-Karabakh.

In providing the exemption, government officials demonstrated concern about corporate interests and Canadian relations with a NATO ally.

“The need for cooperation among NATO partners was a major element of the justification for the carve-out that allowed Canadian tech to be transferred despite the stated ban,” reported Jon Horler.

This is not the first time NATO has been invoked to justify arms sales that fueled a war. In 1967 Prime Minister Lester Pearson responded to calls by opponents of the war in Vietnam to end the Defence Production Sharing Agreement, the arrangement under which Canada sold the US weapons, with the claim that to do so would imperil NATO. Lester Pearson claimed this “would be interpreted as a notice of withdrawal on our part from continental defence and even from the collective defence arrangements of the Atlantic alliance.”

NATO has also had a deleterious impact on nuclear weapons policy. In 2017 the government “hid behind Canada’s NATO membership”, according to NDP foreign critic Hélène Laverdière, when it voted against holding and then boycotted the 2017 UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination. In the lead-up to the resulting Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons entering into force, the nuclear armed alliance publicly criticized the TPNW. “As the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, or ban treaty, nears entry into force, we collectively reiterate our opposition to this treaty,” noted a NATO statement. Despite 86 countries signing the treaty, Ottawa continues to refuse to adopt the UN Nuclear Ban.

The alliance also heightens pressure on the federal government to boost socially and ecologically damaging military spending. In 2006 NATO countries adopted a pledge to put 2% of economic output into their military. Militarists regularly cite this arbitrary figure when pushing for greater military spending. Donald Trump and other US officials have repeatedly demanded Canada and other NATO countries spend 2% of GDP on the military. “NATO Members Ramp Up Defense Spending After Pressure From Trump”, noted a recent Bloomberg headline.

NATO has also been used to push weapons procurement. Calling for expanding the jet fleet, senior military officials told the Globe and Mail in 2017 that “Canada’s fighter fleet is not big enough to meet its NORAD and NATO obligations at the same time.” The federal government’s website justifies purchasing 15 Canadian Surface Combatants (CSC) ships – at a cost of $77 billion to acquire and $286 billion over its life-cycle – on the grounds they “will be able to a perform a broad range of missions with” NATO and other alliances. On Lockheed Martin’s site it says the “CSC will be fully interoperable with 5-eyes and NATO nations” and that its ship building “is based on 30+ years’ experience and knowledge of Canadian and NATO naval operations.”

In a history of the first century of the navy Marc Milner describes a series of reports in the mid-1960s concluding that the Royal Canadian Navy was “too small to meet Canada’s NATO obligations” and should be expanded “to meet NATO and North American commitments.”

NATO also draws Canada into foreign expeditions. A Canadian vessel currently leads Standing NATO Maritime Group One that is patrolling approximately 2,000 km from Canadian territory. It operates in the Baltic Sea, North Sea and Norwegian Sea while three other NATO Standing Naval Forces operate in the Black Sea, Mediterranean and elsewhere. Canada provides logistical support to NATO’s Kosovo Force and Canadian soldiers are part of NATO Mission Iraq, which Canada led until recently. About 600 Canadians are part of a Canadian-led NATO mission on Russia’s doorstep in Latvia.

Over the past two decades the alliance has drawn Canada into a number of violent conflicts. A Canadian general lead NATO’s 2011 attack on Libya in which seven CF-18 fighter jets and two Canadian naval vessels participated. Hundreds of civilians were killed by NATO bombers and to this day the country remains divided.

During the 2000s 40,000 Canadian troops fought in a NATO war that left thousands dead in Afghanistan. While the stated rationale of the war was to neutralize al-Qaeda members and topple the Taliban regime, the Taliban remains a major actor in the country and Jihadist groups’ influence has increased.

In 1999 Canadian fighter jets dropped 530 bombs in NATO’s illegal 78-day bombing of Serbia. Over 500 civilians were killed and hundreds of thousands displaced in bombing that destroyed critical infrastructure.

Sometimes it is necessary to stop hanging around with people who lead you astray. Get rid of the bad influences in your life. It’s time Canada left the belligerent, militaristic, North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

On the eve of NATO’s 72^nd anniversary the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute will be hosting a discussion on “Why Canada should leave NATO”

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After months of preliminary talks, attempts at provocation and political preparations it would appears that the crisis in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea is coming to a head.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are increasing their grouping of troops in the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, as well as in the direction of Crimea, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Ruslan Khomchak announced.

The reason given for this is the purported deployment of Russian forces to Crimea, and it is allegedly a “defensive move”.

This is clearly a pretext, indeed Moscow has repeatedly warned that Ukraine is preparing for an escalation in Eastern Ukraine and likely towards Crimea too.

On the Russian side, quite a bit of heavy equipment is being deployed in order to stop any potential critical escalation.

Social media is filled with footage of various trains and convoys moving forces towards Krasnodar and, especially via the Crimean Bridge, to Crimea.

The pieces of equipment include notably a 2S19 Msta-S self-propelled howitzer, some BMP-3 IFVs, T-72 battle tanks and more.

In total, as of March 30^th, reports claim that Russia has deployed up to twenty-eight battalion tactical groups. Around twenty-five more such formations are expected to arrive in the coming days.

In Eastern Ukraine, the stage has been set for an escalation. For weeks now, Kiev’s forces have carried out one violation after the other, shelling the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republic’s (DPR/LPR) military positions, but also their residential areas.

The two Republics responded in kind, and Ukraine has reported almost daily casualties. In most days over the course of March, Kiev lost 1 soldier, and on March 26^th, it even lost 4.

In MSM, the portrait of an aggressor, renewing their activities is now being painted. This is reinforced by the fact that there is military equipment primed for attack. All that was left was to remove any political obstacles that stood in the way.

On March 29^th, the Ukrainian Parliament passed a bill removing any need for Kiev to fulfill its obligations under the Minsk Agreements.

The document has some typical clauses, that Kiev has adopted numerous times in the past. It, however, calls the situation in Eastern Ukraine an “international armed conflict” – a war, and not “aggression of the Russian Federation against Ukraine.” All of these contravene the Minsk Agreements.

Ukraine also adopted a new Military Strategy, which is mostly aimed at repelling and deterring armed aggression against Kiev, preventing or restraining the enemy from full-scale use of military force against Ukraine, termination of the temporary occupation by the Russian Federation of part of the territory of Ukraine and more.

The stage is set, and it is likely that impromptu NATO exercises will begin in the Black Sea in the coming weeks. Some observers claim that the “ideal period” to begin a war in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea would be between April 15^th and 25^th as the humidity would be low and the roads easier to navigate.

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Media accounts in the United States have shown that thousands of migrant workers and their families are being held in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) detention facilities in the state of Texas.

Since the advent of the new administration which took office on January 20, the numbers of people seeking admission to the U.S. has continued to increase exponentially.

Although President Joe Biden has appointed his Vice President Kamala Harris to address and contain the burgeoning crisis, it is quite obvious that the federal government does not have the organizational capacity or the political will to effectively resolve the issue. The question of immigration into the U.S. is closely linked to the imperialist foreign policy of Washington and Wall Street which has systematically exploited and oppressed the masses of people within the Central America region and Mexico.

For several weeks, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and its affiliates within the immigration and border services concealed the actual conditions prevailing inside the detention facilities. However, Texas Congressman Henry Cuellar (Democrat) traveled to one of the CBP centers and released photographs and videos of the overcrowded and unsanitary situation facing children and adults.

Migrants held in CBP detention with guards overlooking (Abayomi Azikiwe)

On March 30, several members of the corporate press were allowed to enter the CBP detention facility in Donna, Texas where the images were taken and published during the previous week. The release of the initial photographs earlier in March, sparked sharp criticisms of the Biden administration from Democrats, Republicans and independent political forces. Immediately, Biden deployed a delegation to Texas while announcing that two military bases would be opened to house unaccompanied children seeking to enter the U.S. Nonetheless, the president has refused to declare the situation on the southern border and within the migrant detention facilities as a national crisis requiring immediate executive and legislative measures.

Many thousands are continuing to move throughout the Central America and Mexico region with the aim of entering the U.S. often in efforts to reconnect with family members. A recent British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) report filmed in Mexico, illustrates the human trafficking operations taking place from Central America. Couriers are paid large sums of money to smuggle people across dangerous waterways and rural areas until they reach the border between Mexico and Guatemala. People are fleeing from poverty, the tyranny of drug lords and the impact of drought largely stemming from climate change.

An article published by the Associated Press on the media delegation which visited the Texas facility says that:

“The Biden administration for the first time Tuesday (March 30) allowed journalists inside its main border detention facility for migrant children, revealing a severely overcrowded tent structure where more than 4,000 people, including children and families, were crammed into a space intended for 250 and the youngest were kept in a large play pen with mats on the floor for sleeping. With thousands of children and families arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent weeks and packing facilities, President Joe Biden has been under pressure to bring more transparency to the process. U.S. Customs and Border Protection allowed two journalists from The Associated Press and a crew from CBS to tour the facility in Donna, Texas, in the Rio Grande Valley, the nation’s busiest corridor for illegal crossings.”

Concurrently, the Biden administration is continuing the same immigration policy of expelling entire families with children along with adults traveling on their own under the Trump-era public health regulations enacted during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Contrastingly, the Biden White House says that it will not expel unaccompanied minors and children while seeking to house these juveniles in better facilities. (See this)

Criminalization of the Plight of Migrant Workers and Their Families 

When the migrants are detained and moved into the CBP detention facilities they are given medical examinations and psychological evaluations, according to the officials. The children are checked for lice and if they show symptoms of coronavirus they are supposed to be placed in some form of isolation.

Nevertheless, in viewing the photographs released by both Congressman Cuellar and the media delegation from March 30, it becomes quite obvious that these facilities where migrant workers and children are being detained are incubators for infectious diseases. After the detainees are processed through examinations, photographs and psychological evaluations, they are given notices of when to appear before an immigration court.

U.S. immigration officials claim that if the children have contact information for relatives living in the country, they are allowed to inform them of their status. However, many of these relatives themselves maybe living as undocumented persons and are reluctant to come forward. The detainees are fingerprinted as well placing them within the federal law-enforcement system for future monitoring.

In the same report quoted earlier in this article, it says of the flow of migrants into the U.S.:

“The Border Patrol is apprehending far more children daily than Health and Human Services is placing with U.S. sponsors, leading to a severe backlog in the system. The Border Patrol generally is not supposed to detain children for more than three days, but Health and Human Services lacks space. More than 2,000 kids have been at the Donna facility for more than 72 hours, including 39 for more than 15 days. HHS is housing children at convention centers in Dallas and San Diego and is opening large-scale sites in San Antonio, El Paso and elsewhere.”

Consequently, these families will remain separated for the unforeseeable future. The living circumstances in the CBP and HHS facilities will make the migrant workers and children susceptible to contracting coronavirus and other illnesses at a time when the number of COVID-19 cases are surging in more than half of the states threatening the advent of a fourth wave in the U.S., the country with the most infections internationally. The trauma of residing in these detention centers could scar the psychological make-up of both the adults and children held in custody along with their families living both outside and inside the U.S.

Federal Government Must Take Immediate Action on Immigration Reform 

The Biden administration can no longer ignore the escalating numbers of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. Policy initiatives to provide vaccinations and economic relief to millions of people, cannot be utilized as an excuse for inaction on the border crisis.

New legislation and executive orders are required to address the needs of the migrants seeking asylum. The aggressive military and economic policies of the government and corporations should be curtailed in order to provide relief to people living in Mexico and Central America.

This crisis has its origins within domestic and foreign policy imperatives of the U.S. which are designed to maintain white supremacy, enhance capitalist exploitation and the imperialist plunder of Latin America and the Caribbean. The influx of migrants into the U.S. is a manifestation of the more than three decades of wars waged against the peoples of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Latin America.

Tens of millions of people living in these geo-political regions targeted by Washington, the European Union, NATO and their allies are being forced from their homes. The economies under which they live have been destroyed through wars of occupation and the enactment of globalization which stifles the capacity of people to build an independent existence.

Imperialist war and the unquenchable demand by the capitalist states for the land, resources, waterways and labor of the majority of the world’s population has prompted the large-scale displacement of an estimated 75 million people worldwide. The problems of migration from the oppressed nations can only be resolved by a radical transformation of the industrialized countries of Western Europe and North America.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Migrants held on the Southern US border (Abayomi Azikiwe)

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Emer Cooke, Executive Director, European Medicines Agency, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

28 February 2021

Dear Sirs/Mesdames,

FOR THE URGENT PERSONAL ATTENTION OF: EMER COOKE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE EUROPEAN MEDICINES AGENCY

As physicians and scientists, we are supportive in principle of the use of new medical interventions which are appropriately developed and deployed, having obtained informed consent from the patient. This stance encompasses vaccines in the same way as therapeutics.

We note that a wide range of side effects is being reported following vaccination of previously healthy younger individuals with the gene-based COVID-19 vaccines. Moreover, there have been numerous media reports from around the world of care homes being struck by COVID-19 within days of vaccination of residents. While we recognise that these occurrences might, every one of them, have been unfortunate coincidences, we are concerned that there has been and there continues to be inadequate scrutiny of the possible causes of illness or death under these circumstances, and especially so in the absence of post-mortems examinations.

In particular, we question whether cardinal issues regarding the safety of the vaccines were adequately addressed prior to their approval by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

As a matter of great urgency, we herewith request that the EMA provide us with responses to the following issues:

1. Following intramuscular injection, it must be expected that the gene-based vaccines will reach the bloodstream and disseminate throughout the body [1]. We request evidence that this possibility was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

2. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that the vaccines will remain entrapped in the circulation and be taken up by endothelial cells. There is reason to assume that this will happen particularly at sites of slow blood flow, i.e. in small vessels and capillaries [2]. We request evidence that this probability was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

3. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that during expression of the vaccines’ nucleic acids, peptides derived from the spike protein will be presented via the MHC I — pathway at the luminal surface of the cells. Many healthy individuals have CD8-lymphocytes that recognize such peptides, which may be due to prior COVID infection, but also to cross-reactions with other types of Coronavirus [3; 4] [5]. We must assume that these lymphocytes will mount an attack on the respective cells. We request evidence that this probability was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

4. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that endothelial damage with subsequent triggering of blood coagulation via platelet activation will ensue at countless sites throughout the body. We request evidence that this probability was excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

5. If such evidence is not available, it must be expected that this will lead to a drop in platelet counts, appearance of D-dimers in the blood, and to myriad ischaemic lesions throughout the body including in the brain, spinal cord and heart. Bleeding disorders might occur in the wake of this novel type of DIC-syndrome including, amongst other possibilities, profuse bleedings and haemorrhagic stroke. We request evidence that all these possibilities were excluded in pre-clinical animal models with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

6. The SARS-CoV-2 spike protein binds to the ACE2 receptor on platelets, which results in their activation [6]. Thrombocytopenia has been reported in severe cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection [7]. Thrombocytopenia has also been reported in vaccinated individuals [8]. We request evidence that the potential danger of platelet activation that would also lead to disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) was excluded with all three vaccines prior to their approval for use in humans by the EMA.

7. The sweeping across the globe of SARS-CoV-2 created a pandemic of illness associated with many deaths. However, by the time of consideration for approval of the vaccines, the health systems of most countries were no longer under imminent threat of being overwhelmed because a growing proportion of the world had already been infected and the worst of the pandemic had already abated. Consequently, we demand conclusive evidence that an actual emergency existed at the time of the EMA granting Conditional Marketing Authorisation to the manufacturers of all three vaccines, to justify their approval for use in humans by the EMA, purportedly because of such an emergency.

Should all such evidence not be available, we demand that approval for use of the gene-based vaccines be withdrawn until all the above issues have been properly addressed by the exercise of due diligence by the EMA.

There are serious concerns, including but not confined to those outlined above, that the approval of the COVID-19 vaccines by the EMA was premature and reckless, and that the administration of the vaccines constituted and still does constitute “human experimentation”, which was and still is in violation of the Nuremberg Code.

In view of the urgency of the situation, we request that you reply to this email within seven days and address all our concerns substantively. Should you choose not to comply with this reasonable request, we will make this letter public.

This email is copied to:

Charles Michel, President of the Council of Europe

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.

Doctors and scientists can sign the open letter by emailing their name, qualifications, areas of expertise, country and any affiliations they would like to cite, to [email protected]

Yours faithfully,

Professsor Sucharit Bhakdi MD, Professor Emeritus of Medical Microbiology and Immunology, Former Chair, Institute of Medical Microbiology and Hygiene, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany and Thailand)

Dr Marco Chiesa MD FRCPsych, Consultant Psychiatrist and Visiting Professor, University College London (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom and Italy)

Dr C Stephen Frost BSc MBChB Specialist in Diagnostic Radiology, Stockholm, Sweden (Medical Doctor) (United Kingdom and Sweden)

Dr Margareta Griesz-Brisson MD PhD, Consultant Neurologist and Neurophysiologist (studied Medicine in Freiburg, Germany, speciality training for Neurology at New York University, Fellowship in Neurophysiology at Mount Sinai Medical Centre, New York City; PhD in Pharmacology with special interest in chronic low level neurotoxicology and effects of environmental factors on brain health), Medical Director, The London Neurology and Pain Clinic (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Germany and United Kingdom)

Professor Martin Haditsch MD PhD, Specialist (Austria) in Hygiene and Microbiology, Specialist (Germany) in Microbiology, Virology, Epidemiology/Infectious Diseases, Specialist (Austria) in Infectious Diseases and Tropical Medicine, Medical Director, TravelMedCenter, Leonding, Austria, Medical Director, Labor Hannover MVZ GmbH (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Austria and Germany)

Professor Stefan Hockertz, Professor of Toxicology and Pharmacologym, European registered Toxicologist, Specialist in Immunology and Immunotoxicology, CEO tpi consult GmbH. (Scientist) (Germany)

Dr Lissa Johnson, BSc BA(Media) MPsych(Clin) PhD, Clinical Psychologist and Behavioural Psychologist, Expertise in the social psychology of torture, atrocity, collective violence and fear propaganda, Former member Australian Psychological Society Public Interest Advisory Group (Clinical Psychologist and Behavioural Scientist) (Australia)

Professor Ulrike Kämmerer PhD, Associate Professor of Experimental Reproductive Immunology and Tumor Biology at the Department of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, University Hospital of Würzburg, Germany, Trained molecular virologist (Diploma, PhD-Thesis) and Immunologist (Habilitation), Remains engaged in active laboratory research (Molecular Biology, Cell Biology (Scientist) (Germany)

Associate Professor Michael Palmer MD, Department of Chemistry (studied Medicine and Medical Microbiology in Germany, has taught Biochemistry since 2001 in present university in Canada; focus on Pharmacology, metabolism, biological membranes, computer programming; experimental research focus on bacterial toxins and antibiotics (Daptomycin); has written a textbook on Biochemical Pharmacology, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada (Medical Doctor and Scientist) (Canada and Germany)

Professor Karina Reiss PhD, Professor of Biochemistry, Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, Expertise in Cell Biology, Biochemistry (Scientist) (Germany)

Professor Andreas Sönnichsen MD, Professor of General Practice and Family Medicine, Department of General Practice and Family Medicine, Center of Public Health, Medical University of Vienna, Vienna (Medical Doctor) (Austria)

Dr Michael Yeadon BSc (Joint Honours in Biochemistry and Toxicology) PhD (Pharmacology), Formerly Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer Allergy & Respiratory, Pfizer Global R&D; Co-founder & CEO, Ziarco Pharma Ltd.; Independent Consultant (Scientist) (United Kingdom)

References

[1] Hassett, K. J.; Benenato, K. E.; Jacquinet, E.; Lee, A.; Woods, A.; Yuzhakov, O.; Himansu, S.; Deterling, J.; Geilich, B. M.; Ketova, T.; Mihai, C.; Lynn, A.; McFadyen, I.; Moore, M. J.; Senn, J. J.; Stanton, M. G.; Almarsson, Ö.; Ciaramella, G. and Brito, L. A.(2019).Optimization of Lipid Nanoparticles for Intramuscular Administration of mRNA Vaccines, Molecular therapy. Nucleic acids 15 : 1–11.

[2] Chen, Y. Y.; Syed, A. M.; MacMillan, P.; Rocheleau, J. V. and Chan, W. C. W.(2020). Flow Rate Affects Nanoparticle Uptake into Endothelial Cells, Advanced materials 32 : 1906274.

[3] Grifoni, A.; Weiskopf, D.; Ramirez, S. I.; Mateus, J.; Dan, J. M.; Moderbacher, C. R.; Rawlings, S. A.; Sutherland, A.; Premkumar, L.; Jadi, R. S. and et al.(2020). Targets of T Cell Responses to SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus in Humans with COVID-19 Disease and Unexposed Individuals, Cell 181 : 1489–1501.e15.

[4] Nelde, A.; Bilich, T.; Heitmann, J. S.; Maringer, Y.; Salih, H. R.; Roerden, M.; Lübke, M.; Bauer, J.; Rieth, J.; Wacker, M.; Peter, A.; Hörber, S.; Traenkle, B.; Kaiser, P. D.; Rothbauer, U.; Becker, M.; Junker, D.; Krause, G.; Strengert, M.; Schneiderhan-Marra, N.; Templin, M. F.; Joos, T. O.; Kowalewski, D. J.; Stos-Zweifel, V.; Fehr, M.; Rabsteyn, A.; Mirakaj, V.; Karbach, J.; Jäger, E.; Graf, M.; Gruber, L.-C.; Rachfalski, D.; Preuß, B.; Hagelstein, I.; Märklin, M.; Bakchoul, T.; Gouttefangeas, C.; Kohlbacher, O.; Klein, R.; Stevanović, S.; Rammensee, H.-G. and Walz, J. S.(2020). SARS-CoV-2-derived peptides define heterologous and COVID-19-induced T cell recognition, Nature immunology.

[5] Sekine, T.; Perez-Potti, A.; Rivera-Ballesteros, O.; Strålin, K.; Gorin, J.-B.; Olsson, A.; Llewellyn-Lacey, S.; Kamal, H.; Bogdanovic, G.; Muschiol, S. and et al.(2020). Robust T Cell Immunity in Convalescent Individuals with Asymptomatic or Mild COVID-19, Cell 183 : 158–168.e14.

[6] Zhang, S.; Liu, Y.; Wang, X.; Yang, L.; Li, H.; Wang, Y.; Liu, M.; Zhao, X.; Xie, Y.; Yang, Y.; Zhang, S.; Fan, Z.; Dong, J.; Yuan, Z.; Ding, Z.; Zhang, Y. and Hu, L.(2020). SARS-CoV-2 binds platelet ACE2 to enhance thrombosis in COVID-19, Journal of hematology & oncology 13 : 120.

[7] Lippi, G.; Plebani, M. and Henry, B. M.(2020).Thrombocytopenia is associated with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) infections: A meta-analysis, Clin. Chim. Acta 506 : 145–148.

[8] Grady, D. (2021). A Few Covid Vaccine Recipients Developed a Rare Blood Disorder, The New York Times, Feb. 8, 2021.

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The Vaccine Passport Propaganda Template

By Adam Dick, March 31 2021

With reports that President Joe Biden’s administration is planning for imposing a vaccine passport mandate in America, expect to see in the media a deluge of vaccine passport propaganda. What will that propaganda look like?

Biden’s Ukrainian “Putin Push” Could Lead to World War III

By Bruce Wilds, March 31 2021

Biden was in charge of much of the “Ukraine project” during Obama’s time in office. In recent weeks President Biden has been saying some rather mean-spirited things about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.

One of the Great Ironies: As China Grows Richer, It Is Growing Further Apart from the US

By Tom Clifford, March 31 2021

In calmer times, when there is less talk of trade disputes, tariffs, human rights abuses, it will be noted as one of history’s great ironies that as the economic gap between the United States and China narrowed the ideological chasm widened.

COVID-19 Vaccines Likened to ‘Software Updates’ for Your Body

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 31 2021

Despite being a recognized form of gene therapy since its inception, vaccine makers are now frantically trying to deny that this mRNA technology is gene therapy. One reason for this, suggested by David Martin, Ph.D.,1 might be because as long as they’re considered “vaccines,” they will be shielded from liability.

Bill Gates and His Empires. “Ushering In the Great Reset”

By Dr. Vandana Shiva and Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 31 2021

We’re currently facing enormously powerful technocrats who are hell-bent on ushering in the Great Reset, which will complete the ongoing transfer of wealth and resource ownership from the poor and middle classes to the ultra-rich.

68-Year-Old Dies After Anaphylactic Reaction to COVID Vaccine as CDC Continues to Ignore Inquiry Into Increasing Number of Deaths

By Megan Redshaw, March 29 2021

Data released today by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on the number of injuries and deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID vaccines showed that between Dec. 14, 2020 and March 19, 2021, there were 44,606 reports of adverse events, including 2,050 deaths and 7,095 serious injuries.

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

By Richard Sanders, March 31 2021

For centuries, self-righteous state myths have depicted the imperial Canadian project as a victory for democracy and human rights. Despite Canada’s long record of genocide, land plunder, and war profiteering, official narratives about noble “Canadian values” still reign in this imagined “peaceable kingdom.”

Canada Suspends AstraZeneca COVID Shot – 2,530 Injuries and 24 Dead Following Mostly Pfizer and Moderna Shots

By Brian Shilhavy, March 31 2021

Canada’s National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) has joined other nations in recommending that Canadian Provinces halt injections of the experimental AstraZeneca COVID “vaccines” following concerns about blood clots and vaccine-induced thrombocytopenia (VIPIT).

Who Owns Facebook?

By Emanuel Pastreich, March 31 2021

There has been much chatter in the media about the unbridled power of social media tech giants and how they unfairly decide to censor certain voices, or, on the other hand, they fail to delete or block those spreading information that is judged to be false or misleading.

#YemenCantWait. Hands Off Yemen!

By Azza Rojbi, March 31 2021

February 15, 2021, marks one year since the Saudi-led coalition’s horrific air raid on a residential area in Yemen’s northern province of al-Jawf. The bombing killed 35 people, including 25 children, and 18 children were amongst the 23 injured.

Defeating the Global Elite’s Coup d’État: The Great Reset

By Robert J. Burrowes, March 31 2021

Worldwide, international organizations such as the World Health Organization (WHO), governments and the corporate media, acting as agents of the global elite, continue their efforts to preoccupy the human population with measures supposedly being taken to address the non-existent virus labeled SARS-CoV-2.

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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They’re called COVID-19 breakthrough cases — people who have been fully vaccinated yet still contract the virus more than 14 days after their second shot.

The cases are popping up around the country, including in Central Florida.

Hanna Rewerts, 27, is a physical therapist and has been tested for COVID-19 at least once a week since the pandemic started.

She says she got her first positive test just days ago.

Click here to watch the video.

“I was shocked, you know,” Rewerts told News 6. “Immediately I’m like, ‘This has to be a false-positive. This can’t be right.’”

But multiple tests confirmed it.

She said she was shocked because she is also fully vaccinated.

As a health care worker, Rewerts had her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine in December 2020, according to her vaccine card. Her second dose was three weeks later in January.

More than two months after the second shot, she contracted the virus.

“So it’s just, it’s very odd,” Rewerts said.

Rewerts is among a growing number of people.

Earlier this month, the Minnesota Department of Health released a health advisory stating that along with the CDC, it is investigating COVID-19 infections among people who are “appropriately vaccinated,” also called vaccine breakthrough cases, according to the advisory.

News 6 checked and the Florida Department of Health in Volusia County has six documented breakthrough cases while Sumter County has six and Lake County has 26 cases, according to emails from each county’s spokesperson.

Dr. Timothy Hendrix is with Advent Health and said it is possible for someone who is fully vaccinated to still contract the virus.

However, the vaccine can prevent more severe cases, including hospitalization and death. It is still important to get vaccinated from COVID-19.

“It is possible because no vaccine is perfect,” Hendrix said.

Hendrix stressed that both Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are 95% effective, though.

“The good news is for that very small amount of people that might become infected, that less than 5%, the chances of severe disease is next to zero,” Hendrix said.

Breakthrough cases are not specific to COVID-19 and can happen with any vaccine, according to experts.

Rewerts said three of her family members who were also fully vaccinated contracted it as well.

“One of my family members actually went to the hospital,” Rewerts said. “I mean, that’s pretty severe enough to be concerned about the vaccine.”

Rewerts said the Florida Department of Health is testing to see whether she may have been infected by one of the COVID-19 variants that has made it to Florida.

She said for now, she and her family will continue social distancing and wearing masks.

“I don’t think the public is aware that it doesn’t mean you’re not getting the virus, and it doesn’t mean you’re not getting sick. There is still a chance,” Rewerts said.

Hendrix put it this way.

“The one thing you should know is every vaccine that’s been approved at this point, is highly effective at preventing the one major endpoint: hospitalization and death,” Hendrix said.

Researchers are still trying to figure out if people who are fully vaccinated and contract the virus can also spread it to other people, which is why they recommend still wearing masks even after you’re vaccinated.

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Emmy Award-winning reporter Louis Bolden joined the News 6 team in September of 2001 and hasn’t gotten a moment’s rest since. Louis has been a General Assignment Reporter for News 6 and Weekend Morning Anchor. He joined the Special Projects/Investigative Unit in 2014.

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In the past few months, Grayzone journalist Aaron Mate has interviewed two former ambassadors to Syria: former UK Ambassador Peter Ford and former U.S. Ambassador Robert S. Ford.

The two ambassadors have a common surname but dramatically different perspectives. This article will compare the statements and viewpoints of the two diplomats.

UK Ambassador Peter Ford (PF)

Peter Ford trained as an Arabist and served in the British foreign service in numerous cities including Beirut, Riyadh, and Cairo. He was Ambassador to Bahrein from 1999 to 2003, then Syria from 2003 to 2006. From 2006 until 2014 he was a senior officer with the UN Relief Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees.

The interview with UK Amb. Peter Ford (PF) shows why he is exceptional former diplomat. He analyzes and criticizes western aggression against Syria.

PF describes the current situation:

“The Syrian government forces control about 70% of the country. There’s that pocket of jihadi fighters controlling Idlib province and a couple of patches of neighboring provinces, and then you’ve got the big – what I call the wild east of Syria – the big triangle of land up all the way along the thousand miles along the Turkish border and then down the Iraqi border, and that is effectively a US protectorate. There are US forces there being helped on the ground by basically Kurdish militia, the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces.”

PF describes the crushing economic sanctions:

“It’s utterly shocking…The policy has been effective in the sense that Syrian people are suffering every day. There are long queues for bread, long queues for gasoline. The policy of sanctions and denial of assistance for reconstruction has been effective, but what kind of policy is it that tries to immiserate a whole country? It’s delusional because it’s not even going to work….

“The experience of 10 years of this conflict is that the Syrian government is amazingly resilient. They’ve been on the ropes many times in this conflict and pulled through largely because they have the support of great swaths of the Syrian populace. Assad is not going to buckle under this new increased economic pressure. It is utterly delusional to believe that this cynical, callous policy could work.”

PF analyzes the US troops in north eastern Syria.

“By their mere presence, they’re preventing the advance of the Syrian government forces. The result is that the Syrian people are denied the great oil and grain wealth of that triangle, the territory. And, so the war over the last year has been more an economic war than a military war…

“The troops are there basically as a tripwire, a deterrent, so that if the Syrian government forces advanced, they would trip over a few American soldiers and that would incur the massive intervention of the US Air Force. This is what it comes down to. They don’t even need big numbers of troops to create the tripwire.

“Even so, it’s interesting that the architects of this policy in the permanent government of the US found it necessary to deceive the head of the executive, the President, keep him in the dark about the numbers…. So, the deceit that has gone on – on every level – is jaw-dropping to me as a former ambassador and an insider in the British system. I find it absolutely incredible.”

PF describes what the war is and is NOT about.

“US policy is NOT about installing in Syria a democratic government, because there is no prospect of that while the US is effectively supporting Islamist fanatics, and while it’s supporting elsewhere in the Middle East regimes like the feudal regime of Saudi Arabia. No, it’s not about democracy. It’s about helping Israel on the one hand and scoring points against Russia on the other. And when it comes down to it, that is what this whole war is really about, from the US standpoint.”

PF analyzes accusations Syrian government used chemical weapons.

“The world has amnesia over Iraq, the non-existent weapons of mass destruction, the Colin Powell dossier proof presented to the UN. It’s like Groundhog Day when you hear the claims made about Assad, the use of chemical weapons.

“In the first place, it would make no practical sense for Assad to use chemical weapons; it could only ever have been an own goal. If he wanted to invite heavy Western intervention, he would not have gone about it any other way. You’d have to be incredibly either twisted or delusional to believe that Assad could have been so stupid as to do the one thing – use chemical weapons – which would bring about, or possibly bring about, his obliteration.

“I’m quite convinced this is an elaborate hoax. A series of hoaxes. It’s very revealing that not one of the alleged instances of use of chemical weapons was investigated on the ground by any UN or other international investigations, with the sole exception of Douma. And why Douma? Because that was a piece of territory that the government forces managed to recover immediately after the alleged incident, so that the US and its allies were unable to keep away the international investigators…. That ultimately is the purpose of the chemical weapon hoaxes – to justify the occupation of northeast Syria and the continuing cruel economic pressure.”

PF comments on the senior staff from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons who say they did NOT find evidence of chemical weapons attackand their findings were changed by management.

“These gentlemen [from OPCW]) drafted a report stating that they found evidence that was consistent with staging of an incident, rather than an authentic incident. And ever since, they have been vilified, condemned, undermined. And the campaign against the truth goes on and on and on….”

PF comments on the role of the “White Helmets”.

“The White Helmets’ role is absolutely crucial, pivotal to the Western effort to undermine Syria through these accusations of use of chemical weapons. I think, basically, what happened is that Western governments realized that after the Iraq debacle, that if they were going to use claims about WMD, chemical weapons, whatever, again, they were going to have to produce some kind of smoking gun.

“And this is the role of the White Helmets. They produced the phony pictures of phony incidents which constitute the smoking gun. And that is absolutely pivotal to the propaganda to justify the bombing and the relentless economic and military pressure on Syria…. Western governments [have] been funding the White Helmets to the tune of about $50 million a year. That’s peanuts compared to what they see as the advantages of bringing Syria to its knees.”

PF predicts what may happen ahead.

“I think things are likely to get worse, rather than better.

“What we’ll probably see is simply a continuation of the status quo. The current policies will simply be extended…. to prolong the conflict, to prevent Assad gaining military victory, the continuation of economic warfare to try to bring Assad to his knees and force him to sign a suicide note, which would be acceptance of elections on US terms. I’m sure these policies will be continued.

“But there’s a question mark over whether policy might not become even more adventurous and interventionist with a beachhead of a few thousand soldiers already occupying part of Syria. I greatly fear that Biden might be tempted to increase those numbers, put some military pressure on the Syrian government forces, create more no-fly zones. Already, there’s effectively a no-fly zone over that big triangle of territory that’s occupied by the US forces and Kurdish allies. An attempt might be made to create the no-fly zone of Idlib, which would be ironic. It would mean that the US Air Force was the air wing of al-Qaeda…

“I’m definitely not optimistic. And I fear things could get even worse.”

US Ambassador Robert S. Ford (RSF)

Robert S. Ford was a US diplomat in numerous cities including Algiers and Cairo. He was Deputy Chief of Mission in Bahrein from 2001 to 2004, then Political Counselor at the US Embassy in Baghdad from 2004 to 2006. As an Arabic speaker, he may have helped Ambassador John Negroponte launch the “El Salvador option” (death squads) in Iraq. Robert S. Ford was Ambassador to Syria from the end of 2010 until 2014 when the US terminated diplomatic relations with Syria. He has continued as an unofficial advisor on Syria policy.

In contrast with the Peter Ford interview, the interview with US Ambassador Robert S. Ford (RSF) is a case study in public relations. Interviewer Aaron Mate asks important questions but RSF deflects the questions, claims ignorance of new revelations, and repeats standard talking points on Syria.

RSF acknowledges there has been “mission creep” for US troops in Syria.

“American troops were sent into Syria originally to fight ISIS. Now that that job is more-or-less finished, we have a sort of mission creep where now the American forces are there not to defeat ISIS – ISIS is already defeated… But now, so what are the Americans doing? Well, now they sort of changed the mission to putting pressure on Damascus, the Assad government, trying to get the Iranians out, trying to limit the Russian influence.”

RSF implies the sanctions on Syria are just.

“Sanctions is a different question, Aaron. I think a lot of it is emotional here in the United States. There’s a desperate desire for justice after all the war crimes committed in Syria. And I think getting rid of the sanctions is going to be a much harder battle to fight in the Congress. So, the sanctions have very strong approval in Congress…”

RSF maintains the initial protests were “almost entirely peaceful”

“In March and April, May into June, the protests were almost entirely peaceful. That’s not to say there was no violence. In the first protest, for example, in Daraa, in which we’re now coming up on the 10-year anniversary, yeah, the protesters did attack the telephone office [Syriatel] that’s owned by Bashar al-Assad’s cousin, Rami Makhlouf. They did attack a court building…”

[Fact check: RSF neglects to mention seven police were killed in the “almost entirely peaceful” Daraa protest.]

RSF acknowledges US allies were sending weapons early but claims the US began sending weapons in 2013.

“Those countries [Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey] did send in weapons before the Americans…

“I supported arming factions of the Free Syrian Army as early as the summer of 2012. And it took the president a year to get to a decision.”

[Fact check: US Central Intelligence Agency was sending weapons from Benghazi Libya to Syria in Oct 2011.]

RSF compares the Free Syrian Army to the anti-Nazi resistance in WW2.

“The United States never gave anti-tank weapons to al-Qaeda…. the number might be half a dozen.

“I want you to think about this in historical context. Do you think when the Americans airdropped weapons into the French resistance against the Nazis in France, do you think the Nazis never got their hands on any of those air drops?…

“The leakage to the al-Qaeda elements, there was a small amount of leakage, but much, much, much more of their weaponry came from the Assad government, either, because the Assad soldiers were corrupt, as we said, we talked at the start about corruption. They sold them, or in some cases, they surrendered, and with that, huge caches of weaponry made their way into al-Nusra hands. The amount of material that al-Nusra got from the United States wouldn’t have lasted them for a day of combat.”

Fact check: This claim is preposterous. As reported by Janes Defense, the US supplied nearly one thousand TONS of weapons in December 2015, much of which ended up in Nusra (Al Qaeda) hands. Nusra obtained weapons when they over-ran Syrian military bases, but otherwise they were amply supplied with weapons by the Gulf monarchies, Israel, Turkey, the US and UK.

RSF claims the Syrian government has primary responsibility for the war and are the “bad guys”.

“What I hope your listeners will take away from this is that it is not an equal combat on both sides; is not an equal responsibility on both sides. One side from the beginning was using torture and shooting at innocent people, thousands of arrests. And one side was trying peacefully, for a very large part, to bring about change. And, unfortunately, in this instance, the bad guys won.”

Fact check: The campaign against Syria has been waged by a coalition of western powers, Turkey, Israel and the Gulf monarchies. About 121 thousand Syrians in the Syrian army and militias have died defending their country.

RSF claims that Syria is responsible for the war refugees and destabilizing its neighbors.

“Even had Turkey, Qatar and the United States, Saudi Arabia, stayed out of it, there still would have been huge refugee flows trying to escape from those same brutal Syrian security forces, and they still would have flooded the borders of Lebanon and Jordan and of Turkey, which is itself destabilizing, particularly in Lebanon, but some places like Jordan, Turkey. Therefore, you can’t just say that all these other countries intervened in sovereign Syrian territory. The Syrian government itself was taking actions which were destabilizing to its neighbors.”

Fact check: Most refugees fled when their neighborhoods were taken over by militants and became battle zones, NOT because they were afraid of Syrian security.

RSF criticizes Turkey but thinks Syrian government bears primary responsibility.

“I’m never going to justify the Turks allowing Salafi jihadists to go into Syria. I think that I’ve already said that that was a bad mistake. And we criticized them at the time of playing with snakes. I’m never going to justify it. But I have to say, Aaron, that in the end, they came in response to what the Assad government was already doing. And so, the principal responsibility … do the Americans have a share of responsibility? Of course, we do. Yeah. It was our antitank missiles blowing up Syrian government tanks, and not just a few; I mean, hundreds of them.

“I think we have to go back to where it started in 2011. And that’s with the Syrian government…”

RSF says he is not aware of the huge scandal at the OPCW but believes Syria has used chemical weapons.

“I’m not familiar with that controversy within the OPCW….

“But I guess I would just say this, Aaron. There’s plenty of documentation by the UN’s joint investigative group with the OPCW that looked at incidents in Syria chemical weapons use, from 2013 onwards. They’ve issued several reports…. So, the 2018 incident, I don’t know about that report, but I have no doubt whatsoever that the Syrian government has used chemical weapons on multiple instances, the same government that bombs hospitals, the same government that bombs bakeries, the same government that kills people in detention routinely. Look at the photos that were brought up by the military defector. You know, why would you think they wouldn’t use chemical weapons? Why would you think they would suddenly have moral scruples against these? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.”

[Fact check: the OPCW scandal has confirmed manipulation of that organization by the US and west. The “military photographer” refers to the ‘Caesar torture photos’ propaganda stunt.]

RSF wants to increase humanitarian aid to Syria refugees.

“Something the Americans could do that would be hugely helpful is to increase humanitarian aid to the Syrian refugees that number some five million, particularly in Lebanon, where their living circumstances are precarious, very precarious, but also in Jordan and Turkey… I’d like to spend less on the military operation and much more on humanitarian aid.

“And then there is the issue of Northwest Syria, Idlib, where the UN is in charge of an operation getting humanitarian aid to some two million displaced Syrian civilians.”

[Fact check and observation: Idlib province is dominated by Nusra (Al Qaeda). Robert Ford seems to want to perpetuate the AQ stronghold and refugee crisis by supplying aid to Idlib and foreign countries while preventing return of refugees and rebuilding war torn Syria.]

Conclusion

Both ambassadors speak Arabic and have intimate knowledge of Syria.

Robert S. Ford criticizes some past decisions and tactics, but not the assumptions or right of the US to violate the UN Charter and commit aggression against Syria.

Meanwhile, Peter Ford is doing his best to expose the reality of the situation, contrary to government and media bias and falsehoods. Like Daniel Ellsberg, Scott Ritter and Katharine Gun, he is using his special knowledge to publicly challenge the claims and assumptions of western policy. With Ellsberg it was about Vietnam. With Ritter and Gun, it was about Iraq. With Peter Ford, it is about Syria.

The full interview with UK Ambassador Peter Ford is well worth watching or reading.

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People everywhere around the world love and respect Canadians, or so we’re told. So how do you explain what’s going on in Haiti?

On Sunday protesters in Port-au-Prince marched on the Canadian Embassy. “Madame Boukman — Justice 4 Haiti” posted a video to Twitter showing police in front of Canada’s diplomatic representation in Haiti. Madame Boukman quoted two men waving a Russian flag saying, “Long live Russia. Canada go home.” (In an indirect criticism of US/Canadian backing for dictator Jovenel Moïse, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister recently said they were concerned about “political instability” and “ready to help Haitians restore political stability, maintain internal security and train personnel.”)

Ha ha. Protesters in #Haiti at the Canadian Embassy waving a Russian flag. They are demanding the Canadian Embassy shut down to be replaced with a Russian Embassy. "Long live Russia. Canada go home." pic.twitter.com/OfoEnmJvE6

— Madame Boukman – Justice 4 Haiti 🇭🇹 (@madanboukman) March 29, 2021

Madame Boukman’s post elicited anger from some offended Canadians. But anyone who follows Haitian politics knows protesters regularly target Ottawa. On October 27, 2019, Molotov cocktails were thrown at the embassy in Port-au-Prince. A tire was also set alight in front of Canada’s diplomatic representation in Haiti. Voice of America reported that protesters “attempted to burn down the Canadian Embassy.”

A few days earlier rocks were thrown at Canada’s diplomatic outpost. An October 2019 Radio Canada story began with the image of a Haitian holding a sign saying: “Fuck USA. Merde la France. Fuck Canada.” Three years earlier a demonstrator at the front of a protest carried a large wooden cross — as if crucified — bearing the US, French and Canadian flags. The caption on a Reuters video from a protest in 2014 noted, “thousands of Haitians take to the streets of Port-au-Prince to protest the government of President Michel Martelly, as well as the government of Canada for supporting Martelly.”

Protesters regularly speechify against Canadian imperialism. The 2019 documentary Haiti Betrayed includes a man yelling in front of the embassy in Port-au-Prince: “We don’t have anything against Canada! Why are you against us?” In a 2013 Journal of Haitian Studies article Jennifer Greenburg describes a “student from the Artibonite” interjecting in an “animated conversation” at a vocational school where she taught. The young man takes a water bottle and places it on the ground. “‘This is Haiti,’ he says, and grabbing another student’s backpack, ‘is the US, Canada — the powerful countries.’ He lifts the backpack just above the water bottle and ‘every time we come up,’ lifting the water bottle from the ground near my feet, ‘they keep us down,’ crushing the water bottle to the ground with the bulky knapsack.”

After Uruguay announced it was withdrawing its 950 troops from the United Nations Mission to Stabilize Haiti in 2013, senator Moise Jean-Charles took aim at the countries he considered most responsible for undermining Haitian sovereignty. The country’s most trusted opposition figure according to a 2019 poll, Jean-Charles said, “Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay are not the real occupiers of Haiti. The real forces behind Haiti’s military occupation — the powers which are putting everybody else up to it — are the U.S., France, and Canada, which colluded in the Feb. 29, 2004 coup d’etat against President [Jean-Bertrand] Aristide. It was then they began trampling Haitian sovereignty.” Jean-Charles added, “we are asking the Americans, French, and Canadians to come and collect their errand boy because he cannot lead the country anymore.”

Days after I poured fake blood on foreign affairs minister Pierre Pettigrew’s hands and yelled “Pettigrew lies, Haitians die” during a June 2005 press conference on Haiti, Aristide was asked about the incident. In an interview from South Africa, he told journalist Naomi Klein the Canadian government had Haitian “blood on its hands.” He stated, “the coup, or the kidnapping, was led by the United States, France and Canada. These three countries were on the front lines by sending their soldiers to Haiti before February 29, by having their soldiers either at the airport or at my residence or around the palace or in the capital to make sure that they succeeded in kidnapping me, leading [to] the coup.”

For their part, left-wing weekly newspapers Haiti Progrès and Haiti Libertédescribed Canada as an “occupying force”, “coup supporter” or “imperialist” over one hundred times. In one instance, the front page of Haiti Liberté showed a picture of President René Préval next to Prime Minister Stephen Harper and two Canadian soldiers. Part of the caption below read, “Préval under the surveillance of the occupying forces.”

Haitian anger towards Canada is wholly understandable. During this century Canada has helped destabilize an elected government, plan a coup and invade to topple a president. It has also trained and financed a highly repressive police force, justifying their politically motivated arrests and killings. Ottawa has also backed the exclusion of Haiti’s most popular political party from participating in elections and helped fix an election. After a terrible earthquake Canada dispatched troops to control the country and later propped up a repressive, corrupt and illegitimate president facing massive protests.

The truth is Canada has repeatedly sided with oppressors of ordinary Haitians. They have many good reasons to hate our government.

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Does the oft-repeated refrain that “Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere” explain anything? Is it a poor country or an impoverished country? Or perhaps it is unsuspectedly rich? Are its indifferent friends in the West really not interested in the country? Why then do the United States and European countries seem to be so zealous about the “Haitian thing”? In a series of notes and based on fieldwork carried out in four departments of the country, we will focus on understanding the “poor rich Haiti” and some of the initiatives of what has been called its “reconstruction” since 2010. We will discuss the economic interests of Western powers, expressed through initiatives such as industrial parks, mining operations, enclave tourism ventures, land grabbing and agricultural free zones.

Haiti’s borders are curious. The small country is bordered to the east by the Dominican Republic, dividing in two the territory of the island of Hispaniola. To the west it borders the Caribbean Sea and to the south, a forgotten maritime border with the Republic of Colombia. But what interests us here is a border that is not entirely imaginary: to the north and northeast, although the maps would like to indicate otherwise, Haiti borders the United States.

It is here, in this region, that most US economic interests – and also those of its smaller partners – are concentrated. This is the case of Canada, that peculiar North American colony that in turn colonizes others. But also those of France, Germany and other European nations. In this and the following notes, we will talk about industrial parks, mining and speculation, enclave tourism ventures, land grabbing and agricultural free trade zones. This does not include some unholy initiatives in other parts of the country, such as the seizure of entire islands, drug trafficking or tax havens where the money comes in dirty and goes out free of guilt and sin.

But it is in the northeast region of this “poor rich” country that the power enjoyed by the current de facto president, Jovenel Moïse, has been amassed. He has made this territory his personal fiefdom. His modus operandi has been land grabbing and the true foundation of his power, his economic alliances with transnational capital, both legal and extralegal.

For this, we will travel to the heart of the communities affected by what, after the devastating earthquake of 2010, has become known as the “Reconstruction of Haiti”. In this first note, we will talk – paraphrasing Eduardo Galeano – about the “Banana King” Jovenel Moïse and his numerous agricultural courtiers. But first, let’s take a look at the situation of the rural areas and the local peasantry.

Barefoot 

One out of every two inhabitants of the country lives in the countryside. But an even higher percentage of the population, around 66%, depends on and subsists in relation to rural areas and agricultural production. According to a study by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the urban population has only overtaken the rural population in the last five years, and the current difference is only about 100,000 people.

Peasant youth children are the most affected by land grabbing policies. Photo: Lautaro Rivara

Land everywhere is finite and vital. But it is even more so in a territory covered by extensive mountain ranges, and where the agricultural frontier is receding with every meter gained by deforestation and desertification – today the country retains barely 2 percent of its original vegetation cover. It is not surprising, then, that a large part of the peasant population is poor: they are the so-called pyè atè, the “pata en tierra”, the barefoot.

For a long time, however, an unprecedentedly radical measure was at least able to guarantee Haitians a piece of land on which to produce and reproduce life. Since the revolutionary constitution of 1805, land ownership was denied to foreigners on the grounds of sovereignty and national dignity, becoming an obstacle to the full implementation of capitalism on the island. At least until the definitive abolition of this prohibition in 1915, under the mantle of the American occupation.

Today, there are around 600,000 farms in Haiti, organized in small plots – jaden – of between 0.5 and 1.8 hectares. Peasant agriculture is mostly family and traditional, but there are many different forms of land ownership, work and usage: family landowners, tenant farmers, tenant farmers, day laborers, sharecroppers, etc. The tools used are rustic, often no more than the traditional pickaxe and machete, usually without draft animals, without any kind of machinery, without chemical fertilizers, with native seeds, all under a rain-fed agricultural regime. Despite the enormous contribution of peasant agriculture to national wealth – around 25 percent of GDP – the state’s contributions to the sector are practically nonexistent.

On the other side of rural life, a select group of families, usually living abroad, as well as a handful of transnational corporations, still concentrate around half of the available land and in many cases, worse still, keep it unproductive.

A requiem for the free market

Eat what you don’t produce and don’t eat what you produce. This is the secret of the offshoring and financialized export agriculture that has been promoted in the country in recent decades. A fundamental milestone in its implementation was the policy of trade and financial liberalization imposed in the mid-1980s, with the help of the International Monetary Fund, the US State Department and the enthusiastic action of the ineffable Bill Clinton – a self-styled “friend of Haiti” whose friendship, however, nobody here wants to reciprocate.

In the mid-1990s, this policy deepened, with tariffs on rice imports falling from 35 percent to 3 percent under external pressure. In the same year, the US invested 60 billion dollars to subsidize its own rice production. So-called dumping resulted in Haiti’s production falling by over 50% from 130,000 to 60,000 tons. The selling prices of the peasantry, exposed to unfair competition with the hyper-subsidized American farmer, led to the ruin and exodus of thousands and thousands of peasants. A vicious circle of agricultural ruin, unemployment, hunger, foreign food aid, impossibility of competing with the “free” food sent to the country, and again more ruin, unemployment, hunger, etc., was generated.

The Artibonite Valley, the heart of the country’s rice production, has been in terminal crisis since the 1990s. Photo: Lautaro Rivara

As a result, Haiti went from being practically self-sufficient in the production of the staple grain of its national diet to importing it massively. Although the case of rice is the most dramatic, it is far from the only one.  The nation went from importing less than 20 percent of its food in the early 1980s to importing more than 55 percent from abroad today, mainly from the United States and the Dominican Republic.

This cycle resulted in the partial destruction of traditional peasant agriculture. Some may call it “subsistence”, but for the local peasant it was instead an agriculture of “abundance”, if we consider how trade liberalization has generalized the phenomenon of hunger today. On the other hand, the relationship between food assistance and hunger is direct, as was the case with the “Tikè Manje” program and others developed by USAID, through voucher systems that only allow the population to have access to North American products.

Agritrans S.A.: the flagship

In this scorched earth scenario, after the devastating earthquake of January 2010, the project of transnational, deterritorialized and financialized agriculture began to take shape. Transnational, due to the dominant influence of external capital, beyond the resounding publicity of certain local “entrepreneurs”. It is deterritorialized because the local space becomes a kind of non-place for the capitals that mold the territory in their image and likeness: bananas from Haiti or Guadeloupe, soya from Brazil or Paraguay, sugar cane from the Caribbean or European beet sugar, etc., are all the same. And it is financialized because what this agriculture tends to produce is not food, but foreign currency. In short, it is an agriculture that satisfies only the hunger for capital accumulation.

A cautious detour with a good local guide allowed us to enter the lands of Agritrans S.A., the company of de facto president Jovenel Moïse, which became famous for its involvement in one of the largest embezzlements of public funds in the country’s history, amounting to a quarter of the national GDP. This was confirmed by Senate investigations – before its closure in January 2020 – and by the Supreme Audit Court, before its reduction, by presidential decree, to nothing more than a mere consultative body.

The inhabitants of the Limonade and Terrier-Rouge area, in the North-East Department, are in awe of all things related to this fabled expanse of land. And for those who feel neither fear nor respect, there are armed guards to remind them. They told us to stop and threatened to shoot as soon as the motorbike we were traveling on around their perimeter on National Route 6 slowed down. Unable to film or photograph the accesses, we had to clandestinely enter the estate through some twisted wire fences on the side of a canal. Surprisingly, a barren plain then spread out before us. Whether because of the environmental damage resulting from intensive production without crop rotation, or perhaps because the tenure of these lands today serves more the assertion of local power than the process of real accumulation, we saw not even a trace of a cultivated field. Today, Agritrans S.A. is a huge, uncultivated estate, surrounded by crowds of peasants who cannot even get access to a “handkerchief of land”, as the locals eloquently put it.

The “Nourribio” project was set up here in 2013, on the land of the man who would later become the country’s president. The 1,000 hectares in front of us were donated for a project that envisaged the intensive production of bananas, mainly for export to Western countries. It also took the form of a free zone, exempt from taxes and other charges. The land for its establishment was expropriated from 3,000 peasants and granted in concession for a renewable term of 25 years. The aforementioned promises of employment fell far short of expectations: only 200 people were being employed, according to information from 2014. And the people who lost land? The small amount of their compensation was spent on the basic necessities of everyday life. With no land to work or produce, their “beneficiaries” soon found themselves unemployed, expelled to the capital, expelled abroad, or reduced to starvation, if not a combination of all of the above.

According to the specialist Georges Eddy Lucien, in the face of the banana production crisis in the French overseas departments (Guadeloupe and Martinique), “the Northeast – of Haiti – appears in the eyes of investors and international institutions as an ideal alternative territory, where production costs (labor, available land) are much lower…”. The impoverishment of Haitian workers has meant that the wages of an agricultural worker can be 25 times lower – 25 times! Not to mention if we compare it with the average wages of a Frenchman or a North American.

History is a boomerang. The first shipment of Agritrans bananas arrived at the port of Antwerp in Belgium in 2015. The same port that flourished during the slave trade and during the reign of Leopold II. A century ago, thousands of kilos of ivory and rubber, the product of slave exploitation in the Belgian Congo, arrived there. Today, it is bananas from Haiti, produced by one of the most impoverished workforces on the planet.

Operation dispossession

However, at least the construction of Agritrans S.A. involved mechanisms that we will call quasi-legal – although not moral – through the expropriation and compensation of peasant properties, measures taken perhaps because of the international visibility of the project.

But the policy of land grabbing has deepened in recent years, according to the leaders of the main peasant organizations during a recent colloquium on the subject held in the central region. There, for example, the national government ceded by decree no less than 8,600 hectares of fertile land to the Apaid family, one of the richest in the country. Another agricultural free trade zone is supposed to be built there, but this time for the production and export of stevia for the multinational Coca-Cola

Christiane Fonrose and her husband prepare charcoal on reclaimed land in Terrier Rouge. Photo: Lautaro Rivara

But back to the Northeast. After long walks along impassable rural roads, flooded by rain, mud and state neglect, we were able to visit several communities that have suffered and are today facing the dispossession of their lands by local landowners, foreign companies and armed gangs.

In Terrier Rouge, Irené Cinic Antoine of the “Small planters” movement told us that she has owned a large plot of 6,000 hectares of land since 1986. In 1995, under the progressive government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the process to legalize their tenure began. Since then, the common lands have been divided between agriculture, charcoal trees and livestock. Their ownership rights were even published in the official state newspaper, but the documents were later disappeared by anonymous hands.

We also talk to Christiane Fonrose and her husband, as they stoke the fire on the mountain of earth inside which burns the wood that will be turned into charcoal. It is one of the few remaining means of survival in the region, although its ecological costs are well known to all, particularly to the peasantry. From his unshakeable faith, Fonrose tells us: “The land is God’s thing, which God created for us. Before creating his children, God created the earth. (…) But then they took the earth out of our hands. Today we have nowhere to plant, nowhere to graze some small animals, the children cannot go to school (…) We are in a very difficult situation”.

We were also able to visit peasant organizations in Grand Basin who are currently resisting the permanent hostility of invisible actors who are trying to take over land that was ceded to them by the state, again during the Aristide era. After another long trek along the difficult rural roads, our interview had to be conducted in the pouring rain, as even the roofs and doors of the small house on the plot were stolen. Here, on the edge of mineral-rich mountains, 1,500 organized peasants have been able to work 148 kawo of land (about 200 hectares) to produce sugar cane, maize, manioc and even honey and kleren – a peasant sugar cane brandy – in a sovereign and agro-ecological way.

The farmers of MOPAG have been resisting eviction attempts in Grand Bassin for years. Photo: Lautaro Rivara

A little over a year ago, a heavily armed group broke in, disrupting their crops, stealing or killing their animals, destroying fences, buildings and their meager agricultural implements. Evidently these were neither neighbors nor amateurs, as the operation involved the deployment of expensive bulldozers.  Even today, the land that was taken remains unproductive, and the peasants are constantly threatened not to try to recover it. So far, no state body has given them any response. “Without the land, outside the land, we peasants are worthless. We voted for them ourselves, but it seems that they don’t need us anymore,” concludes Antoine.

Today there are barely 350 people left, including only a handful of young people: most of them have been forced to migrate to the capital Port-au-Prince or even abroad. In the long siege they have been suffering since then. The National Institute of Agrarian Reform (INARA) has hardly dared to take sides with them. Coincidentally, according to recent reports, the Moïse government is seeking to eliminate this body in the new constitution it is now preparing. According to Wilson Messidor, leader of MOPAG, the project to dispossess them of their land would be closely linked to the mining resources in the area, and to the construction of the so-called villages, semi-closed residential neighborhoods that USAID is building for the workers in the free trade zones.

USAID appears, in fact, as the de facto civil authority in these territories, and its projects are constantly growing and multiplying, as indicated by the numerous signs on the roadsides. According to an anonymous Cuban engineer, the US mega-cooperation organization operates through loans and projects, indebting the state and the communities, in order to guarantee control of strategic areas for their water and mineral resources.

It matters little, following Eduardo Galeano’s metaphor, whether the monarch is King Banana, Queen Stevia or King Manufacture. Haiti continues to be determined by the blessings of nature and the curses of those who dominate history. We will continue, in the next note, to unravel the mysteries of this “poor rich country” which, in the international division of labor, has been subjected to the task of exporting poverty and importing humanitarian aid. We will talk about the export processing zones and the bizarre project to turn Haiti into the “Taiwan of America”.

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Lautaro Rivara is a sociologist, researcher and poet. As a trained journalist, he participated as an activist in different spaces of communications work, covering tasks of editing, writing, radio broadcasts, and photography. During his two years in the Jean-Jacques Dessalines Brigade in Haiti he was responsible for communications and carried out political education with Haitian people’s movements in this area. He writes regularly in people’s media projects of Argentina and the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean including Nodal, ALAI, Telesur, Resumen Latinoamericano, Pressenza, la RedH, Notas, Haití Liberte, Alcarajo, and more.

All images in this article are from the author

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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Biden was in charge of much of the “Ukraine project” during Obama’s time in office.

In recent weeks President Biden has been saying some rather mean-spirited things about Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Now Russian state sources are alleging that Washington under the Biden administration is ramping up military aid to Ukraine. This comes after the media observed the Ocean Glory, a US cargo ship, began delivering 350 tonnes of military equipment, including tactical vehicles, at Ukraine’s Odessa port. Ukraine’s Dumskaya news agency said the American vessel carried at least 35 US military humvees for Ukrainian national forces.

Adding Ukraine to NATO and the EU is a long-held dream of neocons like Victoria Nuland and neoliberals like Biden.This is also important to those supporting the World Economic Forum’s desire to expand the EU and encircle Russia.

They feel such an action would disrupt any dreams of Eurasian integration which could resist their strategy to reshape the way the world is governed. Putin’s foreign policy, coupled with efforts to rebuild the Russian military, has been part of an effort by the former KGB officer to boost Russia’s standing on the world stage.

This has helped make him popular with his people even as NATO has slowly been expanding in the direction of Russia, but also makes him a thorn in the side of the NWO gang.

NATO Has Slowly Expanded Towards Russia

Interestingly, this delivery of military equipment occurred near the time Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, was signing Decree No. 117/2021. The decree activates the Ukraine Army to recapture and re-unify with Ukraine, the autonomous region of Crimea, and the city of Sevastopol. The military has been instructed to use “hybrid warfare” to re-conquer these former parts of Ukraine. In short, this means Ukraine declared war on Russia, certainly something it would never consider without major backing. It must be noted, his actions are in total conflict with his promise to end the now nearly seven-year-long war in eastern Ukraine that played a central role in his election in 2019. This indicates, Zelensky has continued to subordinate his government’s policies to the US- and NATO-led war drive against Russia.

One Ukrainian blogger contends the censorship of the three opposition channels in Ukraine and the surprise inspection of Ukrainian army units in Donbas link all this together and signals a resumption of the Donbas conflict. He wrote on his Telegram channel, “Protecting his rear through censorship, Zelensky ordered to start an inspection of the AFU units in Donbas in order to establish their readiness to carry out the orders of the military command.” He then went on to say, “Didn’t we warn you last year that the regime was preparing for a major war? All we had to do was wait for the green light from higher authorities.”

Upping tensions in the area is the fact the Kerch Strait Bridge, also known as the Crimean Bridge, is now a target and we will certainly see Russian moves to protect it. Comprised of a pair of Russian-constructed parallel bridges it spans the Strait of Kerch between the Taman Peninsula and the Kerch Peninsula of Crimea. The bridge complex provides for both road and rail traffic and has a length of 19 km. This makes it the longest bridge Russia has ever built.

It is difficult not to tie this to the controversial Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline project which Viktor Zubkov, chairman of the board of directors of Russia’s gas giant Gazprom, claims, will definitely be completed this year. He said on Friday, Biden’s goal is to stop the pipeline and the U.S. is now targeting anyone helping the project’s completion in any way. So far, around 90-92 percent of the work required for the project is complete. Earlier this year, Gazprom warned investors that the Nord Stream 2 project could be suspended or entirely discontinued due to extraordinary circumstances, including “political pressure.”

War In Ukraine Is About Money, Energy, And Power!

As to what really motivates the desire to turn Ukraine into a giant-killing field, several possibilities exist but money and profit should not be ruled out. Foreign policy has often been used as a tool to advance national interest which is often dictated by economics. When it comes to the economy energy is often considered the blood from which all strength flows and in the case of Europe the Nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipeline which after completion will carry natural gas from Russia to Germany is a bone of contention. Years ago leaders from Poland, Latvia, and Lithuania signed an open letter to the parliaments of the EU warning them against the construction of NS2 and cautioned them of how it is not a commercial project but one designed to increase their energy reliance on Moscow.

At that time, Russia’s Gazprom supplied the European Union and Turkey with a record 162 billion cubic meters of gas. Of that gas, 86 billion cubic meters flowed across Ukraine. Those opposed to the new pipeline make a strong case that “Gazprom” is not only a gas company but a platform for Russian coercion and another tool for Russia to pressure European countries. The U.S. State Department has even threatened European corporations they will likely face penalties if they participate in the construction of Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, on the grounds that “the project undermines energy security in Europe.”

Circling back to the conflict, years ago I wrote a piece that urged America to stay out of a war in Ukraine. It warned of the major advantage Putin held by having a huge well-armed army just across the Ukrainian border and that any army cobbled together to face him would most likely be unenthusiastic and politically troubled at best. At the time President Obama had pulled out all the stops to paint Putin with a brush dipped in all the bad colors. Every Sunday in interview after interview Washington experts were paraded across the screens of the talk shows that tell Americans what is happening in our nation’s capital and every single one of them denounced Putin as a “thug and a bully.”

Ukrainian Soldiers Killed In An Unwinnable War

In that piece were accounts of reports from the front in Ukraine often buried or hidden from public view but they appeared to confirm that Ukrainian troops were being sent into a meat grinder. The drafted include men up to 60 years old with only a month of training before they reluctantly go off to the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. Putting more weapons into the hands of those unmotivated to fight for their corrupt state is merely adding fuel to this fire and doing more harm than good. Again, remember Ukraine is a financially failed state and while we can point to its potential, its massive oil and gas reserves by all rights should belong to the people and for their benefit. The IMF, however, points out that Kyiv needs billion in loans and grants just to stabilize its economy after more than twenty years of massive levels of corruption. This debt and the deep, deep hole Ukrainians have dug themselves into flows from a series of bad governments after Kyiv became independent of the Soviet Union.

Back then, the euro-zone faced a lot of problems without jumping into a proxy war against rebels in Ukraine. I use the term proxy because without the money and backing of outsiders things would most likely go quiet. The failed and bankrupt country of Ukraine would most likely break into two parts with the eastern half and its people who share strong ties with Russia aligning itself with that country and Kyiv, and the western-oriented portion of the country drifting towards stronger ties to the euro-zone. What is the big problem with such a solution? Apparently, a great deal for people like Biden in Washington that are pushing for intervention in Ukraine.

To confuse the issue and muddy the waters great efforts have been made at high levels by those advocating military action to paint Russia as an aggressor. These forces aided by the media continue to link Russias move into the majority ethnic-Russian Crimea region as a violation of Ukraine’s sovereign border. In this case, we should remember, the whole concept of sovereign borders is a little gem promoted by those in power, these borders are a creation of man and not visible to the birds flying above. This is an argument of convenience that masks deeper issues and the difference between “terrorist” and “freedom fighters” often depends on a person’s point of view. In this case, it is clearly the new American-backed government in Kyiv that is pushing to bring the eastern part of Ukraine back into the fold.

What this boils down to is that American companies want to sell and supply Europe with Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) and seem willing to start a war to make it happen. Whether it is for profit or to minimize the threat of natural gas shipments to Europe being cut off and used as a key weapon in Russia’s political arsenal we cannot ignore the idea more is at play here than just doing the “right thing”. Many people in the “Tin Foil Hat” community have gone so far as to indicate they feel that America and elements of the CIA were involved or had a part in the overthrow of the former corrupt Ukraine government and its replacement with another corrupt but more pro Europe regime. At the time even America’s Vice President, Joe Biden, saw his son join the board of a private Ukrainian oil and natural gas company. One thing is clear, not only those involved in selling energy to Europe will profit from this but also the military-industrial complex stands to gain.

The odds of U.S. LNG significantly displacing Russian natural gas shipped by pipeline are slim. Piped gas sells at a large discount to LNG, which must be cooled to liquid form, shipped overseas, and turned back into its gaseous form. Poland recently received its first shipment of U.S. LNG last month from what is currently the only export facility in the lower 48 states. While LNG trade between the United States and Europe would help Trump in his bid to reduce the U.S. trade deficit it also stands to improve energy security among the European countries by giving them an alternative to Russian gas. Everyone must concede it is not a cure-all, Russia can easily cut prices and adjust terms to maintain its dominant position in the European gas market and European countries are likely to continue buying most of their gas from the lowest-cost supplier.

Bottom-line, Russia has traditionally been the major supplier of European gas. But it charges high prices, often in the form of long-term contracts linked to the price of oil. The overwhelming dependence on Russian gas leaves European countries from a national security standpoint vulnerable to a cutoff of crucial natural gas supplies. This would be devastating to their economies at any time but even more so in the depths of winter. For these reasons, it makes sense for Europe to consider alternative supplies and open its doors to U.S. LNG but due to Ukraine’s history of corruption flooding the country with weapons and using the people of Ukraine as pawns in this high stakes game violates all standards of human decency.

Americans should also be aware that our current policy drives Russia towards the East and into the open arms of China. This creates even more problems long-term than it solves short-term and borders on the edge of insanity. The war in Ukraine has not developed organically but appears to be the product of meddling. Mercenaries and money from America appear to be backing and propping up Kyiv with America acting as the “champion” for this failed bankrupt country.  The best way for the West and Kyiv to prove they are on the right path is by letting the eastern part of the country seceded and then making Kyiv a center of economic and democratic success.

I reiterate the stand taken in April 2018, the Ukraine war is about money, energy, and power! Since the latest ceasefire agreement in the war in Donbas was implemented in July 2020, it appears few if anyone is being killed. This indicates rocking the boat is a bad idea. We can only hope those hyping the recent events in Ukraine saying the decree signed by Zelensky will someday be looked back upon at the beginning of World War III are overly pessimistic, after all, when you place two major military powers face to face what could go wrong?

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[T]here are two sides whose composition cuts across national and even community boundaries. The issues … can be described as freedom vs. slavery…. [T]wo powerful leaders of these opposed sides have emerged—the United States of America and the USSR.

We are faced now with a situation similar in some respects to that which confronted our forefathers in early colonial days when they ploughed the land with a rifle slung on the shoulder. If they stuck to the plough and left the rifle at home, they would have been easy victims for any savages lurking in the woods. ”

As Canada’s Minister of External Affairs, Lester Pearson delivered the above statements in his speech entitled “Canadian Foreign Policy in a Two Power World” to a joint meeting of the Empire Club of Canada and Canadian Club of Toronto. (April 10, 1951)

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For centuries, self-righteous state myths have depicted the imperial Canadian project as a victory for democracy and human rights. Despite Canada’s long record of genocide, land plunder, and war profiteering, official narratives about noble “Canadian values” still reign in this imagined “peaceable kingdom.”

Canada’s ethnonationalist propaganda demonized First Nations as hostile sub-humans to be enslaved, imprisoned on reservations and made Christian in residential schools. This White-Power racism served imperialist containment policies designed to turn “Red Indian” enemies into captive nations.

By the early 1950s, then-external affairs minister Lester Pearson was pioneering a new containment policy. During the transition to the new world order of the Cold War, he rallied his powerful allies in Canada’s racist old-boys’ clubs.

Pearson’s status as a national hero was consolidated when he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1957 for his role in helping to establish a UN peacekeeping force.

But Pearson was far from a progressive. In 1951, he compared the new Red Menace of communism to what he called “savages lurking in the woods.” These “savages,” he declared, had violently threatened the peaceful lives of innocent white Europeans whom he lovingly called “our forefathers.”

By conjuring unsettling images of a Red-Indian bogeyman, Pearson helped manufacture consent for a new, politically Red enemy to meet the needs of NATO’s capitalist powers.

On the home front, Pearson’s fierce anticommunism justified Canada’s systematic abuses of civil rights. As Ian MacKay and Jamie Swift note in Warrior Nation: “Pearson enthusiastically supported a Cold War against any Canadians suspected of viewing the world outside the newly hegemonic framework of the American imperium.”^[1]

Headline in Toronto newspaper pointing to repressive political environment in the early Cold War. [Source: opentext.bc.ca]

Targeted for abuse by Canada’s Cold War elites were “peaceniks,” radical unionists and anyone branded as too leftwing. “Pearson had become an ever-more-aggressive accomplice,” said MacKay and Swift, “in government attacks on dissidents.”^[2]

To Pearson and other Cold Warriors, the world was torn. As chief architect of Canada’s postwar anti-Red foreign policy, Pearson demonized the Soviet Union as the epicenter of evil. The USSR was still reeling after 27 million of its citizens had been killed by Hitler’s anti-communist crusade.

This is the cover of the Canadian edition (1947) of a U.S. comic by the Catechetical Guild Educational Society. [Source: coat.ncf.ca]

Anti-communist propaganda which Pearson echoed. [Source: coat.ncf.ca]

After the Red Army liberated Eastern Europe and led Germany’s defeat, the U.S. replaced the Nazis as global leaders in the war on communism. NATO efforts to destroy the USSR used Cold-War “containment” strategies: surrounding the Soviet Union with nuclear weapons, isolating it with political and economic sanctions, and vilifying it with propaganda. Pearson had a central role in this new phase of the West’s war on communism.

Lester Pearson, far right, with Halvard Lange of Norway and Gaetano Martino of Italy. They were known as the “Three Wise Men” who were ardent in supporting NATO. [Source: nato.int]

The Red Scare had been going on for decades. In Pearson’s youth during WWI and the First Red Scare (1914-20), Canada ran slave-labor, concentration camps that interned thousands of single immigrant men, mostly Ukrainians, who had been laid off from rural work camps. Elites feared their growing protests in urban centers might spark a socialist revolution.^[3]

Ukrainians interned during World War I and the First Red Scare. [Source: infoukes]

And, in 1919, Canada was among thirteen countries that invaded newborn Soviet Russia with 150,000 troops to intervene in its civil war and reverse its revolution. Canada’s allies in the war, led by Admiral Alexander Vasilevich Kolchak, killed at least 100 civilians for every one killed by the Bolshevik Red Army, according to General William S. Graves, who headed the U.S. contingent.^[4]

Members of the Canadian Army’s 67th Battery pose for a photo following the Battle of Tulgas, Russia, on November 11, 1918. [Source: ipolitics.ca]

During the Depression, when Pearson was a bureaucrat working closely with Canada’s prime minister, some 170,000 single, unemployed men were forced into remote work camps to prevent a potential revolution.^[5]

One means of dismantling Canada’s prevailing peace mythology is to examine this country’s support for U.S. militarism throughout the Cold War. This study leads to the conclusion that little if anything has changed.

Plaque commemorating Pearson and Truman and signing of original NATO treaty in 1949. [Source: tcdb.com]

Always a stalwart NATO warrior giving solid allegiance to U.S.-led military, political, economic and propaganda warfare, Canada has taken leading roles in a new Cold War being waged by the American empire.

Lester Pearson at West Germany’s accession to NATO in 1955. [Source: nato.int]

Facing Canada’s history of duplicity is especially difficult because it means challenging the villainous hypocrisy of some of this nation’s most-beloved leaders. It also means confronting the powerful, political descendants of Canada’s much-glorified peace cult heroes, and debunking pernicious narratives that are still perpetuated, even by many mainstream progressives.

Pearson As Peace-Cult Hero and Cold-War Hatemonger

While state-sponsored myths have helped to create an institutionalized cult around Pearson, Canada’s beloved Nobel Peace Prize winner was actually a vociferous Cold Warrior. Besides using hateful anti-Red rhetoric to whitewash U.S.-backed wars, Pearson rallied support for various covert actions that squashed anti-colonial struggles in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Canada’s largest political, corporate, religious and media institutions shared with their Western allies a fierce loathing for anyone who could be labelled communist. Their global crusade maligned all individuals, groups, parties, movements and governments that dared to threaten the freewheeling reign of predatory corporations. In Lester Pearson, these fear-mongering elites found a believable voice whose skilful devotion to Cold War tropes served their shared, vested interests.

Pearson was useful to British and American power elites because he leveraged Canada’s well-crafted reputation as a neutral “middle power” to cheerlead their neocolonial adventures. This included lending Canada’s respected voice to the ousting of elected, socialist-friendly governments that tried to limit the exploits of foreign corporations.

As Canada’s most influential confidence man, Pearson exuded faith in America’s supposed devotion to peace. “It is inconceivable to me that the United States would ever initiate an aggressive war,” said Pearson in 1955, and “it is also inconceivable that Canada would ever take part in such a war.”^[6]

Captivated by the era’s extreme anti-communism, Pearson ignored Western war crimes. In fact, he artfully glorified these crimes with phobic narratives that painted assaults on democracy as if they were part of a noble, god-inspired plan to wipe communist evil off the face of the earth.

Before examining Pearson’s key role in leading Canada’s support for these American adventures, it is worth examining the cultural influences in his early life that helped create his pious devotion to Cold War causes.

The Early Origins of Pearson’s “Muscular Christianity”

That Pearson slipped so easily into sermonizing about the Red Menace can be explained largely by his ultrareligious upbringing. His father, and both grandfathers, were Methodist ministers. [NOTE: Not sure what a “staunch” Methodist minister is.]

Methodism, which was then Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, was central to the imperial project of spreading “Christian values” at home and abroad.

This religious exercise, to build the moral muscles of a global Anglo-based civilization, fixated on the Social Gospel movement. Its mission was to take up the “white man’s burden” and uplift atheist heathens and inferior races through such genocidal institutions as Indian Residential Schools.^[7]

Pearson describes his maternal grandfather, Rev. Thomas Bowles, as “a pillar of the church and the Liberal party.” He had been elected county warden three times, township reeve (mayor) ten times, and was appointed first sheriff of Dufferin County, Ontario. Pearson notes that his paternal grandfather Rev. Marmaduke L. Pearson, one of the Methodist “church’s most distinguished divines,” was a devoted Tory who seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about and playing baseball, lawn-bowling and cricket.

This obsession was passed on to his sons, including Lester’s father, Rev. Edwin A. Pearson. He was described by historian John English, as “a strong imperialist” whose “three boys shared his enthusiasm for sports and the empire.”^[8]

Lester Pearson (bottom left), at home in Hamilton, 1913, with brothers, parents and grandfather. His father and grandfather were both Methodist ministers who zealously supported British imperialism. [Source: coat.ncf.ca]

Pearson’s memoir also reveals the great influence of certain novels he found in his Sunday School library. “From its shelves I learned of life and adventure,” said Pearson, “through Horatio Alger, G.A. Henty and similar heroic books.”^[9] Alger, a disgraced Unitarian minister who became one of the most popular novelists of the late 1800s, is best known for perpetuating the American dream’s “rags-to-riches” myth.

George A. Henty though, revealed Pearson, was “the author whom I knew the best among all English writers before I went to college.” ^[10] As a British war correspondent, Henty’s travels across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia, were always sure to promote British imperialism. Throughout the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, his work epitomized that blatantly jingoistic literary genre known as “imperial adventure fiction.”

Henty’s books embodied the spirit of so-called “Muscular Christianity.” This Victorian movement glorified the pious athleticism and virile masculinity of tough, white saviors who would happily knock heads together (and kill if need be) for the glory of god, king, country and empire.

Always ready to save the brutish, lower-class savages from themselves, Henty’s heroes enthralled impressionable juveniles, like Pearson, who lapped up this macho vision of a missionizing, tough-love fundamentalism that was hopped up on just wars and imperial steroids.^[11]  “To be a true hero,” explained Henty when interviewed, “you must be a true Christian.”^[12]

Henty’s 122 novels were riddled with white supremacist heroes who spouted the era’s outrageously popular racist, sexist and anti-semitic beliefs. His books also targeted left-wing, cartoon villains from the ruthless labour leaders of striking English coal miners^[13] to the eroticized socialist women who ran loose in the 1871 “Paris Commune.”^[14]

Considering his class and the strong religious leanings of his family and community, it is not surprising that Pearson would be so captivated by Henty’s writings. While Pearson’s 1972 memoir offers no critique of Henty, it praises the author’s historical fiction for having provided a knowledge of the world that informed and inspired him throughout his political career:

“His exciting stories based on history’s more romantic episodes stirred my imagination mightily and, I suspect, had much to do with my liking for and concentration on history in my educational progress. When years later I traveled extensively abroad as Canada’s Secretary of State for External Affairs, there was hardly a place I visited which I had not known through that prolific but now almost forgotten writer of adventure stories for boys.”^[15]

Pearson’s exceedingly sheltered childhood kept him cozy in the warmth of positive feelings for imperialism. “[T]he parish was my world,” he confessed. “As for the rest of the world, I thought about it … largely in terms of the British Empire which was looking after the ‘lesser breeds’ and keeping the French and Germans under control.”^[16]

Admitting that his was “an absorbing mind rather than a questioning mind,” Pearson also disclosed that he had “a rather superficial approach to life.” His “limited” world, Pearson says, “did not broaden much” until 1913 when, at age 16, he entered Toronto’s Victoria College.^[17]

Named for Queen Victoria, and founded by the Wesleyan Methodist Church in 1836, this was no breeding ground for radical thought; it was a hotbed of imperialist education.

Rather than freeing Pearson’s mind from its fetters, college life further narrowed Pearson’s “limited” worldview. And, it was here that Pearson first made contact with influential men who led him along the political path to power.

Victoria College was where he began what he called his “long and … rewarding association”^[18] with Vincent Massey, a history lecturer and dean of the residence building which his family had built and furnished. Massey’s Methodist father, owning one of Toronto’s biggest industrial concerns, had close links to the highest echelons of the Liberal Party. Massey was already a good friend of Mackenzie King, who became Canada’s longest-standing prime minister.

Massey became one of Pearson’s most important Methodist mentors. His deeds included being a leader of Toronto’s Cecil Rhodes-inspired Round Table Society (1911-18); marrying Alice Parkin, daughter of Sir George Parkin, secretary of The Rhodes Trust (1915); being appointed to Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s cabinet war committee (1918) and to the Liberal cabinet (1925); being appointed Canada’s first envoy to the U.S. (1926-30) and its high commissioner to Britain (1930, 1935-46); being president of England and Wales’ National Liberal Federation (1932-35); being made Canada’s delegate to the League of Nations (1936) and being appointed to represent the Queen as Canada’s governor general (1952-59).^[19]

Massey, who Pearson notes was “personal friends of the Royal Family, and … seemed to know every duke by his first name,”^[20] was able to open doors for Pearson throughout his career. This included funding Pearson’s BA and MA studies at Oxford (1923-25).^[21]

Pearson’s subservience to the moneyed interests of empire helped ensure his rise through the Department of External Affairs. He joined that bureaucracy in 1928, during the King government, but when Conservative Prime Minister Richard “Iron Heel” Bennett took power in 1930, “Pearson was a beneficiary.”^[22]

Bennett, who was also a devout Methodist, earned his nickname after an inflammatory 1932 speech in which he said:

“What do these so-called groups of Socialists and Communists offer you? They are sowing their seeds everywhere…. [T]hroughout Canada this propaganda is being put forward by organizations from foreign lands that seek to destroy our institutions. And we ask that every man and woman put the iron heel of ruthlessness against a thing of that kind.”^[23]

Crushing communism was clearly the order of the day, and Pearson was ambitious and eager to comply.

Talent-spotted by Bennett, Pearson was soon appointed to two royal commissions on economic issues. As journalism professor Andrew Cohen noted: “Pearson liked Bennett who treated him as a protegé.”

In early 1935, Pearson accompanied Bennett to London where they took part in the Jubilee to celebrate King George V’s 25-year reign. During their lavish sea voyage with its sumptuous cuisine, Pearson learned he would receive the Order of the British Empire and asked Bennett for a raise of $25 per week.^[24]

This increase boosted Pearson’s salary by an extra $25,000 per year in today’s dollars. This was distasteful considering all those who were hungry for food and justice during the Great Depression.

Unmentioned by Cohen or Pearson is that, between 1932 and 1935, Bennett’s government rounded up 170,000 single, unemployed, urban men and forced them into slavery in army-run “Relief Camps.”

Army-run relief camp during Great Depression, designed to remove “red” agitators from the cities. [Source: sutori.com]

General Andrew McNaughton’s internment plan makes it clear why. “In their ragged platoons,” he explained to the cabinet, “here are the prospective members of what Marx called the ‘industrial reserve army, the storm troopers of the revolution.’”^[25]

General McNaughton further told Bennett that “[b]y taking the men out … of the cities” and forcing them into remote work camps, “we were removing the active elements on which the ‘red’ agitators could play.”^[26]

In 1935, Bennett approved Pearson’s posting to Canada’s High Commission in London. When Bennett was replaced by King, Pearson’s move was confirmed and he continued his climb, becoming second in command under High Commissioner Vincent Massey (1939-42).

In 1940, Pearson was recruited by Sir William Stephenson to be a “King’s messenger” carrying secret documents to Europe. Nicknamed “the Quiet Canadian,” Stephenson was the Canadian intelligence agent, codenamed “Intrepid,”^[27] who inspired Ian Fleming’s fictional, anti-communist superspy, 007.^[28]

James Bond was also the violently racist and sexist Cold War equivalent of the Victorian era’s manly, white, imperial adventure heroes, so admired by Pearson.

From London, Pearson was transferred to Washington, D.C., where he was Canada’s ambassador and envoy extraordinaire to the U.S. (1942-46).

After returning to Ottawa, he was appointed foreign minister for the last few months of Prime Minister King’s time in office (1948). When King’s protégé, Louis St. Laurent, took over, he retained Pearson as foreign minister (1948-57).

Pearson’s early decades of pliable innocence were over. Having been moulded and mentored into form by family, church, schools and government, he had thoroughly internalized the deceitful scripts of elite institutions.

But though he became a manager and manipulator in his own right, Pearson’s role on the global stage was still directed by external forces in Washington and London. While just following his social orders, Pearson’s acts of complicity in Cold War coups, wars, invasions and occupations cannot be excused. He was culpable for the criminality in which he willfully engaged. Let’s look at a few examples.

The Korean War and Its Planning, 1947-1953

Pearson was a strong supporter of the Korean War (1950-1953), which devastated the Korean peninsula and left a legacy of conflict and division that persists to this day.

Pearson considered the war part of a moral crusade against communism.

His understanding overlooked the fact that the northern communist regime, led by Kim Il-Sung, had led the fight against Japanese colonialism. By contrast, the southern regime, led by Syngman Rhee and dominated by Japanese colonial collaborators, killed over 100,000 of its own citizens and launched raids into the north, all of which provoked the onset of the war.

Image from Pyongyang museum of American war crimes depicting U.S. soldiers brutalizing North Koreans. [Source: peacehistory-usfp.org]

Pearson’s hawkish position contrasted with Prime Minister Mackenzie King’s, who said that “Canada should not automatically support the United States in all its endeavors.”^[29]

Pearson also clashed with Defense Minister Brooke Claxton who opposed sending Canadian troops to Korea presciently because the U.S. was “getting [Canada] into something to which there is really no end.”^[30]

When Pearson was dispatched to Washington to meet with President Harry S. Truman in 1948, he conspired behind the scenes with Truman to undermine King’s direct orders regarding the pursuit of an independent Canadian foreign policy, and assisted U.S. State Department officials in crafting a letter that urged King to support the Korean War.^[31]

King’s successor, Louis St. Laurent, assisted the war effort by deploying a Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) squadron of transport planes to airlift U.S. troops, weapons and other materiel across the Pacific.

Canadian soldiers playing ice hockey, the national sport, on a rink they built in South Korea. [Source: bardown.com]

Military historian David Bercusson,^[32] who continues to spread official narratives promoting this and other wars, wrote:

“Pearson was correct about what the Korean War meant in the global confrontation between Soviet Communism and the Western democratic powers and correct too in believing that Canada could not sit out the war if the Americans insisted that Canadian troops were needed. He was far wiser than Claxton in knowing this. With Pearson leading the way, Claxton came on board.”^[33]

Pearson told St. Laurent that he supported troop deployments based on his anti-communist views about “the menace which faces us, … the expression of that menace in Korea, and the necessity of defeating it there by United Nations action.” Pearson’s efforts paid off. “St. Laurent came around,” said Bercusson, because “he and the nation really had little choice.”^[34]

The speech St. Laurent gave over the radio announcing Canada’s commitment to the war was probably crafted in part by Pearson. It was deep in Orwellian newspeak:

“The action of the United Nations in Korea,” St. Laurent intoned, “is not war; it is police action intended to prevent war by discouraging aggression.” Since “the war to end all wars” had already come and gone 30 years hence, the Korean War was framed as “important to all of us who want to avoid another world war.” The need to “defeat the Communist aggressors in Korea,” said St. Laurent, was like fighting “fascist aggression” in WWII. He concluded his deceit with “We owe it to to ourselves, to each other, to our children, and each other’s children … to prevent the disasters of a third world war.”^[35]

This launched Canada’s four-year collaboration—under the UN’s respectable cover—in a barrage of napalm-saturated bombings that slaughtered some three or four million Koreans.

This supposed non-war, also caused “six to seven million” more to be “rendered refugees,” says historian Jeremy Kuzmarov, who also notes that the onslaught destroyed “8,500 factories, 5,000 schools, 1,000 hospitals, and 600,000 homes.”^[36]

Canadian troops marching in North Korea during a brutal 40-day U.S.-UN occupation. [Source: thecanadianencyclopedia.ca]

To aid and abet this mayhem, Canada supplied its good name, plus more than 20,000 troops (516 of whom died), numerous war planes, eight destroyers and a wealth of strategic minerals and military hardware.

Canadian troops after the Battle of Kapyong in April 1951. [Source: veterans.gc.ca]

In return, the St. Laurent government exploited the war as an excuse to vastly expand Canada’s army, navy and air force and to accelerate the production of jet fighters, jet engines, naval vessels, weapons, ammunition, radar and more.

“We are working in the closest co-operation with the United States,” said St. Laurent, so “that our joint resources and facilities are put to the most effective use in the common defence [sic] effort.” The government, he went on, was also “looking forward confidently to an acceleration and an intensification of our joint [military] production efforts” through the “U.S.-Canada industrial mobilization planning committee.”^[37]

While devastating Korea itself, the Korean War sparked the blossoming of Canada’s military-industrial complex, which fueled its complicity in Cold War adventures for decades to come.

Similarly, anti-communism was harnessed by Western governments to repress the civil liberties of anti-war activists. Quebec’s “Padlock Law” (1937-57) made it illegal to copy, publish or distribute anything deemed pro-communist. Although the King and St. Laurent governments could have struck down this law, they didn’t. It was used against peace activists opposing the Korean War.

In May 1951, an “anti-subversion squad” raided a Montreal home where about thirty labor and civil rights activists were meeting with James Endicott, president of the Canadian Peace Congress. Literature was seized and male police invasively searched activists, including the women, who lodged a complaint to Pearson’s office, which did nothing.^[38]

In January 1952, Endicott denounced the “Padlock Law” at a meeting in London, England. “Under American pressure,” he reported, Canada’s treason act had been amended “so that a cabinet committee can order secret arrests and hold people indefinitely and incommunicado without trial. They are doing that against peace workers.”^[39]

Coup in Iran, 1953

Pearson’s foreign ministry supported the coup that installed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as Iran’s dictator in 1953.

This CIA/MI5-led coup ousted Mohammad Mosaddegh’s elected government after it dared to nationalize Iran’s UK-owned oil industry in March 1951. Although not a socialist, Mosaddegh worked with Iran’s communist party, Tudeh, which had played a key role in Iran’s struggle to gain control of its own oil resources.

As revealed by anti-war writer Yves Engler, Pearson “was not happy with the Iranian’s move”:

In May 1951 External Minister Lester Pearson told the House of Commons the “problem can be settled” only if the Iranians keep in mind the “legitimate interests of other people who have ministered to the well-being of Iran in administering the oil industry of that country which they have been instrumental in developing.”^[40]

Mossadegh’s duly-elected government also angered Pearson. “In their anxiety to gain full control of their affairs by the elimination of foreign influence,” he told parliament, Iran had exposed itself “to the menace of communist penetration and absorption—absorption into the Soviet sphere.”^[41]

As Engler notes, “Pearson did not protest the overthrow of Iran’s first elected prime minister” and three days after the coup, Canada’s ambassador expressed concern with what he called the “disturbing factor” of “the continued strength of the Tudeh party.”^[42]

In response, the Shah’s CIA-trained secret police (SAVAK) quickly began arresting thousands of Tudeh members. By 1958, SAVAK torture and assassination campaigns had decimated Tudeh and other popular, democratic forces.^[43] This “progress” allowed Canada to begin diplomatic relations with Iran in 1955.

By May 1965, when deposed Prime Minister Mossadegh was still under arrest, Pearson was prime minister and hosted the Shah’s state visit to Canada.

Upon his arrival in Ottawa, aboard a Canadian military plane, the Shah was greeted by Pearson, Foreign Minister Paul Martin, Sr., and Governor General George Vanier, who literally gave him the red-carpet treatment.

Vanier intoned “I greet Your Imperial Majesty as an able and valiant head of state and as a great leader with progressive policies,”^[44] while Pearson said the Shah “had given outstanding leadership in bringing his country forward into the modern world.”^[45]

During his eight-day visit to five cities, the Shah attended top-government meetings, inspected an honor guard, waved to the public, laid a wreath, spoke at press conferences and elite clubs, was feted at gala luncheons and black-tie dinners, dined privately at Pearson’s home, was honored at a state banquet and reception by Vanier in his palatial mansion, and was regaled by Canada’s mass media. Pahlavi and his Empress were a hit.^[46]

Special police precautions were taken for fear of Iranian student protests, which the Shah “dismissed …  as the work of communists.”^[47]

Summing up the visit, Pearson said it had “brought our two countries even closer together in our approach to problems of peace and the United Nations.”^[48]

Coup in Guatemala, 1954

A CIA-led coup toppled Guatemala’s elected government and ushered in decades of dictatorships that killed about 200,000 people.

Diego Rivera painting, Glorious Victory, which depicts Secretary of State John Foster Dulles shaking hands over a pile of dead corpses with Castillo Armas who deposed Guatemala’s left-leaning president Jacobo Arbenz. CIA Director Allen Dulles stands next to the pair, his satchel full of cash, while Dwight Eisenhower’s face is pictured in a bomb. [Source: wikipedia.org]

As a U.S. State Department official said, Guatemala’s elected President Jacobo Arbenz—the target of the coup—had a “broad social program” to aid “workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises.”

This, he admitted, had “strong appeal to the populations of Central America.”^[49] Arbenz was not allowed to pose the threat of a good example.

Even before Arbenz’s 1950 election, Ottawa’s trade commissioner in Guatemala had characterized him as “unscrupulous, daring and ruthless, and not one to be allayed in his aims by bloodshed or killing.”^[50]

Prior to the coup, Arbenz’s Foreign Minister Guillermo Toriello asked Canada to allow embassies to open in their two countries.

Pearson’s department refused. “At external affairs and in Canadian board rooms,” said reporter Peter McFarlane, “the coup was chalked up as another victory of the Free World against the [Red] Menace.”^[51]

Afterwards, U.S.-led counter-insurgency operations directed against left-wing rebels who sought to restore Arbenz’s political program benefited from the use of Canadian military hardware. The key U.S. warplanes used in this CIA operation were P-47 and F-47N fighter planes and C-47 and C-54 cargo planes. Owned and operated by the CIA, they were flown by American pilots.^[52]

These aircraft in the CIA’s “Liberation Air Force” were powered by Wasp-series engines built in Montreal, Quebec, by Pratt & Whitney Canada (PWC).^[53]

Throughout the 1980s, when the Guatemalan air force attacked villages, they employed U.S. Bell 212 and 412 helicopters—made famous in the Vietnam War—that were powered by PWC’s PT6T engines.^[54]

PWC has long been one of the highest government-subsidized war industries in Canada. For example, between 1982 and 2006 it was Canada’s top corporate welfare recipient, raking in about $1.5 billion.^[55]

Vietnam War, 1952-1974

From the beginning, Pearson was a gung-ho supporter of the Vietnam War. When France initiated the first Indochina War (1946-1954) in an attempt to reclaim its former colony, Pearson led Canadian efforts to supply weapons for use by French forces in Indochina (now Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia).^[56]

This was done under the radar through NATO’s Mutual Aid Program. Between 1950 and 1954 alone, about $650 million (in 2021 dollars) worth of Canadian “armaments, ammunition, aircraft, and engines were transferred … to the Indochina war theatre.”^[57]

In 1952, Pearson “okayed the deal” to allow Canadian arms, sold to France for use in Europe only, to be diverted to Indochina. This materiel included “antitank and anti-aircraft guns, ammunition, rangefinders and telescopic sights.” Behind the cabinet’s back, Pearson decided that arming France’s Indochina War was lawful because it “help[ed] assure the preservation of peace.”^[58]

In one of Pearson’s many 1951 tirades affirming his support for that war, he suggested that if the independence of Indochina were to fail, “all of South-East Asia, including Burma, Malaya and Indonesia, with their important resources of rubber, rice and tin, might well come under communist control.”^[59]

Pearson at the same time was claiming in the early 1950s that the “‘Soviet colonial authority in Indochina’ appeared to be stronger than that of France.” Considering that there was “not a Russian anywhere in the neighborhood,” Noam Chomsky wrote, “[o]ne has to search pretty far to find more fervent devotion to imperial crimes than Pearson’s declarations.”^[60]

Pearson’s collaboration in the Vietnam War included his backing of Canadian government collaboration in “spying, weapons sales, and complicity in the bombing of the North.”^[61]

Many Canadians believe the myth today that Pearson helped keep Canada out of the Vietnam War. However, 40,000 Canadians joined the U.S. armed forces during the war.^[62] This was 50% more than the 26,000 Canadian soldiers who had served in Korea.

In 1954, when Pearson was minister of external affairs, he helped gain American backing for Canada’s bid for a seat on the International Control Commission (ICC)—whose purpose was to enforce the 1954 Geneva accords.

Pearson served as the handler of Canada’s ambassador to the U.S., Arnold Heeney, who forged an agreement with U.S. Deputy Undersecretary of State Robert Murphy, that Canada would illegally supply the U.S. with secret intelligence obtained through its involvement in the ICC mission.^[63]

Canada’s best-known ICC spy was Blair Seaborn, a long-time friend of America’s ambassador to South Vietnam, Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. In late April 1964, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk met Prime Minister Pearson and External Affairs Minister Paul Martin, Sr., to discuss the “Seaborn Mission.” A month later Pearson conveyed to Johnson his “willingness to lend Canadian good offices to this endeavour.”

The Pentagon Papers later revealed that Pearson told Johnson at this meeting that, although he “would have great reservations about the use of nuclear weapons,” in Vietnam, America’s “punitive striking” with “iron bomb attacks” (i.e., unguided, air-dropped conventional munitions) was fine.^[64]

Seaborn conveyed U.S. threats to the North Vietnamese that, unless they surrendered, the U.S. would unleash massive military attacks.

Seaborn also “gathered intelligence for U.S. authorities” on many strategic issues that aided and abetted America’s war. The Pentagon Papers showed that the U.S. informed Canada, seven months in advance, of closely guarded U.S. plans for a major bombing campaign against the north in December 1964.^[65]

Victor Levant’s groundbreaking book, Quiet Complicity: Canadian Involvement in the Vietnam War (1986), reveals that Pearson’s government (he was prime minister from 1963 to 1968) was aiding and abetting domestic war industries to cash in on the bonanza.

This was despite the fact that, as a member of the ICC, one of Canada’s duties was “to restrict the entry of arms into Vietnam from anywhere.”^[66] But, said Levant, “[f]ar from trying to curtail U.S. purchases of Canadian military equipment, the government in Ottawa actively encouraged the process” with grants to so-called “defense industries” between 1964 and 1968, that were worth just over $1 billion in 2021 dollars.^[67]

This investment of taxpayers’ money paid off, at least for Canadian corporations that received over $2.16 billion (in 2021 dollars) “in 1965 [alone] by making military equipment, ranging from green berets to airplanes, for the U.S. war effort in Vietnam.”^[68]

Prime Minister Pearson tried to absolve himself and the government of complicity in this war profiteering by claiming in 1967 that Canada could not determine the whereabouts of military equipment purchased in Canada by the U.S., though he conceded that a “small percentage of Canadian arms could be reaching the battlefield in Vietnam.” ^[69]

While cheered by virulently anti-communist groups, Pearson became a main target of the anti-war protesters who carried banners that read “End Canadian complicity in Viet Nam War,” “Pearson accomplice in genocide” and “Accomplice in mass murder.” A chant that was familiar in those days,was “Pearson, Martin, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?”^[70]

On the nation’s 100th anniversary (July 1, 1967) in Montreal, when thousands marched to protest Canada’s role in the Vietnam War, French chants included “Johnson assassin. Pearson Complice.”^[71]  The fact that Pearson was an accomplice to mass murder in Vietnam was then well known to the peace movement. This institutional memory has now been all but erased.

*

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

Notes

[1] Ian MacKay and Jamie Swift, Warrior Nation: Rebranding Canada in an Age of Anxiety, 2012, p. 128.

[2] Ibid., p. 118.

[3] Richard Sanders, “War Mania, Mass Hysteria and Moral Panics,” Captive Canada, Press for Conversion!, March 2016, pp. 5-14. http://bit.ly/RedScare-1

[4] See Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano, The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018).

[5] Richard Sanders, “Left-Right Camps: A Century of Ukrainian Canadian Internment,” Captive Canada, op. cit., pp. 40-55. https://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/68/68_40-55.htm

[6] Lester Pearson, Statements and Speeches, 55/10, March 24, 1955, cited by Levant, op. cit., pp. 12-13.

[7] Richard Sanders, “The Occupation(al) Psychosis of Empire-Building Missionaries,” Captive Canada, op. cit., pp. 18-19.https://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/68/68_18-19.htm

[8] John English, “Pearson, Lester Bowles,” Dictionary of Canadian Biography, 2003- http://bit.ly/EdwinP

[9] Lester Pearson, Mike: The Memoirs of the Rt. Hon. Lester B. Pearson, Vol.1, 1972, p. 10.

[10] Ibid.

[11] For more on this genre and its Canadian exemplar, Charles Gordon, see Richard Sanders, “Religious Guardians of the Peaceable Kingdom: Winnipeg’s Key Social-Gospel Gatekeepers of Canada West,” Captive Canada op. cit., pp. 22-29. https://coat.ncf.ca/P4C/68/68_22-29.htm

[12] Ray Van Neste, Review of The Boy’s Guide to the Historical Adventures of G. A. Henty, March 3, 2006. http://rayvanneste.com/?p=686

[13] G.A. Henty, Facing Death: A Tale of the Coal Mines, 1883. https://books.google.ca/books?id=rRcCAAAAQAAJ

[14] Matthew Beaumont, “Anti-Communism and the Cacotopia,” Utopia Ltd.: Ideologies of Social Dreaming in England 1870-1900, 2005, pp. 152-154. https://brill.com/view/book/9789047407096/BP000006.xml

G.A. Henty, Woman of the Commune: A Tale of Two Sieges of Paris, 1895. https://books.google.ca/books?id=9mZWAAAAMAAJ

[15] Pearson 1972, op. cit., p. 10.

[16] Ibid., p. 15

[17] Ibid., pp. 14-15.

[18] Ibid., p. 15.

[19] Claude Bissell, The Young Vincent Massey, 1981, passim.

[20] Pearson 1972, op. cit., p. 105.

[21] Ibid., p. 45.

[22] Andrew Cohen, Lester B. Pearson, 2008.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=JyBrNgMJELIC&pg=PT38

[23] Thomas Green, “Bennett Raps Socialism, Communism,” Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, Nov. 10, 1932, p. 5. https://www.newspapers.com/image/508724453

[24] Cohen 2008, op. cit.

[25] Canada: A People’s History, Vol. 2, http://books.google.ca/books?id=2fcXAAAAYAAJ

[26] In Jean Barman, The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, 1991. http://books.google.ca/books?id=JbYe6fCOSTAC

[27] A Man Called Intrepid: The Incredible True Story of the Master Spy Who Helped Win WWII, 1976, pp. 191, 216.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=Zj-CDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT255

https://books.google.ca/books?id=Zj-CDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT287

[28] Guy F. Burnett, “Ian Fleming’s Coldest Warrior: The Anticommunist Origins of James Bond,” Dissident, Nov. 17, 2015. http://bit.ly/antiRedBond

(The above archived article, from the anti-communist, “Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation” website, celebrates both Fleming and his Bond character as those “who fought to save the world from tyranny and oppression.”

[29] Pearson 1972, p. 139.

[30] David Jay Bercuson, Blood on the Hills: The Canadian Army in the Korean War, 1999, pp. 31-32. https://books.google.ca/books?id=eCizi80V1M0C

[31] Pearson 1972, op. cit., pp. 140-141. https://books.google.ca/books?id=nXM2CwAAQBAJ&pg=PA140

[32] Bercuson is a director of two right-wing, Calgary-based think tanks, the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies (funded by the Canadian war department’s “Security and Defence Forum”), and the Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute (which has accepted funding from General Dynamics and publicly promoted the company’s exports of major Canadian-made weapons systems, such as LAVs, to Saudi Arabia.

[33] Ibid., p. 33.

[34] Ibid.

[35] “St. Laurent Text on Resisting Reds,” Windsor Daily Star, August 8, 1950, p. 14.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/72910987/the-windsor-star/

[36] Jeremy Kuzmarov, “The Korean War: Barbarism Unleashed,” United States Foreign Policy, History and Resource Guide website, 2016. http://peacehistory-usfp.org/korean-war/

[37] Windsor Daily Star, op. cit.

[38] See author’s collection of seven newsclips, May 25-28, 1951.

https://www.newspapers.com/clippings/#query=padlock&user=1155887

[39] “Says working for peace in America hard,” Ottawa Citizen, Jan. 10, 1952, p. 10.

https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73516103/the-ottawa-citizen/

[40] Engler 2012, citing Pearson, Hansard, May 14, 1951, 3002.

[41] Lester Pearson, Hansard, Oct. 22, 1951, p. 253, cited by Engler, op. cit., pp. 75.

[42] Engle, ibid., p. 76.

[43] Ervand Abrahamian, Tortured Confessions: Prisons and Public Recantations in Modern Iran, 1999, pp. 89-101. http://bit.ly/SAVAK-Tudeh

[44] “Shah, Empress in Ottawa,” Ottawa Journal, May 19, 1965, p. 1. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73543166/the-ottawa-journal/

[45] “Shah starts visit,” Ottawa Citizen, May 19, 1965, p. 1. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73528451/the-ottawa-citizen/

“Shah in Canada,” Ottawa Citizen, ibid., p. 3. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73534362/the-ottawa-citizen/

[46] “Shah has busy schedule here,” Ottawa Citizen, May 17, 1965, p. 3. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73524704/the-ottawa-citizen/

“Shah of Persia in Canada, 1965.” https://www.britishpathe.com/video/shah-of-persia-in-canada

(Note: These film clips from the Shah’s visit include footage of the state dinner with Governor General Vanier at Rideau Hall.)

[47] “Shah in capital,” Ottawa Citizen, May 19, 1965, p. 3. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73534362/the-ottawa-citizen/

[48] “Royal Visits Top News Events,” Brandon Sun, May 31, 1965, p. 12. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73525463/the-brandon-sun/

[49] Cited by Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, 1991, p. 419. http://bit.ly/Chomsky1991

[50] James Rochlin, Discovering the Americas: Evolution of Canadian Foreign Policy towards Latin America, 1994, p. 35. http://bit.ly/Roch94

[51] Peter McFarlane, Northern Shadows: Canadians in Central America, 1989, pp. 98, 100, cited by Engler op. cit., p. 79.

[52] Guatemala: Air Force History

http://www.aeroflight.co.uk/waf/americas/guatemala/Guatemala-af-history.htm

[53] Pratt & Whitney Canada ; http://bit.ly/PWC-WASP; Republic P-47 Thunderbolt

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_P-47_Thunderbolt; Douglas C-47 Skytrain [Dakota]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_C-47_Skytrain#Postwar_era; Douglas C-54 Skymaster

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_C-54_Skymaster

[54] Pratt & Whitney Canada PT6T  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pratt_%26_Whitney_Canada_PT6T

Bell 212 in Fuerza Aerea Guatemalteca (Guatemalan Air Force) 1980 to present https://www.helis.com/database/modelorg/Guatemala-Bell-212/

Bell 412 in Fuerza Aerea Guatemalteca (Guatemalan Air Force) 1982 to present https://www.helis.com/database/modelorg/Guatemala-Bell-412/

[55] Mark Milke, Corporate Welfare: A $144 billion addiction, Nov. 2007. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/corporate-welfare-a-144-billion-addiction.pdf

[56] Levant, op. cit., p. 42

[57] Ibid., p. 43

[58] Levant, op. cit., p. 43 [NOTE: I believe “Idem.” in italics would be appropriate here.]

[59] Chomsky 2012, op. cit., p. 9.

[60] Noam Chomsky, “Imperial Presidency,” Canadian Dimension, Jan/Feb 2005. http://bit.ly/CDchom

[61] Noam Chomsky, Foreword, in Yves Engler, Lester Pearson’s Peacekeeping: The Truth May Hurt, 2012, p. 8.

[62] Ryan Goldsworthy, “The Canadian Way: The Case of Canadian Vietnam War Veterans,”  http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vol15/no3/page48-eng.asp

[63] James Eayrs, In Defence of Canada: Indochina – Roots of Complicity, 1983, pp. 242-243, cited in Levant, op. cit., p. 193.

[64] Levant, op. cit., pp. 178-79.

[65] Ibid., p. 178

[66] Harry Trimborn, “Canada-US Tieup? Some Other Time!” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 23, 1966, p. 82.  https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73697853/the-los-angeles-times/

[67] Levant, op. cit., p. 57.

[68] Trimborn, op. cit.

(Note: The article noted a figure of $260 million, which the Bank of Canada, when corrected for inflation, says is worth $2,164,578,313.25 in 2021 dollars.)

[69] Lester Pearson, Statements and Speeches, March 10, 1967, Levant, ibid.

[70] Alex Young, “Heavy guard for PM: ‘Vietniks’ at airport, club,” Province, Mar. 31, 1967, p. 1 https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73069053/the-province

Peter Loudon, “Like French Revolution Some Feast Others Chant,” Times Colonist, Apr. 1, 1967, p. 2. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73616904/times-colonist/

(Note: This article, covering a protest the next day outside a gala banquet attended by Pearson, notes the same “Pearson, Martin, LBJ…” chant.  The reporter mocked the protesters’ appearance, and said they were “denouncing Canada’s alleged support of the US in Vietnam.” Emphasis added.)

[71] Nick Auf der Maur, “Vietnam Protesters March Through City,” Montreal Gazette, July 3, 1967, p. 3. https://www.newspapers.com/clip/73067312/the-gazette/

Featured image: Former Canadian Secretary of State for External Affairs (1948-1957), Lester B. Pearson, at his desk in Ottawa. As leader of Canada’s Liberal Party, he served from 1958 to 1968. [Source: journal.forces.gc.ca]

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***

30 March 2021 marks the 45th Palestinian Land Day, a day of struggle and commitment to resisting colonization, occupation and apartheid, and to achieving victory and liberation for the land and people of Palestine.

Land Day commemorates the anniversary of the mass rising in occupied Palestine ’48 in 1976 in response to Israeli land confiscation targeting 20,000 dunums of Palestinian land in the Galilee. Palestinians inside occupied Palestine ’48, who remained on their land after 80% of their people were expelled in the Nakba, confronted these new Zionist attacks with a general strike and mass popular protests, where six Palestinians were killed by occupation forces — Kheir Mohammad Salim Yasin, Khadija Qasem Shawahneh, Raja Hussein Abu Rayya, Khader Eid Mahmoud Khalayleh, Muhsin Hasan Said Taha and Raafat Ali Al-Zheir — as they defended their land.

“Kul al-turab al-watani” — the entire national land of Palestine, meaning “all of Palestine”

The Day of the Land has become a national commemoration of the entire Palestinian people, inside and outside occupied Palestine. It marks the unity of the Palestinian people in confronting Zionism, colonization and occupation and in celebrating the continuing and unbreakable ties to the land of Palestine that cannot be erased by military might. It is a day for the Palestinian refugees struggling for return and every fighter against colonialism.

In 2018, the Day of the Land once again bore witness to the popular organizing of the people, as thousands upon thousands gathered in Gaza for the Great March of Return, and occupation forces again shot down Palestinians defending their land and upholding their rights. 42 years after the first Land Day massacre, Israeli occupation forces killed 16 martyrs of the land and return, with over 200 more shot down in the marches over the months and days to come.

On Land Day, Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network affirms that this day continues to reflect the commitment of the Palestinian people to liberate their land from the river to the sea and to resist all forms of colonization. We join with the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine for the #AllLandPalestine campaign, raising the Palestinian flag and the map of Palestine around the world.

🇵🇸DESDE EL RÍO HASTA EL MAR
PALESTINA VENCERÁ🇵🇸

¡Feliz día de la Tierra!#PalestinaLibre ✊🏿#LibertadPresosPalestinos pic.twitter.com/gdcyPrSZ9Y

— Samidoun (@samidounspain) March 30, 2021

Just as Palestinians in ’48 face state violence, land confiscation, and the racist policies of Zionism from Umm al-Fahm to al-Naqab, they also confront imprisonment, arrests and repression. Behind bars in Israeli jails, Palestinians continue to confront the occupier on a daily basis. 70 of those political prisoners — of approximately 4,400 in total — are those of occupied Palestine ’48, housed with fellow Palestinians and facing the same restrictions and denial of rights. Karim Younis, one of the longest-imprisoned Palestinian prisoners, is from Occupied Palestine ’48 as is his cousin Maher; indeed, six of the seven Palestinian prisonersimprisoned over 30 years for their role in the Palestinian resistance are from Occupied Palestine ’48: Karim and Maher Younis, Walid Daqqa, Rushdi Abu Mukh, Ibrahim Abu Mukh and Ibrahim Bayadseh.

Kul al-turab al-watani” — the entire national land of Palestine, meaning “all of Palestine”

They have been consistently denied release in both prisoner exchanges with the Palestinian resistance and in Oslo-negotiations-based prisoner releases, as the Israeli state attempts to separate them as “Israeli citizens” from their fellow Palestinian prisoners in releases and labels them a “domestic matter“. At the same time, they are housed with fellow Palestinian prisoners, denied family visits, forced to see family only through glass, and held in solitary confinement while Israeli “criminal” prisoners – and even the rare Israeli Jewish prisoner held as a “security” prisoner for extreme-right violence – are granted temporary releases, their sentences limited and lowered, and allowed lengthy family visits, furloughs, and conjugal visits.

Today, from Umm al-Fahm to al-Naqab to Sheikh Jarrah, Palestinians are fighting to stand steadfast against displacement, defend their land and resist colonization in all forms on Land Day. Palestinian refugees in Gaza, in the West Bank, in the camps and in exile and diaspora around the world are fighting to return home.

On Land Day, we stand with the Palestinian people, we stand with the Palestinian resistance, and we look forward together toward a liberated future for the land and people of Palestine.

Read our statement below — first delivered in Arabic (read the original Arabic here) in Berlin by Samidoun Deutschland at a demonstration — and join in the actions to organize for return and liberation for #AllLandPalestine on the 45th Land Day and beyond.

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On the immortal occasion of Land Day, from the heart of the capitals of the Palestinian diaspora, from the refugee camps, from across the occupied Arab land of Palestine, our cries resound to the skies and we declare on this occasion: “We will not concede.” We remain, generation after generation, carrying the memory of Palestine from the river to the sea, carrying al-Lyd, Haifa, Ramleh, Yafa and Jerusalem in our hearts.

We, the children of the land, the refugees, we learned Palestine in the squares of the camps, and we realized the idea of Palestine at the checkpoints. We grew up with our dreams under siege, and we greeted our Palestinian people on the other side of the wall as we raised the hammer of promise for future liberation.

From Berlin and Malmö, to Beddawi camp and al-Wihdat, to al-Arroub and Jabalia, and to our Palestinian people everywhere, we are here today, continuing in direct confrontation and struggling for land and liberation in the heart of the states that provide support for the Zionist regime. We affirm that our return is inevitable and our message is clear: We hold fast to return and liberation and emphasize that we will claim our right to life and expose the crimes of the Zionist occupation.

On this Land Day, we honor our immortal martyrs and salute the brave prisoners inside Israeli prisons and those of the reactionary Arab regimes, and particularly salute Georges Ibrahim Abdallah, jailed in the prisons of the French state. We stand with the democratic and revolutionary forces everywhere in the world and by the side of our comrades in the Palestine solidarity movement in France, Germany, Canada and everywhere, those who are today facing persecution, repression and “lawfare” attacks for defending the just cause of the Palestinian people.

Despite the ongoing colonial settlements invading Palestinian land, the series of normalization deals with reactionary regimes, the complicity of the imperialist powers; despite the siege and poverty and our second exile and displacement; despite the betrayal of Palestinian Authority “security coordination” and the policies of submission and concession; and despite the false promises of the so-called “peace process”, we are confident: Palestine and its people will be victorious.

On Land Day, on this immortal commemoration, we call on the Palestinian and Arab communities to participate, defend their rights and intensify participation in all activities for Palestine, especially the campaigns of solidarity with the Palestinian prisoners’ movement, Palestinian women prisoners and the imprisoned students in occupation jails. We must intensify the boycott campaigns against Israel alongside our role in confronting Western imperial racism, the growing right-wing extreme attacks and Islamophobia, together with all targeted communities. This is part and parcel of our quest for liberation and return.

Together, we must work for an alternative revolutionary path and a new movement of organizing, struggle and resistance, in which the Palestinian diaspora will regain its role and its right to defend Palestine, all of Palestine, as an integral part of the project of liberation and return. From Berlin, Amsterdam and Malmö, to Mar Elias, Baqaa and Yarmouk, to all of Palestine.

We win together, and we win only together. From the Naqab to the Galilee, until return and liberation.

***

Take Action on Land Day and Moving Forward:

1. Join the #AllLandPalestine social media campaign of the Global Campaign to Return to Palestine. Raise the Palestinian flag and post with the hashtag #AllLandPalestine.

2. Boycott Israel! Join the movement for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. Highlight the complicity of corporations like Hewlett-Packard and the continuing involvement of G4S in Israeli policing and prisons. Boycott Teva, the Israeli pharmaceutical corporation that provides millions to the Israeli occupation and its military, and join the campaigns — like those of Palestine Action in the UK — confronting Israeli warmongers like Elbit Systems. Build a campaign to boycott Israeli goods, impose a military embargo on Israel, or organize around the academic and cultural boycott of Israel.

3. Support Palestinian Prisoners: Join the campaign to free Palestinian students and all Palestinian prisoners from Israeli jails. Adopt a prisoner, write a letter, share their stories and build global solidarity to break down prison walls!

4. Organize for Palestinian freedom! The Alternative Palestinian Path (Masar Badil) is organizing a series of events, actions and Palestinian movement-building activities to break clearly with the false path of Madrid and Oslo and develop the movement for Palestinian liberation and return. The conference will take place in late October-early November in Madrid. Visit the Masar Badil website and get involved.

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***

The Biden Administration continues to push its delusional and dangerous grand strategy, which doesn’t even serve the US’ own interests but just the short-term narrow ones of a certain segment of its economic and political elite.

US President Joe Biden’s grand strategy is a mix of Democrat value signaling and Republican aggression, which represents a delusional and dangerous combination. The first observation is evidenced by his administration’s emphasis on so-called “democracy” and “human rights” ideals as manifested by its information warfare campaigns against China and Russia on these false bases. The second, meanwhile, is proven by its attempts to assemble alliances to contain those two on the aforementioned pretexts using the Quad, NATO, and the US’ new proposal to pioneer a competitor to China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI).

About the last of these three means, Biden told his British counterpart Friday afternoon that “I suggested we should have, essentially, a similar initiative, pulling from the democratic states, helping those communities around the world that, in fact, need help.”

This is the definition of delusional for several reasons.

Firstly, economic development is purely apolitical and shouldn’t discriminate against any state’s sovereign choice to govern themselves however they believe is best. Secondly, for this reason and given its enormous scope and scale, BRI doesn’t have any competitors but only partners. Thirdly, many of these partners are US allies.

For instance, last November’s Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) brought China, ASEAN, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the Republic of Korea into a single trading bloc, the last four partners of which as well as ASEAN’s Philippines and Thailand are American allies. One month later, the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) between China and the EU saw many NATO members agreeing to expand financial and other related ties with the People’s Republic. Finally, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi‘s visit to West Asia last week strengthened his country’s economic connections with regional US allies like Saudi Arabia.

Despite China’s growing relations with Europe, West Asia, and East and Southeast Asia – which can altogether be simply grouped as Eurasia – the US still thinks that it can turn some of those countries, especially its traditional allies there, against the People’s Republic. It’s here where delusion becomes dangerous because the worst-case scenario of American meddling could result in serious economic damage being inflicted on its so-called “allies”. The US is so delusional, however, that it truly doesn’t care about anyone else’s interests other than its own which explains why it’s willing to sacrifice its “allies’” interests in advance of its zero-sum ones.

Therein lies the primary problem, namely the US’ delusional refusal to accept that the aggressive zero-sum mindset which is responsible for its gradual decline from international prominence is outdated as China’s new model of International Relations has successfully replaced that counterproductive philosophy with the win-win one. The Biden Administration thought that it could make cosmetic changes to American policy such as spewing multilateral rhetoric in an attempt to differentiate it from its predecessor, but the reality is that nothing of significance has changed since former President Trump.

Even the Biden Administration’s much-touted peace proposals in Afghanistan and Yemen are faltering, the first after his warning that American troops might not withdraw from the war-torn country by May as his predecessor previously agreed prompted the Taliban to issue more threats while the second has failed to have any meaningful impact on the military dynamics there. Moreover, the US continues to illegally occupy Iraq and Syria while Libya remains mired in American-provoked instability. All the rhetoric about resuming cooperation with allies is just a smokescreen for convincing them to join the US’ new anti-Chinese and -Russian coalitions.

Thankfully, the world seems to have learned quite a few lessons during Trump’s four tumultuous years in office. America’s allies are no longer as willing to blindly follow its lead as before. They realized that the US is unreliable and doesn’t always have their best interests in mind. This is increasingly obvious as the Biden Administration continues to push its delusional and dangerous grand strategy, which doesn’t even serve the US’ own interests but just the short-term narrow ones of a certain segment of its economic and political elite. The situation will only improve for average Americans if their leadership finally embraces the win-win philosophy.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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***

In calmer times, when there is less talk of trade disputes, tariffs, human rights abuses, it will be noted as one of history’s great ironies that as the economic gap between the United States and China narrowed the ideological chasm widened.  The spiral in relations shows no sign of easing.

Cold war 2? The sequel. Deep voiceover declares….This time it’s more evenly matched. No. There will be no cold war, at least not yet. But a military stand-off, once considered beyond the borders of the imagination, is not difficult to envisage. Harsh verbal exchanges, real and angry disputes over territory and trade, have replaced the optimism of yesteryear. Remember Chimerica? That word that was meant to symbolize unofficial economic union, with China producing and America buying. Who now dares utter it?

Beijing is not blameless but when it complains that its point of view is being ignored it does at least have a case worth listening to. From the perspective of the leadership compound just off Tiananmen square, there is just the slightest odor of McCarthyism. Everything China does, it seems, is suspicious, warranting the greatest skepticism.

The West, unpopular as it is to say it, has reasons to be grateful to China. In 2008, the country’s cabinet, the State Council when it still had influence and power before being neutered by President Xi Jinping, approved a stimulus plan to invest about US$600 billion in infrastructure and social welfare facilities in 2009 and 2010. This was to be funded mainly by bank loans. China’s central bank lifted almost all restrictions on commercial bank lending to support the real economy. In other words it turned the taps on. This provided a Chinese shot in the arm to an exhausted and overleveraged Western economy.

China has emerged economically and is emerging militarily, at least regionally. Under Xi, it has shifted its gaze. Few in the West paid attention or wanted to. In the West, China was considered the big spender. Produce and China will buy seemed to be the mantra. China, not surprisingly sees itself differently. No longer of the Great Wall, constructed to keep foreigners out, China is now of the great wave, with a navy to deter invasion and secure the three seas, the San Hai: the South China, East China and Yellow seas.

The century of humiliation up to 1949, as every Chinese school child learns, emerged from the sea. Infamously, in the final years of the Qing Dynasty, the Empress Dowager diverted funds earmarked for naval modernization to construct a new Summer Palace. This reallocation was blamed for China’s defeat in the 1894-95 war with Japan. The British had already arrived by sea as had the French and Germans. China had learnt one invaluable lesson; the sea is treacherous.

Securing the sea, secures China and, today, the ruling party. Maritime freedom of navigation? To China, it’s cover for a front door that has been kicked in too many times. Militarizing the South China Sea plays well domestically, and is not seriously challenged internationally. It does not make it right. It does make it realpolitik. A large piece of the planet’s maritime real estate has been taken over by China. There is no mistaking the fact that it is a blow to the West. Beijing understood it can act and deal with the relatively insubstantial consequences. The Monroe Doctrine in the East.

War, like politics, is local. Almost overlooked, out of convenience or otherwise, in just over two decades the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has built up one of the strongest navies in the world. What makes it even more formidable is that in its near waters it can rely on shore-based missiles. In sheer numbers, the PLA navy now has the world’s biggest fleet and is expanding and growing faster than any other major navy.

A defense report to the US Congress during the Trump administration did not mince its words.  In a war with China over Taiwan, “Americans could face a decisive military defeat’’.

True, US ships do sail, frequently, through the Taiwan Strait. It has occurred since Joe Biden took the oath of office. But it is important to realize what is not happening rather than what is. Each passage involved destroyers. Enough to send a message. But nowhere near enough to send a warning. That would involve aircraft carriers. No American carrier has navigated the Taiwan Strait since Obama was first sworn in.

Globally, the US remains the undisputed champion of the high seas. China’s fleet has more ships, but the US has more powerful ones.

But that’s not the point. In waters close to China, the PLA navy enjoys at least parity and probable supremacy.

The Chinese mainland can serve as a vast, unsinkable aircraft carrier. China’s warships would be close to logistical support as well as the firepower of land-based missiles and strike aircraft.

But to what end? Is securing the near seas correcting a legacy of history or the prelude to an action, the invasion of Taiwan, that, at the very least, would set back relations between China and the West for generations and raises the real possibility of conflict?

It is of increasingly little comfort to suggest that this, surely, is beyond the borders of the imagination.

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Tom Clifford is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization reports that yesterday the military bloc scrambled fighter jets ten times over the North Atlantic (for once adhering to its name), North Sea, Baltic Sea and Black Sea, intercepting a reported six groups of Russian bombers and fighters. That is, across the entire western flank of Russia.

Although the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was actually active in part of the North Atlantic for a change – rather than the Balkans, Afghanistan, Central and South Asia, North and Northeast Africa, the Mediterranean Sea, the Arabian Sea, the Caribbean Sea and its other haunts of the past 25 years – the global military alliance grudgingly conceded, at the end of the article on the topic of course, that “The Russian aircraft intercepted on Monday never entered Alliance airspace.”

Alliance airspace is now in twelve nations, though decidedly in five: the five NATO members that now border Russia – Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland – and seven NATO partners: Finland, Belarus (still a member of the Partnership for Peace), Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Mongolia. During the Cold War the Soviet Union shared only one short border with a NATO member (there were no NATO partners then; there are now forty with more to come), a 120-mile border with Norway.

On Russia’s western, southern and eastern borders. Including the High North (NATO’s term for the Arctic) – “In the High North, Norwegian F-16s scrambled after radars spotted two groups of Russian military aircraft flying near Norway’s coast” – that would establish all four compass points around Russia as NATO airspace and that of its partners.

Not only Norwegian warplanes were dispatched against Russian aircraft which “never entered Alliance airspace,” but fighter jets from no less than six other NATO member states were deployed against them as well: Belgium, Britain, Bulgaria, Italy, Romania and Turkey.

Intercepting Russian military aircraft ten times over one ocean and three seas in one day, boasted Brigadier General Andrew Hansen, Deputy Chief of Staff Operations at (NATO) Allied Air Command in Ramstein, Germany, “demonstrate[d] NATO forces’ readiness and capability to guard Allied skies 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year,” thereby proving he stayed awake during elementary school arithmetic classes. (The beginning of this paragraph shows that I did too.)

Italian fighter jets – no doubt defending their national security interests and their nation’s Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coastlines – intercepted a Russian Il 38 maritime patrol aircraft that was “escorted by fighter jets over the Baltic Sea flying into and out of Kaliningrad.” Kaliningrad is Russian territory. A patrol plane would not have been escorted by fighter jets if Kaliningrad were not surrounded by NATO states – Lithuania and Poland – which host NATO fighter jets, NATO battlegroups, a Joint NATO Force Training Centre, U.S. Atlantic Resolve ground troops, a Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missile battery and Standard Missile-3 Block IIA anti-ballistic missile (capable of shooting down ICBMs) installations on the way…just those two countries.

Here’s a plot for an enterprising Hollywood scriptwriter, a 21st-century variation of the 1980s’ Red Dawn genre writ large. A chiropractor from Nebraska, raised a Quaker and a fan of Bruce Springsteen, awakes from a thirty-year coma and discovers that every nation in the Western Hemisphere except the U.S. is now either a full member or a partner on its way to membership of the Warsaw Pact. Soviet and Warsaw Pact warships regularly conduct naval exercises off the U.S.’s Atlantic and Pacific coasts, in the Gulf of Mexico, along the entire periphery of Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico and in the Great Lakes; Soviet and Warsaw Pact fighter jets and strategic, nuclear-capable bombers continuously fly over the above locations as well; the Soviets have installed missile radar stations and interceptor missile batteries in Canada, Mexico and Cuba; and American patrol aircraft are intercepted “flying into and out of” Alaska.

Such a film might prove illustrative of what is occurring not on Netflix or at the local movie theater but in the real world. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Though the plot may seem far-fetched to most film critics.

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***

With reports that President Joe Biden’s administration is planning for imposing a vaccine passport mandate in America, expect to see in the media a deluge of vaccine passport propaganda. What will that propaganda look like? A template illustrating several elements you can expect to see in the propaganda push was provided several weeks ago in a CNN interview.

In the first week of March, host Fareed Zakaria and his guest Arthur Caplan provided at CNN a textbook example of how to present vaccine passport propaganda to the American people. Let’s look at some of the major elements of the propaganda template as demonstrated by Zakaria and Caplan.

1) Include some short expression that the idea of vaccine passports can be troubling, but make sure to only bring this up superficially. This is accomplished in the CNN segment by starting with a clip from a short scene from the movie Casablanca. In the clip, a policeman asks to see a man’s “papers,” the man says he does not have them, and the policeman responds, “in that case we’ll have to ask you to come along.” Not shown is the remainder of the scene in which the accosted man, after presenting apparently expired papers, attempts to flee only to be gunned down. Not showing the full scene demonstrates the care demanded in the propaganda to not allow any depiction of potential dire consequences from imposing vaccine passports.

2) Frame the imposing of a vaccine passport mandate as something that is both inevitable and threatens only minimal, if any, harm. Zakaria accomplishes this task with the first sentence he utters to begin the media segment. Zakaria states: “From Casablanca to today, a demand to produce personal documents can be uncomfortable, but, post-pandemic, it’s something we’ll all likely have to get more and more comfortable with.” Masterfully, Zakaria, in addition to minimizing the problems with passports as just causing discomfort, asserts that even that discomfort with time will disappear, suggesting objecting to vaccine passports is just an irrational or silly reaction.

3) Bring on a guest who, despite his description making him sound like someone who would be looking out for the interests of people concerned about vaccine passports, pretty much says that vaccine passports are the best thing since sliced bread. In the CNN interview the guest performing this role is Arthur Caplan, who Zakaria introduces as a “medical ethicist” and “professor at NYU.” A medical ethicist will surely provide some warning about dangers from vaccine passports, right? Yes, in many cases. But, Caplan is not that sort of medical ethicists. He is the one picked to be interviewed in a media segment designed to promote acceptance of vaccine passports.

4) Reiterate that vaccine passports are inevitable, and that people should support them. Zakaria hits the nail on the head with this, presenting this first question to his guest: “So explain why you think, basically, that this is the future and we should be comfortable with it.”

5) Declare that vaccine passports must be imposed on the American people because of coronavirus. Caplan accomplishes this task in his first words in the media segment. He states: “Well, I’m sure that the future holds vaccine passports for us, partly to protect against the spread of Covid.” Of course, as coronavirus has turned out not to be a major danger to most people, imposing a vaccine passport mandate to counter it makes no more sense than doing it to counter any other of many diseases. But, this is not a topic to be brought up when selling people on vaccine passports. Fearmongering, no matter how ridiculously unjustified, is the name of the game. This is the fraudulent message people are encouraged to act on without much critical thought: Coronavirus is gonna kill us all unless we take the shots and show our papers!

6) Say that mandating vaccine passports is really no big deal because of some other supposedly very similar restriction to which some people are already subjected. Caplan states: “And, you know, it’s not a new idea, we have it for yellow fever; there are about more than a dozen countries that say you can’t come in if you haven’t been vaccinated against yellow fever, and many others require you to show proof of vaccination if you transit through those countries.” Are the yellow fever-related requirements justified? Caplan does not say more than that, because these somewhat similar restrictions exist someplace, the mandating of vaccine passports in America is fine. That’s medical ethicist reasoning? Anyway, the yellow fever stuff, because most Americans have no experience with or knowledge of it, is a fine example for the propaganda. Few watchers of the segment will have any basis for questioning the current practice that is used to justify the new desired mandate. One big difference, though, jumps out on further consideration. Caplan explains that the yellow fever requirements apply for just coming to several countries. In contrast, Zakaria early in the interview says the vaccine passports that will, he claims, inevitably be imposed on Americans will be required for people “to get on an airplane, to go to a concert, or to go back to work.” The vaccine passport mandate is, thus, much more troublesome for most Americans than yellow-fever-related requirements for entry into a few countries that most Americans never visit. But, the point is to quickly present the example as if it provides conclusive support no matter how far that representation is from the truth.

7) Dismiss as insignificant people’s concerns about being required, in order to go about their daily activities, to present a vaccine passport and to take a vaccine, or, really, an experimental coronavirus vaccine that is not even a vaccine under the normal meaning of the term. Assert instead that the only danger to freedom could be something theoretical that could be additionally required in the future. Here is how Zakaria puts it in a question to Caplan: “What about the concerns that many people have about privacy, about the privacy of their health data, that, you know, is there a slippery slope here — ‘OK, I’m comfortable telling you whether or not I have Covid, but does that mean it becomes OK to ask about other things?’” Of course, many people are justifiably wary of being pressured to take the shots and then having their mandated vaccine passport used to track them as they go about their daily activities. That is why this media segment and others like it are being presented, after all.

8) Dismiss any concern that vaccine passports can in fact harm freedom. Instead, describe people as benefiting from and gaining freedom by their being mandated to take experimental coronavirus vaccines and present vaccination passports in order to go about their daily activities. Oh yeah, and keep quiet about all the mass surveillance facilitated by a vaccine passport program, the vaccinations-based caste system resulting from the mandate that will make people who do not take the shots suffer, and how the vaccine passport program can be expanded to advance many additional types of control over people. Here is how Caplan puts it: “With a Covid certification, you’re going to gain freedom, you’re going to gain mobility, and I’m going to suggest that you’re probably going to be able to get certain jobs.” Talk about turning things on their head. The mandate really means that people who do not comply will be barred from the mobility they already have and fired from their jobs. Freedom is supported by rejecting the mandate, not by supporting it.

9) Insist that the vaccine passport mandate is fine because it will be applied equally to all people. This is something Zakaria and Caplan spend a long time talking about in the CNN segment. Come on guys, something bad does not become good because it is applied to the maximum number of people, irrespective of their race, sex, or whatever. We are dealing with a mandate here, not giving everyone a serving of his favorite dessert.

10) Declare that a vaccine passport mandate helps encourage people to take the shots. (Unlike the other nine elements of the vaccine passport mandate propaganda template, this one is likely true. Threats can yield compliance. Still, the threats could deter some people from taking the experimental coronavirus vaccine shots. It sure makes you wonder about shots’ supposed safety when an extreme, and unprecedented, act of force is employed to ensure people take the shots.) States Caplan in the interview: “It also gives you an incentive to overcome vaccine hesitancy. Some people are not sure still whether they want to do the vaccine, but if you promise them more mobility, more ability to get a job, more ability to get travel, that’s a very powerful incentive to actually achieve fuller vaccination.” What Caplan is really talking about is coercion. He is saying that people who would otherwise refuse taking the shots will be forced to do so by the vaccine passport mandate severely restricting their activities and even depriving them of the ability to earn an income so long as they do not give in to the demand they take the shots. All this authoritarianism is dressed up in deceptive language. “Vaccine hesitancy” is substituted for “vaccine refusal” to disguise that the vaccine passport mandate is about stopping people from exercising free choice. “Incentive” is substituted for “coercive technique.”

Watch Zakaria and Caplan’s interview here:

Hopefully, many people will see through the deception and be able to prevent the implementation of the vaccine passport mandate Zakaria, Caplan, and others are promoting in the media.

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***

I’ve discussed why COVID-19 vaccines are in fact gene therapies and not vaccines in several previous articles, including “COVID-19 mRNA Shots Are Legally Not Vaccines,” “COVID-19 ‘Vaccines’ Are Gene Therapy” and “How COVID-19 ‘Vaccines’ May Destroy the Lives of Millions.”

However, despite being a recognized form of gene therapy since its inception, vaccine makers are now frantically trying to deny that this mRNA technology is gene therapy. One reason for this, suggested by David Martin, Ph.D.,¹ might be because as long as they’re considered “vaccines,” they will be shielded from liability.

Experimental gene therapies do not have financial liability shielding from the government, but pandemic vaccines do, even in the experimental stage, as long as the emergency use authorization is in effect. Another reason might be because they fear people won’t line up for experimental gene therapy. It has a very different connotation in people’s minds (as it should).

A third possibility is that they know full well that you cannot, ethically, mandate gene therapy in the way you can mandate vaccines. Mandatory public health measure directives are typically based on the idea that it’s acceptable for some individuals to be harmed as long as the measure benefits the collective.

Well, the COVID-19 “vaccines” are only designed to lessen symptoms of COVID-19. They do not prevent infection or spread, and since the vaccinated individual is the only one receiving a potential benefit, “the greater good” argument falls apart.

Who knows, there may be other factors at play that we’ve not realized as of yet, but whatever the reason, they really do not want you to think of these injections as gene therapy. They want you to accept them as any other conventional vaccine.

mRNA-Based Medicines Designed to Not Irreversibly Alter DNA

Try as they might, though, they cannot get rid of mRNA’s gene therapy label. For starters, Moderna describes its product as “gene therapy technology” in its SEC filings. On page 70, they also provide the following specifics:²

“Currently, mRNA is considered a gene therapy product by the FDA. Unlike certain gene therapies that irreversibly alter cell DNA and could act as a source of side effects, mRNA-based medicines are designed to not irreversibly change cell DNA; however, side effects observed in gene therapy could negatively impact the perception of mRNA medicines despite the differences in mechanism.”

In other words, it’s a form of gene therapy, but one that doesn’t enter and permanently alter your actual DNA. Instead, the mRNA stays in the cellular fluid where ribosomes read the code and create the protein per the mRNA’s coding.

The difference between vaccine mRNA and your natural mRNA is that your natural mRNA resides in the nucleus of the cell where your cellular DNA resides — it can be likened to a reverse photocopy of your DNA — and exits the nucleus when a protein needs to be made.

This is in stark contrast to mRNA from vaccines, which is synthetic and enters the cell from the outside and is not designed to enter the nucleus. Additionally, your own mRNA is rapidly degraded by enzymes, but the one from the vaccine is protected in a liposome that will protect it from degradation and keep on producing spike proteins. How long? No one knows because it has never been tested.

Can Vaccine mRNA Reverse-Transcribe Into Genome?

However, some doctors still worry that mRNA injections might be able to reverse-transcribe into your genes and alter your DNA on a permanent basis. One is Dr. Richard Urso, an ophthalmologist, who shared his concerns on a December 2020 episode of The Shepard Ambellas Show.^3,4

He claimed the mRNA of retroviruses (which are part of our genome) have been shown to have the ability to transcribe into your DNA, and if it can do that, vaccine mRNA might be able to do this as well. According to Urso, if this turns out to be correct, the result of mRNA vaccination might be lifelong COVID-19.

Another skeptic is Dr. Doug Corrigan, who in a March 16, 2021, blog reviewed the findings of recent research^5,6 showing SARS-CoV-2 RNA can reverse-transcribe into the human genome:⁷

“In my previous blog, ‘Will an RNA Vaccine Permanently Alter My DNA?’⁸ I laid out several molecular pathways that would potentially enable the RNA in an mRNA vaccine to be copied and permanently integrated into your DNA.

I was absolutely not surprised to find that the majority of people claimed that this prospect was impossible … After all, we’ve been told in no uncertain terms that it would be impossible for the mRNA in a vaccine to become integrated into our DNA, simply because ‘RNA doesn’t work that way.’

Well, this current research which was released not too long after my original article demonstrates that yes, indeed, ‘RNA does work that way’… Specifically, a new study^9,10 by MIT and Harvard scientists demonstrates that segments of the RNA from the coronavirus itself are most likely becoming a permanent fixture in human DNA.

This was once thought near impossible, for the same reasons which are presented to assure us that an RNA vaccine could accomplish no such feat. Against the tides of current biological dogma, these researchers found that the genetic segments of this RNA virus are more than likely making their way into our genome.

They also found that the exact pathway that I laid out in in my original article is more than likely the pathway being used (retrotransposon, and in particular a LINE-1 element) for this retro-integration to occur.

And, unlike my previous blog where I hypothesize that such an occurrence would be extremely rare (mainly because I was attempting to temper expectations more conservatively due to the lack of empirical evidence), it appears that this integration of viral RNA segments into our DNA is not as rare as I initially hypothesized …

To be fair, this study didn’t show that the RNA from the current vaccines is being integrated into our DNA. However, they did show, quite convincingly, that there exists a viable cellular pathway whereby snippets of SARS-CoV-2 viral RNA could become integrated into our genomic DNA. In my opinion, more research is needed to both corroborate these findings, and to close some gaps.”

A January 2020 Phys.org article,¹¹ “Modified RNA Has a Direct Effect on DNA,” also notes that “it has now been revealed that RNA has a direct effect on DNA stability,” and this too may or may not play a role in mRNA therapy for COVID-19.

Vaccine Makers Fear Negative Perception of Gene Therapy

Getting back to Moderna’s SEC filing, in it, they also admit that public perception of other types of gene therapy may negatively impact perception of mRNA medicines. The problem, they admit, is that irreversible gene therapies have side effects, and knowing this, people might shun mRNA medicines too. The SEC filing goes on to note:¹²

“Because no product in which mRNA is the primary active ingredient has been approved, the regulatory pathway for approval is uncertain. The number and design of the clinical trials and preclinical studies required for the approval of these types of medicines have not been established, may be different from those required for gene therapy products, or may require safety testing like gene therapy products.”

Well, the pandemic allowed them to sneak mRNA gene therapy under the proverbial radar so that they don’t have to conduct more stringent gene therapy safety testing. Instead, they were handed the global population for the largest testing imaginable, and all without liability when something goes wrong — provided it’s viewed as a “vaccine,” that is.

mRNA Therapies Classified as Gene Therapy in Europe and US

The SEC filing¹³ for BioNTech (BioNTech’s mRNA technology is used in the Pfizer vaccine) is equally clear, stating on page 21: “Although we expect to submit BLAs for our mRNA-based product candidates in the United States, and in the European Union, mRNA therapies have been classified as gene therapy medicinal products, other jurisdictions may consider our mRNA-based product candidates to be new drugs, not biologics or gene therapy medicinal products, and require different marketing applications.”

So, in the U.S. and Europe, mRNA therapies, as a group, are classified as “gene therapy medicinal products.” The crux here, again, appears to be the idea that mRNA therapy does not cause permanent DNA alterations. On page 35 of the BioNTech SEC filing, they further clarify the alleged difference between other, irreversible, gene therapies and mRNA gene therapy:

“There have been few approvals of gene therapy products in the United States and other jurisdictions, and there have been well-reported significant adverse events associated with their testing and use.

Gene therapy products have the effect of introducing new DNA and potentially irreversibly changing the DNA in a cell. In contrast, mRNA is highly unlikely to localize to the nucleus, integrate into cell DNA, or otherwise make any permanent changes to cell DNA.

Consequently, we expect that our product candidates will have a different potential side effect profile from gene therapies because they lack risks associated with altering cell DNA irreversibly.”

Hacking the Software of Life

Company executives and scientists familiar with mRNA technology have, for years, been referring to this new technology as gene therapy. The video above features a TED Talk by Dr. Tal Zaks, chief medical officer of Moderna, given in 2017, more than two full years before COVID-19.

In it, he points out that they were, at that time, already working on a variety of vaccines, including an mRNA vaccine for influenza and individualized cancer vaccines based on the genetic sequence of the patient’s tumor, stressing that this vaccine would not act like any previous vaccine ever created.

“We’ve been living this phenomenal digital scientific revolution, and I’m here today to tell you that we are actually hacking the software of life, and that it’s changing the way we think about prevention and treatment of disease,” Zaks said.

“In every cell there’s this thing called messenger RNA or mRNA for short, that transmits the critical information from the DNA in our genes to the protein, which is really the stuff we’re all made out of. This is the critical information that determines what the cell will actually do. So, we think of it as an operating system …

So, if you could change that … if you could introduce a line of code, or change a line of code, it turns out that has profound implications for everything, from the flu to cancer …

Imagine if instead of giving [the patient] the protein of a virus, we gave them the instructions on how to make the protein, how the body can make its own vaccine,” he said.

How mRNA Vaccines Work

Zaks further differentiates conventional vaccines and mRNA vaccines by explaining that when using a conventional vaccine, you have viral protein floating around outside the cell, whereas the mRNA approach reprograms the cell to create that viral protein inside of itself.

“What’s more alarming?” he asks. “A stranger prowling the neighborhood, or somebody who just broke into your ground floor and tripped the alarm? That’s what happens with an mRNA vaccine. You’ve tripped the alarm wire and now the cell is dialing 911, it’s calling the police — at the same time that it’s making the protein, saying ‘That’s the bad guy.’ That’s how an mRNA vaccine works.”

Zaks also refers to the company’s mRNA shots as “information therapy,” which is just another way of saying gene therapy because mRNA is a carrier of genetic code. (For clarification, code in your natural mRNA matches your DNA, whereas vaccine mRNA has no equivalence inside your genome since it’s coming from the outside. Vaccine mRNA still carries “genetic code,” though, just not anything found in your body before.) As explained on genome.gov:¹⁴

“Messenger RNA (mRNA) is a single-stranded RNA molecule that is complementary to one of the DNA strands of a gene. The mRNA is an RNA version of the gene that leaves the cell nucleus and moves to the cytoplasm where proteins are made.

During protein synthesis, an organelle called a ribosome moves along the mRNA, reads its base sequence, and uses the genetic code to translate each three-base triplet, or codon, into its corresponding amino acid.

mRNA, are one of the types of RNA that are found in the cell. This particular one, like most RNAs, are made in the nucleus and then exported to the cytoplasm where the translation machinery, the machinery that actually makes proteins, binds to these mRNA molecules and reads the code on the mRNA to make a specific protein.

So in general, one gene, the DNA for one gene, can be transcribed into an mRNA molecule that will end up making one specific protein.”

mRNA Technology Ushers in Transhumanism

In true technocratic, transhumanist Fourth Industrial Revolution fashion, Zaks and other mRNA pushers view the body as your hardware, your genetic code as software and these mRNA injections as software updates. As noted by Patrick Wood in a recent Technocracy News article:¹⁵

“Pure and simple, this is unvarnished, raw transhumanism … Scientists think they can rewrite the genetic code [his words, not mine, for all you out there who still don’t believe these mRNA vaccines change the genetic code just because some ‘fact checker’ says they don’t], believing they can improve on a person’s God-given genetic makeup is entering dangerous territory …

These scientists truly believe that the human body is nothing more than a machine that can be hacked into and reordered according to some programmer’s instructions … Who’s to say they won’t correct one problem and create something far worse?”

What Is Transhumanism?

What exactly is transhumanism? Technocracy News describes¹⁶ it as “a twisted philosophy that believes in the use of high technology to transform humans into immortal beings … Furthermore, they seek to use genetic engineering to create a new master race of sorts, that will shed all of the ‘unseemly’ characteristics of humans.” Britannica defines¹⁷ it as a:

“… social and philosophical movement devoted to promoting the research and development of robust human-enhancement technologies. Such technologies would augment or increase human sensory reception, emotive ability, or cognitive capacity as well as radically improve human health and extend human life spans.

Such modifications resulting from the addition of biological or physical technologies would be more or less permanent and integrated into the human body.”

Great Reset Is a Transhumanist Agenda

Miklos Lukacs de Pereny, research professor of science and technology policy at the Peruvian University San Martin de Porres, has given presentations¹⁸ and interviews¹⁹ in which he warns that transhumanism is part and parcel of the Great Reset and the Fourth Industrial Revolution agendas, which are being rolled out at a furious pace under the auspices of the COVID-19 pandemic. As reported by Life Site News, November 10, 2020:²⁰

“The COVID-19 pandemic was manufactured by the world’s elites as part of a plan to globally advance ‘transhumanism’ — literally, the fusion of human beings with technology in an attempt to alter human nature itself and create a superhuman being and an ‘earthly paradise,’ according to a Peruvian academic and expert in technology.

This dystopian nightmare scenario is no longer the stuff of science fiction, but an integral part of the proposed post-pandemic ‘Great Reset,’ Dr. Miklos Lukacs de Pereny said at a recent summit on COVID-19.

Indeed, to the extent that implementing the transhumanist agenda is possible, it requires the concentration of political and economic power in the hands of a global elite and the dependence of people on the state, said Lukacs.

That’s precisely the aim of the Great Reset, promoted by German economist Klaus Schwab, CEO and founder of World Economic Forum, along with billionaire ‘philanthropists’ George Soros and Bill Gates and other owners, managers, and shareholders of Big Tech, Big Pharma, and Big Finance who meet at the WEF retreats at Davos, Switzerland, contended Lukacs.

Transhumanists … seek to ‘relativize the human being’ and ‘turn it into a putty that can be modified or molded to our taste and our desire and by rejecting those limits nature or God have placed on us’ …

Indeed, WEF’s Schwab has been promoting the Great Reset as a way to ‘harness the Fourth Industrial Revolution’ … which, he declared in January 2016, ‘will affect the very essence of our human experience.’ Schwab described the Fourth Industrial Revolution then as ‘a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines among the physical, digital and biological spheres’ …

Those technologies include genetic engineering such as CRISPR genetic editing, artificial intelligence (A.I.), robotics, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3D printing, and quantum computing. ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution is nothing other than the implementation of transhumanism on a global level,’ emphasized Lukacs.”

mRNA Technology Is Still Gene Therapy

In “COVID-19 ‘Vaccines’ Are Gene Therapy” (hyperlinked above), I provide even more background information showing that mRNA “vaccines” are in fact gene therapy, and how this technology has been viewed and presented as gene therapy in the past.

The fact is, everywhere you look, mRNA technology, mRNA therapy and mRNA medicines — anything mRNA — have been, for years, treated as a form of gene therapy. Take the 2015 paper²¹“mRNA: Fulfilling the Promise of Gene Therapy” in the journal Molecular Therapy. In this paper, the authors point out that in vitro-transcribed mRNA has the potential to play a role in gene therapy previously only envisioned for DNA.

Back in 2009, the paper²² “Current Prospects for mRNA Gene Delivery” in the European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics noted that while “replication-deficient viruses have been used most successfully in the field of gene therapy … mRNA has … emerged as an attractive and promising alternative in the nonviral gene delivery field,” and a 2019 paper²³ in Frontiers in Oncology discussed the therapeutic prospects of “mRNA-based gene therapy for glioblastoma.”

If they want to call it “temporary gene therapy,” I’m OK with that — provided they can prove that it is in fact temporary, how long the effects last, and that vaccine mRNA cannot reverse-transcribe into the human genome like SARS-CoV-2 RNA apparently can.

But to deny that it’s gene therapy altogether and insist that it’s simply an updated form of vaccine technology is simply impossible, as it does not perform any of the functions of an actual vaccine (i.e., prevent infection and spread).

Now, if our genetic makeup is to be viewed as “the software of life,” as Zaks puts it, then should we not have the sole authority to decide for ourselves whether we actually want a “software update,” be it temporary or permanent?

“If we truly live in a free society, wouldn’t it stand to reason that we would want to have an energetic debate over how to answer that question?” Wood asks.²⁴

“Contrary to what some scientists believe, we are not machines. We are human beings with bodies, souls and free wills. Anyone who tries to mandate the acceptance of an experimental gene-altering treatment is going against the international Nuremberg Codes, which require informed consent of any experimental treatment.”

What to Do if You’ve Had a Change of Heart

If you already got the vaccine and now regret it, you may be able to address your symptoms using the same strategies you’d use to treat actual SARS-CoV-2 infection. I review these strategies at the end of “Why COVID Vaccine Testing Is a Farce.”

Last but not least, if you got the vaccine and are having side effects, please help raise public awareness by reporting it. The Children’s Health Defense is calling on all who have suffered a side effect from a COVID-19 vaccine to do these three things:²⁵

1. If you live in the U.S., file a report on VAERS
2. Report the injury on VaxxTracker.com, which is a nongovernmental adverse event tracker (you can file anonymously if you like)
3. Report the injury on the CHD website

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) recently posted more than 50 video presentations from the pay-for-view Fifth International Public Conference on Vaccination held online October 16 to 18, 2020, and made them available to everyone for free.

The conference’s theme was “Protecting Health and Autonomy in the 21st Century” and it featured physicians, scientists and other health professionals, human rights activists, faith community leaders, constitutional and civil rights attorneys, authors and parents of vaccine injured children talking about vaccine science, policy, law and ethics and infectious diseases, including coronavirus and COVID-19 vaccines.

In December 2020, a U.K. company published false and misleading information about NVIC and its conference, which prompted NVIC to open up the whole conference for free viewing. The conference has everything you need to educate yourself and protect your personal freedoms and liberties with respect to your health.

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity. I was a speaker at this empowering conference and urge you to watch these video presentations before they’re censored and taken away by the technocratic elite.

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Notes

¹ Weston Price January 25, 2021

^2, 12 US SEC Moderna June 30, 2020

³ SGT Report December 21, 2020

⁴ iHeart Radio The Shepard Ambellas Show Episode #78, starting 1 hour 26 minutes

^5, 9 BioRxiv December 13, 2020 DOI 10.1101/2020.12.12.422516 (PDF full study)

^6, 10 BioRxiv December 13, 2020 DOI 10.1101/2020.12.12.422516

⁷ Science With Dr. Doug February 15, 2021

⁸ Science With Dr. Doug November 27, 2020

¹¹ Phys.org January 29, 2020

¹³ US SEC BioNTech 2019

¹⁴ Genome.gov mRNA

^15, 16, 24 Technocracy News March 23, 2021

¹⁷ Britannica.com Transhumanism Definition

^18, 20 Life Site News November 10, 2020

¹⁹ Life Site News November 25, 2020

²¹ Molecular Therapy September 1, 2015; 23(9): 1416-1417

²² European Journal of Pharmaceutics and Biopharmaceutics March 2009; 71(3): 484-489

²³ Frontiers in Oncology November 8, 2019; 9: 1208

²⁵ The Defender January 25, 2021

Featured image is from Mercola

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

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German health officials today suspended use of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine for people under 60 as a “precautionary measure,” stating that people needed to “treat it carefully and wait for the talks taking place at the federal level.”

Authorities in Munich and Berlin today suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine for those under 60 after Germany’s vaccine regulator reported 31 cases of a rare brain blood clot, nine of which resulted in deaths, ABC News reported.

All but two of the cases involved women 20 to 63 years old, according to the Paul Ehrlich Institute.

The decision was made as a precaution ahead of a meeting scheduled for later today with representatives from all of Germany’s 16 states, said Berlin’s top health official, Dilek Kalayci, who also said further recommendations are expected to be made by national medical regulators.

Kalayci said the suspension of AstraZeneca vaccines for younger people was a precautionary measure and that people needed to “treat it carefully and wait for the talks taking place at the federal level.”

Earlier Tuesday, two state-owned hospitals in Berlin announced they had stopped giving AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine to female staff 55 years old and under, and heads of five university hospitals in western Germany called for a temporary halt to the vaccine for all younger women, citing the blood clot risk.

According to ABC News, German news agency dpa International quoted a spokesman for Munich who said the suspension of AstraZeneca vaccinations for people younger than 60 would last “until [the] issue of possible vaccine complications for this group of persons has been resolved.”

This is not the first time Germany has suspended AstraZeneca’s vaccine. Several European governments, including Germany and France, initially limited the shot to people under the age of 65 due to neurological problems reported in a UK trial participant.

As reported today, health officials in Canada suspended the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine in people aged 55 and under following concerns the vaccine might be linked to rare blood clots.

Health Canada updated its recommendations amid new data from Europe suggesting the risk of blood clots is now potentially one in 100,000 — much higher than the one-in-1 million risk stated before. The advisory committee recommended the shot be suspended for younger groups pending the outcome of a detailed risk-benefit analysis the agency demanded from AstraZeneca.

Earlier this month, more than 20 countries, including Germany, suspended use of the AstraZeneca vaccine after reports of rare blood clots in the brain, some resulting in death, in healthy people who received the vaccine.

Germany’s federal health minister, Jens Spahn, said seven cases of cerebral vein thrombosis had been reported and that Germany’s vaccine authority, the Paul Ehrlich Institute, considered “further investigation necessary after new reports of cerebral brain thrombosis in connection with vaccination in Germany and Europe.”

Institute officials said the European Medicine Agency (EMA) should decide “whether and how the new findings will affect the approval of the vaccine.”

After a review by medical experts, the EMA concluded the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine “may be associated with very rare cases of blood clots,” but the benefits of the vaccine outweighed the risks and countries should continue to use it. Most European Union (EU) countries, including Germany, resumed use of the vaccine.

That same week, two independent research teams in Norway and Germany announced they had identified antibodies associated with the immune response that caused the type of blood clots experienced by some people who received AstraZeneca’s vaccine. As a result, France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland did not lift their restrictions on the vaccine’s use.

Finland and Sweden have since restricted the AstraZeneca vaccine to people 65 and older, while France resumed vaccination in people over 55. All three counties maintain the suspension for all other age groups, while Norway has delayed a decision on whether to resume using AstraZeneca’s vaccine for another three weeks.

Although AstraZeneca’s vaccine has been authorized for use in the EU, it has not yet received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in the U.S. The company plans to apply for EUA in the upcoming weeks. If approved, AstraZeneca would become the fourth available vaccine in the U.S., joining Moderna, Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson.

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Megan Redshaw is a freelance reporter for The Defender. She has a background in political science, a law degree and extensive training in natural health.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense