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).

***

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. Perhaps the most well-known of the individuals pushing for this is Bill Gates who, like John Rockefeller a century before him, rehabilitated his sorely tarnished image by turning to philanthropy.

However, Gates’ brand of philanthropy, so far, has helped few and harmed many. While his PR machine has managed to turn public opinion about him such that many now view him as a global savior who donates his wealth for the good of the planet, nothing could be further from the truth.

Gates’ Stranglehold on Global Health

The magnitude of Gates’ role over global health recently dawned on me. I believe the COVID-19 catastrophe would not have been possible had it not been for the World Health Organization, which Gates appears to exert shadow-control over. Remember, it was primarily the WHO that facilitated this global shutdown and adoption of freedom-robbing, economy-destroying measures by virtually every government on the planet.

When then-President Trump halted U.S. funding of the WHO in 2020, Gates became the biggest funder of the WHO. As explained in “WHO Insider Blows Whistle on Gates and GAVI,” the WHO has turned global health security into a dictatorship, where the director general has assumed sole power to make decisions that member states must abide by, but according to a long-term WHO insider, Gates’ vaccine alliance GAVI actually appears to be the directing power behind the WHO.

The two — Gates and the WHO — have been working hand in hand pushing for a global vaccination campaign, and Gates has a great deal of money invested in these vaccines. We’ve also seen extraordinary efforts to censor natural alternatives and inexpensive, readily available and clearly effective drugs, such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, and it appears the reason for this is probably because they’re competitors to the vaccine.

Emergency use authorization for pandemic vaccines are only given when there are no other treatments, so vilifying alternatives has been a key strategy to protect vaccine profits.

The Parallels Between Rockefeller and Gates

As noted by Shiva, the comparisons between Rockefeller and Gates are quite apt. Rockefeller created not just Big Oil but also Big Finance and Big Pharma. He had intimate connections with IG Farben.¹ There was a Standard Oil IG Farben company. Without the fossil fuels of Standard Oil, IG Farben couldn’t have made synthetic fertilizers or fuels.

In 1910, Rockefeller and Carnegie produced The Flexner Report,² which was the beginning of the end for natural medicine in the conventional medical school curriculum. They eliminated it because it saw natural medicine as a hugely competitive threat to the new pharmaceuticals that were primarily derived from the oil industry.

Much of Rockefeller’s history has been captured by Lily Kay,³ who sifted through Molecular Vision of Life’s archives. There, she discovered that the Nazi regime, which was a eugenics regime that thought some people were inferior and needed to be exterminated to keep the superior race pure, didn’t vanish when Germany lost the war.

Eugenics simply migrated to the U.S., and was taken up by Rockefeller under the term of “social psychology as biological determinants.” The word gene did not exist at that time. Instead, they called it “atoms of determinism.” Rockefeller paid for much of the eugenics research, which ultimately resulted in the silencing and suppression of true health.

To be healthy means to be whole, and wholeness refers to the “self-organized brilliance of your integrated body as a complex system,” Shiva says. That’s what Ayurveda is based on, and even this ancient system of medicine has been attacked in recent times. The notion of genetic determination ignores this foundational wholeness, seeking instead to divide the human body into mechanical components controlled by your genes.

“Coming back to the parallels, Rockefeller was behind it because he was driving the chemical industry. When the wars were over, they said, ‘Oh my gosh, we have all these chemicals to sell.’ And they invented the Green Revolution and pushed the Green Revolution on India.

Rockefeller, the World Bank, the USA all worked together, and if the farmers of India are protesting today, it’s a result of Rockefeller’s initiative, the Green Revolution in India. Most people don’t realize what high cost India has borne; what high cost the state of Panjon has born.

Then you have Gates joining up with Rockefeller and creating the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA) … which pretends to be his solution to climate change. I say, ‘My god, what kind of stage has the world reached that absolute nonsense can pass the science?’ I’ll give you just three examples from his chapter on agriculture, in which he talks about how we grow things.

First of all, plants are not things. Plants are sentient beings. Our culture knows it. We have the sacred tulsi. We have the sacred neem. We have the sacred banyan. They are sentient beings. So many people are awake to animal rights. I think we need more people awake to plant rights and really tell Mr. Gates, ‘No, plants are not things.’

He goes on to celebrate Norman Borlaug, who was in the DuPont defense lab, whose job it was to push these four chemicals by adapting the plants [to them]. So, he created the dwarf variety, because the tall varieties are free varieties … [Gates] says we’re eating food because of Borlaug. No, people are starving because of Borlaug. The farmers are dying because of Borlaug.”

Gates Offers Problems as Solutions

Gates hails synthetic fertilizer is the greatest agricultural invention. “Doesn’t he realize synthetic nitrogen fertilizers are creating desertification, dead zones in the ocean, and nitric oxide, which is a greenhouse gas?” Shiva says. In short, he’s offering the problem as the solution. Gates also, apparently, does not understand that nitrogen-fixing plants can fix nitrogen. He incorrectly claims that plants cannot fix nitrogen.

Gates is equally wrong about methane production from livestock. “Have you smelt methane behind nomadic tribes?” Shiva asks. “Have you ever smelt methane behind our sacred cow in India? No, they don’t emit methane.” The reason cows in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) emit methane that stinks to high heaven is because they’re fed an unnatural diet of grains and placed in crowded quarters. It’s not a natural phenomenon. It’s a man-made one.

“You know what Mr. Gates wants to teach us? He says cows make methane because of their poor stomachs,” Shiva says. “They call them containers. I think we should sue him for undoing basic biology 101. You’ve talked about how he controls the WHO. He’s also trying to take control of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO).

[FAO] has recognized ecological agriculture is the way to go and supported [regenerative] agriculture up until last year, when Gates started to take charge. Now he’s moving the food summit to New York. Five hundred organizations have said, ‘This is no longer a food summit, it’s a poison summit. The poison cartel and Bill Gates are running it to push more poisons, now under new names. So, we have a lot of work to do.'”

The answer to the environmental problems we face is not more of the very things that created the problems in the first place, which is what Gates proposes.

The answer is regenerative agriculture and real food.

“When people are eating healthy food, there is no problem,” Shiva says. “[Gates] wants to commit a crime against our gut microbiome, pushing more fake food through Impossible Food. And he wants to create conditions so that real food will disappear. That’s why we all have to organize together and the scientists have to start being protected.

There’s an extinction taking place. They call it the sixth mass extinction. Most people think the sixth mass extinction is about other species. They don’t realize large parts of humanity are being pushed to extinction. Food is health, as Hippocrates said, [and that requires] indigenous systems of learning, ecological agriculture, small farmers.

In Bill Gates’ design, all this that makes life, life, that makes society, society, that makes community, community, that makes healthy beings, he would like to push this to extinction because he’s afraid of independence, freedom, health and our beingness. He wants us to be ‘thingness,’ but we are beings …

The worst crime against the Earth and against humanity is using gene editing technologies for gene drives, which is a collaboration of Gates with DARPA, the defense research system. Gene drives are deliberately driving [us] to extinction. Now he does it in the name of ending malaria. No. It’s about driving to extinction.

Amaranth is a sacred food for us. It’s a very, very important source of nutrition … There’s an application in that DARPA-Gates report of driving the amaranth to extinction through gene rights. And when this was raised at the Convention on Biological Diversity, do you know what he did? He actually hired a public relations agency and bribed government representatives to not say no. Can you imagine?”

Gates’ Long-Term Play

Gates clearly had a long-term vision in mind from the start. His growing control of the WHO began over a decade ago. Over this span of time, he also started transitioning into Big Pharma and the fake food industry, which would allow his influence over the WHO’s global health recommendations to really pay off.

While fake foods have many potential problems, one in particular is elevated levels of the omega-6 fat linoleic acid (LA). If you eat real food, you’re going to get more than enough LA. Our industrial Western diet, however, provides far more than is needed for optimal health already, and engineered meats are particularly loaded with LA, as they’re made with genetically modified soy oil and canola oil.

This massive excess of LA will encourage and promote virtually all degenerative diseases, thereby accelerating the destruction of human health. In addition to that, Gates is also investing in pharmaceuticals, which of course are touted as the answer to degenerative disease. Again, his solutions to ill health are actually the problem. Shiva says:

“Gates … [is] entering every field that has to do with life. Our work in Navdanya, which means nine seeds, is basically work on biodiversity in agriculture. We started to bring together all the work that he’s doing in taking over. I mentioned the Rockefeller Green Revolution, now the Gates-Rockefeller Green Revolution in Africa. The next step he wants to push is … digital agriculture.

He calls it Gates Ag One,⁴ and the headquarters of this is exactly where the Monsanto headquarters are, in St. Louis, Missouri. Gates Ag One is one [type of] agriculture for the whole world, organized top down. He’s written about it. We have a whole section on it in our new report,⁵ ‘Gates to a Global Empire.'”

Stolen Farmer Data Is Repackaged and Sold Back to Them

What does digital agriculture entail? For starters, it entails the introduction of a digital surveillance system. So far, Shiva’s organization has managed to prevent Gates from introducing a seed surveillance startup, where farmers would not be allowed to grow seeds unless approved by Gates surveillance system.

The data mining, Shiva says, is needed because they don’t actually know agriculture. This is why Gates finances the policing of farmers. He needs to mine their data to learn how farming is actually done. This knowledge is then repackaged and sold back to the farmers. It’s evil genius at its finest.

Through his funding, Gates now also controls the world’s seed supply, and his financing of gene editing research has undercut biosafety laws across the world. As explained by Shiva, the only country that doesn’t have biosafety laws is the U.S. “The rest of the world does because we have a treaty called the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety,” she says.

“While he created the appearance of philanthropy, what he’s doing is giving tiny bits of money to very vital institutions. But with those bits of money, they attract government money, which was running those institutions. Now, because of his clout, he is taking control of the agenda of these institutions. In the meantime, he’s pushing patenting, be it on drugs, vaccines or on seeds.”

Taken together, Gates ends up wielding enormous control over global agriculture and food production, and there’s virtually no evidence to suggest he has good intentions.

The Anatomy of Monopolization

The company that collects patents on gene-edited organisms, both in health and agriculture, is Editas, founded by a main financial investor for the Gates Foundation. Gates is also a big investor in Editas.

“So, here’s a company called Editas to edit the world as if it is a Word program. The two scientists who got the Nobel Prize this year have both been funded in their research by Gates. My mind went back to how Rockefeller financed the research, got the Nobel Prize, and then made the money.

So, you finance the research. Then you finance the public institutions, whether they be national or international. You invest and force them down the path where they can only use what is your patented intellectual property. And, as he has said in an interview, his smartest investment was vaccines, because it is a 1-to-20 return. Put $1 in and make $20. How many billions of dollars have been put in? You can imagine how many trillions will be made.

At the end of it, where does food come from? It comes from seed. He wants to control it. It comes from land. He’s controlling that. He’s became the biggest farmland owner [in the U.S.]. But you need weather [control]. You need a stable climate.

So, what could be a weapon of control of agriculture? Weather modification. He calls it geoengineering. This is engineering of the climate. Again, making it look like he’s going to solve global warming by creating global cooling.”

As explained by Shiva, Gates is also heavily invested in climate modification technologies that not only will destabilize the earth’s climate systems more, but also can be weaponized against the people by controlling rainfall and drought. In India, they’ve been having massive hail during harvest time, which destroys the harvest.

Is the UN Subservient to Gates?

According to Shiva, Gates is also corrupting the United Nations system, just like he’s corrupted world governments and the WHO, and in so doing, he’s destroying the efforts built over the last three decades to protect the global environment.

“Whether it be the climate treaty, the biodiversity treaty or the atmospheric treaties, he is absolutely behaving as if the UN is his subservient institution,” Shiva says. “[He thinks] governments and regulatory bodies should not exist … and that people in democracy have no business to speak. [If they do], they’re conspiracy theorists.”

Taking Down Gates’ Empires

As it stands right now, ordinary people are forced to fight battles that are in actuality rooted in institutional, structural and societal crimes. These crimes really need to be addressed the way Rockefeller’s Standard Oil empire was addressed. In the case of Gates, his empire is actually multiple empires, and they all need to be dismantled. To that end, I will be collaborating with Shiva and Regeneration International, which she co-founded, on a project to boycott Gates’ empires.

“I’ve noticed that no matter what the movement, they’re using the word regeneration now. It could be a health movement, a democracy movement, a peace movement, a women’s movement — everyone has realized that regeneration is what we have to shift to,” Shiva says.

“So, what do we need to be doing in the next decade? For me, the next decade is the determining decade, because these petty minds’ insatiable greed want to go so fast that if, in the next decade, we don’t protect what has to be protected, build resilient alternatives and take away the sainthood from this criminal, they will leave nothing much to be saved.

The poison cartel is also big pharma. People think agriculture is here, medicine is there. No. The same criminal corporations gave us agrichemicals. They gave us bad medicine that creates more disease than it solves. So, Big Pharma, Big Ag, Big Poison — it’s all one. And Bill Gates is holding it all together even more, and trying to make them bigger because he has investments in all of them …

I think [seeds] is where we have to begin … I’m hoping that we will be able, together, to launch a global movement soon to take back our seeds from the international seed banks. The strategy is we need to remind the world that these are public institutions [and] that they’re accountable to the farmers whose collections these [seeds] are …

On the food question, I think that’s the big one because food and health go [together]. In Ayurveda, it says food is the best medicine, and if you don’t eat good food, then no medicine can cure whatever disease you have. The best medicine is good eating. And Hippocrates said ‘Let food be thy medicine.’ So, I think this is the time to really grow a very big global campaign for food freedom.

Food freedom means you cannot destroy our right to grow food. Secondly, you cannot destroy our governments’ obligations to us to support regenerative agriculture rather than support degenerative agriculture and subsidize it. And third, I think we should call for a worldwide boycott of lab foods …

Another part of this should be, don’t let big tech enter our bodies. Let big tech not enter life sciences … These guys will make life illegal. Living will be illegal except as a little piece in their machine through their permission.”

Each year, Navdanya holds a two-week campaign on food freedom starting October 2, which is nonviolence day. We now need to take that campaign to the global stage, and I will do my part to aid this effort. So, mark your calendar and prepare to join us in a global boycott of food that makes you sick — processed food, GMO foods, lab-created foods, fake meats, all of it.

More Information

You can learn more about Shiva’s work and her many projects on Navdanya.org. During the first week of April every year, Navdanya gives a five-day course called Annam, Food as Health, via Zoom. In this course, you’ll learn about soil and plant biodiversity and healthy eating for optimal health.

You can also learn more by reading the report “Earth Rising, Women Rising: Regenerating the Earth, Seeding the Future,” written by female farmers. And, again, mark your calendars and plan your participation in the food freedom campaign, starting October 2, 2021.

“When all the spiritual forces, all of nature’s forces and most of people’s forces are aligned together, what can [a few] billionaires, technocrats — who want to be richer than they are, greedier than they are, more violent than they are — do?” Shiva says. “They don’t count in the long run, really. It’s just that we cannot afford to not do the things that we can do.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Notes

¹ History of the Pharma Cartel May 10, 2007

² Evid Based Complement Alternat Med. 2012; 2012: 647896 December 26, 2012

³ University of Chicago Press Journals Volume 85, No. 1

⁴ Independent Science News November 16, 2020

⁵ Navdanya International, Gates to a Global Empire

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).

***

One of the most common occurrences in Iraq in 2021 is a US supply convoy being blown up by an IED bomb.

On March 29th, three separate supply consignments were targeted. The first one took place in the Al Diwaniyah province in central Iraq.

The two other attacks were reported in the provinces of Dhi-Qar and Babil.

No casualties were reported however, only damage. No loss of human life is an important fact, due to the fact that the convoys are largely carried out by Iraqi contractors, since US forces no longer take part in logistics.  The aim of the pro-Iranian groups that target the supplies is to force the US out of Iraq.

It is unlikely that these convoys will stop being targeted anytime soon, but strikes on US positions appear to have subsided in recent weeks.

Meanwhile, in northern Syria and Greater Idlib the chaos is here to stay.

Trying to improve the situation, Russia proposed to Turkey to reopen 3 humanitarian crossings into Greater Idlib, but that failed. Ankara, similarly to how it carries out its ceasefire commitments, put no effort towards attempting to contain any of the factions that it backs.

In northern Syria clashes between the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces and the factions backed by Turkey continue.

On March 29th, a large explosion was reported in the town of Ras al-Ain, which is under the control of Turkish-backed forces.

Nearby, clashes between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Turkish-backed militants were reported in the Sher district of Afrin.

According to the reports by the Syrian Observation for Human Rights, on March 28th, SDF forces carried out a successful operation in the Ras al-Ain countryside, killing 5 Turkish-backed militants and wounding 3 others.

It is a back and forth struggle, especially since the SDF stopped giving oil to the Turkish-backed factions to smuggle for Ankara.

In Greater Idlib, the Russian Air Force carried out an airstrike on a militant headquarters.  The attack reportedly took place near the town of Martin in the Western Idlib countryside.

These strikes, as well as shelling from the Syrian Arab Army will continue as long as Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and the other militant groups in Greater Idlib continue to regularly violate the ceasefire agreement.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, in Yemen, Ansar Allah (the Houthis) continue their largely successful operations against the Saudi-led coalition.

In the southern Taiz province, Ansar Allah repelled an attack of Saudi proxies. Reportedly, the Houthis destroyed 3 vehicles and the enemy lost a large number of fighters.

A missile was launched at a Saudi-led forces position in Marib, however no casualties or damage was reported.

At least two drones were used to attack the Khamis Mushait Airport.

Saudi Arabia, on its part, continues its heavy airstrike activity, but it seems to be achieving close to nothing.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT:

PayPal: [email protected], http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

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).

***

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.  

Such debates in the media is deeply misleading and destructive because

1) they focus on how to compel these massive consolidated companies to do what is in the public interest rather than asking how these handful of billionaires got the money to monopolize the means that we get information and communicate with each other and how that basic right can be returned to the citizen;

2) they refuse to consider that the very nature of these social media corporations are unconstitutional and that they are compelled by their profit model, and the interests of their wealthy stock holders, to use their platform to dumb down the population and to render all efforts to employ social media for debate and organization ineffective, and in many cases to introduce false, or unreliable information into the debate.

Sadly, most activists, whether concerned about the environment or social justice, turn to Facebook, Twitter or Google as a means of communication without ever considering that these for-profit multinational corporations have an inherent conflict of interest and that the first step if one wants to organize for social change it to create independent social communications systems.

Although marketed as open platforms for the citizens of the world, there is no democratic manner to appeal how Google searches are conducted, or Facebook is administered, let alone for citizens to make proposals and then vote on how they are implemented.

The ignorance of citizens about the nature of social media is far, far more dangerous today as increasingly multinational corporations and investment banks are using smartphones and computers as a means of hypnotizing mass numbers of people by manipulating the interaction of the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, and stimulating various pleasure centers in the brain as a means to render us passive and to open up the minds of citizens to persuasion by repeating set themes and thereby shutting down the screening function of the right brain.

Anyone who has actually tried to start a serious movement, like Occupy Wall Street, will discover that one is free to post just about anything in social media just as long as one does not start to organized people into an effective movement. It is fine, however, to talk about climate change or social justice as long as one’s activities are directed towards an ineffective leader figure who is pre-approved and broadly publicized in the commercial media.

I will focus on the social media company Facebook here, but most of what I describe applies to all the other for-profit corporations whose stock is owned by investment firms and billionaires around the world, and are intended to manipulate, to distract and to render the citizens of the United States passive and harmless.

The medium of cyberspace, of the Internet, has become a primary means of communication for citizens and its importance has only increased as the COVID19 crisis has been manipulated into a means of limiting our ability to meet with each other. Yet, this format through which we obtain our information about the world, talk to each other and collaborate with each other has been carved up by ruthless corporations whose explicit purpose is to thwart our effort to collaborate and to make us dependent on corporations for everything.

Facebook has set out to sell us the big lie and many of us are happy to accept that lie in part because it is too terrifying to recognize the manner in which our personal lives and our every action has been taken over by ruthless multinational corporations.

Billions of dollars are spent by corporations to buy advertising time, to ghost write articles for newspapers, and to bribe experts so that they describe your relationship with Google, Facebook, Twitter, SnapChat or other search engines and social media, as that of the user, or even as that of the citizen. It is a bald and dangerous lie. You are but a product whom those companies sell to other parties.

It is not so much that they sell you products to buy, or even that they sell off your private information, including detailed profiles about your personal life, your interests and your peculiar habits, and about your friends and associates, to the highest bidder around the world.

They main product that they offer to the corporations robbing you, and the United States, blind, is the production and maintenance of a population of educated people who are prostrate in a semi-state of hypnotic trance.

We are encouraged by massive PR campaigns by these corporations to think that Facebook or Google are run as a benevolent charity for our benefit. But the actions, and the profit model, of these social media corporations is innately unconstitutional and increasingly criminal as they seek to degrade the intellectual capacity of citizens and to undermine the ability of citizens to organize themselves.

The corporations will tolerate our efforts to promote healthy society to some degree, but only in that such efforts do not threaten their profits, or the profits of the corporations that are their clients. They rarely refuse to let you post (although that is increasing). Rather their primary function is to take your demand for real change in our country and divert it toward ineffective, even dishonest, political parties, NGOs and other similar bottom-feeding creatures.

Facebook and its ilk make money by distracting you and your friends, by keeping you from thinking in an organized and effective manner, and by getting you addicted to instant gratification via postings and messages. They saturate us with reports and discussions about minor issues so as to keep us from forming real institutions to confront the current moral and political crisis. Above all, they want us to think that if we share something through the networks that they control with our friends that we have somehow made a difference.

Another service offered up to multinational corporations by Facebook is the creation in the mind of citizens of a deep distrust of all institutions. Citizens are being taught by the media, and by corrupt government officials, and other corrupt experts, that they should distrust all news, distrust all government, distrust the police, distrust universities and research institutions, distrust all authorities.

That distrust is of course justified by the rampant corruption, but it means that ultimately there will be no institutions left that can resist the push for the consolidation of power by the rich and powerful.

If all our interactions with others become their property, if we must pay, directly or indirectly, for the right to communicate with friends and family, to form organizations, and to defend ourselves. If they control our ideas, and our means of communications, then these multinational corporations can slowly reduce us to slavery, so slowly that we hardly notice.

If we cannot meet in person, cannot travel, cannot communicate by letter, email or telephone without going through them, that means not only that they can spy on every part of our efforts, but also that they can completely shut us down whenever they feel like it.

The Republic of Facebook

The only viable solution to the problem is the one that is never mentioned by anyone on the right or the left: take over Facebook and its evil siblings and declare that they belong to us as citizens and that we the people, not the corporation “Facebook” make policy and determine how the profits are employed.

Granted the level of criminal manipulation of the population by Facebook over the last decade, and the illegal manner in which that corporation has set out to block citizens from forming their own networks, we do not need to waste time talking to Facebook Inc. lawyers. They have no role in this case.

Facebook has made its owners and investors many, many billions of dollars by selling the entire world a lie. Facebook is presented as a shared, transparent platform for cooperation that allows anyone to use it for free. But it does not allow its users any rights to determine how Facebook is run, it gives citizens information that is intended to manipulate them, and it sells off the information it collects about them for profit.

Facebook, however, offers access to more people than any independent start up, or cooperative social networking organization could possibly do. That breadth is what forces us to use Facebook for exchanges. But the reason Facebook is able to do so is because its corrupt relations with investment banks, who steal our money, allows it to borrow hundreds of billions of dollars for free that allow it to buy up, or take over, its competitors, and to bribe or intimate possible critics.

Facebook has become a powerful platform for international exchange that allows people around the world to seek out peers with similar interests and to begin exchanges with them.

That platform could be used to share photographs of fat cats and cafe lattes. Such a use is actively encouraged by Facebook because the corporation wants to brainwash and control us, not facilitate our capacity to organize globally.

Facebook could be a platform whose primary purpose is to help the citizens of the Earth work together to build a better world, that allows people to exchange meaningful information for real educational purposes, that permits friends and family to engage in deep and fulfilling communication.

That is not its role now.

You cannot easily seek out other people with common interests (or by region) on Facebook and you cannot systematically store the materials that you send or receive through Facebook for easy reference, or for the editing of books or the creation of works of art. You cannot use Facebook to allow people around the world to cooperate in responding to common problems, or to organize themselves and to govern themselves.

Information posted on Facebook becomes inaccessible to anyone but the corporation Facebook after a few days.

It is also impossible for third parties, or users, to develop original applications to run on Facebook that would allow users to expand its functionality or to customize their pages.

Nevertheless, even in its current format, Facebook offers the potential for a broad conversation between thoughtful and committed individuals around the world. In spite of Facebook Incorporated’s hostility towards those seeking the truth, it is still populated with thoughtful activists, and could be the platform for a new form of true governance if modified in key ways.

Facebook was designed to generate profit, not to facilitate global cooperation. Yet Facebook today offers the possibility for those who are completely locked out of the policy debate to collaborate and make a contribution to their local community or to the Earth as a whole.

If we compare Facebook, a for-profit company, with international organizations for global governance like the United Nations, the World Bank, the OECD or the World Health Organization, the governance structures supposedly engaged in global governance, it is clear that a flawed and twisted Facebook is a far, far more participatory system that allows for much broad discussions.

International organizations like the United Nations carry out internal debate on policy together with multinational corporations, and increasing figures like Bill Gates that are secret. Then the decisions distributed to the world in a one-way manner via arcane technical texts, or broadcasts in the corporate media. There is literally no means for someone like you, let alone a Nigerian street merchant or a Chinese high school student, to have any say at all about the policies that those organizations promote, even though those policies impact the entire world.

The United Nations and other global organizations only recognize nation states as its members, and only recognize those who claim to be the heads of government as representatives.

But today the institutions of governance in nation states are being torn apart by multinational corporations, and by internal class divisions, so that it is questionable that those authority figures serve as a government in any critical sense of the word.

In any case, citizens of the Earth are not permitted to put forth a proposal to the United Nations General Assembly through their government, let alone directly.

But if Facebook was transformed into a global institution that was owned and operated by the citizens of the Earth, it could play a central role in true international governance—which is needed so critically.

Remember that Facebook Incorporated, the corporation, did not build Facebook. The users of Facebook built it, just as we built Twitter or SnapChat or other global institutions that corporations claim that they own. We, the people, did the work of actually populating Facebook with valuable content and of forming effective networks.

We should think of the corporations who claim ownership of Facebook as the equivalent of the robber barons who built the Union Pacific railroad in the 19th century. The robber barons Clark Durant and Mark Hopkins raised money from banks and built the Union Pacific for the shrewdest of profit motivations. Over time, thanks to the activism of citizens, those railroads were turned into regulated organizations. For example, the Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 outlawed short-haul discrimination and other predatory practices. The free-wheeling railroads were made to conform to strict codes. By the 1930s, the railways were strictly regulated and even for-profit corporations were compelled by law, and by custom, to consider the greater good.

The postal service similarly was transformed from a hodgepodge of for-profit companies into a non-profit government agency that serves a vital service. The postal service as a public utility that offered stable jobs to many citizens in a constructive manner was so successful that destroying this institution became a primary focus for the rich and powerful. The same holds true for the administration of telecommunications, water and other services as government services, or regulated monopolies. Destroying these institutions, and creating narratives in the media about how evil and criminal they were, was a major drive by investment banks and corporations.

What we need today is the complete opposite. Not only to defend the administration of essential services by regulated monopolies that provide stable long-term jobs, but also to demand that Facebook, Google, Instagram and Amazon must be made regulated monopolies, or user-owned cooperatives.

The citizens of the United States, and of the world, are deeply integrated through systems of production, distribution, logistics and data distribution and collection, but we do not know each other or have a means of cooperating with each other.

We must overcome our ignorance, and indifference, to each other and form an entirely new form of participatory global governance to respond to global threats. We must transform institutions like Facebook to serve that purpose and recognize how multinational corporations have intentionally kept us isolated and narcissistic in our behavior.

Facebook could be a method to bring us together. But we must make forceful demands. First and foremost, we must assert that Facebook belongs to us, and not to the corporation that preys on us. We must make concrete proposals for what Facebook will become in order to push Facebook, and similar companies, in the right direction.

But those proposals must start from the assumption that Facebook belongs to us, the users and the citizens, and that the corporation has no particular rights to tell us what to do without a democratic process. The same logic will be used in our future interactions with Google, Amazon, WeChat and other such self-appointed hidden empires.

Building a true, common, global community online by lobbying Facebook Incorporated for changes in the rules of governance (thereby allowing the users to decide by democratic process the design and structure of Facebook) is impossible now in that such a for-profit organization has no incentive to accept our demands.

There exist now alternative social networks to connect people together, but they are remarkably ineffective, and with a few rare exceptions, no one has ever heard of them. They are often intentionally destroyed by planted corporate spies, and in any case the current corrupt system demands that unless you have access to private capital you cannot build such institutions. Independent social media is intentionally rendered impossible.

We need a concrete plan for how Facebook will be governed internally, how individual users will debate policy for Facebook and then how that policy will be approved, and enacted, at the local and global level through our Facebook community. That is to say, we will not only use Facebook to share information subject to the permission of, and interference by, the corporation Facebook, we will administer the entire system democratically and make its administration transparent.

The governance of Facebook starts with reforms that make it more accessible, more transparent, and more oriented to the needs of individuals and communities. We can start with demands for simple reforms like allowing individuals to design applications on their own within Facebook and have the right to give or sell them to other members.

That process could involve the formation of local elected communities that debate and determine local and global Facebook policy.

Although this process may seem silly to some, perceptions are critical and if we have a substantial number of citizens around the world debating and demanding how Facebook will be run for the benefit of its citizens, perceptions will start to shift, even among the corporate thieves who administer Facebook the corporation, and a new paradigm will become possible.

The question of ownership

The process of making Facebook a collective controlled by us, the users, and making Facebook the corporation a paid contractor, at best, subject to our decisions, will only begin when we forcefully assert that the content of Facebook, and the profits derived by Facebook, belong to us. To put it more succinctly: Facebook belongs to us.

Facebook Incorporated claims the right to all profits generated from our activities, and gives nothing to the users who produce all the content and who create all the networks. This assumption makes no legal sense. Facebook clearly belongs to those who create it, and not those with access to international finance and rows of lawyers. The manner in which Facebook actively worked to undermine its possible competitors among cooperatives, and made it impossible for such democratic approaches to receive finance, makes Facebook’s monopoly essentially criminal.

We need to start an effective and concrete discussion about ownership among users and to develop concrete proposals for what the ownership of this shared space for communication should look like in the future. Those proposals must be backed up with concrete demands, with plans for the implementation of governance of Facebook by organized groups of its users who will share all aspects of ownership of Facebook and also share profits based on the content that they produce.

Making Facebook our own requires us to rethink what our role in society is. We must snap out of the slumber of consumption that we been steeped in for so many years. I believe that the current economic, ecological and ideological crisis may be enough to wake us up.

Part of the process should be a constitutional convention at which we will draft a basic constitution that will establish the means for governing Facebook (and similar social networks and search engines) globally.

The constitution should:

1. Create a mechanism by which Facebook is made responsive to the needs of its citizens through voting and participatory processes;
2. Make the administration of Facebook accountable to a set of ethical principles;
3. Assure complete transparency concerning Facebook’s financial dealings and its administrative structure and assure that all profits generated are shared between the users who create content, in accord to their production of content.
4. Make sure that access to private capital is never used as a way to control the creation of policy for Facebook.
5. Make sure that all changes are subject to review by the users of Facebook and that all decisions regarding the content, the format or the administration of Facebook is undertaken in a transparent manner.

A group of experts from fields such as computer programming, design, law, art, philosophy, literature, engineering, and the social, physical, biological, and information sciences should come together at this constitutional convention to set out the basic framework for how Facebook will be governed in an open and transparent manner and to map out a roadmap for its future structure. It is critical that those individuals have a deep ethical commitment to human society and to the potential for the development of constructive intellectual exchange. Such principles are far more critical to the constitutional convention than specialized knowledge.

After the convention, there will be a six-month period of consultation with the entire Facebook community, whereby the proposed constitution is considered by the global community and ratified in a systematic manner. The constitution will contain within is a description of what membership will mean and the process for its future amendation.

The day of ratification will transform Facebook’s entire user base into citizens and they will vote for the creation of a “Republic of Facebook,” complete with a transparent and accountable administrative system.

That Republic of Facebook will include a payment system whereby all the profits generated by its activities are fairly distributed to all its users, its owners, in accord with their efforts. Citizens of Facebook will be allowed to sell or exchange their creations and will be paid at appropriate rates for their posts, designs, memes, video and audio. Moreover, they will be able to make suggestions, and implement, changes in the format and structure of Facebook that makes it more suitable to real cooperation.

We have no need for a Facebook Inc. except, perhaps, as a contractor for specific task, just as Merit Network was served as a contractor that administered the mechanics of the early internet.

An ethically-administered, transparent and accountable Facebook will serve as a space wherein those with similar concerns around the world can meet and engage ideas as part of a next stage of global participatory democracy, forming teams in the process to propose means for collaboration, for creative solutions to common problems.

This platform will serve as a critical counterbalance to the domination of the United Nations and other global institutions by the super rich and the investment banks and corporations that they control.

Facebook could be a means for those who pursue similar goals in every corner of the globe to seek out partners and collaborators for research, policy debate and implementation that does not require cooperation with global finance. Sharing resources around the world offers tremendous potential to us.

If we have the will, and a sense of obligation,  we can transform Facebook into a legitimate form of participatory democratic governance. We will transform the entire internet as well, in that process, into a constitutional democracy that promotes participation by citizens of the Earth through peer-to-peer networks and that is powered 100 percent by renewable energy.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

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).

***

The efforts to require every American to be injected with an experimental vaccine for Covid-19 are based on the false notion that vaccination will protect recipients from becoming infected with SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, or protect them from passing along the infection to other people.

The FDA, the CDC, the NIH and the pharmaceutical companies involved have all stated very clearly that there is no evidence to support this idea.

None of the three experimental Covid-19 vaccines now being distributed in the United States have been demonstrated to protect against infection with or transmission of the virus believed to cause Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2), or even prevent symptoms of Covid-19 disease from developing.

This fact is indisputable, yet media, medical providers, and politicians continue to repeat the lie that vaccination provides “immunity to Covid” and even sources like the Mayo Clinic make irresponsible and unsubstantiated claims that vaccination “might prevent you from getting”or “spreading” Covid-19. The same lies are the basis for President Biden’s hard press for mass vaccination to “make this Independence Day truly special.”

On February 27, 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced it had “issued an emergency use authorization (EUA) for the third vaccine for the prevention of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19),” the Janssen (Johnson&Johnson) Covid-19 vaccine.

This announcement is virtually identical to the EUAs previously issued for Covid-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer-Biontech and Moderna.

In each of the EUAs, the FDA has been careful to avoid any claim that the vaccines provide protection against infection or transmission of the virus. Similarly, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organization (WHO), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) have each publicly stated that the vaccines have NOT been shown to prevent infection or transmission.

All of their regulatory documents and commentary addressing the issue state clearly that there is no evidence that the vaccines affect either infection with or transmission of the virus, nor do they prevent symptoms of Covid-19 from appearing.

The US Government Position

The FDA’s Briefing Document analyzing clinical trial data for the Pfizer vaccine, released the day before the FDA’s issuance of an EUA for that vaccine, noted (on page 47):

Data are limited to assess the effect of the vaccine against asymptomatic infection

And:

Data are limited to assess the effect of the vaccine against transmission of SARS-CoV-2 [virus] from individuals who are infected despite vaccination.”

The FDA Briefing Document on the Moderna vaccine stated the same fact, while also describing plans for a future clinical trial to measure infection prevention, but that will not be completed until December 31, 2023 (p.47). The FDA’s review of the Janssen vaccine noted the same “limited” data…

to assess the effect of the vaccine in preventing asymptomatic infection… and definitive conclusions cannot be drawn at this time.”

“Limited data” means there is in fact no evidence to support those conclusions.

The CDC Advisory Committee that recommended emergency use of the Moderna vaccine noted:

“the level of certainty for the benefits of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine was… type 4 (very low certainty) for the estimates of prevention of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection and all-cause death.”

The CDC guidance to Covid vaccine administrators (January 2, 2021) asks:

Can a person who has received a Covid-19 vaccine still spread COVID-19? At this time, we do not know if COVID-19 vaccination will have any effect on preventing transmission.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) on January 26, 2021 similarly admitted:

We do not know whether the vaccines will prevent infection and protect against onward transmission.”

This is all very confusing due to the language the FDA, NIH and other agencies use to describe the potential effectiveness of the vaccines. For example, in the NIH analysis of the Janssen vaccine data, the authors note the vaccine’s reported effectiveness in “preventing moderate and severe COVID-19 in adults.”

This deliberately blurs the distinction between infection with a virus (SARS-Cov-2) and the illness called Covid-19.

The NIH claims the Janssen vaccine prevents or lessens symptoms of the illness Covid-19, but is silent on whether the vaccine prevents infection or transmission of the virus said to cause Covid-19 (SARS-CoV-2). The similar analysis for the Moderna vaccine notes, however:

“[T]here is not yet enough available data to draw conclusions as to whether the [Moderna] vaccine can impact SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”

Unfortunately, we have seen many reports over the last few months of deaths attributed to Covid-19 days and weeks after vaccination (see here and here (video)), confirming that vaccinated people can and do become infected with the virus.

Health officials have avoided blaming these deaths on side effects from the vaccines themselves. Instead, they say these deaths are the result of infections with the virus (SARS-Cov-2) acquired after receiving the vaccines.

Particularly devastating reports from an isolated Kentucky monasterydescribe how two nuns died of Covid-19 after receiving Covid-19 vaccines, despite the complete absence of any cases of infection in the monastery during the ten months prior to vaccination.

Moderna’s chief science officer was quoted in the British Medical Journalabout the clinical trials in 2020 that resulted in the FDA’s decision to grant a EUA to the Moderna shot:

Our trial will not demonstrate prevention of transmission,” Zaks said, “because in order to do that you have to swab people twice a week for very long periods, and that becomes operationally untenable.”

The most important questions about the experimental Covid-19 vaccines were not even asked during the clinical trials: Do these experimental vaccines prevent infection with the virus and do they prevent transmission of that virus? The short answer is No.

The FDA has stated clearly in each of the Covid vaccine Briefing Documents (see Moderna document here, Pfizer here, Janssen here) that the trials were not even designed prove or disprove a hypothesis that the vaccines prevent infection or transmission of the virus, or even prevent symptoms of Covid-19 from developing.

The FDA issued Emergency Use Authorizations (EUAs) for the Pfizer, Moderna and Janssen vaccines on December 11 and December 18, 2020, and on February 27, 2021, respectively.

The EUAs indicate that the vaccines “prevent severe Covid-19,” that is, they don’t prevent infection or development of symptoms after infection, but they may make the illness less severe.

The EUAs explicitly deny any evidence that the Pfizer, Moderna or Janssen vaccines prevent infection, or prevent hospitalization or even death from Covid-19 after vaccination. The highly publicized “success rates” of the vaccines refer only their potential ability to lessen the severity of those symptoms, but there is “no data” that they prevent the infection that could cause those symptoms.

Mandating Vaccination Under Emergency Use Authorization Is Impermissible

An EUA is not “FDA Approval.”

An EUA indicates that a product has not been fully tested but, despite the obvious risks, distribution is permitted because the government declared a “public health emergency” in January 2020.

As the FDA notes in its Information Sheet for the Moderna shot:

The Moderna COVID-19 Vaccine has not undergone the same type of review as an FDA- approved or cleared product.”

The FDA granted EUAs for all three experimental vaccines after less than five months of clinical trials, with most of trial data still to be collected. All three vaccines will be in clinical trial status through January 31, 2023.

According to comments from vaccine scientists in September 2020 (prior to the Covid-19 EUA issuances), no vaccine had ever before been distributed on an EUA basis.

“We don’t do EUAs for vaccines,” [Dr. Peter] Hotez said, “It’s a lesser review, it’s a lower-quality review, and when you’re talking about vaccinating a large chunk of the American population, that’s not acceptable.”

Three months later, the FDA issued EUAs for the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, but with explicit guidance that the vaccine “has not undergone the same type of review as an FDA- approved or cleared product.”

Indeed, the highly experimental nature of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine, in particular, is extraordinary as that vaccine is the first and only product the company has ever been allowed to distribute, and it was allegedly developed in only two days.

Any use of an experimental vaccine under an EUA must be voluntary and recipients must be informed “of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, of the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product, and of the alternatives to the product that are available and of their benefits and risks.

This information is repeated in small print on each of the FDA Covid-19 vaccine Fact Sheets, but it is largely ignored.

Dr Amanda Cohn, the executive secretary of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, was asked in October 22, 2020, if the new Covid-19 vaccines could be legally required. She respondedthat, under a EUA:

Vaccines are not allowed to be mandatory. So, early in this vaccination phase, individuals will have to be consented and they won’t be able to be mandatory.”

Under EUA status, the government is not permitted to require Covid-19 vaccinations because the vaccines are not FDA-approved and recipients are clinical trial participants. This is why states cannot legally require vaccination, despite suggestions by some legislators to do just that.

Indeed, the US military is barred from mandating the vaccines. This ban on government vaccine mandates explains why some private companies are trying to require vaccination of employees, which makes the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance on this issue potentially relevant.

The EEOC Guidance on COVID-19 Vaccination Does Not Authorize Vaccine Mandates

The EEOC updated its guidance on the issue of Covid-19 vaccination on December 16, 2020.

This update appeared five days after the FDA issued an EUA for the Pfizer vaccine and two days prior to issuing the Moderna EUA. Based on this timing, we can safely assume that the EEOC was well-aware of the contents of the FDA briefing documents and Fact Sheets, specifically the FDA statements about the lack of proof that the vaccines prevent infection with or transmission of the virus (SARS-CoV-2).

The EEOC guidance evaluates the idea of employer Covid-19 vaccine mandates under the Americans with Disabilities Act’s (ADA) “direct threat” analysis:

The ADA allows an employer to have a qualification standard that includes ‘a requirement that an individual shall not pose a direct threat to the health or safety of individuals in the workplace.’“

But the EEOC’s analysis presupposes that vaccines protect against infection, which is false.

The “direct threat” doctrine is an employer’s potential defense to a claim of disability discrimination under the ADA. According to the EEOC, “A conclusion that there is a direct threat would include a determination that an unvaccinated individual will expose others to the virus at the worksite.”

The specific but theoretical “direct threat” described here is one allegedly posed by an unvaccinated person who might become infected with the virus (SARS-CoV-2) and then spread infection to the workplace.

But no “determination” of such a threat is possible. The EEOC was careful to state only that a direct threat defense “would include” such a “determination.” The EEOC took no position on this issue because officials there were likely aware there has been no determination that vaccination prevents infection or transmission, and none is possible with current data.

Aspirational claims that vaccination “might” [be eventually be shown to] prevent infection or that “some data tends to show” such an effect are insufficient bases for a direct threat defense.

The US Supreme Court ruled in Bragdon v Abbott (1988) that the assertion of a direct threat defense must be evaluated “in light of the available medical evidence,” noting that “the views of public health authorities, such as the U.S. Public Health Service, CDC, and the National Institutes of Health, are of special weight and authority.”

Overcoming the long-standing protections of the right to bodily integrity and informed, voluntary consent to medical treatment requires articulation of an actual and imminent, not theoretical, threat presented by an unvaccinated person in the workplace.

The CDC, the National Institutes of Health and numerous other “public health authorities” have all stated that there is no evidence to show that vaccination prevents viral infection or transmission, a fact the EEOC should have presented but did not.

The EEOC guidance does not provide any legal cover for employers to require vaccination. The guidance proposes that employers might be successful in proving a direct threat if they were able to prove facts which, it turns out, cannot be proven.

Even more importantly, according to the CDC, more than 29 million Americans (and likely many, many more) have already contracted the virus (SARS-CoV-2) and recovered from it.

A recent NIH study demonstrates that these millions of “recovered” people have long-lasting, and likely permanent protection from re-infection. They present no threat of infection or transmission of the virus. However, under a blanket employer vaccine requirement, these people who are already immune would still be required to get vaccinated. It makes no sense logically or legally to require the vaccination of people who already have more protection from the virus than people who get vaccinated.

What Is the Threat Prevented by Mandatory Vaccination?

Outside the employment context, companies are demanding proof of vaccination from travelers and even movie- and concert-goers, based on the same debunked idea that vaccination with one of the Covid-19 vaccines will prevent the theoretical spread of the virus in trains, planes, movie theaters and concert halls among low-risk populations. But the relevant government agencies have all stated clearly that that the vaccines do not prevent infection or the spread of infection.

The benefit from any vaccination lies with the recipient of the vaccine. In the case of Covid-19 vaccines, vaccinated people may have fewer symptoms after becoming infected. While this is an important consideration for many people, this benefit has nothing to do with preventing the spread of the virus SARS-Cov-2.

A vaccinated person presents at least the same “risk” of infection and transmission of the virus (if not more risk) as a person who is not vaccinated. At best, vaccination might prevent a more serious case of Covid-19 illness from developing. The vaccines do not prevent infection or the spread of the virus that causes Covid-19. They can have little or no impact on stopping transmission.

Because no one has shown that vaccination prevents infection or transmission of the virus SARS-CoV-2, a fact undisputed by all official sources, this also means that vaccination cannot help to achieve the goal of herd immunity.

“Herd immunity” means that a population can be protected from a virus after enough of the population has become immune to infection, either through exposure to the virus and later recovery, or through vaccination.

But with Covid-19, there is no proof that vaccination makes anyone immune to the virus SARS-CoV-2. Covid-19 vaccination cannot play any meaningful role in the pursuit of herd immunity because the Covid-19 vaccines do not provide immunity from infection.

Oddly, the WHO contradicts itself in arguing that Covid-19 vaccination promotes herd immunity to the virus that causes Covid-19, claiming:

To safely achieve herd immunity against COVID-19, a substantial proportion of a population would need to be vaccinated, lowering the overall amount of virus able to spread in the whole population.”

This statement is simply false. It also contradicts the WHO’s prior admission that “We do not know whether the vaccines will prevent infection and protect against onward transmission.”

If the WHO has already acknowledged that it “does not know if” the Covid-19 vaccines protect people from becoming infected or transmitting the virus, it is a deliberate lie to claim that somehow these vaccines can lead to herd immunity.

A far more useful strategy than forcing people to accept an experimental vaccine that does not even protect them from infection would be to instead protect those most vulnerable to serious illness or death as a result of infection. Tens of thousands of renowned doctors and scientists in the U.S. and around the world proposed such a strategy in October 2020.

Unfortunately, the media and Silicon Valley tech monopolies attacked and effectively censored discussion of this common sense approach as “anti-science” and “right wing” by removing discussion of the proposal from nearly all media platforms.

Yet the fake “scientific” approach to herd immunity touted by the WHO, US government agencies and politicians, and media monopolists is blatantly dishonest, and has nothing to do with “science.” The push by private companies to require vaccination and “immunity passports” is similarly based on private financial interests, not scientific research.

Government scientists admit that the Covid-19 vaccines do not prevent infection or transmission of the virus they say causes Covid-19, but many of these same scientists also dishonestly claim the vaccines will somehow prevent the spread of the virus, leading to herd immunity.

Such an approach is not only unscientific and dishonest. It’s nonsense.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on OffGuardian.

P Jerome is civil rights attorney based in Washington, D.C. He can be reached at [email protected]

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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).

***

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. According to the Yemen Data Project,

“During 2020, air raids in #Yemen averaged 6 per day — double the average daily rate in 2019. Despite the pandemic, strikes hit healthcare facilities, markets, farms, schools, and vital water infrastructure, including water wells. At least one Covid-19 quarantine centre was bombed.”

The brutal U.S.-backed Saudi-led war on Yemen is approaching its sixth year, causing over 230,000 deaths, and plunging the country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. The airstrikes and bombing have destroyed homes, schools, hospitals, markets, and many other vital infrastructures. The destruction, combined with the land, sea, and air blockade imposed by Saudi Arabia, pushes Yemen to the brink of collapse. According to the United Nations, 2.3 million children under the age of five will suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021, of which 400,000 could die of starvation.

The humanitarian situation in Yemen is dire. Years of bombing and wars have destroyed over half of the hospitals in the country. The ones that are still functional lack the essential resources and medicine to provide adequate care to those in need. The Covid-19 pandemic threatens to make an already disastrous situation worse.

Since the start of the war in 2015, the United States has provided full backing to the Saudi-led coalition, including technical support, training fighter jet pilots, targeting assistance, selling arms, and supplying military hardware. On February 4, 2021, U.S. President Joe Biden announced a new shift in the U.S. support for the Saudi-led war on Yemen. This announcement was welcomed as a positive step, and it seems that it created hope that the Biden administration is ending its support for the war on Yemen. Biden’s remarks were full of doublespeak and deceiving words. We have to be cautious and careful about what his announcement really means.

Biden’s maneuvers and delay tactics

A closer examination of Biden’s speech reveals contradictory and confusing statements.

“This war has to end. And to underscore our commitment, we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” Biden said.

One wonders what Biden is referring to by, “offensive operations” and “relevant arms sales”? This ambiguous expression leaves the door open for the United States to continue its support for the war. Saudi Arabia has continuously framed its war on Yemen as defending itself and the region from the threat of Houthi rebels.

In the same address, Biden continues to say, “At the same time, Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks, UAV strikes, and other threats from Iranian-supplied forces in multiple countries. We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and its territorial integrity and its people.” This language sounds very similar to that used by the Obama administration when it announced the start of Yemen’s war in 2015.

This rhetoric reinforces and validates the suspicion that Biden’s promise to end the war on Yemen is a sheer lie. His promise to end “relevant” arms sales is another example of doublespeak. It allows the United States to deflect criticism about their complicity in fuelling the war on Yemen while finding ways to continue selling weapons to Saudi Arabia.

Absent from Biden’s remarks is any mention of ending U.S. drone strike operations in Yemen or lifting the cruel Saudi-led blockade against the people of Yemen. Overall, Biden’s words are a change of tone from the previous Trump administration, but they are hollow in substance. In response to the speech Saudi Arabia, Foreign Minister Prince Faisal Bin Farhan tweeted,

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia welcomes the United States’ commitment, expressed in President Biden’s speech today, to cooperate with the Kingdom in defending its security and territory.”

How and why the war on Yemen started

March 26, 2021, marks 6 years of the inhuman and devastating war on Yemen. Backed by the United States, Saudi Arabia led a coalition of allied countries to militarily intervene in Yemen under the guise of restoring ‘legitimacy’ and ‘stability’ to Yemen and the region. Where is that legitimacy or peace today? They destroyed an entire country and caused the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The Saudi-led coalition never had the future or the well-being of the Yemeni people in mind! Their goal has been to crush any democratic aspirations of the Yemeni people and impose a puppet regime in the country that will serve Saudi Arabia and its Washington masters’ interests. Yemen’s strategic location is vital for the United States and imperialists to expand their military and economic hegemony over the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), as well as the East African region. Yemen’s coast borders the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, a narrow strategic waterway between the Horn of Africa and the Middle East connecting the Mediterranean Sea, Suez Canal, and the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean. The strait is one of the most active and vital maritime shipping routes in the world.

Yemen is a land of rich history and ancient civilization; beautiful and complex culture; and resilient people. The potential of an independent, democratic, and powerful Yemen with its strategic location in the MENA region is a threat to the Saudi kingdom and its imperialist masters. In addition, the U.S., U.K., Canada, France, Germany, Italy and other European states made billions of dollars on arms sales and training contracts with Saudi Arabia and other countries in its military coalition.

As we approach the sixth year of the war, Saudi Arabia and its imperialist backers are stuck in a quagmire in Yemen. They were unsuccessful in restoring the power of widely unpopular puppet Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and they failed to crush the resistance of the Yemeni people to foreign domination. The atrocities committed by the Saudi-led coalition are condemned internationally, and Saudi Arabia can no longer hide the horrific destruction and humanitarian crisis it caused in Yemen. Biden’s vague pledge to end the war on Yemen is a maneuver and delay tactic for the growing world-wide criticism against the war and Yemen’s dire humanitarian situation.

Building solidarity with Yemen

The overwhelming sentiment of people in Canada, the United States, and around the world are against Yemen’s war. This was evident at the successful Global Day of Action against the war on Yemen that took place on January 25, 2021. Tens of thousands of people in 28 countries joined the online virtual rally and the 30+ protests on the streets around the world. The coming together of anti-war activists and peace-loving people from across the globe to stand against the war in Yemen is inspiring!

We need to build on this momentum and continue educating, organizing, and mobilizing against the war in Yemen. Coordinated and consistent local and international actions and campaigns are vital to keeping the pressure on our respective governments. Here in Canada, we need to raise the issue of Yemen among working and oppressed people, student unions, political groups, labour unions, civil society organizations and mobilize all peace-loving people to demand that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government ends all its arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

There cannot be peace in Yemen without an immediate ending of all arms sales to Saudi Arabia and its coalition. There will be no peace in Yemen without the withdrawal of all foreign troops and mercenaries. To end the humanitarian disaster in Yemen, the Saudi blockade must be ended fully and immediately so that the desperately needed humanitarian aid can freely flow to Yemen. Any real solution needs to include all Yemeni voices without any foreign interventions or coercion. The Yemeni people deserve to determine the future of their country freely. Self-determination is a fundamental right of any sovereign nation.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Fire This Newspaper.

Azza Rojbi is a Tunisian social justice activist, author and researcher in Vancouver, Canada. She is a member of the Executive Committee of Vancouver’s antiwar coalition Mobilization Against War and Occupation (MAWO) and author of the book “U.S. and Saudi Arabia War on the People of Yemen” (Battle of Ideas Press, April 2019).

Featured image is from Medium

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).

***

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.

For just two of the most recent of the ever-lengthening list of documents and videos demonstrating non-existence of the virus, see ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’ and ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’.

Unfortunately, this lie is succeeding in distracting the vast bulk of the human population from the ongoing elite coup to take complete control – politically, economically, socially, spiritually and even physically – of the human population under the guise of the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’. See ‘The Great Reset’ and ‘Now is the time for a “great reset”’.

Hence, the elite coup – which includes implementation of the technological measures necessary to facilitate the fourth industrial revolution as well as the agenda of the transhumanists – now rapidly gathers pace, at enormous cost to the human population and our prospects for survival.

In brief, this coup has many facets notably including the deployment of 5G to enable comprehensive surveillance, digital ID (possibly implanted in your brain: see ‘Beware the Transhumanists: How “Being Human” Is Being Re-Engineered by the Elite’s Coup’) linked to your bank account and health records, a social credit ID that will end up dictating every facet of your life, the digitization of money, robotization of the workforce and the military as well as, in the words of Dr Joseph Mercola, the complete transformation ‘of government, energy and finance to food, medicine, real estate, policing – even how we interact with our fellow human beings. The globalist technocracy is using the COVID-19 pandemic to bypass democratic accountability, override opposition, accelerate their agenda and to impose it on the public against our will.’ See ‘Who Pressed the Great Reset Button?’

But for a more detailed summary of the essential details of this coup, see ‘Corrupt Science and Elite Power: Your Techno-Slavery is Now Imminent’. For a summary of the enormous and increasing costs, see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup Against a Terrified Humanity: Resisting Powerfully’. And for the evidence of the coup’s adverse impact on human survival prospects, see ‘The Elite’s COVID-19 Coup to Destroy Humanity that is also Fast-Tracking Four Paths to Human Extinction’.

However, while the bulk of the human population remains unaware of what is being planned for us, or naively believes the sanitised version of events presented by elite agents – such as the World Health Organization, governments, official medical spokespeople and the corporate media – enough people are concerned about the serious threats to humanity’s future or, at least, about the very damaging impacts of the lockdowns and other measures such as the ‘gene-altering injectables’ being marketed as ‘vaccinations’, that resistance to this elite coup is also gathering pace. And while this is an encouraging sign, the resistance being conducted so far falls well short of what is necessary given the imminence, multifaceted nature and enormity of the threats.

As a result, Homo sapiens rushes headlong to the cliff-edges of both tyranny and extinction.

So who is resisting, how are they doing so and what else must be done to defeat this coup?

The Resistance So Far: Individual Scholars and Groups

Of course a substantial number of individuals and groups have made the effort to investigate and analyse what is happening ‘beneath the surface’ of this coup and these efforts have resulted in a multitude of documents and videos such as these, for example:

This interview of Catherine Austin Fitts for the film ‘Planet Lockdown’.

This video ‘“The New Normal” New documentary exploring the origin and purpose behind the covid narrative’.

This latest video by Professor Michel Chossudovsky: ‘The 2021 Worldwide Corona Crisis’. Or you can read his article ‘The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”’.

And this article by Dr Joseph Mercola which explains the network of organizations centrally involved in ‘The Web of Players Trying to Silence Truth’.

The Resistance So Far: Health Professionals

Many health professionals and others have been consistently exposing the lies that underpin the official narrative being promulgated by the (badly misnamed) World Health Organization, the United Nations, the World Economic Forum, national governments and the corporate media. One outcome of this effort to educate people was the formation of the World Freedom Alliance, which you can join.

Another initiative, undertaken by the 1,500 members of United Health Professionals, was to issue an initial ALERT on 26 August 2020, titled ‘STOP to: terror, madness, manipulation, dictatorship, lies and the biggest health scam of the 21th century’. They urged an immediate halt ‘to all crazy and disproportionate measures that have been taken since the beginning to fight SARS-CoV-2 (lockdown, blocking the economy and education, social distancing, wearing of masks for all, etc.) because they are totally unjustified, are not based on any scientific evidence and violate the basic principles of evidence-based medicine.’ Subsequent alerts of a similar nature have followed.

Other initiatives, among many, have included this recent video by 33 doctors warning against getting the experimental vaccines. Watch ‘33 doctors around the world issue dire warning, to not get the covid vaccine’.

Leo Hohmann simply reminds us that Dr. Tal Zaks, the chief medical officer at Moderna, admitted in 2017 that ‘We are actually hacking the software of life’ thus ‘totally debunking the establishment media’s lie that mRNA vaccines don’t alter your genetic code’ when that, of course, is the actual purpose of messenger RNA vaccines. See ‘Moderna’s top scientist: “We are actually hacking the software of life”’.

Other authors make a point of highlighting the high death rate among those vaccinated, even on official sites which clearly understate the extent of the problem. See, for example, ‘460 Dead 243,612 Reported Injuries from COVID19 Vaccines Reported in the U.K.’ and ‘COVID Vaccine Injury Reports Grow in Number, But Trends Remain Consistent’.

An earlier report noted that the US was forced to change official guidelines in response to the enormous vaccine injury rate. See ‘CDC Issues New Guidelines, Launches Probe After 1000s Negatively-Affected Following COVID-19 Vaccination’.

And Denmark, Iceland and Norway have simply halted administration of the vaccine ‘after reports of blood clots among some people who had received the inoculation’. See ‘COVID: Several European countries halt use of AstraZeneca vaccine’.

If the above doesn’t have you questioning the elite-driven narrative, check out this website with its multitude of videos challenging elite dogma in relation to the ‘virus’: ‘Questioning Covid’.

Of course, you will find very little of the above in the corporate media, with its huge advertising revenue from the major pharmaceutical corporations giving them no incentive to risk losing this income by telling the truth.

The Resistance So Far: Legal

Another series of initiatives is the ongoing efforts to challenge the legal basis of the lockdowns and other official policies supposedly in response to the virus. Watch, for example, Dr. Reiner Fuellmich outline the basis of one legal challenge in ‘“Crimes Against Humanity”: The German Corona Investigation. “The PCR Pandemic”’ and see these two documents submitted to governments in Australia by the Concerned Lawyers Network: ‘Re: Notice of Liability & Potential Claims, 6 November 2020’ and ‘Re: Notice of Liability & Potential Claims, 11 December 2020’.

One challenge has been posed by scholars and a judge drawing attention to the ways in which forced mask-wearing and forced vaccines violate The Nuremberg Code, 1947. See, for example, Judge Anna Von Reitz’s ‘A Plague of Liars’ and Makia Freeman’s ‘Do Mandatory Masks and Vaccines Break the 10 Points of the Nuremberg Code?’

Two of the legal challenges under way in the United States are those being conducted by New Mexico Attorney Ana Garner against declaration of the public health emergency and mandatory administration of the unapproved experimental injectables. Watch ‘It’s Here: First Court Case Against Mandatory Vaccination – Attorney Interview’.

Of course, there are other legal challenges taking place in various countries but, again, you won’t hear much about them in the corporate media.

The Resistance So Far: Police and Military

Police and military personnel around the world have also taken a stand in defence of human freedoms won long ago but now under siege once again.

For example, police in Spain formed Policías Por La Libertad (‘Police for Freedom’) and this is now spreading around the world, including to Australia, the Netherlands, Sweden and the United States, for example.

The mission of this international movement is to re-humanise our societies, bringing back trust and unity between the security forces and the people. The peaceful marches, events, campaigns and content created by Police For Freedom aim to educate people about their human rights, civil liberties, constitutional rights as well as the ethical code of conduct for the police and security forces.

We are colleagues from different occupations who want to continue to carry out our work based on our personal and professional ethics, without being influenced by fears, deceptive narratives, immoral rules or differences of opinion.

The Association of French Reserve Army Officers issued their extensive and damning report ‘Investigative Report on the Covid-19 Pandemic and its Relationship to SARS-CoV-2 and other Factors’ in May 2020. Its conclusion noted that ‘The management of the health “crisis” seems to be a pretext for a totalitarian global takeover’ and includes the ‘intention to impose a global cryptocurrency, a vaccine with nano-chips and a subcutaneous electronic chip’ with ‘5G installations, both terrestrial and aerial (Elon Musk’s satellites in low-Earth orbit)… clearly part of this “total war” project.’

Of course, plenty of military personnel are simply resisting vaccination personally, given the long history of abuse of service personnel with experimental ‘vaccinations’. At one US base, ‘as little as 30 percent of personnel are accepting the vaccine’. See ‘A THIRD of all military personnel are refusing to receive the COVID-19 vaccine with alarmed commanders aiming to make the shot mandatory “as soon as possible”’.

The Resistance So Far: ‘Ordinary’ People

Resistance to one or other features of the coup by individuals, communities, businesses and religious organizations, despite being largely ignored or denigrated by the corporate media, has been considerable with plenty of demonstrations, street theatre and other nonviolent actions documented all over the world. For just one article outlining some of the resistance in Europe last year, see this summary: ‘Anti-Lockdown Protests All Across Europe’.

But perusal of the progressive media will quickly reveal some of the many initiatives undertaken by activists and others who have no trouble ‘seeing through’ the fog of lies and misinformation with which certain international agencies, governments, tame medical personnel and the corporate media are deluging us. For example, you can watch ‘10,000 Protesters In Vienna March Against Coronavirus Restrictions’.

More recently, this resistance has gathered pace considerably, including among the small business community. For example, in mid-January restaurant-owners in Italy, other parts of Europe, Mexico and elsewhere opened their doors in defiance of lockdown measures reminding people that collective civil disobedience of any magnitude is extraordinarily difficult to stop. See ‘“I Am Open”: 50,000 Italian Restaurant Owners Plan to Ignore Lockdown’.

And, more broadly, hundreds of Polish businesses reopened in January as well. See ‘Lockdown Rebellion: Highlanders in Poland’s “Winter Capital” to Reopen Hundreds of Businesses’.

Such is the resistance taking place across Europe, that some prominent commentators have been led to ask ‘Is a Revolutionary Movement Developing in Europe? Rejecting the Lockdown and the Mask’.

Are you reading about any of this in the corporate media?

What can we do to halt ‘The Great Reset’ and defend ourselves against the elite coup?

Understanding the many elements of what is taking place and, therefore, what is necessary to address it effectively, is the first step to responding powerfully.

Important points in this understanding include two I have made above: The global elite is driving what is happening and, using the ‘virus’ (for which there is no documented scientific proof in existence) as a ‘cover story’, is conducting a coup to take complete control of our lives.

But there is a third, and deeper, point that it is vital to understand: This coup has only proceeded this far because existing parenting, educational and religious practices indoctrinate and terrorize children into a lifetime of submissive obedience. Hence, the bulk of the human population is too (unconsciously) frightened to even question the elite-driven narrative, let alone seek out and analyze the evidence for themselves and then act powerfully in response. For detailed explanations, see ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So if we are to succeed in defeating this elite coup, we must be strategically thoughtful in how we approach it.

This is why it is important to point out that entreaties to key international organizations and governments, as well as legal challenges, must ultimately fail. The global elite operates without official constraint, well beyond the ‘rule of law’ and has long controlled all key international organizations as well as governments and legal systems (and the medical and pharmaceutical industries, for that matter) so that they serve elite interests. Therefore, initiatives directed at these elite agents will inevitably come to nought, as history has repeatedly demonstrated. See, for example, ‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’.

So while I acknowledge the sincerity and genuine effort being put into such activities as lobbying politicians and legal challenges, for example, unless sufficient people are willing to take action that fundamentally undermines the power that enables the global elite to implement its agenda, humanity faces a dark future. It is for this reason that, once again, I outline below the measures that are necessary for us to succeed.

Hence, if you would like to be part of the campaign to defeat the elite coup, see the list of strategic goals necessary to achieve this outcome, and other aspects of this campaign, starting here: Coup Strategic Aims.

Anita McKone has presented a simpler version, with explanations and examples of actions you can take, here: ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’. Her song, of the same title, can be heard here: ‘We are Human, We are Free’.

If you wish to focus on resisting the deployment of 5G – the central pillar that will enable so many of the technological measures of the coup to be implemented while causing enormous other harm in the process – scroll down ‘Campaign Strategic Aims’.

To undertake action that is strategically-focused, it will be useful if more people understand the principles and practice of nonviolent action, which can be taught by some nonviolence educators around the world. See, for example, ‘Nonviolent Action/Strategy Workshops in Australia’.

If you wish to campaign to avert one or more of the four most immediate paths to human extinction, you can see a list of strategic goals for doing so here: Campaign Strategic Aims.

If you wish to nurture children to be better equipped to understand what is happening and far more able to critique it and act powerfully, see ‘My Promise to Children’.

If you wish to reduce your vulnerability to elite control, consider joining those who recognize the critical importance of reduced consumption and greater self-reliance by participating in ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’. In addition, you are welcome to consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Conclusion

Under cover of a non-existent virus and pandemic, the global elite is now implementing a coup that has been carefully planned and prepared over several decades: It is the logical culmination of a millennia-long process of consolidation and expansion of elite control, at the expense of humanity and the biosphere. I have briefly outlined this history in ‘Why Activists Fail’.

If you question the sanity of the global elite for doing this, you are right to do so. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’.

The fundamental aim of this elite coup, readily discernible by reading their documentation over the past 50 years, is to substantially reduce the human population and keep those still alive, subject to permanent surveillance as well as mind and behavioural control, as ‘techno-slaves’.

If you wish to resist this fate for humanity, you are welcome to join us.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here. He is a frequent contributor to ‘Global Research’.

Featured image is from Inga – stock.adobe.com

Appendix

The Earth Pledge

Out of love for the Earth and all of its creatures, and my respect for their needs, from this day onwards I pledge that:

1. I will listen deeply to children. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.
2. I will not travel by plane
3. I will not travel by car
4. I will not eat meat and fish
5. I will only eat organically/biodynamically grown food
6. I will minimize the amount of fresh water I use, including by minimizing my ownership and use of electronic devices
7. I will not own or use a mobile (cell) phone
8. I will not buy rainforest timber
9. I will not buy or use single-use plastic, such as bags, bottles, containers, cups and straws
10. I will not use banks, superannuation (pension) funds or insurance companies that provide any service to corporations involved in fossil fuels, nuclear power and/or weapons
11. I will not accept employment from, or invest in, any organization that supports or participates in the exploitation of fellow human beings or profits from killing and/or destruction of the biosphere
12. I will not get news from the corporate media (mainstream newspapers, television, radio, Google, Facebook, Twitter…)
13. I will make the effort to learn a skill, such as food gardening or sewing, that makes me more self-reliant
14. I will gently encourage my family and friends to consider signing this pledge.

The Hidden Danger: Digitalisation and Mind Control. “The Prerequisites For Total Dictatorship”

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, March 30 2021

The following commentary draws attention to a wake-up call by the renowned medical doctor and brain researcher Prof. Karl Hecht. The title is: “Thoughts are free – but with global digitalisation it’s over”.

Can We Trust America’s COVID-19 Vaccine Injury Statistics?

By Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null, March 30 2021

According to the latest figures derived from the European Medicines Agency’s database of Covid-19 vaccine adverse reactions, 162,610 injurious events and 3,964 deaths have now been reported.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: COVID Vaccine Mandate Violates Federal Law

By Children’s Health Defense, March 30 2021

The announcement last week by Rutgers University that it would require all students to get the COVID vaccine prompted CHD Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to remind university officials that federal law prohibits mandating Emergency Use Authorization vaccines.

Australia’s Plan for Manufacturing Missiles to be Accelerated

By Prof. Michelle Grattan, March 30 2021

The government is speeding up the establishment of its planned $1 billion Sovereign Guided Weapons Enterprise, which aims to boost Australia’s own defence production capabilities as it faces a deteriorating security outlook.

Dr. Mike Yeadon: The Devastating Impacts of the Covid Vaccine

By Dr. Mike Yeadon and Mordechai Sones, March 30 2021

America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) spoke to former Pfizer Vice President and Chief Science Officer Dr. Mike Yeadon about his views on the COVID-19 vaccine, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, the regulatory authorities, and more.

WHO Postpones the Delivery of “AstraZeneca” Vaccine to Syria

By Khaled Iskef, March 30 2021

The World Health Organization (WHO) has postponed the delivery of the “AstraZeneca” vaccine against the novel coronavirus to Syria, after it was supposed to arrive during this March.

Iran-China: The 21st Century Silk Road Connection

By Pepe Escobar, March 30 2021

Capping an extraordinary two weeks that turned 21st century geopolitics upside down, Iran and China finally signed their 25-year strategic deal this past Saturday in Tehran.

Deadly Blood Clots Caused by COVID-19 Vaccine

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 30 2021

As of March 16, 2021, 19 European countries plus Thailand1 had suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, either in full or in part, following reports of deadly blood clots.

Entire City in Shock as Another Italian Professor Is Dead Following the AstraZeneca COVID Injection

By Brian Shilhavy, March 30 2021

As mass vaccination campaigns with experimental COVID injections now move on to the next demographic populations after beginning with senior citizens in assisted care facilities, and the healthcare workers in those facilities, the next targeted groups are educators.

An Old Green Colonial Trick: Israel Masking Land Grabs as Environmental Conservation

By Jessica Buxbaum, March 30 2021

For decades, a Palestinian village on the southern tip of Jerusalem has lived on and cultivated the land. But a series of recent efforts by Israel is not only threatening their way of life but potentially displacing them from their homes.

Non tutto in Europa è paralizzato dai lockdown anti-Covid: si è infatti messa in moto la mastodontica esercitazione annuale dell’Esercito Usa, Defender-Europe, che fino a giugno mobilita sul territorio europeo, e al di là di questo, decine di migliaia di militari con migliaia di carrarmati e altri mezzi. La Defender-Europe 21 non solo riprende il programma di quella del 2020, ridimensionata a causa del Covid, ma lo amplifica.

Perché arriva dall’altra sponda dell’Atlantico il «Difensore dell’Europa»?  Lo hanno spiegato i 30 ministri degli Esteri della Nato (per l’Italia Luigi Di Maio), riuniti fisicamente a Bruxelles il 23-24 marzo: «La Russia, col suo comportamento aggressivo, mina e destabilizza i vicini, e tenta di interferire nella regione balcanica». Scenario costruito con la tecnica del capovolgimento della realtà: ad esempio accusando la Russia di tentare di interferire nella regione balcanica, dove la Nato ha «interferito» nel 1999 sganciando sulla Jugoslavia, con 1.100 aerei, 23.000 bombe e missili. 

Di fronte al grido di aiuto degli alleati, arriva l’Esercito Usa a «difendere l’Europa». La Defender-Europe 21, al comando dell’Esercito Usa in Europa e Africa, mobilita 28.000 militari degli Stati uniti e di 25 alleati e partner della Nato: essi condurranno operazioni in oltre 30 aree di addestramento in 12 paesi, comprese esercitazioni a fuoco e missilistiche. Vi parteciperanno anche l’Aeronautica e la Marina Usa. 

In marzo è cominciato il trasferimento dagli Stati uniti in Europa di migliaia di soldati e di 1.200 mezzi corazzati e altri equipaggiamenti pesanti. Essi stanno arrivando in 13 aeroporti e 4 porti europei, compresi quelli italiani. In aprile, da tre depositi preposizionati dell’Esercito Usa – in Italia (probabilmente Camp Darby), Germania e Olanda – saranno trasferiti in varie aree di addestramento in Europa oltre 1.000 equipaggiamenti pesanti, che saranno trasportati con autocarri, treni e navi. In maggio, in 12 paesi, tra cui l’Italia, si svolgeranno quattro grandi esercitazioni. In una di queste, oltre 5 mila soldati di 11 paesi si spargeranno in tutta Europa per esercitazioni a fuoco. 

Mentre ai cittadini italiani ed europei sarà ancora vietato spostarsi liberamente, per ragioni di «sicurezza», tale divieto non varrà per le migliaia di soldati che si sposteranno liberamente da un paese europeo all’altro. Avranno il «passaporto Covid», fornito non dalla Ue ma dall’Esercito Usa, in cui si garantisce che essi sono sottoposti a «strette misure di prevenzione e mitigazione del Covid».

  Gli Stati uniti non vengono solo a «difendere l’Europa». La grande esercitazione – spiega nel suo comunicato l’Esercito Usa in Europa e Africa – «dimostra la capacità degli Stati uniti di essere partner strategico per la sicurezza nelle regioni dei Balcani e del Mar Nero, mentre sosteniamo le nostre capacità nel Nord Europa, nel Caucaso, in Ucraina e Africa». Per questo la Defender-Europe 21 «utilizza le fondamentali rotte terrestri e marittime che collegano Europa, Asia e Africa». 

Il generoso «Difensore» non dimentica l’Africa. In giugno, sempre nel quadro della Defender-Europe 21, andrà a «difendere» Tunisia, Marocco e Senegal con una vasta operazione militare dal Nord Africa all’Africa Occidentale, dal Mediterraneo all’Atlantico. Essa sarà diretta dall’Esercito Usa attraverso la Task Force dell’Europa Meridionale con quartier generale a Vicenza. Bisogna contrastare – spiega il comunicato ufficiale – «la malefica attività in Nord Africa ed Europa Meridionale e l’aggressione militare avversaria». Non specifica chi siano i «malefici», ma è evidente il riferimento a Russia e Cina. 

Il «Difensore dell’Europa» non è qui di passaggio. Partecipa alla Defender-Europe 21 il V Corpo dello US Army che, dopo essere stato riattivato a Fort Knox nel Kentuky, ha costituito il proprio quartier generale avanzato a Poznan in Polonia, da dove comanderà le operazioni lungo il fianco orientale della Nato. Partecipano all’esercitazione le nuove Brigate di assistenza delle forze di sicurezza, unità speciali dello US Army che addestrano e guidano in operazioni militari le forze di paesi partner della Nato (come sono Ucraina e Georgia).

Anche se non si sa quanto costerà la Defender-Europe 21, si sa che a pagare saremo, con denaro pubblico, noi cittadini dei  paesi partecipanti, mentre scarseggiano le risorse per affrontare la crisi. La spesa militare italiana è salita quest’anno a 27,5 miliardi di euro, ossia a 75 milioni di euro al giorno. L’Italia ha però la soddisfazione di partecipare alla Defender-Europe 21 non solo con le proprie forze armate, ma quale paese ospite. Avrà quindi l’onore, in giugno, di ospitare l’esercitazione conclusiva del Comando Usa, con la partecipazione del V Corpo dello US Army da Fort Knox.

Manlio Dinucci

Quando circa sei anni fa titolammo su il manifesto (9 giugno 2015) «Ritornano i missili a Comiso?», la nostra ipotesi che gli Usa volessero riportare i loro missili nucleari in Europa fu ignorata dall’intero arco politico-mediatico. Gli avvenimenti successivi hanno dimostrato che l’allarme, purtroppo, era fondato. Ora, per la prima volta, abbiamo la conferma ufficiale. L’ha data pochi giorni fa, l’11 marzo, una delle massime autorità militari Usa, il generale James C. McConville, capo di stato maggiore dell’Esercito degli Stati uniti. Non in un’intervista alla Cnn, ma in un intervento – di cui abbiamo qui la trascrizione ufficiale  – a un meeting di esperti alla George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs. Il generale McConville non solo comunica che lo US Army si sta preparando a installare nuovi missili in Europa, abbastanza evidentemente diretti contro la Russia, ma rivela che saranno missili ipersonici, un nuovo sistema d’arma di estrema pericolosità. Ciò crea una situazione ad altissimo rischio, analoga se non peggiore di quella in cui si trovava l’Europa durante la guerra fredda, quale prima linea del confronto nucleare tra Stati uniti e Unione sovietica.

I MISSILI IPERSONICI – con velocità superiore a 5 volte quella del suono (Mach 5), ossia più di 6.000 km/h – sono un «salto di qualità»; costituiscono infatti un nuovo sistema d’arma con capacità di attacco nucleare superiore a quella dei missili balistici. Mentre questi seguono una traiettoria ad arco per la maggior parte al di sopra dell’atmosfera, i missili ipersonici seguono invece una traiettoria a bassa altitudine nell’atmosfera direttamente verso l’obiettivo, che raggiungono in minor tempo penetrando le difese nemiche (vedi scheda).

Dall’alto in basso le traiettorie dei diversi nuovi missili Usa: balistico, ipersonico con propulsione a razzo, ipersonico a statoreattore © «Difesa online»

Nel suo intervento alla George Washington School of Media and Public Affairs – un vertice di esperti -, il generale McConville rivela che lo US Army sta preparando una «task force» dotata di «capacità di fuoco di precisione a lungo raggio che può arrivare ovunque, composta da missili ipersonici, missili a medio raggio, missili per attacchi di precisione» e che «questi sistemi sono in grado di penetrare lo spazio dello sbarramento anti-aereo». Il generale precisa poi che «prevediamo di schierare una di queste task force in Europa e probabilmente due nel Pacifico» (abbastanza evidentemente dirette contro la Cina). Sottolinea quindi che «le stiamo costruendo in questo momento, mentre stiamo parlando».

Ciò viene confermato dalla Darpa (Agenzia per i progetti di ricerca avanzata della Difesa). In un comunicato ufficiale informa di aver incaricato la Lockheed Martin di fabbricare «un sistema missilistico ipersonico a raggio intermedio con lancio da terra», ossia missili con gittata tra 500 e 5500 km della categoria che era stata proibita dal Trattato sulle forze nucleari intermedie firmato nel 1987 dai presidenti Gorbaciov e Reagan, stracciato dal presidente Trump nel 2019. Secondo le specifiche tecniche fornite dalla Darpa, «il nuovo sistema permette ad armi ipersoniche glide con propulsione a razzo di colpire con rapidità e precisione bersagli di importanza critica e prioritaria, penetrando moderne difese aeree nemiche. L’avanzata propulsione a razzo può trasportare vari carichi bellici a più distanze ed è compatibile con piattaforme terrestri di lancio mobili, che possono essere dispiegate rapidamente».

IL CAPO DI STATO maggiore dell’Esercito e l’Agenzia di ricerca del Pentagono informano dunque che tra non molto gli Stati uniti schiereranno in Europa (si parla di una probabile prima base in Polonia o Romania) missili ipersonici armati di «vari carichi bellici», ossia di testate nucleari e convenzionali. I missili ipersonici nucleari a raggio intermedio installati su «piattaforme terrestri mobili», ossia su speciali veicoli, potranno essere rapidamente dispiegati nei paesi Nato più vicini alla Russia (ad esempio le repubbliche baltiche). Avendo già oggi la capacità di volare a circa 10.000 km/h, i missili ipersonici saranno in grado di raggiungere Mosca in circa 5 minuti. Anche la Russia – ecco l’elemento anch’esso nuovo e pericoloso – sta realizzando missili ipersonici a raggio intermedio ma, lanciandoli dal proprio territorio, non può colpire Washington.

I missili ipersonici russi potranno però raggiungere in pochi minuti le basi Usa, anzitutto quelle nucleari come le basi di Ghedi e Aviano, e altri obiettivi in Europa. La Russia, come gli Stati uniti e altri, sta schierando nuovi missili intercontinentali: l’Avangard è un veicolo ipersonico con raggio di 11.000 km e armato di più testate nucleari che, dopo una traiettoria balistica, plana per oltre 6.000 km alla velocità di quasi 25.000 km/h. Missili ipersonici li sta realizzando anche la Cina. Poiché i missili ipersonici sono guidati dai sistemi satellitari, il confronto-reazione si svolge sempre più nello spazio: a tale scopo è stata creata nel 2019 dall’amministrazione di Donadl Trump il sesto settore militare statunitense, la Forza Spaziale degli Stati uniti.

LE ARMI IPERSONICHE, di cui vengono dotate anche le forze aeree e navali che hanno maggiore mobilità, aprono una nuova fase della corsa agli armamenti nucleari, rendendo in gran parte superato il trattato New Start appena rinnovato da Usa e Russia.

La corsa al riarmo passa sempre più dal piano quantitativo (numero e potenza delle testate nucleari) a quello qualitativo (velocità, capacità penetrante e dislocazione geografica dei vettori nucleari). La risposta, in caso di attacco o presunto tale, viene sempre più affidata all’intelligenza artificiale, che deve decidere il lancio dei missili nucleari in pochi secondi o frazioni di secondo. Aumenta in modo esponenziale la possibilità di una guerra nucleare per errore, rischiata più volte durante la guerra fredda. Il «Dottor Stranamore» non sarà un generale pazzo, ma un supercomputer impazzito. Mancando l’intelligenza umana per fermare questa folle corsa alla catastrofe, dovrebbe almeno scattare l’istinto di sopravvivenza, risvegliatosi finora solo per il Covid-19.

Le tipologie della nuova arma

• Quelli con propulsione a razzo rilasciano una testata glide (ad aliante) che plana a velocità ipersonica tra 50 e 100 km di altitudine, manovrando per evitare i missili intercettori.
• Quelli con statoreattore (propulsore a getto) volano a bassa quota, a velocità ipersonica, seguendo il contorno del terreno e manovrando come missili da crociera. Data la curvatura della Terra, essi vengono avvistati dai radar terrestri solo quando sono a 1-2 minuti dall’obiettivo. Il loro avvistamento radar è reso più difficile dal fatto che a velocità ipersonica, si forma attorno alla testata una guaina di plasma ad alta temperatura.

Gli Usa stanno realizzando i seguenti missili ipersonici:

1. Un missile a raggio intermedio su lanciatore mobile per l’Esercito, sviluppato dalla Darpa e costruito dalla Lockheed Martin nel programma Operational Fires.
2. Un missile a lungo raggio con propulsione a razzo e testata glide, lanciato da terra, per l’Esercito. Un missile da pronto attacco con propulsione a razzo e testata glide, lanciato da unità di superficie e sottomarini della Marina.
3. Un missile a statoreattore e uno con propulsione a razzo e testata glide per l’Aeronautica.

Manlio Dinucci

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).

***

In an unusual turn of events in Syria, militants once backed by the US have seized a shipment of US-made missiles that was heading to fighters currently backed by the US.

The missiles, US-made TOWs, were seized on March 28 by the Syrian Task Force, a joint force of the Turkish Police, Counterterrorism Unit and the National Syrian Army (SNA), near the Turkish-occupied town of Azaz in the northern Aleppo countryside.

According to the Turkish Ministry of Interior, the smugglers confessed that that they had been trying to transfer weapons to the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the town of Manbij in the northeastern countryside of Aleppo.

Beside two TOW anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs), the weapons shipment included 24 AK-type assault rifles, a designated marksman rifle, two gun tubes and ammunition.

Source: t.me/uom_03

Most SNA factions were once backed by the US, which supplied them with TOW ATGMs until late 2017. The YPG and the PKK, one the other hand, are the core of the Syrian Democratic Forces, which still receive US support.

Between 2012 and 2017, the US shipped loads of weapons and ammunition to rebels in Syria in an attempt to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Pentagon led these efforts to arm the Syrian rebels with a direct support from US allies in the Middle East, first and foremost Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

US efforts didn’t only fail to topple the Damascus government, but also ended up turning Syria into a large black market for advanced weapons. Many of the weapons supplied by the US and its allies found their way to the hands of terrorist groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda-linked Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. Some of these weapons were found in Iraq and even Lebanon.

Today, weapons like TOW ATGMs, are being used by militants once supported by the US against Washington’s current proxies in Syria and vice versa.

The US plans to arm Syrian rebels inflamed the war, threatened neighboring countries and even ended up turning Washington’s tools against each other. Some not very tolerant social media users would call these great achievements a brilliant example of “clusterfuck.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT:

PayPal: [email protected], http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

Featured image is from South Front

Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.

Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes  the mainstream media narratives on Syria. 

Voices from Syria 

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-1-6

Author: Mark Taliano

Year: 2017

Pages: 128 (Expanded edition: 1 new chapter)

List Price: $17.95

Special Price: $9.95 

Click to order

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

***

First published on July 26, 2012, revised on March 29, 2021.

“The establishment media ignores the scientific evidence linking psychiatric medications and violent behavior because psychiatry is the religion of the mainstream media, and it has chosen to not mention the dangers of psychiatrically prescribed drugs.” — Peter R. Breggin, MD (www.breggin.org)

“In some European nations it is against the law for doctors to prescribe SSRI anti-depressant drugs for children and adolescents because of 1) the lack of long-term safety studies and 2) the known increased incidence of violence and suicide.” — See this

America Is A Gun – by Brian Bilston

England is a cup of tea.
France, a wheel of ripened brie.
Greece, a short, squat olive tree.
America is a gun.

Brazil is football on the sand.
Argentina, Maradona’s hand.
Germany, an oompah band.
America is a gun.

Holland is a wooden shoe.
Hungary, a goulash stew.
Australia, a kangaroo.
America is a gun.

Japan is a thermal spring.
Scotland is a highland fling.
Oh, better to be anything
than America as a gun.”

Domestic mass shootings are a peculiarly American phenomenon at least partly because of the enormous propaganda influence of two of the most powerful industries in America, the US military/industrial/weapons complex and the untouchable multinational pharmaceutical corporations.

If one is totally honest, one must acknowledge also that those same two Corporate Powers have been the major factors behind the pandemics of “legal”, non-domestic, mass shootings in the various foreign countries that have been regularly invaded and destabilized by the American military/industrial/congressional establishment over the past decades.

These condoned, even celebrated mass killings in foreign countries have been occurring with astonishing regularity. These killings have been perpetrated by well-trained, obedient young soldiers, who have all-too-frequently been given prescriptions for brain- and behavior-altering psych drugs by both military psychiatrists and minimally-trained medics.

In the American epidemic of mass shootings – both civilian and military – it needs to be understood that America’s obvious failure to do the right thing and overcome the epidemics is because neither the Republican and Democrat Party politicians can resist taking campaign “bribes” from Big Weapons and Big Pharma Corporate “contributors”.

The mainstream media often uses the phrase “senseless violence” when referring to the domestic mass shootings. Perhaps we could overcome the “senselessness” if we were just given all the inconvenient facts concerning the two taboo subjects of traumatic stress events experienced by the mass shooters and their use of dangerous and addictive psychiatric drugs that can have such disastrous effects on the immature brains of children and adolescents – and adults as well.

If we knew about their past traumas, the amount of violence experienced in videogames, Hollywood movies or on television and the mass shooter’s use of brain-altering prescription or illicit drugs in the now infamous Colorado shootings at Aurora, Colorado Springs, Littleton and now Boulder – there would be far less confusion about the origins of mass shootings in America.

Interestingly, one of the victims of Littleton’s (Columbine High School) shooter Eric Harris (Harris had been first prescribed Pfizer’s so-called “antidepressant” Zoloft and then was switched to Abbott’s so-called “antidepressant” Luvox) seemed to be promoting blind ignorance when he said “don’t waste time trying to figure out what motivated the shooters. “It’s a waste of time, and it gives them exactly what they want.”  And then he complained, “I don’t think I’ll ever understand.” This Columbine School victim had obviously adopted America’s official “approved” narrative: 1] keep everybody unaware of what the real motives may have been; 2] remain silent about painful truths; and 3] don’t expose any of the corporate or governmental powers-that-be for their guilty role in the shootings (or the wars).

In a recent 2012 Duty to Warn column I mentioned the existence of a remarkable database of serious so-called “SSRI-antidepressant” drug adverse effects (SSRI = “Selective” Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) that contributed to criminal acts that had been reported in the public domain. That website can still be accessed at www.ssristories.com.

Before I knew about that website, I had already come to the realization that the vast majority of media reports on mass shootings usually don’t ask the essential questions about what crazy-making psychiatric drugs the perpetrators might have been taking – unless, of course, the drugs were illicit ones.

So the thousands of examples documented on that website represents just the tip of what surely is an enormous iceberg, since even the FDA estimates that up to 99% of adverse effects from any given drug are never reported to that agency.

The Doctor’s “Drug Bible” (the Physicians’ Desk Reference – PDR) lists the following typical adverse reactions to SSRI “antidepressants”:

• Manic Reaction (Mania, e.g., Kleptomania, Pyromania, Dipsomania, Nymphomania)
  
• Hypomania (e.g., poor judgment, over-spending, impulsivity, etc.)
  
• Abnormal Thinking
  
• Hallucinations
  
• Personality Disorder
  
• Amnesia
  
• Agitation
  
• Psychosis
  
• Abnormal Dreams
  
• Emotional Lability
  
• Alcohol Abuse and/or Craving
  
• Hostility
  
• Paranoid Reactions
  
• Confusion
  
• Delusions
  
• Sleep Disorders
  
• Akathisia (Severe Inner Restlessness)
  
• Withdrawal Syndromes
  
• Impulsivity

It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that any of the above SSRI drug-induced mental aberrations could pass as a “mental illness”.

It needs to be emphasized that so-called adverse reactions are most likely to occur when starting or discontinuing the drug, increasing or lowering the dose, running out of the medication or switching from one drug to another. Adverse reactions are commonly mis-diagnosed as bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, ADHD, sleep disorder, psychosis, schizophrenia or some other “mental illness of unknown origin” when, in actuality, the symptoms may be entirely iatrogenic (treatment, drug, vaccine or physician-induced).

Withdrawal from any of these addictive psychiatric medications can cause the neuropsychiatric and/or physical signs and symptoms that are listed in the above list. It is important to withdraw extremely slowly from these drugs, preferably under the supervision of a qualified and experienced healthcare practitioner.  Withdrawal syndromes can be more difficult to treat than the disorder for which the drug was prescribed.

SSRI “adverse reactions” should be expected to occur and should not be a surprise to the prescribing physician, the patient or concerned family members.

So, knowing some of the signs and symptoms of the drugs listed above, I present below a partial list of psych drug–associated mass shootings in and around the turn of the last century, perpetrated mostly by children and adolescents. I was able to find, with a lot of sleuthing, the specific psych drugs associated with the shootings.

Suspiciously, in the vast majority of psychiatric drug-related episodes of irrational violence, such drugs are generally not reported in the Big Pharma-controlled mainstream media, where pharmaceutical companies advertise heavily, thereby exerting conflicts of interest influences on how much investigative journalism is allowed. He who pays the piper, after all, calls the tune.

The SSRI Stories website noted above has listed, among the thousands of examples of psychiatric drug-induced violence, scores of American school shootings. That website also lists psych drug-induced suicides and non-lethal acts of violence or irrational behaviors. There has been a measurable explosion of such incidents since the media-assisted popularization of Prozac, which was released by Eli Lilly & Company onto an unsuspecting public in 1989.

Contrary to popular opinion, the FDA never actually does tests on drugs (or vaccines, for that matter). Such tests are done by for-profit entities that only report the results to the FDA. Even those tests usually don’t run tests for long-term safety or efficacy, and commonly these corporate entities don’t run pre-clinical rials on patients below the age of 18. Therefore, we physicians, if we prescribe these untested drugs to that underage group (who are all at various stages of immature brain development), we are doing so “off label”, thus making ourselves medico-legally liable.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr Gary G. Kohls is a retired American family physician who practiced holistic (non-drug) mental health care during the last decade of his professional career. His patients came to see him asking for help in getting off the psychotropic drugs to which they were addicted and which they knew had sickened them and disabled their brains and bodies. He was successful in helping significant numbers of his patients get off or cut down on their cocktails of drugs using a time-consuming program that was based on psychoeducational psychotherapy, brain nutrient therapy and a program of gradual, closely monitored drug withdrawal.

He warns against the abrupt discontinuation of any psychiatric drug – legal or illicit – because of the common, often serious withdrawal symptoms that can occur in patients who have been taking such drugs. It is important to be treated by an aware, informed physician who is familiar with treating drug withdrawal syndromes and brain nutritional needs. 

Dr. Gary G. Kohls is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from CCHR International

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).

***

Last week, Australians found themselves delighting in another fit of cancel culture, this time in the art world.  Tasmania’s Dark Mofo art festival prides itself on being gritty but the mood was very much about removing any grit to begin with.  Interest centred on the project of Spanish artist Santiago Sierra, who had proposed soaking a Union Jack Flag “in the blood of its colonised territories”.  The blood would come by way of donations.  First Nation peoples “from countries claimed by the British Empire at some point in history, who reside in Australia” would furnish the liquid. 

Given what followed, festival organisers might have preferred one of Sierra’s other suggestions: a work that would have involved vast amounts of cocaine.  Social media outrage followed.  People purporting to speak for the offended, while also counting themselves as offended, railed and expectorated.  Festival curator Leigh Carmichael tried to be brave against the howling winds of disapproval.  “At this stage we will push on,” he told ABC Radio Hobart on March 23.  “Provided we can logistically make this work happen, we will.”  He acknowledged that, “These were very dangerous topics, they’re hard, they hurt.”  For criticisms that the work was being made by a Spanish artist, Carmichael was initially clear: to make work taboo for people from specific localities could constitute “a form of racism in itself.”  Then inevitable equivocation followed.  “This artist is about their experience and whether a Spanish artist has the right to weigh in, I don’t know.”

Within a matter of hours, Carmichael’s position had collapsed: Sierra’s project was cut and put out to sea.  “We’ve heard the community’s response to Santiago Sierra’s Union Flag.”  Grovelling and capitulation before this all powerful community followed.  “We made a mistake, and take full responsibility.  The project will be cancelled.  We apologise to all First Nations people for any hurt that has been caused.  We are sorry.” 

David Walsh, Tasmanian founder of MONA (Museum of Old and New Art) and responsible for running the festival, was open to self-education and reflection, having not seen “the deeper consequences of this proposition”.  He had thought the work “would appeal to the usual leftie demographic.  I approved it without much thought (as has become obvious).”  A bit of old fashioned, censoring conservatism was called for.

Brian Ritchie, bassist for the Violent Femmes and artistic director of Mona Foma, the museum’s summer festival, felt righteous, firstly, wanting to distance his own outfit as “a completely different and separate organisation” before weighing into rubbishing the cultural sensitivity credentials of the work and the artist.  “Exploiting people while claiming to protest on their behalf is intellectually void.  Stupid programming is aesthetically null.  Controversy outweighing the quality of the work is bad art.”

The cancellation was approved by the bloated entities across the academy, certain ethnic groups and the professionally enraged.    Critique ranged from the identity of the artist (Spanish, foreigner, coloniser) to the merits of the work itself.  “A coloniser artist intending to produce art with the actual blood of colonised people is abusive, colonising and re-traumatising,” came the social worker assessment from novelist Claire G. Coleman.  “The idea is disgusting and terrible and should not have been considered.” 

If every traumatic, disgusting incident (rape, pillage, massacres, wars, the crucifixion) were to be considered a bad idea for representation, the canvasses best be left empty, the art shows barren.  Never depict, for instance, that Tasmania’s lands are blood soaked by European conquest.  Do not, as Australian artist Mike Parr did in June 2018, bury yourself beneath a busy street of the state capital Hobart to get to the hidden truth.  That way lies trauma.

The art content commissars were also keeping close eye over how the depiction might have been properly staged, if it was even possible.  Such a contribution can be found in the journal Overland. “Simply stating or depicting that the beginnings of the Australian colony were brutal and bloody for Indigenous people is a passive act,” moaned the very selective Cass Lynch.  She demands, expects. “The concept on its own isn’t active as an agent of truth-telling, it doesn’t contain an indigenous vice or testimony, it has no nuance.  On its own, it leans into the glorification of the gore and the violence of colonisation.”  Blood, it would seem, is no indicator of truth.

In such convulsions of faux sensitivity to the First Nations, the arts sector (for this is what it has become in Australia, a corporatized, sanitised cobbling of blandness, branding and safe bets) justified not merely the pulling of the piece, but that it should have ever been contemplated to begin with.  In the commentary on Sierra, the Indigenous peoples are spoken of in abstract and universal terms: they were hurt and all have one, monolithic voice; and “white curators” should have thought better in letting the project ever get off the ground.  Thinking in cultural police terms, Paola Balla asked “how this was allowed to be programmed in the first place?  And what structures support white curators to speak of Black traumas?”  Such questions are bound to embolden art vandals across the world keen on emptying every museum for being inappropriately informed about “power structures”.

Ironically enough, in this swell of ranting about voices and representation, the artist in question was deprived of it.  Sierra, in a statement released on March 25, called treatment of his work “superficial and spectacular” and his own treatment as a “public lynching”.  His quotes had been misconstrued; he had been “left without a voice, without the capacity to explain and defend” his project.  He had hoped the blood-soaked Union Jack would inspire reflection “on the material on which states and empires are built” and reveal how “all blood is equally red and has the same consistency, regardless of the race or culture of the person supplying it”. 

Sierra’s shabby treatment did not go unnoticed.  Parr took issue with the festival organisers’ “cowardice and lack of leadership”.  Michael Mansell, Chair of the Aboriginal Land Council of Tasmania urged Carmichael to push on with the work.  “The artist challenges Tasmanians about whether Aboriginal lands were peacefully or violently taken, and uses the blood-smattered Union Jack to express his view.”  By all means disagree with the artist and even feel offended “but that cannot justify stifling the artist’s freedom of thought.”  A sinister result had followed from the cancellation of the project.  “The unintended consequence of the objectors is that the discussion about truth telling will now be ignored, put aside.”

There are parallels in this fiasco with previous instances of rage over what can and cannot be depicted in the shallow art lands of the Antipodes.  The cultural police also took issue with Australian photographic artist Bill Henson in 2008 for his portrayals of children as sexual beings.  On May 22 that year, twenty Henson photographs featuring “naked children aged 12 and 13” were confiscated by police from Sydney’s Roslyn Oxley9 gallery.  Jason Smith of the Monash Gallery of Art defended Henson, claiming that his work “has consistently explored human conditions of youth, and examined a poignant moment between adolescence and adulthood”. 

Then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was having none of it.  There were simply certain things you could not touch, that art should not enable you to understand.  Henson had erred into vice.  “Kids deserve to have the innocence of their childhood protected,” he spluttered.  Rudd found the photographs “absolutely revolting” despite having not seen them.  “Whatever the artistic view of the merits of that sort of stuff – frankly I don’t think there are any – just allow kids to be kids.”  Jenny Macklin, Minister for Families at the time, moralised before the Nine Network about how children were “just getting bombarded with sexualised images all the time, and it’s that sexualisation of children that I think is wrong.”  Now, just as then, artists have been put on notice.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

Featured image is CC BY-SA 4.0

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).

***

Israel had no time to enjoy the successful election and Benjamin Netanyahu’s slim victory when Iran reportedly reminded Israel of itself.

On March 25th, while sailing from Tanzania to India, the Israeli-flagged ship “Lori” was allegedly struck by missiles in the Gulf of Oman.

Tehran was immediately accused, and the strike only caused material losses, but no casualties. Photographs of the damaged hull of the ship were shared on Twitter, but little else in the way of evidence.

This alleged incident is the third in a presumed exchange.It began on February 26th, when the Israeli-flagged MV HELIOS RAY suffered a number of explosions, in the Gulf of Oman. It was blamed on Iran.

Then, on March 11th, an explosion struck the Iranian-owned SHAHR E KORD off the coast of Syria. Tehran called it a terrorist attack, but not specifically blaming Tel Aviv.

On Syrian soil, approximately 15 unidentified gunmen attacked posts of the Syrian Arab Army’s 5th Corps and Iranian-backed forces in southern Raqqa, according to the Eye of the Euphrates. They infiltrated the government-controlled area in southern Raqqa with three trucks. The unknown militants abandoned their vehicles and attacked the position near the village of Maksar. At least 9 Syrian and Iranian-backed fighters were killed, and 6 others were captured.

In northern Syria, the situation is becoming increasingly chaotic. Despite a Russian-Turkish agreement to open humanitarian crossings in Idlib, but no such luck.

Ankara immediately denied agreeing to anything of the sort, and even if it didn’t, militants blocked the crossings.

Syrian authorities reopened the Saraqib and Abu Zindain crossings on March 25th. However, both remained blocked by the al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

Turkish Forces in the fashion of how they impose the ceasefire agreement in Greater Idlib undertook no action in assisting the opening of the crossings.

In Iraq, the situation is stacked even more against the U.S. and its allies. On March 25th, five US supply convoys were attacked in different parts of Iraq. Three of the attacks were carried out by pro-Iranian groups, while two are still unclaimed.

These attacks continue to be non-lethal and rather cause only material damage.

These groups, as well as all other Iranian allies are a part of the unofficial Axis of Resistance. Yemen’s Ansar Allah are as well a part of it.

In recent days, the Houthis (as Ansar Allah is more commonly known) were accused by Saudi Arabia of being cowards.

While that accusation was sinking in, Riyadh’s forces targeted al-Hudaydah with heavy artillery.

This is explicitly prohibited under a ceasefire agreement, and still violations take place almost hourly. The Saudi-led coalition continues its heavy airstrike activity, and is being steadily pushed back on the ground by the Houthis.

More retaliatory actions are likely expected by Israel, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia in the coming days and weeks, since the Iranian-aligned bloc seems to be making progress.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

SUPPORT SOUTHFRONT:

PayPal: [email protected], http://southfront.org/donate/ or via: https://www.patreon.com/southfront

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).

***

“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”—Martin Luther King Jr. (A Knock at Midnight, June 11, 1967)

In every age, we find ourselves wrestling with the question of how Jesus Christ—the itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist who died challenging the police state of his time, namely, the Roman Empire—would respond to the moral questions of our day.

For instance, would Jesus advocate, as so many evangelical Christian leaders have done in recent years, for congregants to “submit to your leaders and those in authority,” which in the American police state translates to complying, conforming, submitting, obeying orders, deferring to authority and generally doing whatever a government official tells you to do?

What would Jesus do?

Study the life and teachings of Jesus, and you may be surprised at how relevant he is to our modern age.

A radical nonconformist who challenged authority at every turn, Jesus spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire, and providing a blueprint for standing up to tyranny that would be followed by those, religious and otherwise, who came after him.

Those living through this present age of government lockdowns, immunity passports, militarized police, SWAT team raids, police shootings of unarmed citizens, roadside strip searches, invasive surveillance and the like might feel as if these events are unprecedented. However, the characteristics of a police state and its reasons for being are no different today than they were in Jesus’ lifetime: control, power and money.

Much like the American Empire today, the Roman Empire of Jesus’ day was characterized by secrecy, surveillance, a widespread police presence, a citizenry treated like suspects with little recourse against the police state, perpetual wars, a military empire, martial law, and political retribution against those who dared to challenge the power of the state.

A police state extends far beyond the actions of law enforcement.  In fact, a police state “is characterized by bureaucracy, secrecy, perpetual wars, a nation of suspects, militarization, surveillance, widespread police presence, and a citizenry with little recourse against police actions.”

Indeed, the police state in which Jesus lived (and died) and its striking similarities to modern-day America are beyond troubling.

Secrecy, surveillance and rule by the elite. As the chasm between the wealthy and poor grew wider in the Roman Empire, the ruling class and the wealthy class became synonymous, while the lower classes, increasingly deprived of their political freedoms, grew disinterested in the government and easily distracted by “bread and circuses.” Much like America today, with its lack of government transparency, overt domestic surveillance, and rule by the rich, the inner workings of the Roman Empire were shrouded in secrecy, while its leaders were constantly on the watch for any potential threats to its power. The resulting state-wide surveillance was primarily carried out by the military, which acted as investigators, enforcers, torturers, policemen, executioners and jailers. Today that role is fulfilled by the NSA, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and the increasingly militarized police forces across the country.

Widespread police presence. The Roman Empire used its military forces to maintain the “peace,” thereby establishing a police state that reached into all aspects of a citizen’s life. In this way, these military officers, used to address a broad range of routine problems and conflicts, enforced the will of the state. Today SWAT teams, comprised of local police and federal agents, are employed to carry out routine search warrants for minor crimes such as marijuana possession and credit card fraud.

Citizenry with little recourse against the police state. As the Roman Empire expanded, personal freedom and independence nearly vanished, as did any real sense of local governance and national consciousness. Similarly, in America today, citizens largely feel powerless, voiceless and unrepresented in the face of a power-hungry federal government. As states and localities are brought under direct control by federal agencies and regulations, a sense of learned helplessness grips the nation.

Perpetual wars and a military empire. Much like America today with its practice of policing the world, war and an over-arching militarist ethos provided the framework for the Roman Empire, which extended from the Italian peninsula to all over Southern, Western, and Eastern Europe, extending into North Africa and Western Asia as well. In addition to significant foreign threats, wars were waged against inchoate, unstructured and socially inferior foes.

Martial law. Eventually, Rome established a permanent military dictatorship that left the citizens at the mercy of an unreachable and oppressive totalitarian regime. In the absence of resources to establish civic police forces, the Romans relied increasingly on the military to intervene in all matters of conflict or upheaval in provinces, from small-scale scuffles to large-scale revolts. Not unlike police forces today, with their martial law training drills on American soil, militarized weapons and “shoot first, ask questions later” mindset, the Roman soldier had “the exercise of lethal force at his fingertips” with the potential of wreaking havoc on normal citizens’ lives.

A nation of suspects. Just as the American Empire looks upon its citizens as suspects to be tracked, surveilled and controlled, the Roman Empire looked upon all potential insubordinates, from the common thief to a full-fledged insurrectionist, as threats to its power. The insurrectionist was seen as directly challenging the Emperor.  A “bandit,” or revolutionist, was seen as capable of overturning the empire, was always considered guilty and deserving of the most savage penalties, including capital punishment. Bandits were usually punished publicly and cruelly as a means of deterring others from challenging the power of the state.  Jesus’ execution was one such public punishment.

Acts of civil disobedience by insurrectionists. Starting with his act of civil disobedience at the Jewish temple, the site of the administrative headquarters of the Sanhedrin, the supreme Jewish council, Jesus branded himself a political revolutionary. When Jesus “with the help of his disciples, blocks the entrance to the courtyard” and forbids “anyone carrying goods for sale or trade from entering the Temple,” he committed a blatantly criminal and seditious act, an act “that undoubtedly precipitated his arrest and execution.” Because the commercial events were sponsored by the religious hierarchy, which in turn was operated by consent of the Roman government, Jesus’ attack on the money chargers and traders can be seen as an attack on Rome itself, an unmistakable declaration of political and social independence from the Roman oppression.

Military-style arrests in the dead of night. Jesus’ arrest account testifies to the fact that the Romans perceived Him as a revolutionary. Eerily similar to today’s SWAT team raids, Jesus was arrested in the middle of the night, in secret, by a large, heavily armed fleet of soldiers.  Rather than merely asking for Jesus when they came to arrest him, his pursuers collaborated beforehand with Judas. Acting as a government informant, Judas concocted a kiss as a secret identification marker, hinting that a level of deception and trickery must be used to obtain this seemingly “dangerous revolutionist’s” cooperation.

Torture and capital punishment. In Jesus’ day, religious preachers, self-proclaimed prophets and nonviolent protesters were not summarily arrested and executed. Indeed, the high priests and Roman governors normally allowed a protest, particularly a small-scale one, to run its course. However, government authorities were quick to dispose of leaders and movements that appeared to threaten the Roman Empire. The charges leveled against Jesus—that he was a threat to the stability of the nation, opposed paying Roman taxes and claimed to be the rightful King—were purely political, not religious. To the Romans, any one of these charges was enough to merit death by crucifixion, which was usually reserved for slaves, non-Romans, radicals, revolutionaries and the worst criminals.

Jesus was presented to Pontius Pilate “as a disturber of the political peace,” a leader of a rebellion, a political threat, and most gravely—a claimant to kingship, a “king of the revolutionary type.” After Jesus is formally condemned by Pilate, he is sentenced to death by crucifixion, “the Roman means of executing criminals convicted of high treason.”  The purpose of crucifixion was not so much to kill the criminal, as it was an immensely public statement intended to visually warn all those who would challenge the power of the Roman Empire. Hence, it was reserved solely for the most extreme political crimes: treason, rebellion, sedition, and banditry. After being ruthlessly whipped and mocked, Jesus was nailed to a cross.

As Professor Mark Lewis Taylor observed:

The cross within Roman politics and culture was a marker of shame, of being a criminal. If you were put to the cross, you were marked as shameful, as criminal, but especially as subversive. And there were thousands of people put to the cross. The cross was actually positioned at many crossroads, and, as New Testament scholar Paula Fredricksen has reminded us, it served as kind of a public service announcement that said, “Act like this person did, and this is how you will end up.”

Jesus—the revolutionary, the political dissident, and the nonviolent activist—lived and died in a police state. Any reflection on Jesus’ life and death within a police state must take into account several factors: Jesus spoke out strongly against such things as empires, controlling people, state violence and power politics. Jesus challenged the political and religious belief systems of his day. And worldly powers feared Jesus, not because he challenged them for control of thrones or government but because he undercut their claims of supremacy, and he dared to speak truth to power in a time when doing so could—and often did—cost a person his life.

Unfortunately, the radical Jesus, the political dissident who took aim at injustice and oppression, has been largely forgotten today, replaced by a congenial, smiling Jesus trotted out for religious holidays but otherwise rendered mute when it comes to matters of war, power and politics.

Yet for those who truly study the life and teachings of Jesus, the resounding theme is one of outright resistance to war, materialism and empire.

Ultimately, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, this is the contradiction that must be resolved if the radical Jesus—the one who stood up to the Roman Empire and was crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be—is to be an example for our modern age.

After all, there is so much suffering and injustice in the world, and so much good that can be done by those who truly aspire to follow Jesus Christ’s example.

We must decide whether we will follow the path of least resistance—willing to turn a blind eye to what Martin Luther King Jr. referred to as the “evils of segregation and the crippling effects of discrimination, to the moral degeneracy of religious bigotry and the corroding effects of narrow sectarianism, to economic conditions that deprive men of work and food, and to the insanities of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence”—or whether we will be transformed nonconformists “dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.”

As King explained in a powerful sermon delivered in 1954, “This command not to conform comes … [from] Jesus Christ, the world’s most dedicated nonconformist, whose ethical nonconformity still challenges the conscience of mankind.”

Furthermore:

We need to recapture the gospel glow of the early Christians, who were nonconformists in the truest sense of the word and refused to shape their witness according to the mundane patterns of the world.  Willingly they sacrificed fame, fortune, and life itself in behalf of a cause they knew to be right.  Quantitatively small, they were qualitatively giants.  Their powerful gospel put an end to such barbaric evils as infanticide and bloody gladiatorial contests.  Finally, they captured the Roman Empire for Jesus Christ… The hope of a secure and livable world lies with disciplined nonconformists, who are dedicated to justice, peace, and brotherhood.  The trailblazers in human, academic, scientific, and religious freedom have always been nonconformists.  In any cause that concerns the progress of mankind, put your faith in the nonconformist!

…Honesty impels me to admit that transformed nonconformity, which is always costly and never altogether comfortable, may mean walking through the valley of the shadow of suffering, losing a job, or having a six-year-old daughter ask, “Daddy, why do you have to go to jail so much?”  But we are gravely mistaken to think that Christianity protects us from the pain and agony of mortal existence.  Christianity has always insisted that the cross we bear precedes the crown we wear.  To be a Christian, one must take up his cross, with all of its difficulties and agonizing and tragedy-packed content, and carry it until that very cross leaves its marks upon us and redeems us to that more excellent way that comes only through suffering.

In these days of worldwide confusion, there is a dire need for men and women who will courageously do battle for truth.  We must make a choice. Will we continue to march to the drumbeat of conformity and respectability, or will we, listening to the beat of a more distant drum, move to its echoing sounds?  Will we march only to the music of time, or will we, risking criticism and abuse, march to the soul saving music of eternity?

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president The Rutherford Institute. His books Battlefield America: The War on the American People and A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State are available at www.amazon.com. He can be contacted at [email protected]. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

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).

***

The following commentary draws attention to a wake-up call by the renowned medical doctor and brain researcher Prof. Karl Hecht. The title is: “Thoughts are free – but with global digitalisation it’s over”. It was published by “Klagemauer.TV”, or “Kla.TV” for short. The content is about a hitherto concealed operation in the war of the “super-rich” against the vast majority of humanity. The declared goal: the establishment of a New World Order.

Never before, says the 96-year-old expert, have the technical prerequisites for a total dictatorship been as mature as they are today. In the age of digitalisation, he says, mind manipulation and thought control – especially through electromagnetic radio waves – have become ubiquitous reality. Only a conscious turning away from the ideology of digitalisation can save us from degrading into totally monitored robot humans. It is high time to stop this inhumane process and return to divine nature, because otherwise humanity will digitize itself away.

Elon Musk’s brain implant “Neuralink”, electromagnetic radio waves and 5G

Karl Hecht first talks about the beginnings of technical experiments in mind control in the 1950s and 1960s, which would be “old hat” from today’s perspective. He then moves on to talk about today’s digitalisation ideology, which generates great enthusiasm for this technology and promises a lot: prosperity, comfort, better schooling and even health and immortality. But in reality, digitalisation would bring total surveillance, make jobs disappear, make people sick and ultimately make them superfluous. Public opinion would be manipulated and in the end man would lose control over technology.

As an example, Professor Hecht mentions a recent invention by Elon Musk, one of those super-rich philanthropists and do-gooders. It is shocking news for him – and for all of us: Musk has invented a neuralink the size of a euro coin and is in the process of placing it on the skull with an incision through the scalp. This would create a connection or interface between the brain, this neuralink and a computer or mobile phone. According to Musk, this connection between brain and computer is necessary for mankind to keep pace with artificial intelligence (AI). Electromagnetic radio waves and the installation of the 5G mobile phone standard, even in space, are indispensable for this.

Stop the inhumane process!

So we are dealing with a technology that practically dehumanises the human being. The human being is being turned into a controllable machine, into a robot. This scientific truth must also be communicated to the youth and the inhumane process must be stopped!

The following quote by Galileo Galilei (1564 to 16429) is addressed in particular to the ruling gravediggers of nations and their servile and corrupt politicians and corporate media:

“He who does not know the truth is but a fool. But he who knows it, and calls it a lie, is a criminal.”

To the indolent contemporaries, the words of an American scientist who is reported to have said, according to Professor Hecht, that only the little secrets could be kept secret. The big secrets would be kept secret by the incredulity of the people. They would believe the scientific truth less than the lies.

Yet we all have a great responsibility for what we leave to the next generation. But our generation does not care about the future. Actually, we should leave our children something better than we have received. But we don’t seem to care about that.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is an educationalist and graduate psychologist.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

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

***

According to the latest figures derived from the European Medicines Agency’s database of Covid-19 vaccine adverse reactions, 162,610 injurious events and 3,964 deaths have now been reported.  Among the three major vaccines approved and deployed in Europe, Pfizer-Biontech’s vaccine accounts for over two-thirds of reported injuries and mortalities, or 102,100 and 2,540 events respectively.  Curiously, women disproportionately account for 77% of adverse events; this greater than 1:4 gender ratio is also being observed for Moderna’s and AstraZeneca’s vaccines.  So far there seems to be no scientific explanation to account for this gender disparity.

Recently, we have been alerted that AZ’s adenovirus vaccine is particularly worrisome. It has been less than two months since its administration in the EU commenced; already there have been over 54,000 injuries and 451 deaths registered.  Consequently, many European nations, which are more committed to protecting their citizens than increasing pharmaceutical profits, have placed moratoriums on administering AZ’s Covid vaccine.  In the UK, over 114,000 adverse reactions from AZ’s product or 4.6 reactions per 1,000 recipients has been reported.

However, the EU’s vaccine injury statistics are disturbing for another reason. It seems very apparent in our review of government and institutional figures that the EU has a far more robust and accurate vaccine injury reporting system in place. Given that the US started vaccinating adults against SARS-CoV-2 before the EU, we would expect to observe the number of reported adverse effects higher or at least proportionate. However, this is not the case.  Since December 14, 2020, the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has only reported 44,606 adverse events and 2,050 deaths – a small fraction compared to Europe and where the average European citizen is generally healthier and where far less doses have been administered.

Consider two other anomalies.  According to Oxford University’s global Covid-19 vaccine tracker, as of March 27th, the US has administered over 136 million doses, which accounts for about 25 percent of all Covid-19 vaccines administered worldwide.  On the other hand, the EU nations have only administered 66 million doses — less than a half compared to the US.  In addition, the US vaccination rate is now approximately 41 per 100 Americans. EU nations have individually vaccinated 17 per 100 citizens or less.  Therefore, why is there such an enormous discrepancy of adverse vaccine reactions between the US and EU?  The EU is reporting a 0.2 percent adverse reaction rate whereas the US is claiming only 0.03 percent, almost a ten-fold difference.

Various studies have estimated that only between 1 to 10 percent of vaccine injuries are reported in VAERS.  In the past the CDC has relied upon the conservative 10 percent estimate, which may account for the ten-fold discrepancy in adverse Covid-19 vaccine events in the EU and US.  A 2011 Harvard study in collaboration with the Federal Agency for Health Care Research has estimated actual adverse event reporting may be as low as 1 percent.  The study states,

“Adverse events from drugs and vaccines are common, but underreported. Although 25% of ambulatory patients experience an adverse drug event, less than 0.3% of all adverse drug events and 1-13% of serious events are reported to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Likewise, fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.”

If we assume the European Medicines Agency’s statistics are relatively accurate, we would therefore expect that the actual number of US adverse reactions should be in the neighborhood of 335,000 injuries and over 8,100 deaths.

Something is very seriously amiss with this scenario.

First we can surely agree that Covid vaccines do not hold a personal vendetta against Europeans. Nor does owning an EU passport make one more susceptible to a serious vaccine reaction.

Although anyone can report an adverse reaction to VAERS, very few Americans know it exists. The CDC notes that reporting vaccine injuries and deaths in the database is completely voluntary.  Consequently, there is no requirement for a vaccine administering physician or health professional to report an injury or death.  In fact, many doctors and healthcare workers are largely ignorant about VAERS’ existence as is the public.

Because VAERS is an extremely flawed passive surveillance system, it provides an extremely inaccurate picture for risks associated with every approved vaccine, let alone those against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.  The CDC’s National Immunization Program has acknowledged VAERS’ glaring limitations for over 25 years, but nothing has fundamentally changed in mandating its use throughout the medical establishment. As millions of Americans are rushing to get their shots, our health officials have been relying upon “a patchwork of existing programs that they acknowledge are inadequate because of small sample size, missing critical data or other problems.”  Anthony Fauci and the heads of our health agencies have known for many months that these vaccines were forthcoming. However they have been utterly negligent, according to a New York Times article, to put in place a robust monitoring system to record adverse vaccine reactions and to undertake appropriate analysis

VAERS has served as a highly successful propaganda tool to mask and hide actual vaccine risks instead of a reliable monitoring system.  Anyone can access the database, and it is the most common resource for those who follow and report adverse vaccine reaction trends.

Yet, the CDC also relies upon other monitoring sources, notably the Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD), a database controlled in a collaboration between the CDC and nine large managed healthcare organizations. In fact, the CDC states that it relies upon VSD “to evaluate vaccine safety issues.”

The Institute of Medicine ranks VSD as the best resource for conducting necessary analysis on vaccine safety and contains the electronic records of over 9 million Americans.  It is also relied upon for comparing the health status of vaccinated versus unvaccinated groups and for investigating long-term adverse vaccine risks.  However, despite our tax dollars going towards the funding of VSD, the database’s content is inaccessible to the public. Federal agencies have assured that its data remain the proprietary property of the private healthcare organizations to prevent it being used by independent researchers and journalists.

Given the CDC’s and FDA’s long history of secrecy and lack of transparency, and its long public relations arm that infiltrates every mainstream media source, it is not surprising that we never hear public service announcements notifying viewers and readership that the CDC has a system in place to report any adverse effects from Covid-vaccination. Now that the vaccines are being rolled en masse, we would expect our government to enforce due diligence to track vaccine injuries in the public interest. But we will never hear this information coming from the lips of the pharmaceutical media shills such as Sanjay Gupta and George Stephanopoulos. Not even during flu seasons when the media follows its marching orders from federal health agencies to persuade the public to roll up their sleeves.

In the meantime, the medical establishment gives lukewarm condolences towards those unfortunate to have become seriously ill or have died from the virus.  But think of all the others, Fauci and his federal colleagues consistently tell us over the media waves, who have been lucky enough to be vaccinated and can return to a normal life.  Just take these experimental vaccines despite the shoddy evidence to convince any objective reviewer that they prevent transmission or protect anyone from contracting the virus.

Nor were they tested to determine rates of hospitalization or deaths.  Yet the media makes every effort to assure us that we are being given the best information science can provide. And sadly, all this science is preferentially cherry picked to strengthen the false narrative to increase vaccination compliance. And since lockdowns, masks, social distancing and quarantining remain in place, it is near impossible to conduct any vigorous scientific study to determine how much or how little these vaccines are contributing to the rise and fall of infectious rates. Is it vaccination or all of the mandatory social restrictions that is the major contributing factor?

“The greatest enemy of knowledge,” wrote renowned historian Daniel Boorstein, “is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. Today, this illusion of authoritative knowledge pervades the medical establishment and brainwashes the sleeping media. In our opinion, it is becoming a dangerous collective mental disorder.  The good news is that more and more scientists, researchers and doctors within the towering medical citadel are exiting rapidly in order to publicly speak out against the litany of falsehoods, lies and corruption spewed from the orifices of the CDC, the FDA, World Health Organization and Big Pharma.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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).

***

In late 2020 Robert J. Burrowes and myself were asked by some Melbourne activists protesting against the lockdowns and Covid vaccinations to help them develop more effective strategy. Many of the protesters were new to activism, and those with an inclination towards following a nonviolent approach wanted education in this area.

In February, Robert and I ran two Introduction to Nonviolent Action workshops, and one Nonviolent Strategy weekend, and with the inspiration and input of this great group of participants, I have now put the basics of a worldwide nonviolent campaign strategy to defeat the Great Reset on a website. We have named this campaign We Are Human, We Are Free.

The website is designed as a resource that activists anywhere in the world can use to develop effective local nonviolent campaigns.

Here are some excerpts from the website:

We Are Human, We Are Free is a worldwide nonviolent resistance movement to free ourselves from Elite control and resist the forces of fear and dehumanisation.

Our aim is to build a mass civil resistance movement to undermine the power of the Global Elite to control us, and to regain the freedoms that make our lives worth living. Because we are human, we are free to make choices. The time has come to choose – are we on the side of love, life and freedom or fear, self-imprisonment and tyranny?…

What is happening in our world?

Do you have a gut feeling that there is something ‘wrong’ with the way this supposed pandemic is being presented, and with planetary wide lockdowns as a response? Are you being negatively impacted by lockdowns, or vaccines, in ways that make you feel the ‘cure’ is worse than the original ‘problem’? If what is going on doesn’t make sense to you, is there another, reasonable way to explain what is happening?…

The supposed pandemic and the planetary lockdown response are key tools in achieving the Global Elite’s aims – psychologically designed to dramatically increase people’s fear of the unknowable, and justify greater and greater loss of freedoms and human rights…

What is The Great Reset?

In brief, the Global Elite is in the process of establishing:

• A Monopolised Corporate Dictatorship of the economy, including all natural, agricultural, human, technological and financial resources, destroying any attempt of ordinary people to achieve economic self-reliance through independent farming, small and medium sized business, organic food production or local trade. The full digitisation of money (the end of currency altogether), will leave people with no control over currencies they can use to trade in ways they see fit. The advent of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ is expected to lead to at least one-third of jobs now performed by humans being replaced by software, robots, and smart machines by 2025, leaving at least 30% of people permanently unemployed. In a short video, the WEF predicts that by 2030, ‘You’ll own nothing, and you’ll be happy’.
• A Medical Dictatorship by profit-driven pharmaceutical medicine and psychiatry for social control, that denies the true value of natural and holistic physical and mental health, disallows use of non-patented or previously patented medicines, and forces damaging and experimental medical treatments and procedures on people without informed consent. These include vaccines involving genetic engineering and nanotech which have the potential to fundamentally change the way we exist as independent biological entities.
• National/State Government Dictatorships (intended to become a Global Government Dictatorship) controlled by elite ‘advice’ and interests, that destroy privacy through mass surveillance and restrict freedom of thought, speech, work, finances and movement.
• A Monopolised Media Dictatorship that uses censorship and propaganda for social control.
• A Technocratic Dictatorship run by pseudoscientific ‘experts’, involving the fourth industrial revolution (AI, satellites, robotics, drones and the Internet of Things); the surveillance, control and attempted ‘robotisation’ of our biological selves through nanotech implants and connection to AI through 5G technology; the control and destruction of the natural environment through technologies such as 5G and genetically modified crops; and the denigration of genuine scientific methods and principles, which are non-authoritarian by nature…

What can we do? Why choose nonviolent resistance?

We Are Human, We Are Free recognises that to defend our human needs and rights it is necessary to noncooperate with the forces of fear, and this involves many types of courageous and conscientious individual and collective action. While legal and political challenges within the system help raise awareness of the unhealthy nature of tyranny, we need to trust ourselves to make the final decisions about how to meet our own needs when existing political and legal systems are corrupted and fail. When we cannot defend ourselves according to legal or conventional political rules, we must step outside these rules and draw upon the more natural and fundamental powers of human solidarity, conscience and courage.

Some powerful acts of nonviolent noncooperation, such as boycotts, will remain legal and risk free. Increasingly, however, noncooperation will require civil disobedience, as the forces of fear attempt to reign us in ever more tightly. The Global Elite and their agents have already used arrests, fines, imprisonment, psychiatric committal, property seizure and direct violence against pro-freedom activists in different countries to try to intimidate us into giving up. They will continue to use violence against us. In these challenging circumstances, nonviolent processes and interactions provide the greatest degree of physical and psychological/emotional safety possible for activists and will help build the greatest number of participants in our growing movement…

Everyone is Welcome

Everyone is welcome to take action under the We Are Human, We Are Free banner if they agree with the three fundamental points that unify this movement:

1. That whatever the level of illness occurring in the community, and whatever its causes, there is no genuine evidence of the existence of a contagious pandemic that is killing statistically significant numbers of people, and therefore no justification for any of the measures which are supposedly a response to this ‘crisis’.
2. That the false pandemic is one tool being used by the Global Elite to achieve The Great Reset, which is designed to gain total control over the world’s natural resources and the entire human population. The various elements of The Great Reset must be collectively resisted if we are to gain back the freedoms that make our lives worth living.
3. All participants in this movement are willing to abide by the code of nonviolent discipline detailed on We Are Human, We Are Free in their campaigns.

We hope to build an easily recognisable worldwide movement against Elite dictatorship, which will unite us as we enact the many locally organised nonviolent campaigns necessary to win back our freedom.

Many nonviolent actions and campaigns are already occurring – we invite local campaigns to consider adding the We Are Human, We Are Free banner to their existing identities as a worldwide unifying element in their campaign…

What Sort of Actions Will Make a Real Difference to the Situation?

Public protests where we show our discontent and connect with the many others who feel as we do are a first step in addressing the problem. But effectively undermining attempted global dictatorship requires more than this – we need to take actions of strategic significance that transfer power from the hands of the Elite to ordinary people…

Choose messaging that clearly asks ordinary people to noncooperate in specific ways. For example “Choose Natural Health. Say No to Experimental Vaccines”; “Provide No Excuse for Lockdowns. Don’t Get Tested”; “Don’t Buy Censorship. Boycott Facebook”; “Use Your Own Eyes and Ears. Turn off Your TV”; “Don’t Buy 5G Upgrades”; “Don’t Feed the Monsters. Boycott Amazon…

And here are a few examples from the website of 29 ‘Strategic Goals’ which will contribute to achieving our overall purpose of defeating the Global Elite’s attempted takeover:

(1) To cause people and groups all around the world to join the resistance strategy by wearing a global symbol of human solidarity.

Asking people and groups all around the world to wear an orange ribbon, wristband or armband showing their solidarity as part of this worldwide nonviolent movement is a key way to increase people’s courage to take action. Can you think of particular groups of people to whom you might make this suggestion, or ways in which you might spread this message to the general public?…

(8) To cause people and groups all around the world to conscientiously refuse to submit to vaccination, which is likely to include nanotechnology that will subvert your individual identity, freedom, dignity, volition and privacy; including through a ‘digital vaccine passport’ (possibly delivered via a microneedle platform using fluorescent microparticles called ‘quantum dots’, which can deliver vaccines and at the same time invisibly encode vaccination history directly in the skin).

How can we best encourage people not to receive Covid vaccinations (experimental injectables), regardless of whether or not they are made legally mandatory by your national government? Can you organise picketing or boycotts of businesses that are coercing their workers into having vaccinations as a condition of employment?

Can you ask all air traffic controllers, and pilots and drivers of air, land and water transport (including military transport), and construction machinery such as cranes, to refuse to take vaccinations on account of the potentially catastrophic dangers to the community if they have a negative reaction to these experimental injectables while working?

Can you organise nonviolent protests or interventions at any education, healthcare (such as nursing homes) or travel related sites that have been targeted as priority vaccination sites to convince the management not to go ahead?

Can you organise a strike by workers at your workplace or in your industry in support of your right to choose not to be used as part of a medical experiment?

Can you organise a strike or ‘refusal to act on vaccine related punishment’ by public servants if they are ordered to cut off people’s government benefits for not taking a vaccine?

Can you ask GPs to resist performing Covid vaccinations by stating they are already overworked and have no further time for this ‘health’ campaign? Can you ask GPs to take positive responsibility for the health of their patients by presenting those patients who ask to be vaccinated with information regarding the exact contents of the vaccine and data regarding the known negative effects of the vaccine, and the data that is still unavailable because of its experimental nature, so that patients can make a genuinely informed choice?

(9) To cause people and groups all around the world to organize or participate in a collective event that conscientiously resists the Covid lockdowns.

This could be, for example, a cultural, religious or sporting event, a nonviolent action for another cause, a community activity such as working to establish a community garden to increase local self-reliance, a celebration or a return to work.

This is all about showing its okay to live our normal lives. The more people involved in a mass ‘dispersed’ event, the less likely we are to be arrested or receive fines. If you are just organising locally, with a small number of people involved, police liaison is crucial for the best possible outcomes to occur. You must be prepared personally for the risk of arrest, and think about how you can make this process as dignified as possible to show your courage and commitment, and your willingness to engage with the police as individual human beings. Then, they may arrest you today, but decide that they don’t wish to do so tomorrow.

The 50,000 restaurants in Italy that opened in defiance of lockdown restrictions in January 2021 are a great example of a mass, dispersed action of noncompliance. Many religious services have been held in defiance of lockdowns. What cultural events matter most in your local community? Sport? Music? How about a ‘Football for Freedom’ match or a ‘Band Together for Freedom’ music event? You may be arrested before completing your event, but if you go with police with dignity, the absurdity of the police’s actions will be made all the more clear.

(10) To cause people and groups all around the world to organize or participate in events that conscientiously refuse to maintain social distance.

Are you a grandparent? Is it possible to organise ‘Grandparents for Freedom’ days, where grandparents visit their grandchildren against lockdown regulations, and take photos of themselves hugging and kissing their grandchildren to post online, or to print off and letterbox drop around their local community? This would work directly against the Elite narrative of having to ‘protect’ our older people by keeping them in isolation, showing that older people have courage and volition of their own.

To give people non-arrestable and arrestable options for showing their support for the campaign, public nonviolent actions could be organised where some of the group abides by social distancing and mask wearing (the masks could have a question mark drawn on them, or lips that appear to be speaking), and holds banners with clear messages encouraging acts of noncooperation, while others remove masks and hold hands or hug one another, accepting arrest in a dignified manner if the police decide to take that course. These actions will work best if you have done solid police liaison beforehand. To discourage use of water cannons and teargas to clear crowds, many smaller public actions could be organised around a city on a particular day, rather than one mass action in a centralised location.

(15) To cause people all around the world fined for breaking ‘pandemic’-related health laws or regulations (mask wearing, social distancing and lockdown restrictions, including curfews, local and wider travel restrictions, ‘non-essential’ work bans and business closures) to refuse to pay their fines and continue to conscientiously break these laws or regulations, accepting time in jail as a prisoner of conscience if necessary.

The legal system as it exists in any country does not have the resources to put large numbers of people through the court and prison system. If people refuse to pay fines, and do not deliver themselves up to the legal system voluntarily, it will take enormous resources to send police to locate and arrest all those with a warrant, put them in front of a magistrate, and then imprison them for a number of days, weeks or months in lieu of paying the fine. Already, in Victoria, Australia, for example, many unpaid fines have been withdrawn by the government, presumably for this reason, and the 50,000 restaurant owners in Italy who reopened against lockdown restrictions cannot possibly all be imprisoned for their actions.

It will be necessary to morally and practically support anyone who is targeted for prosecution as a ‘public example’ – if these people can be supported well through a prison experience, they can understand their important role in remaining courageous and patient for the benefit of the movement as a whole. The more of us who refuse to pay fines, the less chance there is of anyone being prosecuted, until the point where the authorities simply give up trying to enforce the laws or regulations.

(16) To cause the police to refuse to obey orders from the Global Elite and its agents to arrest, assault, torture and shoot nonviolent activists and the other citizens of your country.

There are already some great nonviolent initiatives happening with the police, which you may like to copy in your local area. Check out Police for Freedom, for example. Talking to police at stations in your area, to get to know them as individuals, and when you are planning actions, is vital to the success of this movement. We need the police, security personnel and military personnel on our side and need to give them every opportunity to see us as people they respect and want to stand with. Obviously when people have had very bad experiences with police and other security forces, this can make it difficult for them to feel confident or willing to do this. Choose people who do have confidence to liaise with security forces, and work out ways to support and provide extra protection for those who have been previously abused.

We hope that the We Are Human, We Are Free website will provide a user friendly resource for developing a worldwide nonviolent campaign against the Global Elite’s Great Reset, encouraging many acts of noncooperation from ordinary, empowered people. We look forward to your participation!

Much love to you all from Victoria, Australia.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Anita McKone has been a nonviolent activist, educator and researcher since 1993. She has been arrested and imprisoned on a number of occasions for her activism. She has written many articles on different aspects of nonviolent activism, psychology and philosophy. Her website is at Songs of Nonviolence.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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).

***

“More and more open areas in East Jerusalem are being designated as preservation or national parks, and this is clearly in order to prevent Palestinian urban development.” — Sari Kronish, Israeli planning rights organization Bimkom

For decades, a Palestinian village on the southern tip of Jerusalem has lived on and cultivated the land. But a series of recent efforts by Israel is not only threatening their way of life but potentially displacing them from their homes.

On January 25, the Jerusalem District Planning Committee rejected the residents of Palestinian village al-Walaja’s plan to legalize their homes and further develop the community. Instead, the committee declared their land an ancient agricultural area in need of environmental conservation that should be transformed into a national park.

The notion of environmental integrity struck Amy Cohen, director of international relations and advocacy at Israeli non-profit Ir Amim, as contradictory.

“The planning committee and the [Israel] Civil Administration within the West Bank [have] been promoting and advancing plans within the same area for Jewish settlers,” Cohen said. “It shows massive discrimination in how [Israel] treats Palestinian areas in order to suppress the residential development.”

The committee’s decision paves the way for the lifting of the demolition freeze on 38 al-Walaja homes. On April 26, Israel’s Supreme Court will convene for a hearing on al-Walaja’s 2018 petition over its resident-initiated outline plan.

The portion of al-Walaja (spelled Al Walajeh on this map) facing mass demolitions is shaded in brown within the purple circle between the apartheid wall (red line) and the Jerusalem municipal border/annexation line (blue line). Credit | Ir Amim

Ibrahim A’raj, 37, grew up in al-Walaja. The home he built for his family in 2016 is now under threat of demolition. A’raj expects the court will not rule in al-Walaja’s favor in April and his house will be demolished.

“It’s not logical or legal,” A’raj said, referring to the Planning Committee’s rejection of the development plan for environmental reasons. “The village is surrounded by settlements and the wall, which destroyed the nature and environmental landscape.”

The Planning Committee did not respond to requests for comment.

Zones and no permits

When Israel annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, it took the northern section of al-Walaja as well. Today, al-Walaja is split between Jerusalem and Areas B and C of the West Bank, so one-third of the land is controlled by the Jerusalem Municipality and the rest by the Bethlehem Governorate.

The Jerusalem area of al-Walaja has been at risk of forced displacement for a decade as a result of the Planning Committee’s refusal to discuss an outline plan. This refusal has made it impossible for the community to obtain building permits, so A’raj had to construct his house without one.

Amid the absence of building permits, demolition orders have increased. More than 20 homes have been razed in al-Walaja since 2016.

An isolated village cut off from its surroundings

Israeli authorities have prevented al-Walaja from developing while expanding Jewish settlements around the village and the apartheid wall (the barrier separating the West Bank and Israel).

Construction of the wall on three sides of al-Walaja cut off the village from nearly 300 acres of its agricultural land and turned that land into Nahal Refaim National Park. Har Gilo settlement lies to the south of al-Walaja. The Israel Civil Administration’s proposed expansion of the Har Gilo settlement to the west of the village will extend the wall, thereby enclosing al-Walaja and fully isolating it from its surroundings. The Civil Administration did not respond to requests for comment.

“The wall and the settlements deprived us from accessing our own land that we worked so hard to cultivate,” A’raj said, mentioning how the villagers are now blocked from the olive trees they harvested before the wall was built.

Ancient agricultural terraces in al-Walaja (left) and Israel’s destruction of ancient terraces to build the wall (right). Photos | B’Tselem

Al-Walaja residents experience harassment daily from Israeli settlers and authorities. A’raj explained:

The Civil Administration confiscates our equipment when we start building a new house. The settlers around us use drones to take pictures when we start building and send them to the Civil Administration. The police put checkpoints at the entrance of the village and sometimes inside the village and the Walaja Bypass Road [connecting Har Gilo settlement to Jerusalem] gets a lot of traffic, so it limits our movement.”

A’raj lamented that if his home is demolished, he will likely leave al-Walaja, the place he’s called home his whole life. “It’s a huge tyranny that I have to leave my own house and my own land,” he said.

Israel doesn’t provide alternative or temporary housing for Palestinians whose homes they demolish. Sari Kronish — East Jerusalem planner for Bimkom, an Israeli planning rights organization — described the government’s lack of consideration in helping displaced families find housing as one of the “dark sides of the Israeli regime at the moment.”

“The very sad reality is that the authorities don’t offer [the uprooted Palestinians] anything. They just treat them as lawbreakers who are receiving their penalty,” Kronish said. “People just become homeless and become displaced.”

Ir Amim’s Cohen emphasizes that what Israel is enacting isn’t just the wide-scale displacement of Palestinians but also an attempt at annexation. She elaborated:

It’s an acute humanitarian toll that’s exacted upon the families, but it is also in service to the Israeli objective of consolidating control, which completely undermines any sort of conditions for a two-state solution based on two capitals. Because if you can completely segment Palestinian contiguity and advance steps toward de facto annexation of these areas, then you’re foiling a prospect of an agreed resolution.”

Not just al-Walaja

In what many Palestinians have described as a continuation of the Nakba (Israel’s 1948 ethnic cleansing campaign in Palestine), Israel is currently in the process of expelling thousands of Palestinians from East Jerusalem under the pretext of preservation.

“More and more open areas in East Jerusalem are being designated as preservation or national parks, and this is clearly in order to prevent Palestinian urban development,” Kronish said.

In the Al-Bustan neighborhood of the East Jerusalem district of Silwan, mass dispossession looms over the residents in order to make room for the touristic venture, Garden of the King. The community of Sheikh Jarrah is experiencing displacement at the hands of settler groups for the Shimon HaTzadik National Park.

Israel has long employed the practice of stealing Palestinian land and claiming it for recreational purposes. Many of Israel’s prized national parks were built on top of Palestinian villages destroyed during the Nakba. In Jerusalem, for instance, the remains of the village of Lifta are now a national park and hotel. Garbage and graffiti adorn what’s left of Lifta’s stone houses. Most of the village’s inhabitants, who were expelled in 1948, and their descendants live in refugee camps around Jerusalem — unable to return to home.

“It’s a form of institutional confiscation and settlement in the guise of green protection,” Kronish said.

Displacing indigenous peoples under the claim of conservation is an inherently settler-colonialist tactic spanning regions and centuries. Most well-known national parks in the United States like Yellowstone and Yosemite were once Native American tribal territories. In order to create an “uninhabited wilderness,” the federal government first had to remove the native peoples living on that land.

Modern environmentalism ignorantly dictates Some environmentalist assumptions suggest humans cannot coexist with wildlife. But that racist assumption idea ignores the history of indigenous communities living with and preserving nature.

Native Americans understood how to sustainably tend to the land. And just as in al-Walaja, maintaining the land is part of their livelihood.

Kronish explained:

This type of agricultural lifestyle is very dependent on people living [on] and working the land harmoniously. Once people are displaced, attempts at preservation become artificial. The residents would argue that by continuing to live there, they are more able to continue to preserve. For them, it’s not a question of preservation. It’s a question of a way of life and connection to the land.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Jessica Buxbaum is a Jerusalem-based journalist for MintPress News covering Palestine, Israel, and Syria. Her work has been featured in Middle East Eye, The New Arab and Gulf News.

Featured image is from PressTV

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).

***

I’m sitting at a bar in Texas, surrounded by maskless people, looking at folks on the streets walking around like life is normal, talking with nice and friendly faces, feeling like things in the world are more-or-less normal. Cases and deaths attributed to Covid are, like everywhere else, falling dramatically. 

If you pay attention only to the media fear campaigns, you would find this confusing. More than two weeks ago, the governor of Texas completely reversed his devastating lockdown policies and repealed all his emergency powers, along with the egregious attacks on rights and liberties.

There was something very un-Texan about those lockdowns. My hotel room is festooned with pictures of cowboys on horses waving guns in the air, along with other depictions of rugged individualism facing down the elements. It’s a caricature but Texans embrace it. Then a new virus came along – as if that had never happened before in Texas – and the new Zoom class took the opposite path, not freedom but imposition and control.

After nearly a year of nonsense, on March 2, 2021, the governor finally said enough is enough and repealed it all. Towns and cities can still engage in Covid-related mischief but at least they are no longer getting cover from the governor’s office.

At that moment, a friend remarked to me that this would be the test we have been waiting for. A complete repeal of restrictions would lead to mass death, they said. Would it? Did the lockdowns really control the virus? We would soon find out, he theorized.

I knew better. The “test” of whether and to what extent lockdowns control the virus or “suppress outbreaks” (in Anthony Fauci’s words) has been tried all over the world. Every serious empirical examination has shown that the answer is no.

The US has many examples of open states that have generally had better performance in managing the disease than those states that are closed. Georgia already opened on April 24, 2020. South Dakota never shut down. South Carolina opened in May. Florida ended all restrictions in September. In every case, the press howled about the coming slaughter that did not happen. Yes, each open state experienced a seasonality wave in winter but so did the lockdown states.

So it was in Texas. Thanks to this Twitter thread, and some of my own googling, we have a nice archive of predictions about what would happen if Texas opened.

• California Governor Gavin Newsom said that opening Texas was “absolutely reckless.”
• Gregg Popovich, head coach of the NBA San Antonio Spurs, said opening was “ridiculous” and “ignorant.”
• CNN quoted an ICU nurse saying “I’m scared of what this is going to look like.”
• Vanity Fair went over the top with this headline: “Republican Governors Celebrate COVID Anniversary With Bold Plan to Kill Another 500,000 Americans.”
• There was the inevitable Dr. Fauci: “It just is inexplicable why you would want to pull back now.”
• Robert Francis “Beto” O’Rourke of Texas revealed himself to be a full-blown lockdowner: It’s a “big mistake,” he said. “It’s hard to escape the conclusion that it’s also a cult of death.” He accused the governor of “sacrificing the lives of our fellow Texans … for political gain.”
• James Hamblin, a doctor and writer for the Atlantic, said in a Tweet liked by 20K people: “Ending precautions now is like entering the last miles of a marathon and taking off your shoes and eating several hot dogs.”
• Bestselling author Kurt Eichenwald flipped out: “Goddamn. Texas already has FIVE variants that have turned up: Britain, South Africa, Brazil, New York & CA. The NY and CA variants could weaken vaccine effectiveness. And now idiot @GregAbbott_TX throws open the state.” He further called the government “murderous.”
• Epidemiologist Whitney Robinson wrote: “I feel genuinely sad. There are people who are going to get sick and die bc of avoidable infections they get in the next few weeks. It’s demoralizing.”
• Pundit Bill Kristol (I had no idea that he was a lockdowner) wrote: “Gov. Abbott is going to be responsible for more avoidable COVID hospitalizations and deaths than all the undocumented immigrants coming across the Texas border put together.”
• Health pundit Bob Wachter said the decision to open was “unforgivable.”
• Virus guru Michael Osterholm told CNN: “We’re walking into the mouth of the monster. We simply are.”
• Joe Biden famously said that the Texas decision to open reflected “Neanderthal thinking.”
• Nutritionist Eric Feigl-Ding said that the decision makes him want to “vomit so bad.”
• The chairman of the state’s Democratic Party said: “What Abbott is doing is extraordinarily dangerous. This will kill Texans. Our country’s infectious-disease specialists have warned that we should not put our guard down, even as we make progress towards vaccinations. Abbott doesn’t care.”
• Other state Democrats said in a letter that the decision was “premature and harmful.”
• The CDC’s Rochelle Walensky didn’t mince words: “Please hear me clearly: At this level of cases with variants spreading, we stand to completely lose the hard-earned ground we have gained. I am really worried about reports that more states are rolling back the exact public health measures we have recommended to protect people from COVID-19.”

There are probably hundreds more such warnings, predictions, and demands, all stated with absolute certainty that basic social and market functioning is a terrible idea. The lockdown lobby was out in full force. And yet what do we see now more than two weeks out (and arguably the lockdowns died on March 2, when the government announced the decision)?

Here are the data.

The CDC has a very helpful tool that allows anyone to compare open vs closed states. The results are devastating for those who believe that lockdowns are the way to control a virus. In this chart we compare closed states Massachusetts and California with open states Georgia, Florida, Texas, and South Carolina.

What can we conclude from such a visualization? It suggests that the lockdowns have had no statistically observable effect on the virus trajectory and resulting severe outcomes. The open states have generally performed better, perhaps not because they are open but simply for reasons of demographics and seasonality. The closed states seem not to have achieved anything in terms of mitigation.

On the other hand, the lockdowns destroyed industries, schools, churches, liberties and lives, demoralizing the population and robbing people of essential rights. All in the name of safety from a virus that did its work in any case.

As for Texas, the results so far are in.

I’m making no predictions about the future path of the virus in Texas. Indeed for a full year, AIER has been careful about not trying to outguess this virus, which has its own ways, some predictable and some mysterious. The experience has, or should have, humbled everyone. Political arrangements seem to have no power to control it, much less finally suppress it. The belief that it was possible to control people in order to control a virus produced a calamity unprecedented in modern times.

What’s striking about all the above predictions of infections and deaths is not just that they were all wrong. It’s the arrogance and confidence behind each of them. After a full year and directly observing the inability of “nonpharmaceutical interventions” to manage the pathogen, the experts are still wedded to their beloved lockdowns, unable or unwilling to look at the data and learn anything from them.

The concept of lockdowns stemmed from a faulty premise: that you can separate humans, like rats in cages, and therefore control and even eradicate the virus. After a year, we unequivocally know this not to be true, something that the best and wisest epidemiologists knew all along. Essential workers still must work; they must go home to their families, many in crowded living conditions. Lockdowns do not eliminate the virus, they merely shift the burden onto the working class.

Now we can see the failure in black, white, and full color, daily appearing on our screens courtesy of the CDC. Has that shaken the pro-lockdown pundit class? Not that much. What an amazing testament to the stubbornness of elite opinion and its bias against basic freedoms. They might all echo the words of Groucho Marx: “Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Editorial Director for the American Institute for Economic Research. He is the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and nine books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also the editor of The Best of Mises. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

Jeffrey is available for speaking and interviews via his email.  Tw | FB | LinkedIn

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

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

***

As of March 16, 2021, 19 European countries plus Thailand¹ had suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s vaccine, either in full or in part, following reports of deadly blood clots.^2,3 March 2, 2021, The Defender reported⁴ U.K. data showing the AstraZeneca vaccine was responsible for 77% more adverse events and 25% more deaths than the Pfizer vaccine, which in the U.S. has been connected with a majority of death reports in the Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS).

AstraZeneca’s vaccine has received emergency use authorization in Europe but not in the U.S., where the Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines are available. Contrary to the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, the AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson vaccines use a viral vector to deliver double-stranded DNA for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into your cells.⁵

Business Insider has created a comparison chart⁶ of the four vaccines — Moderna, Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson — currently available in the U.S. and Europe.

Norway Links Lethal Blood Clots to AstraZeneca Vaccine

While virtually all post-vaccination deaths so far have been shrugged off as coincidence, even when occurring in healthy individuals in their 20s and 30s, doctors at Oslo University Hospital have now announced the blood clotting disorders experienced by some recipients of the AstraZeneca vaccine are in fact caused by the vaccine.⁷

A March 18, 2021, article in Science Norway reads, in part:⁸

“’Our theory that this is a powerful immune response most likely triggered by the vaccine, has been confirmed,’ says professor and chief physician Pål Andre Holme. Three Norwegian health workers under the age of 50 have been hospitalized. One is dead …

‘In collaboration with experts in the field from the University Hospital of North Norway HF, we have found specific antibodies against blood platelets that can cause these reactions, and which we know from other fields of medicine, but then with medical drugs as the cause of the reaction,’ the chief physician explains …

When asked to clarify why he says ‘most likely’ in the quote, Holme confidently responds that the reason for these rare cases of blood clots has been found.

‘We have the reason. Nothing but the vaccine can explain why these individuals had this immune response,’ he states. [Norwegian national newspaper] VG also asks how Holme can know that the immune response is not caused by something other than the vaccine.

‘There is nothing in the patient history of these individuals that can give such a powerful immune response. I am confident that the antibodies that we have found are the cause, and I see no other explanation than it being the vaccine which triggers it,’ he responds.”

The three health workers reported acute pain, bleeding, low platelet counts and were found to have blood clots in “unusual places,” such as their stomachs and brains. Later that same day, March 18, 2021, the European Medicines Agency ruled the AstraZeneca vaccine is “safe and effective, despite some concerns over possible side effects,” CNBC reported,⁹ and that benefits of the vaccine outweigh the risks.

Meanwhile, March 22, 2021, Norway Today reported the Norwegian Medicines Agency had received two new reports of blood clots with deadly consequences following vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine. In a press release, the agency stated that “The Norwegian Medicines Agency cannot rule out that these cases may have a connection with the AstraZeneca vaccine.”¹⁰ One of the two victims was a health care worker.

German Experts Weigh In

A March 19, 2021, German Spektrum article¹¹ reviews preliminary findings by German investigators, which add further weight to Holme’s findings in Norway. It reads, in part (translation from German using translate.com):

“The effects of the suspended vaccinations with the AstraZeneca vaccine are believed to have been due to a particular immune response that activates platelets and thus triggers thrombosis. This preliminary conclusion is being made by a working group made up of Andreas Greinacher from the University Hospital Greifswald.

The effect corresponds in many details to a heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT) type 2,¹² in which antibodies against a protein complex are formed in connection with heparin, which in turn respond to a receptor on the platelets …

The team demonstrated the similarity of thrombosis with HIT in the blood of four patients with sinus vein thrombosis. Antibodies appear to form against a complex of heparin and the signaling molecule PF4, which in turn interact with the receptor CD32 of the platelets and thus activate them.

This triggers the clotting cascade, which leads to the thrombosis. The antibodies produced in the vaccinated individuals were very similar to those found in HIT, Greinacher said at a news conference. So far, however, it is still unclear where these antibodies come from, whether they form against the vaccine virus or the spike antigen or perhaps against a factor only involved in the immune response.”

According to Greinacher, people with a history of thrombosis probably do not have a higher risk of complications from the vaccine due to the mechanism of harm. He also points out that there is treatment against HIT, which the team believes “should also work in the case of the suspected vaccination side effect.”

Spektrum reports that, based on these findings, the Society for Thrombosis and Hemostasis Research suggests vaccinated individuals who experience thrombosis or neurological symptoms such as dizziness, headache or visual impairment on the fifth day post-vaccination and onward should be tested for HIT type 2.

The HIT type 2 test will detect antibodies against the heparin complex and, if positive, the Society recommends administering intravenous immunoglobulin G to prevent the activation of CD32 and interrupt the mechanism that results in thrombosis.

AstraZeneca Efficacy Data Being Questioned

March 22, 2021, AstraZeneca¹³ announced its Phase 3 U.S.-based trial showed the vaccine was 79% effective at preventing symptomatic cases of COVID-19 and 100% effective against severe or critical disease and hospitalization, with no increased risk for adverse effects compared to placebo.

According to The Associated Press,¹⁴ partial results from trials in the U.K, Brazil and South Africa — where a “manufacturing mistake” had led to some participants receiving only half of their first dose — suggested the vaccine was 70% effective.

The AP goes on to cite a number of individuals saying the U.S. results should allay concerns about the AstraZeneca vaccine.

That narrative broke apart the very next day, March 23, 2021, when the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) issued a statement^15,16,17 first thing in the morning, saying the Data and Safety Monitoring board (DSMB) had notified them that AstraZeneca’s data may include “outdated information” that cast doubt on its effectiveness. As reported by The Defender:¹⁸

“Notably, in its most recent data, AstraZeneca neglected to include key information, such as the number of trial participants who developed ‘severe COVID.’ AstraZeneca President Ruud Dobber, during an interview on CNBC’s Squawk Box, said the number was ‘5,’ shortly after the data were released.”

“We urge the company to work with the DSMB to review the efficacy data and ensure the most accurate, up-to-date efficacy data be made public as quickly as possible,” the NIAID said in its statement.¹⁹

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who heads the NIAID and was one of the people quoted by the AP as saying the U.S. trial ought to put concerns to rest, went on the defensive, saying “This is really what you call an unforced error because the fact is, this is very likely a very good vaccine. If you look at it the data, they really are quite good, but when they put it into the press release, it wasn’t completely accurate.”²⁰

AstraZeneca responded²¹ saying the data were based on a “pre-specified interim analysis with a data cut-off” of February 17, 2021, and promised to share more data with the independent review board.

In a Tweet,²² Francois Balloux, professor and director of the UCL Genetics Institute, called the NIAID’s statement “highly unusual,” noting it “comes close to accusing Oxford/AZ of having willfully misrepresented” some of its trial results.

Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, called the NIAID’s statement “unprecedented,” as while the DSMB will “sometimes disagree with investigators over vaccine trial results,” they typically do so “in private,” not publicly.²³

This isn’t the first time AstraZeneca has been challenged over its data handling, though. As reported by The Defender:²⁴

“‘The way they handled their data early on, AstraZeneca basically shot themselves in the foot,’ Julian Tang, a virologist at the University of Leicester, said even before the latest issue arose.

AstraZeneca has received criticism over its studies since the first data released in the UK, which purported to show the vaccine was 70% effective, yet failed to account for a manufacturing mistake and didn’t include enough participants over 65 to determine efficacy among older patients …”

Full Throttle Forward Despite Risks

Despite concerns about data mishandling and two independent investigations finding a mechanism of harm, the World Health Organization and the European Medicines Agency are saying the AstraZeneca vaccine is good to go and urge countries to keep using it.

March 18, 2021, the EMA issued a press release²⁵ giving the AstraZeneca the green-light, despite admitting it is associated with “very rare cases of blood clots associated with thrombocytopenia, i.e., low levels of blood platelets.” The justification, as usual, is that the benefits outweigh the risks.^26,27,28

But do they? What exactly are the benefits? You can still contract the virus. You can still spread the virus. All it promises to do is lessen your symptoms when you get infected. Sure, the idea is that by lessening symptoms, you’ll reduce your risk of hospitalization and death, but lessening symptoms is not what a vaccine is supposed to do. A vaccine is supposed to make you immune to the disease in question, and none of the COVID-19 vaccines does that.

I’ve discussed this in 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.”

What’s more, COVID-19 is really only a serious risk to the very old and people with two or more comorbidities. For the rest, its lethality is on par with the common flu.^{29,30,31,32,33} It may be different in terms of symptoms and complications, but the actual lethality is about the same.

Data³⁴ have shown the overall noninstitutionalized infection fatality ratio for all age groups is 0.26%. If you’re under the age of 40, your risk of dying from COVID-19 if you get infected is just 0.01%.

Meanwhile, as reviewed in “COVID-19 Vaccine Tested on Babies Even as Death Toll Mounts,” the lethality rate of COVID-19 vaccines is somewhere between 0.0024% and 0.0028%, and that’s assuming all deaths are being reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is doubtful.

The key difference between being harmed or killed by COVID-19 and being harmed or killed by the vaccine is that the illness kills those who are old, sick and frail, while reports show the vaccine is killing young and healthy people. From my perspective, the argument that the vaccine benefits outweigh the risks simply does not hold water.

Side Effects 3X More Common in Those Previously Infected

In related news, according to researchers at King’s College, people who have already had COVID are three times more likely to experience vaccine side effects than those who have not been exposed to the virus, and this appears true for both mRNA and DNA versions of the vaccine.³⁵

They gleaned this information from the college’s ZOE app, which has logged more than 700,000 vaccinations. According to that data, 35.7% of those given the Pfizer vaccine who had previously been infected reported side effects, compared to just 12.2% of those not previously infected.

Looking at the AstraZeneca vaccine specifically, 52.7% of previously infected had side effects, compared to 31.9% of those who had not been previously infected.

While The Telegraph reports this as being a beneficial thing, saying “More severe side effects are often a sign of better immunity, and emerging research suggests just one dose of vaccine gives a similar protective effect to two doses in people who have had a previous infection,” some experts vehemently disagree.

Proper Timing May Eliminate Some Vaccine Risks

In January 2021, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, a cardiac surgeon and patient advocate, sent a public letter³⁶ to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration commissioner detailing the risks of vaccinating individuals who have previously been infected with SARS-CoV-2, or who have an active SARS-CoV-2 infection.

He urged the FDA to require prescreening for SARS-CoV-2 viral proteins to reduce the risk of injuries and deaths following vaccination, as the vaccine may trigger an adverse immune response in those who have already been infected with the virus.

Fox TV host Tucker Carlson recently interviewed him about these risks as well. In that interview, Noorchashm said:³⁷

“I think it’s a dramatic error on part of public health officials to try to put this vaccine into a one-size-fits-all paradigm … We’re going to take this problem we have with the COVID-19 pandemic, where a half-percent of the population is susceptible to dying, and compound it by causing totally avoidable harm by vaccinating people who are already infected …

The signal is deafening, the people who are having complications or adverse events are the people who have recently or are currently or previously infected [with COVID]. I don’t think we can ignore this.”

In an emailed response to The Defender, Noorchashm fleshed out his concerns, saying:³⁸

“Viral antigens persist in the tissues of the naturally infected for months. When the vaccine is used too early after a natural infection, or worse during an active infection, the vaccine force activates a powerful immune response that attacks the tissues where the natural viral antigens are persisting. This, I suggest, is the cause of the high level of adverse events and, likely deaths, we are seeing in the recently infected following vaccination.”

Noorchashm is now pushing for the implementation of a prevaccine screening campaign (#ScreenB4Vaccine), using PCR or rapid antigen testing to determine whether the individual has an active infection, and an IgG antibody test to determine past infection.

If either test is positive, he recommends delaying vaccination for a minimum of three to six months to allow your IgG levels to wane. At that point, he recommends testing your blood IgG level and use that as a guide to decide the timing of your vaccination. As reported by The Defender:³⁹

“Noorchashm told Carlson that he’s been wrongly accused of stoking vaccine hesitancy, when just the opposite is true — if public health officials want people to trust the vaccines, they need to do everything possible to avoid creating situations where the vaccines can actually cause harm.

‘People aren’t stupid,’ Noorchashm said. ‘If you explain how the vaccine works, and give them the information on how to keep themselves safe,’ that is how you build trust.”

What to Do if You Regret Getting the COVID-19 Vaccine

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.”

Additionally, if you’re experiencing 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:⁴⁰

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.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Notes

¹ The Sun March 15, 2021, Updated March 16, 2021

² The Defender March 16, 2021 Countries Suspend AstraZeneca Vaccine

³ The Defender March 11, 2021

⁴ The Defender March 2, 2021

⁵ New York Times February 3, 2021 (Archived)

⁶ Business Insider March 1, 2021

^7, 8 Science Norway March 18, 2021

⁹ CNBC March 18, 2021

¹⁰ Norway Today March 22, 2021

¹¹ Spektrum March 19, 2021

¹² Cleveland Clinic Type 2 Heparin-Induced Thrombocytopenia

¹³ AstraZeneca Press Release March 22, 2021

¹⁴ AP March 22, 2021

^15, 19 NIH NIAID Statement of AstraZeneca Vaccine March 23, 2021

^16, 20 The Verge March 23, 2021

^{17, 18, 23, 24, 37, 38, 39} The Defender March 23, 2021

²¹ AstraZeneca Press Release March 23, 2021

²² Twitter Prof Francois Balloux March 23, 2021

²⁵ EMA March 18, 2021

²⁶ New York Times March 22, 2021

²⁷ NBC News March 15, 2021

²⁸ World Pharma News March 17, 2021

²⁹ The Mercury News May 20, 2020 (Archived)

^30, 34 Annals of Internal Medicine September 2, 2020 DOI: 10.7326/M20-5352

³¹ Breitbart May 7, 2020

³² Scott Atlas US Senate Testimony May 6, 2020 (PDF)

³³ John Ioannidis US Senate Testimony May 6, 2020 (PDF)

³⁵ The Telegraph March 5, 2021 (Archived)

³⁶ Medium February 15, 2021

⁴⁰ The Defender January 25, 2021

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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

***

As mass vaccination campaigns with experimental COVID injections now move on to the next demographic populations after beginning with senior citizens in assisted care facilities, and the healthcare workers in those facilities, the next targeted groups are educators.

We have seen multiple reports, for example, in the U.S. of entire school districts having to close down following a mass COVID injection campaign, as so many people get sick after the injections that there have not been enough employees in some school districts to hold classes right away following these massive injections.

Last week, I was informed of 3 deaths among faculty following COVID injections in one school district in Portland. But with nothing printed in the media and social media accounts silenced, I could not get collaborating evidence to publish those stories.

The Italian press, however, has now reported another death following the AstraZeneca COVID injection, a young professor from Gela, Italy. This follows our report from last week about 31-year-old Ilaria Pappa, a professor from Ischia, Italy, that The COVID Blog reported.

The professor from Gela is 37-year-old Zelia Guzzo. The Italian news publication quotidianodigela.it reports:

Zelia didn’t make it. After 12 days the professor died.

Only a miracle could have saved her, changing a clinical picture that already last week had appeared irreversible. Shortly before eight o’clock last night it was ascertained that for Zelia Guzzo, 37 years old, there was nothing more to do.

The 37-year-old teacher leaves her husband, also a teacher, and a young son. A tragedy that has shocked the family and all the colleagues where Zelia worked and was appreciated.

Twelve days ago the young woman had felt ill and had been forced to hospitalization first in the hospital, then urgently to Sant’Elia of Caltanissetta. Conditions made very serious because her condition was affected by a cerebral hemorrhage.

Three weeks ago she had received the Astrazeneca vaccine as well as all teachers in the province.

She had been breathing artificially for a week.

The prosecutor’s office of Gela has already started the first investigations to determine the possible causality with the vaccine she had received on March 1. A huge tragedy, which left in shock not only those who knew Zelia but the whole city. (Source.)

This is now the second time we have seen a criminal investigation started against the AstraZeneca COVID vaccines in Italy, following a death after injection.

Prosecutors in the northern Italian region of Piedmont also started a criminal investigation after a 57-year-old clarinet teacher passed away less than 24 hours after having the first dose of the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine. (Story here.)

Newsicilia.it is reporting that the shot that killed Zelia Guzzo in Gela is NOT from the same questionable batch of AstraZeneca COVID doses responsible for the death of Stefano Paternò, a 43-year-old Italian serviceman in Sicily. (Source.)

Meanwhile, the Prosecutor of Gela has ordered the seizure of medical records and documentation relating to the vaccine of the young teacher.

To report that the drug administered was not part of the famous lot ABV2856 seized by Aifa.

In short, the investigation goes on, but the pain remains. The pain of those who have seen break the dream of a 37 year old ready to protect others and herself, ready to fulfill her duty, ready to vaccinate to return to a normalcy still far away. (Source.)

As we reported last week, the adverse reactions from the COVID injections in Europe and recorded in EudraVigilance, show that for the AstraZeneca COVID vaccines, Italy has more deaths and injuries than any other European country reported in EudraVigilance.

All of this information is being censored by the Pharma-controlled corporate media, as well as Big Tech, which is the only reasonable explanation as to why people are continuing to rush out and take one of these experimental injections.

What is it going to take for people to wake up and understand that the intention behind these shots is NOT to provide immunity against a SARS virus, but to control people and serve the goals of the eugenicist Globalists who have publicly stated that they want to reduce the world’s population?

*Italian text translated with help from DeepL. (Just say “no” to Google!)

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Health Impact News

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).

***

The announcement last week by Rutgers University that it would require all students to get the COVID vaccine prompted CHD Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., to remind university officials that federal law prohibits mandating Emergency Use Authorization vaccines.

Rutgers University last week announced it will require all students enrolled for the 2021 fall semester to be vaccinated for COVID-19.

The announcement prompted Children’s Health Defense (CHD) Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to remind university officials that federal law prohibits mandating products approved under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA).

In a letter to Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway, Kennedy, who also serves as chief legal counsel for CHD, wrote:

“Federal law 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3(e)(1)(A)(ii)(III) requires that the person to whom an EUA vaccine is administered be advised, ‘of the option to accept or refuse administration of the product, of the consequences, if any, of refusing administration of the product, and of the alternatives to the product that are available and of their benefits and risks.’”

The reason for the right of refusal stems from the fact that EUA products are by definition experimental, Kennedy wrote.

“Under the Nuremberg Code, no one may be coerced to participate in a medical experiment. Consent of the individual is ‘absolutely essential,’” Kennedy wrote.

Kennedy said forced participation in a medical experiment could result in injury.

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

***

This Monday, March 29, the third shipment of Russian Sputnik V vaccine arrived in Venezuela on a Conviasa airline flight from Moscow, containing 50,000 vaccines. With this shipment, 250,000 doses have arrived in the country since February 15.

In addition, it is estimated that the flight itinerary will continue to advance Venezuela’s COVID-19 vaccination plan. This batch was received by the Russian Ambassador to Venezuela, Sergey Mélik-Bagdasárov; Venezuelan Minister for Health, Carlos Alvarado; and Foreign Affairs Minister Jorge Arreaza.

New agreements were signed with the Russian Federation to complete an order for ten million doses of its vaccines.

“50,000 Sputnik V vaccines arrived, and 98,000 immunized health workers are going to immunize more health workers and people over 60 years of age or with a comorbidity, for comprehensive protection,” said Alvarado.

Similarly, Alvarado explained that “with these 50,000 vaccines we advanced towards the goal of vaccinating 70% of the population and then anticipating herd immunization.”

#EnVideo 📹 | Así fue el embarque de las 50 mil dosis de la vacuna #SputnikV que arribará a nuestro país en las próximas horas gracias al despliegue de @LAConviasa y la alianza estratégica integral con la Federación Rusa. 🇻🇪🤝🇷🇺#CuídateDeLaCovid19 pic.twitter.com/NGRg1lqrpQ

— Cancillería Venezuela 🇻🇪 (@CancilleriaVE) March 29, 2021

Priority for the elderly

In addition, the head of the Health Ministry announced that older adults will be prioritized.

“The goal is high, and we are starting with the most susceptible population. We started with life-saving health personnel and teaching personnel; vaccination of adults over 60 years of age will soon begin.”

The goal is to vaccinate 22 million people.

“We are already making agreements for more vaccines with Russia, China, Cuba and India. Venezuela is not stopping, and we are going to advance towards mass vaccination,” Alvarado announced.

#EnFotos 📸 | 50 mil dosis de la vacuna #SputnikV han sido embarcadas en vuelo de @LAConviasa para dar continuidad al plan de inmunización del pueblo venezolano, gracias a la cooperación del pueblo y gobierno de la Federación Rusa. 🇻🇪🤝🇷🇺#CuídateDeLaCovid19 pic.twitter.com/bmmdktkKE8

— Cancillería Venezuela 🇻🇪 (@CancilleriaVE) March 29, 2021

Peace diplomacy

Foreign Affairs Minister Arreaza, for his part, highlighted the twinned alliances between both nations that allowed the acquisition of this drug.

“Thanks to the Russian Federation, today we received more vaccines,” said Arreaza. “In the next few hours further good news will be announced.”

He announced that in April a direct commercial flight route from Moscow to Caracas will be opened to expand binational agreements, trade, and tourism.

“We have the sale of oil under siege and they have blocked more than $100 billion from us, but President Nicolás Maduro does not stop,” added Arreaza.

The head of diplomacy also outlined the titanic efforts of the Government to guarantee the health of the Venezuelan people.

#EnVideo📹| Canciller @jaarreaza: En este avión de @LAConviasa está llegando vida, hemos conseguido los canales para obtener las vacunas del pueblo venezolano. Gracias Rusia, gracias presidente Vladimir Putin#CuídateDeLaCovid19 pic.twitter.com/m8iQWXPxDZ

— VTV CANAL 8 (@VTVcanal8) March 29, 2021

“The vice president met with the director of the WHO for the COVAX initiative for truthful agreements, not falsehoods,” he said, perhaps referring to the social media campaign launched by anti-Chavismo claiming that the Venezuelan government is not allowing some vaccines to enter the country. In reality the Venezuelan government has been blocked by the United States, the European Union and extreme-right Venezuelan anti-Chavismo from buying vaccines, due to the seizure of its assets in international banks.

Arreaza recalled that “we must be very rigorous, and that is why we are approving safe vaccines for people,” a reference to the responsible announcements made by the Venezuelan government in relation to its concern about acquiring AstraZeneca vaccines, singled out by many countries for causing serious side effects.

“We are going step by step, but these are firm steps. The people must recognize that their Government is making every effort and soon we will all be vaccinated,” said Arreaza.

Finally, a humanistic approach to the vaccination process in Venezuela was ensured, and the arrival of more drugs is expected.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image: Second shipment of Sputnik V vaccines arriving in Venezuela on Monday, March 29, to continue the mass vaccination plan. Photo courtesy of MPPRE.

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).

***

Gun control was already a Biden Administration priority before the recent shootings in Georgia, Colorado, and Virginia. In fact, the House of Representatives passed two gun-control bills weeks before the shootings.

One of the House-passed bills expands background checks to include private sales, including those made at gun shows. Under this bill, someone who is not a licensed federal firearms dealer cannot sell a firearm without first relinquishing it to a federally-licensed dealer. The dealer must then conduct a background check on the prospective purchaser.

The second bill allows the federal government to indefinitely delay a background check, thus indefinitely delaying a gun purchase. Other legislation introduced in Congress would create a national firearms registry, which would only facilitate gun confiscation.

This same legislation would forbid anyone under 21 from owning a gun. The ban does not apply to the military, so it will not stop the majority of gun violence committed by 18-21 year-olds.

The bill requires Americans to obtain a federal license before getting a firearm, but individuals cannot receive a license unless they undergo a psychological evaluation. The psychological evaluation mandate could lead to individuals losing their Second Amendment rights because they once suffered from depression. It could also cause people to lose their Second Amendment rights because someone told the police they may become violent.

Police officers in 20 states and the District of Columbia already have the authority to take away an individual’s Second Amendment rights based on allegations and without giving the individual due process. These “Red Flag” laws are supported by politicians of both parties, including some who claim to be pro-gun rights.

For example, former President Trump supported Red Flag laws. President Trump and Congressional Democrats were on the verge of reaching a “bipartisan” deal to expand Red Flag laws in the fall of 2019. Fortunately, the Democrat attempt to impeach the President ended all efforts at “bipartisan” deals to take away our rights.

A psychological evaluation could also be used to deny an individual Second Amendment rights because they may engage in “domestic terrorism.” Among those likely to be considered as potential “domestic terrorists” are opponents of US foreign policy, mass surveillance, the income tax, the Federal Reserve, and – ironically – gun control.

There is also legislation to reinstate the assault-weapons ban. Like the original ban, which was in effect from 1994-2004, the new legislation bans an arbitrary list of firearms and will do little to reduce gun violence.

Criminals and psychotics are not going to be deterred by background checks and licensing requirements from obtaining a firearm. There will be a black market to service those who cannot obtain firearms by legal means.

By discouraging law-abiding Americans from owning firearms, these laws leave millions of Americans defenseless against gun violence. There is a reason why most mass shootings occur in gun-free zones.

If Congress is serious about protecting Americans from violence, it would repeal all federal gun control laws. A good place to start would be with the Brady background check law and the misnamed “Safe and Gun-Free Schools” law, which leaves children defenseless against mass shooters. Congress ending the unconstitutional and anti-liberty war on drugs would also greatly reduce gun violence. Gun control, like all attempts by government to control our lives, makes us less safe, and less free.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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).

***

The World Health Organization (WHO) has postponed the delivery of the “AstraZeneca” vaccine against the novel coronavirus to Syria, after it was supposed to arrive during this March.

The WHO representative in Syria, Akjamal Majtimova, stated that the distribution of the vaccine “depends on its availability in the global market, as well as the ability to manufacture, purchase, and invest in delivery.”

Majtimova added:

“It is possible that the distribution of the vaccine will need to be modified in light of the difficulty to anticipate circumstances and the constantly evolving variables. It is expected that Syria will receive the first batch of vaccines when the manufacturer confirms their availability.”

Regarding concerns about receiving the “AstraZeneca” vaccine after / 15 / European countries suspended the vaccination process due to the emergence of serious blood problems such as blood clotting in some of those who received it, the WHO representative stated that the organization “suggests that the AstraZeneca vaccine will continue to receive benefits- positive risks file, that is, its benefits are greater than its risks, with enormous potential for preventing infection and reducing deaths all over the world.”

Regarding the national plan to spread the vaccine, Majtimova said that it will be first by vaccinating 3% of the population, being “health workers who are in daily contact with pandemic patients,” and then 17% of the elderly and those with chronic diseases.

Despite announcing the late arrival of the “AstraZenica” vaccine in Syria, the country is close to the arrival of the Russian “Sputnik V” vaccine against Coronavirus, as batches are scheduled to arrive during the next month, noting that batches of Chinese vaccine have already arrived Syria and they were allocated at the time to vaccinate medical personnel who are in contact with virus patients.

The number of people infected with Coronavirus in Syria is 18201 cases, including 1216 deaths and 12142 recoveries, bearing in mind that the total number of Coronavirus infections worldwide approached 127 million.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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).

***

America’s Frontline Doctors (AFLDS) spoke to former Pfizer Vice President and Chief Science Officer Dr. Mike Yeadon about his views on the COVID-19 vaccine, hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin, the regulatory authorities, and more.

At the outset, Dr. Yeadon said “I’m well aware of the global crimes against humanity being perpetrated against a large proportion of the worlds population.

“I feel great fear, but I’m not deterred from giving expert testimony to multiple groups of able lawyers like Rocco Galati in Canada and Reiner Fuellmich in Germany.

“I have absolutely no doubt that we are in the presence of evil (not a determination I’ve ever made before in a 40-year research career) and dangerous products.

“In the U.K., it’s abundantly clear that the authorities are bent on a course which will result in administering ‘vaccines’ to as many of the population as they can. This is madness, because even if these agents were legitimate, protection is needed only by those at notably elevated risk of death from the virus. In those people, there might even be an argument that the risks are worth bearing. And there definitely are risks which are what I call ‘mechanistic’: inbuilt in the way they work.

“But all the other people, those in good health and younger than 60 years, perhaps a little older, they don’t perish from the virus. In this large group, it’s wholly unethical to administer something novel and for which the potential for unwanted effects after a few months is completely uncharacterized.

“In no other era would it be wise to do what is stated as the intention.

“Since I know this with certainty, and I know those driving it know this too, we have to enquire: What is their motive?

“While I don’t know, I have strong theoretical answers, only one of which relates to money and that motive doesn’t work, because the same quantum can be arrived at by doubling the unit cost and giving the agent to half as many people. Dilemma solved. So it’s something else.

Appreciating that, by entire population, it is also intended that minor children and eventually babies are to be included in the net, and that’s what I interpret to be an evil act.

“There is no medical rationale for it. Knowing as I do that the design of these ‘vaccines’ results, in the expression in the bodies of recipients, expression of the spike protein, which has adverse biological effects of its own which, in some people, are harmful (initiating blood coagulation and activating the immune ‘complement system’), I’m determined to point out that those not at risk from this virus should not be exposed to the risk of unwanted effects from these agents.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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).

***

Capping an extraordinary two weeks that turned 21^st century geopolitics upside down, Iran and China finally signed their 25-year strategic deal this past Saturday in Tehran.

The timing could not have been more spectacular, following what we examined in three previous columns: the virtual Quad and the 2+2 US-China summit in Alaska; the Lavrov-Wang Yi strategic partnership meeting in Guilin; and the NATO summit of Foreign Ministers in Brussels – key steps unveiling the birth of a new paradigm in international relations.

The officially named Sino-Iranian Comprehensive Strategic Partnership was first announced over five years ago, when President Xi Jinping visited Tehran. The result of plenty of closed-door discussions since 2016, Tehran now describes the agreement as “a complete roadmap with strategic political and economic clauses covering trade, economic and transportation cooperation.”

Once again, this is “win-win” in action: Iran, in close partnership with China, shatters the glass of US sanctions and turbo-charges domestic investment in infrastructure, while China secures long-term, key energy imports that it treats as a matter of national security.

If a loser would have to be identified in the process, it’s certainly the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” drive against all things Iran.

As Prof. Mohammad Marandi of the University of Tehran described it to me,

“It’s basically a road map. It’s especially important coming at a time when US hostility towards China altogether is increasing. The fact that this trip to Iran [by Foreign Minister Wang Yi] and the signing of the agreement took place literally days after the events in Alaska makes it even more significant, symbolically speaking.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh confirmed the deal was indeed a “roadmap” for trade, economic and transportation cooperation, with a “special focus on the private sectors of the two sides.”

Marandi also notes how this is a “comprehensive understanding of what can happen between Iran and China – Iran being rich in oil and gas and the only energy-producing country that can say ‘No’ to the Americans and can take an independent stance on its partnerships with others, especially China.”

China is Iran’s largest oil importer. And crucially, bill settlements bypass the US dollar.

Marandi hits the heart of the matter when he confirms how the strategic deal actually secures, for good, Iran’s very important role in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI):

The Chinese are getting more wary about sea trade. Even the incident in the Suez Canal reinforces that, it increases Iran’s importance to China. Iran would like to use the same Belt and Road network the Chinese want to develop. For Iran, China’s economic progress is quite important, especially in high-tech fields and AI, which is something the Iranians are pursuing as well and leading the region, by far. When it comes to data technology, Iran is third in the world. This is a very appropriate time for West Asia and East Asia to move closer to one another – and since the Iranians have great influence among its allies in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Hindu Kush, Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, Iran is the ideal partner for China.

In a nutshell, from Beijing’s point of view, the astonishing Evergreen saga in the Suez Canal now more than ever reiterates the crucial importance of the overland, trade/connectivity BRI corridors across Eurasia.

JCPOA? What JCPOA?

It’s fascinating to watch how Wang Yi, as he met Ali Larijani, special adviser to Ayatollah Khamenei, framed it all in a  single sentence:

“Iran decides independently on its relations with other countries and is not like some countries that change their position with one phone call.”

It’s never enough to stress the sealing of the partnership was the culmination of a five-year-long process, including frequent diplomatic and presidential trips, which started even before the Trump “maximum pressure” interregnum.

Wang Yi, who has a very close relationship with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, once again stressed, “relations between the two countries have now reached the level of strategic partnership” and “will not be affected by the current situation, but will be permanent”.

Zarif for his part stressed that Washington should get serious about its return to the Iran nuclear deal; lift all unilateral sanctions; and be back to the JCPOA as it was clinched in Vienna in 2015. In realpolitik terms, Zarif knows that’s not going to happen – considering the prevailing mood in the Beltway. So he was left to praise China as a “reliable partner” on the dossier – as much as Russia.

Beijing is articulating a quite subtle charm offensive in Southwest Asia. Before going to Tehran, Wang Yi went to Saudi Arabia and met with Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. The official spin is that China, as a “pragmatic partner”, supports Riyadh’s steps to diversify its economy and “find a path of development that fits its own conditions”.

What Wang Yi meant is that something called the China-Saudi Arabia High-Level Joint Committee should be working overtime. Yet there have been no leaks on the absolutely crucial issue: the role of oil in the Beijing-Riyadh relationship, and the fateful day when China will decide to buy Saudi oil priced exclusively in yuan. 

On the (Silk) road again

It’s absolutely essential to place the importance of the Iran-China deal in a historical context.

The deal goes a long way to renew the spirit of Eurasia as a geo-historic entity, or as crack French geopolitician Christian Grataloup frames it, “a system of inter-relations from one Eurasian end to another” taking place across the hard node of world history.

Via the BRI concept, China is reconnecting with the vast intermediary region between Asia and Europe through which relations between continents were woven by more or less durable empires with diverse Eurasian dimensions: the Persians, the Greco-Romans, and the Arabs.

Persians, crucially, were the first to develop a creative role in Eurasia.

Northern Iranians, during the first millennium B.C., experts on horseback nomadism, were the prime power in the steppe core of Central Eurasia.

Historically, it’s well established that the Scythians constituted the first pastoral nomadic nation. They took over the Western steppe – as a major power – while other steppe Iranians moved East as far away as China. Scythians were not only fabulous warriors – as the myth goes, but most of all very savvy traders connecting Greece, Persia and the east of Asia: something described, among others, by Herodotus.

So an ultra-dynamic, overland international trade network across Central Eurasia developed as a direct consequence of the drive, among others, by Scythians, Sogdians and the Hsiung-Nu (who were always harassing the Chinese in their northern frontier). Different powers across Central Eurasia, in different epochs, always traded with everyone on their borders – wherever they were, from Europe to East Asia.

Essentially Iranian domination of Central Eurasia may have started as early as 1,600 B.C. – when Indo-Europeans showed up in upper Mesopotamia and the Aegean Sea in Greece while others journeyed as far as India and China.

It’s fully established, among others by an unimpeachable scholarly source, Nicola di Cosmo, in his Ancient China and Its Enemies: The Rise of Nomadic Power in East Asian History(Cambridge University Press):  pastoral nomadic lifestyle on horseback was developed by Iranians of the steppe early in the first millennium B.C.

Jump cut to the end of the first century B.C., when Rome was starting to collect its precious silk from East Asia via multiple intermediaries, in what is described by historians as the first Silk Road.

A fascinating story features a Macedonian, Maes Titianos, who lived in Antioch in Roman Syria, and organized a caravan for his agents to reach beyond Central Asia, all the way to Seres (China) and its imperial capital Chang’an. The trip lasted over a year and was the precursor to Marco Polo’s travels in the 13^th century. Marco Polo actually followed roads and tracks that were very well known for centuries, plied by numerous caravans of Eurasian merchants.

Up to the caravan organized by Titianos, Bactria – in today’s Afghanistan– was the limes of the known world for imperial Rome, and the revolving door, in connectivity terms, between China, India and Persia under the Parthians.

And to illustrate the “people to people contacts” very dear to the concept of 21^st century BRI, after the 3^rd century Manicheism – persecuted by the Roman empire – fully developed in Persia along the Silk Road thanks to Sogdian merchants. From the 8^th to the 9^th   century it even became the official religion among the Uighurs and even reached China. Marco Polo met Manicheans in the Yuan court in the 13^th century.

Ruling the Heartland

The Silk Roads were a fabulous vortex of peoples, religions and cultures – something attested by the exceptional collection of Manichean, Zoroastrian, Buddhist and Christian manuscripts, written in Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Syriac, Sogdian, Persian and Uighur, discovered in the beginning of the 20^th century in the Buddhist grottoes of Dunhuang by European orientalists Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot, following the steps of Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang. In the Chinese unconscious, this is still very much alive.

By now it’s firmly established that the Silk Roads may have started to slowly disappear from history with the Western maritime push to the East since the late 15^th century.  But the death blow came in the late 17^th century, when the Russians and the Manchu in China divided Central Asia. The Qing dynasty destroyed the last nomadic pastoral empire, the Junghars, while the Russians colonized most of Central Eurasia. The Silk Road economy – actually the trade-based economy of the Eurasian heartland – collapsed.

Now, the vastly ambitious Chinese BRI project is inverting the expansion and construction of a Eurasian space to East to West.  Since the 15^th century – with the end of the Mongol Empire of the Steppes – the process was always from West to East, and maritime, driven by Western colonialism.

The China-Iran partnership may have the capacity to become the emblem of a global phenomenon as far-reaching as the Western colonial enterprises from the 15^th to the 20^th centuries.  Geoeconomically, China is consolidating a first step to solidify its role as builder and renovator of infrastructure. The next step is to build its role in management.

Mackinder, Mahan, Spykman – the whole conceptual “rule the waves” apparatus is being surpassed. China may have been a – exhausted – Rimland power up to the mid-20^th century. Now it’s clearly positioned as a Heartland power. Side by side with “strategic partner” Russia. And side by side with another “strategic partner” that happened to be the first historical Eurasian power: Iran.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Video: Bill Gates and His Empires. Boycott “Fake Food”. Dr. Vandana Shiva

By Dr. Vandana Shiva and Dr. Joseph Mercola, March 29 2021

In this interview, Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discusses the importance and benefits of regenerative agriculture and a future Regeneration International project that we’ll be collaborating on.

New York’s COVID Vaccine Passport. Show “Your Papers Please” Way of Life

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, March 29 2021

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is establishing a Covid passport that will show vaccination or a recent negative test. It will serve as permission to enter events or venues.

The World’s Richest People: Excessive Wealth Disorder Is Destroying Our Societies

By Rod Driver, March 29 2021

David Rothkopf wrote a book about the world’s richest people called Superclass. In it he noted that 161 people control $23 trillion, and that the incomes of the top 25 hedge fund managers are approximately $800 million per year each.

Genocidal Nation: “What Is It About Us?…Are We Homicidal by Nature?”

By Jim Miles, March 29 2021

While there are no truly easy answers and no easy solutions (while they may be obvious, they will be highly contested – violently so) the quick answer reveals more truth: no, not homicidal, but very much genocidal.

The U.S. Pivot to Asia: Cold War Lessons from Vietnam for Today

By Cynthia Chung, March 29 2021

There were Cold War preparations underway as early as August 1945 and the two regions selected, Korea and Vietnam, were pre-planned years in advance before the actual wars were to take place.

Stop COVID Testing Immediately: PCR and Quick Test Swabs May be Cancer-Causing

By Peter Koenig, March 29 2021

Not only has covid testing become a US$ 100 billion business, it is also potentially a “deadly business”. PCR and Quick Test swabs are sterilized with the carcinogen Ethylene Oxide.

Norwegian Health Authorities Will Keep Investigating Possible Side Effects from the AstraZeneca Vaccine

By Eivind Nicolai Lauritsen, March 29 2021

Norwegian health authorities still haven’t reached a conclusion on the AstraZeneca vaccine. The pause in vaccinations will be kept in place for three more weeks. A decision will be made before April 15.

Lockdown One Year On – It Doesn’t Work, It Never Worked & It Wasn’t Supposed to Work

By Kit Knightly, March 29 2021

And so we come to March 23rd, and lockdown’s first birthday. Or, as we call it here, the longest two weeks in history. 1 year. 12 calendar months. 365 increasingly gruelling days.

The Criminalization of Big Pharma, mRNA Vaccine Deaths and Injuries. EU Adopts “Digital Vaccine Passport”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 29 2021

On March 25, 2021, the European Parliament voted 468 to 203 in favour of the Digital Vaccine Passport or “Green Pass” which requires EU citizens to get vaccinated if they want to travel, or even have access to various social and cultural activities within their respective communities.

Will a China Real Estate Collapse Trigger the Global Financial Meltdown?

By F. William Engdahl, March 28 2021

Prevailing financial sector “wisdom” holds that while the bond and stock markets of the US and EU are dangerously inflated following huge COVID borrowings and unprecedented central bank measures, that China is the one example of a market suitable for investment as it has managed to get beyond COVID and restart its economy.

The Ides of March: False Pretexts Galore in the Wars on Yugoslavia and Iraq

By Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Scott Ritter, Živadin Jovanović, James Bissett, and Scott Taylor, March 27 2021

Joe Biden recognized that weapons inspections, if allowed to proceed would undermine his effort. This is why he had to discredit the inspections.

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).

***

The continual improvement of Chinese-EU relations is irreversible since it embodies the driving force of history, particularly as it relates to the inevitable integration of the Eurasian supercontinent as an outcome of the emerging Multipolar World Order.

China and the EU are economically complementary partners and equally rich civilizations that are unprecedentedly expanding their cooperation through last December’s Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). This deal enables them to more closely connect their economies and pursue mutually beneficial outcomes through their shared win-win philosophy. Nevertheless, America has attempted to aggressively break their bilateral bonds out of hegemonic jealousy, furious at the scenario of its transatlantic partners evolving from patron states to independent players in International Relations.

This is evidenced by US Secretary of State Blinken’s trip to the bloc last week where he sought to turn its 27 member states against the People’s Republic. The relaunching of their previously frozen dialogue under the former Trump Administration isn’t intended to advance anything other than America’s efforts to divide the EU from China. It was preceded by the Brussels imposing its first sanctions against Beijing in over 30 years as a result of Washington’s pressure upon it to tow the propaganda line on debunked allegations of human rights abuses in Xinjiang.

The People’s Republic swiftly responded in a symmetrical manner that’s fully in line with its rights under international law, thereby dealing a principled tit-for-tat intended to show that no provocations will ever remain unanswered but that Beijing also harbors no intention to escalate matters with Brussels. Both moves are mostly symbolic for the most part but they still worryingly show that Washington is trying to regain its hegemonic influence over the EU. The bloc’s 27 members must therefore be extremely wary of their historic transatlantic partner since it doesn’t have their best interests in mind.

The continual improvement of Chinese-EU relations is irreversible since it embodies the driving force of history, particularly as it relates to the inevitable integration of the Eurasian supercontinent as an outcome of the emerging Multipolar World Order. International Relations are changing from their hitherto zero-sum outlook to the new perspective of win-win engagement, which is led by China’s active efforts to popularize this philosophy across the world. A lot of progress has already been achieved, and although external meddling might lead to a few road bumps along the way, the path ahead is still clear and desired by both parties.

The next step to strengthen Chinese-EU ties in the face of US resistance is to expand their existing cooperation into other strategic spheres such as jointly containing the COVID-19 pandemic, combating climate change, and collaborating on 5G technological solutions for facilitating the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Some EU member states are under heavy American pressure to choose between their their traditional transatlantic partner and their newfound East Asian one in these fields, but such a zero-sum choice is a false one that’s only being forced upon them for hegemonic reasons. In reality, they can and should cooperate with both countries.

Unlike the US, China doesn’t pressure its partners, whether it comes to any aspect of their bilateral ties or especially not in terms of their relations with any third party. All that Beijing asks is that their pragmatic cooperation remain free from any external influences and focused solely on pursuing win-win outcomes. This speaks to how sincerely China treasures the principles of multipolarity as articulated in the UN Charter, which contrasts with the American approach of exploiting strategic elements of its relations with certain states for the purpose of advancing zero-sum outcomes vis-a-vis its perceived rivals such as China.

The world is in the midst of full-spectrum paradigm-changing processes which will unleash an exciting future for all. Everyone stands to benefit as International Relations continue becoming more multipolar, which will open up new opportunities for development that will in turn improve people’s living standards. The EU must resist American pressure to revert back to the discredited model of zero-sum thinking and instead proudly embrace the win-win philosophy that defines the new model of International Relations. That is the only means through which the EU can enhance its strategic independence and truly remain a meaningful player in global affairs.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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.

Dear Readers,

We are pleased to announce that the first Global Research Webinar will be held this Wednesday, March 31st, at 4:00 pm (EDT), 1:00 pm (PT), 3:00 pm (CT)

The 2020-21 Worldwide Corona Crisis

It will be presented by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky on the topic of the 2021 Corona Crisis as discussed in his E-book (Ten Chapters) entitled:

The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

Another important reference is:

The WHO Confirms that the Covid-19 PCR Test is Flawed: Estimates of “Positive Cases” are Meaningless. The Lockdown Has No Scientific Basis

Image right: Prof. Michel Chossudovsky

Wednesday, March 31st, 4:00 pm (EDT) Time Zones 

4:00 pm EDT 

1:00 pm PT,

2:00 pm CT

9:00 pm BST (GMT + 1) 

10:00 pm ECT 

We extend this invitation to all Global Research Members and Readers.

The webinar will be able to accommodate up to 120 people on a first come, first served basis.

To become a Member of GlobalResearch.ca, click here 

A message will be sent out to our Newsletter subscribers tomorrow Tuesday March 30th, 2021 providing the Zoom login and password details.

A followup Newsletter reminder with Zoom details will be sent out on Wednesday morning March 31st, 2021.

First published by Global Research on July 21, 2020

Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children (aka SickKids) has released a detailed report on “the harms of school closure on [children’s] physical and mental health.” Harms included: “Increased rates of depression, trauma, drug abuse and addiction and even suicide can be anticipated.”

The SickKids report reassures parents that there is “strong evidence that the majority of children who become infected with SARS-CoV-2 are either asymptomatic or have only mild symptoms…. There have been no paediatric deaths reported in Canada to date.”

Even more heartening is that SickKids Hospital recommends:

“Non-medical and medical face masks are not required or recommended for children returning to school.”

They point out that

“if worn incorrectly, it could lead to increased risk of infection and it is not practical for a child to wear a mask properly for the duration of a school day.”

They also state the oft-ignored fact that:

“There is a lack of evidence that wearing a face mask prevents SARS-CoV-2 transmission in children.”

More like no (direct) evidence. Same goes for adults. Which may be why the report advises teachers to teach without a mask as “facial expression is an important part of communication which children should not be deprived of.”

But what about physical distancing? Should kids all be cubicled like in China and have recess in a six-foot bubble? Here’s what The Hospital for Sick Children says:

“…strict physical distancing should not be emphasized to children in the school setting as it is not practical and could cause significant psychological harm. Close interaction, such as playing and socializing, is central to child development and should not be discouraged.”

Instead, to help prevent the spread of COVID they give some reasonable suggestions that have many other health benefits:

“If weather permits, consideration could be given to having classes outside…. Attention should be paid to improving classroom ventilation (e.g. optimizing ventilation system maintenance and increasing the proportion of outside air brought in through these systems).”

Even high-risk children are not advised to be quarantined:

“…there is no convincing evidence to suggest the level of medical risk to [high-risk] children from SARS-CoV-2 is different from that posed by other respiratory viruses, such as influenza. As a result, given the unintended consequences associated with not attending school, attending school is recommended for the majority of these children.”

You can read SickKids Hospital’s refreshingly sensible advice in COVID-19: Recommendations for School Reopening.

Maybe we can avoid turning the schools into corona concentration camps as Italian parliamentarian Sara Cunial has been warning against.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, as well as naturopaths, chiropractors and Ayurvedic physicians. He publishes the COVID-19(84) Red Pill Daily Briefs – an email-based newsletter dedicated to preventing the governments of the world from using an exaggerated pandemic as an excuse to violate our freedom, health, privacy, livelihood and humanity. He is also writing a novella, COVID-27: A Dystopian Love Story. Visit his website at: MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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).

***

Dear Department for Education,

This request is in relation to the use of the Innova lateral flow test (the “LFT”) being used across schools in the UK.

We are in receipt of correspondence from Innova confirming that the swab used in the LFTs is sterilised by ethylene oxide. Given the known toxicity and potential carcinogenicity of ethylene oxide, we are concerned by this.

Under the ‘Freedom of Information Act 2000’, we request disclosure of the following:

• information as to what, if any, independent tests have been carried out to check for any residues of ethylene oxide on a random sample of swabs;
• information as to what, if any, assessments have been conducted to ensure that the invasive use of these swabs for children is safe?

I understand that, under the Act, I am entitled to a response within 20 working days of your receipt of this request.

Some parts of the request may be easier to answer than others. Should this be the case, I request that you release information as soon as possible as it becomes available. If my request is denied in whole, or in part, I ask that you justify all decisions to deny disclosure by reference to specific exemptions of the Act.

I will expect you to disclose all non-exempt material that is within the scope of this request. I reserve the right to appeal your decision to withhold any information or to charge excessive fees.

I would prefer to receive the information electronically at the email address submitted to you as part of this request.

Yours faithfully

Molly Kingsley,
UsforThem

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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).

***

Not only has covid testing become a US$ 100 billion business, it is also potentially a “deadly business”. PCR and Quick Test swabs are sterilized with the carcinogen Ethylene Oxide.

According to the Government of Canada, as well as the “What do They Know” the PCR test swabs are sterilized by ethylene oxide which is described by the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) as a carcinogen. In other words, a potentially cancer-causing chemical toxin.

In essence, EPA says the following about the carcinogen Ethylene Oxide:

“EPA classified ethylene oxide as a human carcinogen in December 2016. Studies of workers show that their exposures to ethylene oxide are associated with an increased risk of cancers of the white blood cells (the infection-fighting cells of the immune system). Studies also showed an increased risk of breast cancer in females.”

“Evidence in humans indicates that long-term exposure to ethylene oxide increases the risk of cancers of the white blood cells, including non-Hodgkin lymphoma, myeloma, and lymphocytic leukemia. Studies also show that long-term exposure to ethylene oxide increases the risk of breast cancer in females.”

“EPA, as well as the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Toxicology Program, classifies ethylene oxide as carcinogenic to humans. Evidence in humans indicates that exposure to ethylene oxide by inhalation increases the risk of lymphohematopoietic cancers (including non-Hodgkin lymphoma, myeloma, and lymphocytic leukemia) and, for females, breast cancer.

EtO is mutagenic (i.e., it can change the DNA in a cell). Children may be more susceptible to the harmful effects of mutagenic substances.”

For the full EPA text, see this.

RT-PCR Testing, Testing

Governments, especially in Western countries are calling frantically for more and more testing? – Testing-testing-testing. They put people into lockdowns – the so-called Third Wave lockdowns, aka, illegal and totally unjustified house-arrests – a complete lie, so they submit easier to the constant testing, and eventually vaccination, hoping the lockdowns will end sooner.

Is it a coincidence or negligence that school children, the most vulnerable for cancerous toxin Ethylene Oxide (see EPA, above) – are now tested regularly and repeatedly? – In Switzerland for example, the Government has given the Cantons (semi-autonomous Departments) the authority (or a tacit order?) to have school children tested at least once a month, even though they show no symptoms whatsoever? It is not only negligence – it is an outright crime.

See this horrifying video of children testing – how they hurt the children – and why does the swab stick have to go all the way up in the nose to a thin wall separating the sinuses from the brain cavity?

Honest medical doctors tell you – even in Switzerland – this is not necessary. A swab could be taken simply from the saliva in the mouth.

Knowing the Big Picture behind Covid – the Great Reset, or Building Back Better – in brief the UN Agenda 2030, see this. This testing-testing-testing with a carcinogen-tainted swab is beyond just negligence. Is it possible (yet to be verified) that many of the health staff in the testing front-line do not know about the danger for their testing subjects.

Are those in senior decision-making government positions throughout the West aware of what they are doing? The Canadian Government Advisory states the following:

If the swab is sterilized using an ethylene oxide (EtO) method, you should demonstrate that EtO and ethylene chlorohydrin (ECH) residuals meet the tolerable contact limits (TCL) specified in ISO 10993-7. Commonly used swab materials, compatible sterilization methods and appropriate biological indicators are described below.

Anything goes. Quietly injecting with multiple-multiple tests with swab sticks contaminated, alias “sterilized”, with carcinogenic agents, deep into your nose, at the entrance of the brain cavity, is just one means of creating potential cancer cases, not to mention brain damage.

Such “secondary effects” may appear much later, years down the road, when nobody can trace them back to the covid-tests, the covid vaccines and whatever else nefarious and diabolical tools are used in the name of combating covid.

Should the matter pertaining to the use of carcinogenic Ethylene Oxide be the object of an investigation. investigation? 

The PCR Tests Are Useless

By now, every government knows – there is no way of ignoring it – that the PCR tests are useless. They do not allow detecting the existence of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. The WHO has admitted that the test as applied since January 2020 in invalid.

However, most of the 193 UN member governments – with a few exceptions – run over this evidence like a steamroller, hoping the masses will not notice.

They may do so probably as long as it takes to get the world population vaccinated — as Bill Gates wants it. Remember, when he said, the world won’t be getting back to somewhat close to normal until the 7 billion world population is vaccinated.

Again, one wonders what ulterior agenda might be behind this ferocious, coercive and human rights abusing effort of most world governments – involving the UN system as a whole.

The entire vaccination hype – everybody is strongarmed or otherwise manipulated into being vaccinated against a virus that does not need a vaccine to cure it. As we know by now, there are plenty of inexpensive but effective viral medicines that work efficiently against covid. China had no vaccines to combat the covid outbreak. Yet, they did it in a record time.

Recently, the EU Commission ratified a Vaccination Passport, or Certificate, without which your “free” movements may be tremendously hampered.

It becomes increasingly clear that there is another agenda in action; a “different agenda” from that of protecting people’s health.

What are injected, especially with these non-vaccines, called mRNA jabs – never tested before – are, among other bio-chemicals, women- and men-sterilizing and fertilization inhibiting agents, as well as special electromagnetic proteins converting your body into an EM field for eventual digitization, to make humans into “trans-humans”.

These modern Frankensteins could then be remotely controlled and become a walking “Agenda ID2020” – so they will eventually carry all their health and other personal data in their bodies. Agenda ID2020 is a Bill Gates creation and has already been approved in several countries, including Germany.

We are not there yet. But that is the plan. Bear in mind, life is not linear, but dynamic.

The Great Reset, UN Agenda 2030, “Building Back Better”, and other slogans to ring in the Big Change, are all based on linear approaches. They may work for a while. But in the long-run, dynamics – the life-inherent defense system, will prevail. See also “The Big Picture” article

The danger of vaccination is multifaceted and, if carried out in the midst of what is called a pandemic, it can cause a global catastrophe a few years on, according to an interview with Dr. G. Vanden Bossche, a renowned virologist, who worked for many years for the pharma industry, notably vaccine manufacturers, including Pfizer, Moderna, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and GAVI – the Vaccine Alliance, in Geneva – physically located – by sheer coincidence – next door to WHO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=ZJZxiNxYLpc

Premature death is written all over the place from all sorts of artificially imposed causes, as part of the huge criminal fraud of covid, the mass manipulation by the media driven by government lies – lies indoctrinated by false media propaganda – by the 193 UN member governments. What a coincidence!

Think about it.

And especially ask your governments without hesitating with a loud voice that TESTING BE IMMEDIATELY STOPPED.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

The security situation on the African continent is close to chaos. Once again, terrorist groups advance in Mozambique and leave innocent victims, drawing the attention of international society to the structural failure in the current mechanisms to combat terrorism in Africa.

Last Wednesday, terrorists invaded the Mozambican city of Palma in a brutal attack on shops, banks, hotels, and a military base. Dozens of people died during the attack. There are hundreds of wounded, many in serious condition. According to reports by survivors, while escaping the shootings, civilians hid on a beach in the region, where a large number of decapitated bodies were spread. Official figures are still being counted.

Palma is a city located in the province of Cabo Delgado, a region with a Muslim majority. The dispute for political control of the region has been operated by several terrorist militias. These militias belong to the terrorist group Al Shabab, which is an African regional branch of ISIS. Al Shabab’s activities are all carried out under strict control, being fully coordinated according to the interests of ISIS, which is in fact the organization that controls terrorism in Mozambique and in most of Africa. With the recent attacks, Mozambique has reached the mark of more than 2,500 dead since the start of the attacks and clashes in 2017. In addition, the number of migrants is already over 70,000, due to collective fear.

However, the reasons why militias representing ISIS want to control the region are quite strategic. Palma is a city close to a large gas exploration field under the control of the French company Total. Right after the attack, Total suspended its activities indefinitely. As a result, the company’s facilities are vulnerable to occupation by terrorists, considering that government forces have been unable to contain the attacks.

Indeed, the most plausible explanation for the focus of the attacks and tensions being Palma and the entire region close to the border with Tanzania, where there are rich reserves of natural gas, is that there is an interest on the part of ISIS to control this natural resource and enjoy its technological and economic benefits. Al Shabab has been conducting attacks with the objective of making it impossible to carry out the exploration and commercialization of the gas.

Total, which has now suspended its activities, can, at any time, give up on its projects in Mozambique if it does not receive support in security policies – something that the Mozambican government does not seem capable of doing and that the French government does not seem interested in. This will lead to the abandonment of the facilities, which could be occupied by Al Shabab in a few days, making official the control of Mozambican gas by terrorists affiliated with ISIS. This situation would be catastrophic, as it would put a large amount of material resources under the control of criminal organizations, making possible several projects that until then would have been unimaginable. After all, having an equipped army, controlling a territory and its population, and exploring and trading natural resources, terrorists will have almost all the necessary requirements to form a true country in Africa, which will serve as the basis for international terrorism.

The formation of an Islamic caliphate in Africa is not a recent project. This has always been part of the dreams of the largest terrorist groups, and many see that such a project would in fact have greater viability in the African continent than in the Middle East, mainly because it is a region with much weaker states, much more deteriorated political structures, poorly equipped armies, with little military action by world powers and with a gigantic list of natural resources far beyond oil. It is no coincidence that ISIS’ activities in Africa have been growing as this group has failed in Syria. The less space it loses in the Middle East, the more ISIS focuses on regions with less international attention.

Historically, France is the nation that is most concerned with the security of the African continent. There are several French military cooperation projects with African nations and the presence of the European country on this continent is immense. However, we can clearly see that the mechanisms used so far have not been sufficient and that Paris is no longer able to deal with the African issue. Still, amid problems with migration and concerns about the forthcoming elections, Macron does not seem willing to change his policy towards Africa. Meanwhile, Mozambique suffers from the advance of the terrorist militias, which already almost completely control Palma. Total is about to leave the country and soon its structures may be commanded by Al Shabab, which will be able to use natural gas to invest in the infrastructure of a new caliphate or to sell resources on the world illegal market. In the end, who will prevent the catastrophe of the formation of a terrorist state in Eastern Africa?

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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 is from InfoBrics

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).

***

I have just watched Michael Moore’s latest Rumble podcast [1] in which he asks the question “What is it about us?” while referencing the Columbine massacre and relating it to the current set of U.S. mass murders.  The subtext to the title “What is so different about Americans?” asks “Are we homicidal by nature?”  

While there are no truly easy answers and no easy solutions (while they may be obvious, they will be highly contested – violently so) the quick answer reveals more truth:  no, not homicidal, but very much genocidal.

Genocidal nation

I use the term genocidal in its application by the U.S. and its empire against both the people of the world and the world itself, comprising all other living things and the environment required to support that life.  It can be narrowed down to two facets for the establishment of the country:  first it was born out of violence; and secondly it was born out of racism.  These two go very well together and have shaped the U.S. into what it is today.

Much of it is the U.S.’ European heritage, a region of the world very familiar with genocide (well before the holocaust) and military violence.  Another aspect of that heritage is the racist Doctrine of Discovery as promulgated by the Papal Bull of 1452 and others following.   The Christian Doctrine of Discovery essentially relegated all non-Europeans to being savages, primitives, who are to be treated as outside of European/Christian culture and at the very base, treated as slaves, with their environments to be used to enrich the homeland.

Britain was very much a part of this, as its empire had all the aspects already mentioned and used them for its own power and enrichment around the world.  Nor is the U.S. unique in being born of a British heritage, but its revolutionary birth, its continuing fight over slavery and its still present racism, combined with its ethnocentric view as being a superior people destined to lead and control the world has morphed into what it is today – a militarized culture of violence.

It’s personal….

The personal level is created by the rhetoric of the media, the politicians, and the banksters,  financiers, and corporate bosses who have ruled throughout the history of the U.S.    The list of personality traits is significant: rugged individualism; exceptionalism; entitlement; revenge.  Another social attribute is the overwhelming rhetoric for freedom, without an associated call for responsibility, only responsible for the self and not the general good of society.  What develops from all this social and psychological rhetoric is a greedy, ignorant, self-centered society.  Those attributes are generalized throughout society.

…and it’s societal….

From the start the U.S. has operated in a militarily violent and racist manner, continuing with and bettering its British heritage.  Today the government of the U.S. is composed of those who embody the violent and racist heritage of its founding and development.  It is an imperial government, endlessly creating fear of the ‘other’ – be it socialists, communists, jihadists, immigrants, Russian, Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese, Japanese, Nicarauguans and essentially anyone ‘other’ than the old white guys who wish to retain control of the system.  What is created is a militarized society operating for the benefit of corporate, political, and military elites.  There are many aspects of its control – militarized police, financial dominance of the elite, corporate malfeasance towards people and the environment, lack of social structures, a prison-military complex, and the control of the vast majority of media of all kinds.

The lack of social structures has a serious impact on the financial and emotional health of the individual.  Access to health care is expensive, limited, or for many non-existent.  Education is not highly regarded in the sense that many want the public system abolished and replaced with private schools or equally racist/elitist voucher schools.   In general, U.S. citizens tend to be rather ignorant about not only the world, but about their own country and how it operates, and through the education process and its allied media process produces a greedy self-centered society that puts the blame on the individual rather than on the collective for any problems that may occur.

…and it’s the empire.

The U.S. has been since its inception an expanding empire using violent and genocidal techniques in attempts to control the world.  There is a long history of U.S. endeavours towards empire from the Doctrine of Discovery through Manifest Destiny on to today’s hubristic “exceptionalism” and “indispensability”.   All of it is underlain by racism and the use of violence as an initial ‘diplomatic threat’ to be followed by violent war (covert or overt) as the next diplomatic step.  As an empire it is not alone in all this as its companions in violence and racism are either of the same heritage – Canada, Australia, Europe, Israel – or have been co opted into being significant partners through a combination of threats and financial benefits, the latter accruing to the local domestic powers rather than citizens.  But the U.S. stands alone as the greatest purveyor of violence and militarism, and its domestic culture and foreign policy are both born out of the roots of imperial violence and racism.

Solutions

As always, the solutions are really  quite simple as far as ideas are concerned – it is the application of those ideas that will create immense resistance.

From the problems listed above, the solutions should be obvious.

First, create an education system that develops a well informed and critical thinking public.

Secondly, as exposed by the current pandemic, a large change needs to be made to the health system so that greed – profit – is not the dynamic supporting the system, but that care for all should be equally accessible and free.

For the working people and the environment, corporations need to be either banned or severely limited with large responsibilities for ‘externalities – pollution, worker’s health and safety – put into place.

The financial system is near a breaking point, built on debt (largely through the military industrial complex combined with outsourcing and offshoring of employment) and supported now mostly by money created by the stroke of a computer keyboard without any product being produced, the financialization of markets that enriches the elites and impoverishes the rest.  Reform of corporate law and tax law will help create a significantly more equal society and should help finance necessary health, safety, educational, and environmental laws.

“So what is it about us?”

This is not really an easy question to answer.  The attributes of U.S. society discussed above can be found in other countries, but not to the same degree, nor in the same over-riding conglomeration.    A nation founded on exceptionalism, racism, and violence over the land and the people will be hard to reconstruct let alone make amendments for.

Ultimately change will occur.  It may come conclusively and finally from the barrel of a gun and related military hardware.  Or it may occur as the citizens of the U.S., the “Columbine generation”, finally outlive ‘we’ the boomers and create a new kind of society.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes

[1] https://rumble.media/episode/what-is-so-different-about-americans-are-we-homicidal-by-nature-with-tom-mauser-columbine-parent/

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).

***

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is establishing a Covid passport that will show vaccination or a recent negative test. It will serve as permission to enter events or venues. See this. 

Will this passport be efficacious, or is its purpose to get us accustomed to a “your papers please” way of life?

Allegedly, the combination of people with vaccinations and those recovered from infection have, or are, bringing about “herd immunity.”  If so, what is the point of a passport?

There are credible reports that some who have been vaccinated have nevertheless come down with Covid, which raises doubt about the efficacy of the vaccine.  There are other reports that antibodies produced by the vaccines are not long lasting.

How recent must the Covid test be to make the passport valid.  A person could have a negative test and catch Covid on the way home.  If the passport relies on a negative test, the passport will have to expire after some designated period unless the passport is renewed with a new test.

There is also the problem that the widely used PCR test produces false negatives and false positives.  In other words, is the information on which the passport is issued valid information?

We can laugh at the passport as a silly over-reaction to a virus that in most cases is hardly more dangerous than flu, or we can understand it as a control measure over our freedom of movement and association.  We are the safer if we view it as the latter.  

Police already have too much power to invade homes without warrants and to stop and search people on the streets without warrants.  “Probable cause” has been used to curtail civil liberty. 

I am convinced that no health purpose will be served by Covid passports, and that the public should protest the introduction of a Soviet-style internal passport.

Once established, the Covid passport will be a boon for Big Pharma.  A yearly booster shot will be decreed, and without it your passport will expire. 

Keep in mind that Florida avoided lockdowns and mask mandates and has no worse infection and death rate than lockdown states.  

Notice also that many highly qualified experts have criticized the lockdowns, mask mandates, use of untested vaccines, and the prohibition on using safe effective treatments such as HCQ and Ivermectin.  Why were their voices censored and the information kept from the public?  The only explanation I can think of is that Covid is being used for an unstated agenda.  We should not be deceived into cooperating with this unstated agenda.  

A democracy that censors expert testimony and prohibits public debate is well on its way to a police state.  

A public that can be stampeded by orchestrated fear into being jabbed with vaccines that could be more dangerous than Covid is not a public that can expect to remain in freedom.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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).

***

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue is a group that includes the US, Japan, India, and Australia. Formed 14 years ago as a forum to coordinate Indo-Pacific policy, many are dubbing it the Asian NATO, and a possible counterweight to China’s growing influence. But can they contain an increasingly powerful China?

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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).

***

A Chapel Hill woman who says her mother died of a stroke 48 hours after receiving the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine spoke to WRAL News about her concerns and the questions she has about her mother’s death. The state and a UNC doctor, though, warn about drawing any conclusions yet.

Becca Ingle is understandably devastated after her mother’s sudden death two weeks ago. She says her mother was in good health, but started feeling very ill shortly after getting the vaccine. She wants to know if her mother’s death could be connected to the vaccine. The state is investigating this case and so is WRAL.

As a college professor who worked in person with her students at Appalachian State University and spent lots of time caring for her two grandchildren, 63-year-old Virginia Ellington was counting the days until she could be vaccinated against COVID-19.

“I have texts from her saying how excited she was to get it,” her daughter, Ingle, said.

Ingle said her mother and father got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine on the morning of Monday, March 8, at the Watauga Health Center in Boone.

Ellington started feeling very tired and even asked her husband about possible vaccine side effects, Ingle told WRAL News.

Ellington went to work the next day but was still feeling unwell, according to her family. On Wednesday, March 10, she stayed in bed. A little while later, her husband returned to the bedroom to find her unresponsive.

“He tried giving her CPR, and he called 911, and they said she was gone when they got there,” Ingle said.

Ingle said the local doctor, who did a preliminary examination, told the family that her mother died of a stroke. The local medical examiner, a paramedic and a teacher who signed the death certificate, wrote that the vaccine was one of the “significant conditions contributing to her death.”

“We were all shocked when we saw that was even on there,” Ingle said.

Ingle shared her questions about the vaccine and her mother’s death on TikTok. The post has had more than 4 million views, but it received mixed reviews. TikTok even placed a warning on it.

“It just breaks my heart that this is what happened and this is what it takes to share her story,” Ingle said.

Ingle says her mother was in good health prior to her death.

“It (the vaccine) definitely escalated things,” she said. “Whether she was going to have a stroke in 30 years or whether she was going to have it now, it definitely triggered it.”

Ingle says high blood pressure and strokes run in her family.

Dr. Stephan Moll, a medical professor, researcher and hematologist at UNC Health, believes connecting the vaccine to a stroke is a rush to judgment.

“The vaccine is appropriate for everybody independent of the family history or their personal history,” he said.

He thinks mention of the vaccine should not have been included on the death certificate.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 795,000 people in the United States have strokes every year. North Carolina has one of the highest rates, at 26,000 per year, or 70 per day.

“Some people will develop a stroke and have had the vaccine,” Moll said, “but that’s a coincidental occurrence. Even an association, that’s a rare one. It should not sway away anybody from getting the vaccine.”

The CDC has found no evidence of a connection between the vaccines and strokes. Moll says the only way to know for sure is to do an autopsy.

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has referred Ellington’s case to the Office of the State Medical Examiner for an autopsy. Agency officials told WRAL News:

“The death investigation for this case is in the preliminary stage, which is why the death certificate says ‘pending.’ After an autopsy examination by one of our regional autopsy centers, the preliminary results do not show that this death was related to a vaccine or vaccination.”

Susan Hawkins, the local medical examiner who signed the death certificate and made the reference to the vaccine as a factor, declined comment to WRAL News and referred all questions to the state.

The final state medical examiner’s report could take several months to complete, and more answers should be clear at that time.

That portends a painful wait for a daughter seeking answers.

“I’m not here to say you shouldn’t take it,” Ingle said. “I’m just saying raise awareness. You should check on your loved ones if you are getting it.”

Johnson & Johnson provided this statement to WRAL News:

“There is no greater priority than the safety and well-being of the people we serve. We carefully review reports of this nature that involve individuals receiving our medicines, or in this instance, a vaccine.”

Company officials go on to say that these reports are evaluated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other health authorities that are monitoring the overall safety of the vaccine rollout.

Recognizing this story may generate a lot of interest, the family issued a statement saying, “As the family mourns their loss, please respect their need for privacy.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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).

***

British former Supreme Court judge Lord Sumption has warned that “social controls” brought about by the coronavirus pandemic may be kept in place by governments for up to a decade.

“It’s politically unrealistic to expect the Government to backtrack now,” commented Sumption, who has been highly critical of the government’s ‘totalitarian’ lockdown policies.

The judge compared the reaction to rationing after the Second World War, which went on for nine years, adding that this time “I think it may be even longer.”

“An interesting parallel is the continuation of wartime food rationing after the last war. People were in favour of that because they were in favour of social control,” he said during a ‘Sketch notes on’ podcast.

“In the 1951 general election, the Labour party lost its majority entirely because people with five years more experience of social control got fed up with it. Sooner or later that will happen in this country,” he added.

Sumption’s warning comes in the wake of Public Health England officials stating that restrictions will remain in place for as long as other countries have not vaccinated everyone, a process likely to take years.

England’s chief medical officer also recently asserted that the pandemic restrictions, which have been in place on and off for a year, have “improved life” for some people.

Despite promising an end to restrictions in June, the UK government yesterday extended emergency COVID laws until October, with Health minister Matt Hancock refusing to say how long they will remain in place after that.

Lord Sumption also noted during the podcast that scientists skeptical of lockdown policies have been “subjected to an extraordinarily unpleasant campaign of personal abuse”.

“I know a lot of people that would prefer not to put their head above the parapet,” He continued, adding “From the very moment I started to make these points I began to get emails from politicians who agreed with what I had to say but that they themselves didn’t dare to speak out. That I think is a very serious state of affairs.”

The judge also argued that governments are using the virus politically, noting

“They have consistently tried to maintain that the virus is indiscriminate when it is perfectly well-established that it primarily affects people with identifiable vulnerabilities, particularly in the elderly.”

Speaking about the draconian crack down on anti-lockdown protesters, Sumption said

“People ought to be entitled to voice their differences (of opinion),” adding “If the only way you can enforce distancing is by beating people over the head with truncheons then it’s not worth it.”

Now that Brits have allowed society to be permanently deformed, with polls routinely showing vehement support for lockdown and other pandemic rules, things are never going to be the same again.

Having allowed the precedent that the government can put the entire population under de facto house arrest on a whim, look for the policy to be repeated over and over again with different justifications that have nothing to do with COVID-19.

As we previously highlighted, one of those justifications will be man-made global warming, with climate lockdowns set to become a regular reality.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from howstuffworks

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).

***

In this interview, Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., discusses the importance and benefits of regenerative agriculture and a future Regeneration International project that we’ll be collaborating on.

Click here to watch the video. 

Full transcript below.

***

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).

***

Initial data from Israel and Scotland appeared to indicate a very high real-world effectiveness of covid vaccines, even in senior citizens. However, much of this data was heavily adjusted for various factors and was therefore not easy to interpret. Numerous reports of covid outbreaks in care homes even after the second vaccination have raised additional questions about vaccine effectiveness.

To clarify this situation, a German study with 176 participants, published last week as a preprint, measured the age-dependent immune response to the Pfizer vaccine. Somewhat shockingly, the study found that one third of people over the age of 80 developed no neutralizing antibodies at all, and thus were potentially without seroprotection even after the second vaccination (see above).

Some of these elderly people developed non-neutralizing antibodies, but their role in Sars-Cov-2 infection remains unknown: they might help reduce symptoms, but they could also increasesymptoms (so-called antibody-dependent disease enhancement, ADE). The official vaccine trials included hardly any people of the 80+ age group and so didn’t answer this question.

In vaccine science, a reduced immune response in the elderly is known as immunosenescence.

If the reduced protection in the high-risk group gets confirmed, it may explain the somewhat disappointing performance of many covid vaccination pioneers (such as Israel): in most of these countries, covid hospitalizations and deaths have decreased slower than expected, or have even increased, since the beginning of the mass vaccination campaign (see updated figure below).

Meanwhile, documented post-vaccination deaths continue to rise and are now close to 3000 in the US and the EU. Some of these deaths may be unrelated to vaccinations, but in the US, 47% of post-vaccination deaths occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated, and 31% of deaths occurred within 48 hours of vaccination. The average age was 78, the youngest case was 23.

(Update: The immunological results of the German study have been confirmed by a large-scale Danish study with 30,000 care home residents and 330,000 health care workers. In care home residents, vaccine effectiveness was 0% after the first dose and reached 64% one week after the second dose. In health care workers, vaccine effectiveness was 17% two weeks after the first dose, 46% during the first week after the second dose, and reached 90% one week after the second dose.)

As New York attorney Aaron Siri pointed out in a recent article on StatNews, neither governments nor employers are currently permitted to require covid vaccinations, as covid vaccines have not yet been officially licensed: they only received an “emergency use authorization” in the US and a “conditional marketing authorisation” in the EU. Indeed, the US FDA specifically notes that covid vaccines are “investigational vaccines not licensed for any indication.”

Cumulative covid deaths in global covid vaccination pioneers, excl. the US and UK (OWD)

Neutralizing antibody titers after vaccination, by age group (Source: Mueller et al)

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Viacheslav Lopatin | Credit: scaliger – stock.adobe.com

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).

***

As Mark Zuckerberg tries to sell Congress on Facebook’s preferred method of amending the federal law that serves as a key pillar of the internet, lawmakers must see it for what it really is: a self-serving and cynical effort to cement the company’s dominance.

In prepared testimony submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee before a Thursday hearing, Zuckerberg proposes amending 47 U.S.C. § 230 (“Section 230”), the federal law that generally protects online services and users from liability for hosting user-generated content that others believe is unlawful.

The vague and ill-defined proposal calls for lawmakers to condition Section 230’s legal protections on whether services can show “that they have systems in place for identifying unlawful content and removing it.” According to Zuckerberg, this revised law would not create liability if a particular piece of unlawful content fell through the cracks. Instead, the law would impose a duty of care on platforms to have adequate “systems in place” with respect to how they review, moderate, and remove user-generated content.

Zuckerberg’s proposal calls for the creation of a “third party,” whatever that means, which would establish the best practices for identifying and removing user-generated content. He suggests that this entity could create different standards for smaller platforms. The proposal also asks Congress to require that online services be more transparent about their content moderation policies and more accountable to their users.

An Anti-Competitive Wedge

The proposal is an explicit plea to create a legal regime that only Facebook, and perhaps a few other dominant online services, could meet. Zuckerberg is asking Congress to change the law to ensure that Facebook never faces significant competition, and that its billions of users remain locked into its service for the foreseeable future.

It’s galling that at the same time Zuckerberg praises Section 230 for creating “the conditions for the Internet to thrive, for platforms to empower billions of people to express themselves online,” he simultaneously calls on Congress to change the law to prevent any innovation or competition that could disrupt Facebook’s market position. Zuckerberg is admitting that after Facebook has benefited from Section 230, he doesn’t want any other competitor to do the same. Rather than take up Facebook’s proposal, Congress should instead advance meaningful competition and antitrust reforms to curtail the platform’s dominance.

Moreover, Zuckerberg’s proposal comes just before a congressional hearing that is ostensibly about the problems Facebook has created. These problems exist precisely because of Facebook’s dominance, anti-competitive behavior, and terrible privacy and content moderation practices. So in response to Facebook’s significant failures, Zuckerberg is telling Congress that Facebook is the solution. Congress should respond: Absolutely not.

A Flawed Proposal

On the merits, Zuckerberg’s proposal — though light on specifics — is problematic for several reasons.

First, the proposal overlooks that the vast majority of online services that host user-generated content do not have the technical, legal, or human resources to create systems that could identify and remove unlawful content. As Mike Masnick at TechDirt recently wrote, the internet is made up of far more diverse and less-resourced services than Facebook. Congress must recognize that the legal rules it sets for online services will apply to all of them. Zuckerberg proposes that the required “adequate systems” be “proportionate to platform size;” but size is only one factor that might correlate to an intermediary’s ability to implement such systems. By punishing growth, a size-scaled system would also discourage the development of nonprofit intermediary models that might compete with and replace those that profit greatly off of their users’ data. What would actually be necessary is an assessment of whether each individual intermediary, based on its numerous characteristics, has provided adequate systems. This is essentially a legal negligence standard – asking the question “Has the intermediary acted reasonably?” – and such standards have historically and legally been found to be insufficiently protective of freedom of speech.

Second, Zuckerberg’s proposal seems to require affirmative pre-screening and filtering of content as an “adequate system.” As we have written, filtering requirements are inherently privacy invasive and almost always rely on faulty and nontransparent and unaccountable automation. And of course, they are extremely burdensome, even at a small scale.

Third, the standards under Zuckerberg’s proposal would be unworkable in practice and result in even greater online censorship. Content moderation at scale is impossible to do perfectly and  nearly impossible to do well. Automated tools and human reviewers make scores of mistakes that result in improper removal of users’ content. If services are required by law to have systems that remove users’ content, the result will be a world in which much greater volumes of user speech will be removed, as services would rather censor their users than risk losing their legal protections.

Fourth, the proposal would not even address the problems Facebook is now being called out for. Zuckerberg calls for Section 230 protections to be conditioned on having systems in place to remove “unlawful content”; but most of the examples he addresses elsewhere in his testimony are not illegal. Hate and violence, misinformation, and community standards for groups are largely protected speech. Platforms like Facebook may and should want to actively moderate such content. But the speech is not usually “illegal,” a narrow subset of speech unprotected by the First Amendment.

Fifth, Zuckerberg calls for a “third party” to define the “adequate systems” an intermediary must adopt. We saw a similar proposal recently with the original version of the EARN IT Act. We opposed a standards-setting body there because it was going to be dominated by law enforcement officials who desire to break end-to-end encryption. Although Zuckerberg does not identify the membership or composition of his proposed third party, we worry that any entity created to address online content moderation could similarly be captured by special interests who do not represent internet users.

Transparency, Yes Please

We appreciate that Zuckerberg is calling on online services to be more transparent and responsive to user concerns about content moderation. EFF has been actively involved in an effort to push these services to adopt a human rights framing for content moderation that includes adequate notice to its users and transparency about the platform’s practices. Yet we do not believe that any requirement to adopt these practices should be linked to Section 230’s protections. That’s why we’ve previously opposed legislation like the PACT Act, an initial version of which compelled transparency reporting. It’s also worth noting that Facebook lags behind its peers on issues of transparency and accountability for censoring its users’ speech, a 2019 EFF review found.

Zuckerberg’s proposal to rewrite Section 230 joins a long list of efforts to overhaul the law. As we have said, we analyze every fully formed proposal on its merits. Some of the proposed changes start from a place of good faith in trying to address legitimate harms that occur online. But Zuckerberg’s proposal isn’t made in good faith. Congress should reject it and move on to doing the real, detailed work that it has to do before it can change Section 230.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Electronic Frontier Foundation

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).

***

We live in a war-like society; one that supports, and is in league with, the world’s number one terrorist threat: the United States of America. Corporate media propaganda plays a key role in keeping things that way.

Ten years ago this month, the US, UK and France attacked oil-rich Libya under the fictitious cover of ‘humanitarian intervention’. The bombing was ‘justified’ by Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy by the supposed imminent massacre of civilians in Benghazi by forces under Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. As we have documented previously, the propaganda claims were fraudulent.

Libya, previously a wealthy state with free health care and education, was essentially destroyed. An estimated 600,000 Libyans were killed. Many more were displaced from their homes. In the barbarous conditions of the failed state, black people have been ethnically ‘cleansed’, lynched and auctioned off as slaves, illicit arms transfers and terrorism have become rife, and many Libyans have attempted to flee to better lives across the Mediterranean, thousands of them drowning en route.

As Jeremy Kuzmarov, managing editor of CovertAction Magazine and author of four books on US foreign policy, pointed out recently, the powerful Western perpetrators of this human calamity have never been brought to justice. He added:

‘In hindsight, it is clear that the U.S. was completing a 40-year regime change operation targeting Colonel Qaddafi for which media disinformation was pivotal.

‘It is important today as such to revisit the 2011 war so that U.S. citizens can learn from the history and not be duped again into supporting an intervention of this kind.’

The Stunning Silences Over Syria And Venezuela

But, when it came to Syria several years later, media disinformation was once again pivotal in unleashing Western firepower. As we have described in numerous media alerts, the corporate media declared with instant unanimity and certainty that Syria’s President Bashar Assad was responsible for a chemical weapons attack on the Damascus suburb of Douma on 7 April, 2018. One week later, the US, UK and France attacked Syria in response to the unproven allegations. Since then, there has been a mounting deluge of evidence that the UN’s Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has perpetrated a massive cover-up to preserve the Western narrative that Assad gassed civilians in Douma.

Earlier this month, five former OPCW officials joined a group of prominent signatories to urge the UN chemical weapons watchdog to address the controversy. Aaron Maté, an independent journalist with The Grayzone website, has been following developments closely since the beginning (see his in-depth article, ‘Did Trump Bomb Syria on False Grounds?’).

He noted that:

‘Leaks from inside the OPCW show that key scientific findings that cast doubt on claims of Syrian government guilt were censored, and that the original investigators were removed from the probe. Since the cover-up became public, the OPCW has shunned accountability and publicly attacked the two whistleblowers who challenged it from inside.’

In an interview, Maté pointed out the remarkable silence from the corporate media:

‘the western media, across the spectrum, has buried this story – which is pretty incredible. You have extraordinary allegations of a cover-up, you have whistleblowers; and not only…do you have allegations, you have documents – a trove of documents released by WikiLeaks.’

We have observed a similar shameful silence in the UK, including BBC News; even after initial interest in the ‘important story’ had been expressed by Lyse Doucet, the BBC’s chief international correspondent.

But Western violence against other nations, and the ‘justifications’ trotted out to defend ‘our’ crimes, or simply ignoring them, has become normalised in ‘mainstream’ journalism.

Consider the case of Venezuela, harbouring one of the largest oil reserves on the planet, and which, as a left-leaning democracy, has long been targeted by the US for regime change. This was seen very clearly when the late Hugo Chávez was the Venezuelan president – temporarily deposed in a failed US-supported coup in 2002, and who was often wrongly described by corporate media as a ‘dictator’ – and continues today under Chávez’s successor, Nicolás Maduro.

As John McEvoy observed in a piece for Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, a recent UN rebuke of crippling US and European sanctions on Venezuela has been met with ‘stunning silence’.

McEvoy wrote:

‘The report laid bare how a years-long campaign of economic warfare has asphyxiated Venezuela’s economy, crushing the government’s ability to provide basic services both before and during the Covid-19 pandemic.’

According to Alena Douhan, the UN special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights, the Venezuelan government’s revenue was reported to have shrunk enormously, ‘with the country currently living on 1% of its pre-sanctions income,’ impeding ‘the ability of Venezuela to respond to the Covid-19 emergency.’

Douhan urged US and European governments:

‘to unfreeze assets of the Venezuela Central Bank to purchase medicine, vaccines, food, medical and other equipment.’

The US-led campaign to overthrow the Venezuelan government, Douhan added, ‘violates the principle of sovereign equality of states and constitutes an intervention in domestic affairs of Venezuela that also affects its regional relations’.

Almost exactly two years ago, we noted in a media alert that the US-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, a respected thinktank, had published a study showing that US sanctions imposed on Venezuela in August 2017 had since caused around 40,000 deaths. With the exception of a single piece in the Independent, there was zero coverage in the national UK press, and no BBC News coverage at all, as far as we could ascertain.

McEvoy wrote:

‘By omitting the devastating impact of sanctions, corporate media attribute sole responsibility for economic and humanitarian conditions to the Venezuelan government, thereby using the misery provoked by sanctions to validate the infliction of even more misery.’

He continued:

‘Loath to abandon belief in the fundamentally benign nature of Western foreign policy, corporate scribes have typically presented the devastating effects of sanctions as a mere accusation of Nicolás Maduro’.

This is a pattern of deception seen over and over again. For example, in 2002-2003, the ‘mainstream’ media repeatedly attributed claims that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction to Saddam Hussein. Doing so buried the evidence-backed testimony of senior UN weapons inspectors concluding that Iraq had been ‘fundamentally disarmed’ of 90-95 per cent of its weapons of mass destruction by December 1998. (Scott Ritter and William Rivers Pitt, ‘War On Iraq’, Profile Books, 2002, p.23)

McEvoy noted that the Guardian’s reporting of Venezuela sticks to the Washington script:

‘Often, they fail to mention sanctions at all. In June 2019, for instance, the Guardian’s Tom Phillips reported that “more than 4 million Venezuelans have now fled economic and humanitarian chaos,” citing would-be coup leader Juan Guaidó’s claim that the country’s economic collapse “was caused by the corruption of this regime,” without making any reference to Washington’s campaign of economic warfare.

‘Keeping with tradition, Douhan’s damning report has been met with stunning silence by establishment media outlets. Neither the Guardian, New York Times, Washington Post nor BBC reported on Douhan’s findings’.

Imagine if Russia had been responsible for imposing sanctions on another country, violating that country’s sovereignty, with tens of thousands dead and many more lives at risk in the months to come. Imagine, moreover, that Russia had been condemned in a hard-hitting UN report for engaging in economic warfare, described as ‘a violation of international law’ that was causing a serious ‘growth of malnourishment in the past 6 years with more than 2.5 million people being severely food insecure.’ Imagine that such a report pointed to the ‘devastating effect of unilateral sanctions on the broad scope of human rights, especially the right to food, right to health, right to life, right to education and right to development.’ The headlines and in-depth coverage in the West would be incessant. The Russian ambassador in London would be given a stern dressing-down by the UK Foreign Secretary. MPs would address Parliament, condemning Putin in the strongest possible terms. There would be global demands for the UN to intervene.

The ideological discipline required to ignore such crimes under Western policy is remarkable, but it is standard in the corporate media system. Propaganda by omission, routinely carried out by BBC News and the rest of the ‘mainstream’ news media, is a crucial tool enabling Washington and London to pursue their aims; whether that be ‘regime change’, exploitation of oil and other natural resources, and geopolitical domination.

‘Grand Wizards’ And Client Journalism

Occasionally, the strict enforcement of ideological purity imposed on corporate journalists is laid bare when they step out of line by the merest millimeter. Thus, for example, BBC television presenter Naga Munchetty had to issue an apology on Twitter for ‘liking’ tweets that mocked Tory government minister Robert Jenrick for appearing on a BBC Breakfastinterview with a Union Jack prominently displayed behind him.

She tweeted:

‘I “liked” tweets today that were offensive in nature about the use of the British flag as a backdrop in a government interview this morning. I have since removed these “likes”. This do [sic] not represent the views of me or the BBC. I apologise for any offence taken. Naga’

This read like a statement that had been dictated from lofty levels within the BBC hierarchy. When you are a high-profile BBC figure, you are obliged to tweet out an apology for daring to question the trappings of ‘patriotism’. But when have BBC journalists ever apologised for catastrophically platforming government propaganda on Iraq, Libya, Syria, the NHS, ‘austerity’, militarism, the royal family? The list is endless.

On Twitter, tweets from the broadcaster RT are flagged with the warning, ‘Russia state-affiliated media.’ Rather than apologise for broadcasting Western propaganda, it is far more likely that a senior client journalist working for the UK state-affiliated media known as ‘BBC News’ will send out whitewashing tweets to minimise or deflect any challenges to the government. Take BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, a prime example of this key propaganda function. On the National Day of Reflection on 23 March, the anniversary of the start of the first UK Covid-19 lockdown, Boris Johnson had boasted during a private meeting of Tory MPs:

‘The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends.’

There was a huge outcry on social media. Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor who has been outspoken in her criticism of the government during the pandemic, tweeted in response to Johnson’s crassly insensitive and smug comment:

‘But he’s wrong.

‘Human nature is bigger & better & bursting with more grace & decency than he’ll ever know.’

Wise and compassionate words.

By contrast, Kuenssberg went into full damage-limitation mode, tweeting:

‘More on PM’s “greed” comments – one of those present says Johnson was having a crack at Chief Whip, Mark Spencer, who was gobbling a cheese + pickle sandwich while he was talking about the vaccine, “it was hardly Gordon Gekko”, “it was banter” directed at the Chief, it’s said’

It is a fair point: probably not even Gordon Gekko would have joked about the virtue of capitalism and greed on a day when his very clear responsibility for the deaths of 149,000 people was at the forefront of many people’s minds.

Newspaper cartoonist Dave Brown depicted brilliantly what the day of reflection should have meant: Johnson reflected in the mirror as the Grim Reaper carrying a scythe with the number 149,000 engraved on it.

Kam Sandhu, head of advocacy at the independent thinktank Autonomy, reminded her Twitter followers that, in 2019, Kuenssberg had brushed off the revelation that Brexiteer MPs visiting Chequers, the prime minister’s 16th century manor house, had called themselves ‘the Grand Wizards’. The BBC political editor had tweeted:

‘just catching up on timeline, for avoidance of doubt, couple of insiders told me using the nickname informally, no intended connection to anything else’

Presumably the use of an infamous Ku Klux Klan term of white supremacy was to be considered mere ‘banter’. There are countless other examples of Kuenssberg deflecting criticism of Tories, while echoing and amplifying their propaganda. You may recall that she acted to defend the government when it belatedly went into the first lockdown one year ago. She misled the public, as Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious medical journal The Lancet noted last March:

‘Laura Kuenssberg says (BBC) that, “The science has changed.” This is not true. The science has been the same since January. What has changed is that govt advisors have at last understood what really took place in China and what is now taking place in Italy. It was there to see.’

Her insidious role in endlessly propping up the government narrative on any given topic is a ‘courtesy’ conspicuous by its absence when it came to the ‘impartial’ BBC political editor’s reporting of Jeremy Corbyn and, in particular, the manufactured crisis of supposedly institutional antisemitism in the Labour party.

On 26 November 2019, just prior to the general election on 12 December, Kuenssberg tweeted about Tory-supporting chief rabbi Ephraim Mirvis’ suggestion that Corbyn should be ‘considered unfit for office’, 23 times in 24 hours. This at a time when journalistic impartiality was obviously never more essential.

Kuenssberg is not an exception within BBC News, although given her very high-profile position, it is not always as blatant with other BBC journalists. Take BBC diplomatic correspondent James Landale, for instance: another serial offender. An item that he presented on BBC News at Ten on 16 March added to the ever-rising steaming pile of ‘impartial’ journalism scaremongering about Official Enemies that must be countered by the peace-loving West.

In line with a new UK government report on ‘defence’, Landale depicted China and Russia as threats that required this country to ‘show Britain can project force overseas’. As part of the strategy, the new £6.1 billion aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, will hold joint operations with allies in the Indo-Pacific later this year. ‘But will it be enough?’, intoned Landale, ‘impartially’ cheerleading the UK’s ‘projection of force’ across the globe.

Continuing his virtually government spokesperson role, Landale added:

‘And the cap on Britain’s stockpile of nuclear warheads will be lifted because of what the report says is “the evolving security environment”.’

The likely increase in the UK’s nuclear weapons was just slipped out, almost as an after-thought. There was no mention that nuclear weapons are now prohibited under international law after the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was ratified earlier this year. The Treaty includes:

‘a comprehensive set of prohibitions on participating in any nuclear weapon activities. These include undertakings not to develop, test, produce, acquire, possess, stockpile, use or threaten to use nuclear weapons.’

In July 2017, over 120 countries voted to adopt the Treaty. In October 2020, the 50th country ratified the Treaty which meant it became international law on 22 January, 2021. Where were the BBC News headlines?

As Double Down News observed:

‘Boris Johnson set to expand Nuclear Warheads by 40%

‘No money for Nurses but money for Armageddon’

But all this must have slipped Landale’s mind. Or perhaps there was no time to include information deemed unimportant by him or his editors. There was, however, ample room for a major item on that evening’s BBC News at Ten titled, ‘Duke leaves hospital’. This covered Prince Philip’s return to Buckingham Palace after one month in hospital for heart treatment. And why was this a major ‘news’ headline on the BBC? Because BBC News is staunchly royalist, fervently establishment and an upholder of the unjust UK class system.

All of this just goes to show that BBC News really is the world’s most refined state propaganda service. As BBC founder John Reith confided in his diary during the 1926 General Strike:

‘They [the government] know they can trust us not to be really impartial.’

(‘The Reith Diaries’, edited by Charles Stewart, Collins, 1975; entry for 11 May, 1926)

The same holds true today.

In this era of Permanent War, potential nuclear Armageddon and climate breakdown, the enormous cost to victims of UK and Western state-corporate policy around the world is incalculable.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Media Lens

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).

***

Israel has accused Iran of doing many nefarious things. But the historical record shows that whatever Israel accuses Iran of, it is likely that Israel is already doing it.

For example, Israel has repeatedly accused Iran of destabilizing the region by malignantly spreading across the region and forming alliances and exercising influence in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

But Israel is spreading across the region by forming alliances and exercising influence across the region. With varying degrees of formality and publicity, Israel has expanded its network and formed alliances with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. And this Israeli spread has been destabilizing both in terms of increasing weapons in the region and legitimizing and solidifying occupations.

The agreement between Israel and the UAE meant F-35 fighter jets, Reaper drones and EA-18G Growler jets that are capable of jamming enemy air defenses for the UAE and a large weapons package for Israel in compensation, potentially including combat helicopters, advanced communications satellites, bunker buster bombs, F-35s, KC-46A tanker aircrafts that are capable of refueling many aircrafts simultaneously and V-22 aircrafts that can transform from helicopter to airplane.

The agreements have also led to the solidifying of occupations in the region. And it is not only the solidifying of the Palestinian occupation. In order to extract an agreement from Morocco, the price was US recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara: an occupation that is illegal under international law. Both the UN and the International Court of Justice have ruled in favor of Western Sahara’s right to self governance.

Israel is also reportedly planning to lobby the US not to pressure Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE over human rights issues because of the value Israel places on these alliances in confronting Iran. Israeli officials reportedly want to remind Washington that the agreements they have signed in the region should be prioritized over concerns about human rights.

Spreading its influence across the region sounds a lot like what Israel is accusing Iran of. And Israel’s spread has been destabilizing in terms of the proliferation of arms, the legitimizing of occupations and the acceptance of human rights abuses.

Using Proxies

Israel has long accused Iran of using proxy forces in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.

But Israel has a distasteful history of using proxy forces going back at least as early as the proxy use of the Phalange militia in Lebanon. Not wanting to be seen sending Israeli soldiers into the Palestinian refugee camps, Israel used its proxy Christian militia. According to Patrick Tyler, in A World of Trouble, the Phalange militia developed “with covert assistance from Israel.” In September 1982, the Israeli proxy Phalange militia slaughtered hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of Palestinian refugees in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Israel admits to 700 people massacred; the Palestinians claim 2,750. In Balfour’s Shadow, David Cronin places the number at between 800 and 3,500.

More recently, Israel has employed the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK) as a proxy in the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reports that a former senior intelligence official told him that the assassinations are “primarily being done by MEK through liaison with the Israelis.” Most recently, Iran has suggested a proxy role for the MEK in the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh.

Israel accuses Iran of using proxy forces. But Israeli history demonstrates the well documented use of proxy forces to carry out some of its most illegal work.

Terrorism

Israel has forcefully tried to characterize Iran as a leading state sponsor of terrorism.

But Israel has recently aligned itself with the most barbarous terrorists. Israel has allied itself with the Islamic State and al-Nusra. In September 2013, Michael Oren, the Israeli Ambassador to the US said, “We always wanted Bashar Assad to go, we always preferred the bad guys who weren’t backed by Iran to the bad guys who were backed by Iran.” Oren told the Jerusalem Post that “This was the case . . . even if the other ‘bad guys’ were affiliated with al-Qaeda.” Nearly a year later, in June 2014, Oren would repeat Israel’s position of preferring the Islamic State and al-Nusra over Assad: “From Israel’s perspective, if there’s got to be an evil that’s got to prevail, let the Sunni evil prevail.” A year and a half later, Defense Minister Moshe Yalon would essentially reiterate this firm Israeli preference.

And Israel didn’t just root for the Islamic State, it aided it. Israel has repeatedly bombed Syrian targets, and UN observers in the Golan Heights have reported witnessing cooperation between Israel and Syrian rebels. Netanyahu has also revealed that Israel has hit Hezbollah forces fighting against the Islamic State and al-Qaeda in Syria dozens of times. And it has been exposed that Israel also provided funding, food and fuel to Syrian rebels fighting Assad.

In The Management of Savagery, Max Blumenthal says that “ISIS found a defender in Israel.” He reports that the director of “the Likud Party-linked Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies” advocated for pursuing the “weakening of Islamic State, but not its destruction.” They called ISIS a “useful tool.” There are reports of coordination and communication between Israel and al-Nusra, including Israel providing maps.

So, Israel is doing exactly what it accuses Iran of doing.

Nuclear Weapons

Most vociferously, Israel has accused Iran of possessing a nuclear weapons program and of secretly constructing nuclear weapons facilities.

It is well known that Israel has a nuclear weapons program. A leaked email written by Colin Powell suggests that the US estimates Israel’s arsenal at 200 nuclear weapons.

What has received less attention amid the cries that Iran has secretly built nuclear facilities is that Israel is secretly building on to the nuclear facility it secretly built. Satellite images published in February, 2021, show that Israel has been “carrying out a major expansion of its Dimona nuclear facility” for at least the past two years.

So, while Israel accuses Iran of secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program and secretly constructing nuclear facilities, Israel is secretly pursuing a nuclear weapons program and secretly constructing nuclear facilities.

Attacking Ships

Back in 2019, Iran was blamed for two limpet mine attacks on ships. Israel has also blamed Iran for a recent explosion on the Israeli cargo ship MV Helios Ray. Iran has denied responsibility for the attack.

But it looks like Israel has been very busy blowing up Iranian ships. The Wall Street Journal has shockingly reported that, since late 2019, Israel has attacked at least a dozen ships headed for Syria and carrying Iranian oil. Israel has attacked Iranian vessels or vessels carrying Iranian oil with weapons that included mines. At least some of the Israeli attacks have been carried out with limpet mines: exactly like the attacks Iran is accused of. The Wall Street Journal reports that three of the Israeli strikes took place in 2019 and six more took place in 2020.

As in the case of regional influence, use of proxies, terrorism, and constructing secret nuclear facilities, Israel seems to be guilty of the very thing it is accusing Iran of: blowing up ships. This boomeranging accusation is consistent with a historical pattern of Israel accusing Iran of the very things Israel is doing.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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).

***

House Democrats are leading a charge to repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force that President Bush used to invade Iraq in 2003, that Obama used for a host of anti-ISIS air campaigns over eight years, and President Trump cited to justify a 2020 drone strike on Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. 

Dismantling the AUMFs that are used to wage wars that are increasingly attenuated from the original intent of those authorizations is important. But if wars like Afghanistan are not also brought to an end, then they will inevitably be made to fit new and more narrow authorizations making it even harder to end them in the future.

Press secretary Jen Psaki recently indicated that President Biden welcomes an effort by Congress to replace the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs with a “narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending the forever wars.” But he is not the first president to cast doubt on the utility of AUMFs that are now nearly two decades old. In a 2013 speech at the National Defense University, President Obama remarked, “[s]o I look forward to engaging Congress and the American people in efforts to refine, and ultimately repeal, the AUMF’s mandate.” But this inclination did not stop the Obama administration from using the 2001 AUMF to justify attacks on ISIS in Syria by arguing that the group was essentially cut from the same cloth as al-Qaeda. Similarly, President Biden’s appeal for oversight did not stop him from ordering an airstrike in Syria and citing his Article II powers as Commander-in-Chief, nor has it led him to end the war in Afghanistan.

That President Biden continues to deploy U.S. military force abroad while also calling for more restrictive AUMFs is not surprising. He may feel political pressure to continue to use the broad powers authorized to him until Congress hopefully relieves him of this burden and takes more responsibility over America’s wars. This is precisely why narrower AUMFs will not end America’s forever wars without additional steps. Truly ending forever wars will require leaders and the “NatSec”community to prioritize the proven costs of engaging in forever war over the future risks of not taking military action.

Afghanistan is a good place to start. If President Biden refuses to leave Afghanistan, then a war with no achievable end state will likely be grandfathered into any future and purportedly more narrow AUMF. This may not occur explicitly in the authorization’s text but through its application. Much needed repeals of the current AUMFs will be reduced to little more than Congressional virtue signaling. If the U.S. cannot walk away from the war in Afghanistan, then it is difficult to imagine how Washington will prioritize other threats without getting dragged into perpetual conflicts of choice.

Others have also argued that merely replacing or passing a new AUMF does not amount to Congressional oversight. In 2018, Richard Fontaine and Vance Serchuk warned, “[l]awmakers who portray passage of an AUMF as the ultimate fulfillment of their war-powers responsibilities therefore risk elevating constitutional form over national security substance.” Rather than pass an AUMF and let it sit untouched for years, they assert that Congressional oversight should be “continuous” and occur “independent from any AUMF mechanism.” Jack Goldsmith and Samuel Moyn arguethat, “Congress must do more than withdraw old permission slips” and instead “cut off funding for discretionary presidential wars after a short period, absent congressional permission or a defined emergency.”

Thus, genuine oversight must function as a threshold rather than a loophole. This will inherently require America’s leaders to accept manageable degrees of risk to avoid neverending wars. Afghanistan represents the clearest test of this approach. Leaving Afghanistan militarily will force the United States to find new ways to respond to potential terrorism threats on U.S. targets in the region. But these threats no longer present the same risk they once did and the capacity to disrupt attacks within the United States is far greater than on the morning of 9/11. The cost of continuing to wage endless wars long ago surpassed any security benefits.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image: A U.S. Army Soldier from the A Company, 1-503rd Battalion, 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team, conducts a patrol with a platoon of Afghan national army soldiers to check on conditions in the village of Yawez, Wardak province, Afghanistan, Feb. 17, 2010. Partnership between the U.S. Army and the Afghan national army is proving to be a valuable tool in bringing security to the area. (U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Russell GilchrestReleased)

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).

***

The head of US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday that the command launched a new task force to focus on information operations to counter China in the Pacific.

According to a report from C4ISRNET, the task force, known as the Joint Task Force Indo-Pacific team, will  focus “on information and influence operations in the Pacific theater.” Gen. Richard D. Clarke, the commander of SOCOM, said the task force will work with “like-minded partners” in the region.

“We actually are able to tamp down some of the disinformation that they [China] continuously sow,” Clarke said. It’s not clear exactly what this new task force will be doing, but the C4ISRNET report suggested that offensive cyber operations could be part of the influence campaign.

Gen. Paul Nakasone, the head of US Cyber Command, also spoke with senators on Thursday and pointed to offensive cyber operations the command took prior to the 2020 election that he claims thwarted election interference.

“The idea of operating outside of the United States, being able to both enable our partners with information and act when authorized. This is an active approach to our adversaries,” Nakasone said. “It’s been most effective as we’ve seen with the 2018 and 2020 elections with adversaries attempting to influence us, attempting to interfere but not being able to do that.”

Gen. Clarke also spoke of information operations conducted under SOCOM’s Special Operations Forces, specifically a group known as Military Information Support Operations professionals that are deployed at embassies around the world.

“By working closely with those partners to ensure that our adversaries, our competitors are not getting that free pass and to recognize what is truth from fiction and continue to highlight that to using our intel communities is critical,” he said.

The Biden administration has made it clear that countering Beijing is its top foreign policy priority. The task force shows that Washington’s campaign against Chinese influence will be played out in many theaters.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image is from OneWorld

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).

***

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.

In the U.S., 118.3 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of March 19.

VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Every Friday, the CDC makes public all VAERS vaccine injury reports received as of the previous week.

This week’s VAERS data included 2,306 reports of anaphylaxis. Fifty-five percent of anaphylaxis reports were attributed to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, 45% to Moderna and 1% to the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) vaccine, which was rolled out in the U.S. on March 2.

As The Defender reported earlier this month, the J&J vaccine contains polysorbate 80, known to trigger allergic reactions. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines contain polyethylene glycol (PEG), also known to trigger anaphylactic reactions.

The latest news report of an anaphylactic reaction to a COVID vaccine was of a 68-year-old Kansas woman who died a day after receiving the vaccine. According to EMS dispatch records, the woman had an allergic reaction at a vaccine clinic site around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, KMBC reported. She had difficulty breathing and speaking and was injected with an EpiPen.

Kansas Department of Health and Environment spokesperson Kristi Zears told The Wichita Eagle that Evans had an anaphylactic reaction during a waiting period after receiving the shot. She was transported to the hospital and pronounced dead a day later. It is not clear whether Evans had underlying health conditions and the Kansas health agency did not indicate which COVID vaccine was administered.

According to the CDC’s website,

“the CDC follows up on any report of death to request additional information and learn more about what occurred and to determine whether the death was a result of the vaccine or unrelated.”

To date, the only information the CDC has published related to the investigation of COVID vaccine-related deaths and how those investigations were conducted is a COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Update via the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), published on Jan. 27.

On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with questions about reported deaths and injuries related to COVID vaccines. We provided a written list of questions about how the CDC conducts investigations into reported deaths, the status of investigations on deaths reported in the media, if autopsies are being done and the standard for determining whether an injury is causally connected to a vaccine.

We also inquired about whether healthcare providers are reporting all injuries and deaths that might be connected to the COVID vaccine, and what education initiatives are in place to encourage and facilitate proper and accurate reporting.

As of today, 18 days later, the CDC has not responded or followed up with our calls or emails. We have contacted them numerous times and are either told “they received the email,” “they will escalate it and it is in the system” or their press officers are still reviewing it. After our most recent follow up call this Wednesday and giving them an updated deadline of 48 hours, we still have not heard back.

A look at the numbers

Overall, the data released today reflects trends that have been emerging since The Defender first began tracking VAERS reports related to COVID vaccines.

This week’s VAERS data show:

• As of March 19, 321 pregnant women had reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 97 reports of miscarriage or premature birth. None of the COVID vaccines approved for Emergency Use Authorization has been confirmed safe or effective for pregnant women, although J&J said earlier this month it would begin testing on pregnant women, infants and the immunocompromised.
• 535 cases of Bell’s Palsy. Of those, 64% of cases were reported after Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinations — almost twice as many as reported (36%) following vaccination with the Moderna vaccine. Three cases of Bell’s Palsy were reported with J&J’s vaccine (about 1%).

Physicians sound alarm about need for pre-screening

Meanwhile, concerns about mass vaccination continued to make national and international headlines this week.

As The Defender reported Tuesday, Dr. Hooman Noorchashm, cardiothoracic surgeon and patient safety advocate, said we’re taking the COVID pandemic problem — where a half-percent of the population is susceptible to dying — and compounding it by vaccinating people who are already infected. In an interview with Fox News host and political commentator, Tucker Carlson, Noorchasm said public health officials are making a “dramatic error” by promoting a “one-size-fits-all” COVID vaccination program:

“… the signal is deafening, the people who are having complications or adverse events are the people who have recently or are currently or previously infected [with COVID]. I don’t think we can ignore this.”

Noorchashm believes that a #ScreenB4Vaccine campaign could save millions from vaccine injuries. He is promoting a screening campaign that consists of “PCR or Rapid Antigen test to determine if there is an active infection and an IgG antibody test that would allow determination of a past infection. If either of these tests are positive, vaccination ought to be delayed for a minimum of 3 – 6 months,” Noorchasm told The Defender. “If at that time IgG levels are waning, it is reasonable to consider getting a vaccine shot. But even then, blood IgG levels should guide whether or not a person gets vaccinated.”

Noorchasm sent a third communication to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this week, warning that deaths like that of 32-year-old Benjamin G. Goodman, who died after receiving the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, could have been prevented, and that there will be more deaths unless people are screened before being vaccinated.

An article in The Hill this week, by several physicians, also suggested that people be prescreened for COVID before being vaccinated.

The physicians wrote:

“A closer look at the level of protection obtained by a single shot vaccine regimen for those who are ‘COVID-primed’ is needed. Rigorous, effective and efficient antibody prescreening tools to identify these individuals would be required as well.”

AstraZeneca under fire in U.S. and Europe

As far as individual vaccines, AstraZeneca garnered the most headlines this week, in Europe and the U.S.

On March 22, The Defender reported that two independent research teams in Norway and Germany identified antibodies that provoke immune reactions leading to the type of blood clots experienced by some people who received AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine.

Although many countries resumed their vaccination program with AstraZeneca’s vaccine after the EMA’s preliminary findings, some countries, including France, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland, did not lift their restrictions on its use.

According to Reuters, Finland announced Wednesday it was still looking into two cases of blood clots but would resume using the AstraZeneca vaccine against COVID for people aged 65 and over. Finland plans to complete its investigation by April 6 at the earliest.

On March 23, U.S. health officials accused AstraZeneca of misrepresenting efficacy data when it included “outdated information” in its clinical trial results, which may have led to the vaccine maker providing the public with an incomplete view of its efficacy data, The Defender reported.

The statement by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases came less than a day after the pharmaceutical company said its vaccine was 79% effective against COVID and 100% effective against severe or critical disease and hospitalization.

AstraZeneca released updated information on its COVID-19 clinical trial Wednesday which showed an efficacy rate of 76% against symptomatic COVID infection instead of the 79% figure released Monday. The estimated efficacy in people over 65 rose slightly, from 80% to 85%. The vaccine maker identified no safety concerns related to the vaccine.

On March 24, the Ukrainian government urged the public not to jump to conclusions after a servicewoman died two days after getting the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine, reported Fox News. Although the woman reportedly had chronic cardiovascular disease and other comorbidities, she experienced no side effects from the vaccine before she suddenly lost consciousness.

According to Reuters, nine other people were given the vaccine from the same batch on the same day and had no ill effects.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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).

***

Norwegian health authorities still haven’t reached a conclusion on the AstraZeneca vaccine. The pause in vaccinations will be kept in place for three more weeks. A decision will be made before April 15.

“We need to know if there have been more cases of side effects in other countries, than those we already know about. We will be working very closely with other Nordic countries, especially Denmark,” said Camilla Stoltenberg, the head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, to NRK.

They will also investigate if there are less serious cases of side effects that have gone unreported in other countries.

Four dead in Norway

Norway halted vaccinations with the AstraZeneca vaccine on March 11, after reports of possible serious side effects surfaced in several countries.

Four people have died from a rare combination of blood clots, low platelets and bleeding in Norway after receiving the AstraZeneca-vaccine.

A group of Norwegian doctors and researchers concluded that at least two of the deaths were caused by a powerful immune response to the vaccine on March 18.

“There is nothing in the patient history of these individuals that could give such a powerful immune response. I am confident that the antibodies we have found are the cause, and I see no other explanation than that the vaccine has triggered it,” said professor and chief physician at Oslo University Hospital, Pål Andre Holme.

Norway and Denmark still haven’t concluded

Around 120.000 people have received a dose of the AstraZeneca vaccine in Norway, with the first dose being administered on February 7. So far there have been six reported cases of a rare condition of blood clots in patients who have received the vaccine. Four of them are dead.

Several other countries, like Germany, Italy, France and Spain, also paused the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine after the early reports of side effects.

After the European Medicines Agency (EMA) concluded that the vaccine is safe and effective, almost all of these countries have resumed vaccinations using AstraZeneca.

The EMA did not consider the blood clot-report from the Norwegian team of experts, as it arrived a day after the agency finished their investigations.

Currently, Norway and Denmark are the only countries that are still not putting their doses of AstraZeneca to use.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Berit Roald / NTB

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).

***

The Cape Verde Supreme Court has approved a request to extradite Venezuelan government envoy Alex Saab to the US.

“The Supreme Court confirms the legal authorization for Saab’s extradition to the United States,” the ruling issued on Wednesday read.

The Colombian-born businessman was detained on an Interpol warrant in June 2020 during a stopover in the African archipelago. He was reportedly on his way to Iran to negotiate trade agreements on behalf of the Nicolás Maduro government.

Caracas protested his arrest, arguing that Saab was protected by diplomatic immunity as “an agent of a sovereign government,” and launched a campaign for his release. The subsequent months saw Washington’s request approved by lower courts, in spite of the absence of a mutual extradition treaty between the two countries, and appealed to higher instances by Saab’s lawyers.

His defense team, which includes high-profile Spanish jurist Baltasar Garzón, secured his transfer to house arrest in January and vowed to appeal the latest ruling before the Cape Verde Constitutional Court.

“We reaffirm our confidence that Saab will be released,” stated lawyer Femi Falana, adding that the defense was “studying the decision.” The businessman’s attorneys and the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry have blasted the arrest and extradition approvals as “politically motivated.”

The Cape Verde Supreme Court decision came on the heels of an Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) Court of Justice ruling that Saab’s arrest had been “illegal” and calling for his immediate release.

“We found his arrest was arbitrary and subsequent detention throughout the period until today was illegal,” Justice Edward Amoako Asante of the Abuja-based tribunal stated on Monday.

The ECOWAS court found that Cape Verdean authorities arrested Saab before the Interpol arrest warrant was issued.

However, the archipelago’s judicial body argued that the ECOWAS Court of Justice had no jurisdiction on the matter, despite Cape Verde belonging to the West African economic union.

For their part, Saab’s attorneys blasted this decision as “an extraordinary act of disobedience,” arguing that the ECOWAS tribunal’s ruling is binding and calling for other community member countries to secure its enforcement.

Washington has accused the Colombo-Venezuelan businessman of running a “vast corruption network” and profiting from overpriced import contracts for Venezuela’s CLAP program, which delivers subsidized food bags to a reported seven million families.

In July 2019, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Saab, business associate Alvaro Pulido and thirteen foreign-based firms allegedly owned or controlled by them and used to circumvent US sanctions. Shortly after, Saab and Pulido were indicted by a Florida court on charges of laundering US $350 million, but no evidence was publicly disclosed.

The CLAP program has been targeted by US authorities as part of a wide-reaching sanctions program aimed at ousting the Maduro government. Measures have included an oil embargo, secondary sanctions, a clampdown on swap deals and the seizure of a number of Venezuelan state assets held abroad.

The unilateral coercive measures have been denounced by multilateral bodies for their “devastating” effects and classified as “collective punishment” of the Venezuelan population, while Caracas has filed a lawsuit at the International Criminal Court (ICC) arguing that they constitute a crime against humanity.

The Trump administration identified Saab as an important player for the Maduro administration to secure key imports, with Washington’s blockade forcing Caracas to increasingly rely on middlemen. Saab’s companies have reportedly secured a number of government contracts over the years in the housing, mining and food sectors.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image: Businessman Alex Saab has been a Venezuelan gov’t ally in circumventing US sanctions. (Archive)

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).

***

And so we come to March 23rd, and lockdown’s first birthday. Or, as we call it here, the longest two weeks in history.

1 year. 12 calendar months. 365 increasingly gruelling days.

It’s a long time since “2 weeks to flatten the curve”, became an obvious lie. Sometime in July it turned into a sick joke. The curve was flattened, the NHS protected and the clapping was hearty and meaningful.

…and none of it made any difference.

This was not a sacrifice for the “greater good”. It was not a hard decision with arguments on both sides. It was not a risk-benefit scenario. The “risks” were in fact certainties, and the “benefits” entirely fictional.

Because Lockdowns don’t work. It’s really important to remember that.

Even if you subscribe to the belief that “Sars-Cov-2” is a unique discrete entity (which is far from proven), or that it is incredibly dangerous (which is demonstrably untrue), the lockdown has not worked to, in any way, limit this supposed threat.

Lockdowns. Don’t. Work.

They don’t make any difference, the curves don’t flatten and the R0 number doesn’t drop and the lives aren’t saved (quite the opposite, as we’ve all seen).

Just look at the graphs.

This one, comparing “Covid deaths” in the UK (lockdown) and Sweden (no lockdown):

Or this one, comparing “Covid deaths” in California (lockdown) and Florida (no lockdown):

From Belarus to Sweden to Florida to Nicaragua to Tanzania, the evidence is clear. “Covid”, whatever that means in real terms, is not impacted by lockdowns.

Putting the entire population under house arrest doesn’t benefit public health. In fact, it’s (rather predictably) incredibly counter-productive.

The damage done by shuttering businesses, limiting access to healthcare, postponing treatments and diagnoses, postponed surgeries, increasing depression, soaring unemployment and mass poverty has been discussed to death. The scale of the impact cannot be overstated.

Dr David Nabarro, World Health Organization special envoy for Covid-19, said this of lockdowns back in October:

We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of the virus[…]just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry…look what’s happening to small-holding farmers[…]it seems we may have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition […] This is a terrible, ghastly global catastrophe.”

A terrible, global catastrophe. A doubling of childhood malnutrition.

The “pandemic” didn’t do that, lockdowns did that. They were never going to achieve their stated aims. And what’s more, they were never intended to achieve those aims.

Too often soft language in the media talks about “misjudgments” or “mistakes” or “incompetence”. Supposed critics claim the government “panicked” or “over-reacted”. That is nonsense. The easiest, cheesiest excuse that has ever existed.

“Whoops”, they say, with an emphatic shrug and shit-eating grin “I guess we done messed up!”. Unflattering, but better than the truth.

Because the truth is that the government isn’t mistaken or scared or stupid…they are malign. And dishonest. And cruel.

All the suffering of lockdown was entirely predictable and deliberately imposed. For reasons that have nothing to do with helping people and everything to do controlling them.

It’s been more than apparent for most of the last fifty-two weeks that the agenda of lockdown was not public health, but laying the groundwork for the “new normal” and “the great reset”.

A series of programmes designed to completely undercut civil liberties all across the world, reversing decades (if not centuries) of social progress. A re-feudalisation of society, with the 99% cheerfully taking up their peasant smocks “to protect the vulnerable”, whilst the elite proselytise about the worth of rules they happily admit do not apply to them.

And we’ve all had lives ruined and a year of precious time wasted. For nothing. You’ve been locked up for two weeks that lasted 365 days. For nothing.

…or rather, for everything. Because that’s what they are trying to take from us. Everything. And the only way to stop them is not to let them. To simply refuse consent.

Let’s not let lockdown get a second birthday.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

17 years of a US-UN military occupation paved the way for 10 years of a US imposed dictatorship in our country, Haiti.

This regime has turned the police force into government death squads.

State corruption and land grabs are rampant..

Youth in popular neighborhoods are armed to the teeth by the government and the oligarchs to fight and kill one another, to create chaos in the streets, and to keep the people in these neighborhoods from joining anti-government protests.

For the first time in the history of our country wanton murders, kidnappings and rapes are a daily occurrence.

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).

***

In a recent episode of the High Wire, host Del Bigtree says:

We are putting immense pressure on [the coronavirus] with an underperforming vaccine that is going to turn it into a hulk. And [Dr. Bossche’s] concern is that it will become so viral and so deadly that there is nothing we can do to stop it.

I can’t help but feel Bigtree and Bossche may be big fans of I Am Legend. Both the novel and the movie are set in a post-apocalyptic America, where a mutant measles virus has wiped out most of mankind. Outside of such dystopian thrillers, however, it’s hard to find examples of such genocidal pandemics (natural or manmade).

Del Bigtree was, as many know, commenting on Dr. Geert Vanden Bossche’s open letter and interview where the vaccine scientist denounces the COVID-19 vaccine.

Well, he sort of denounces it.

Actually, not really.

Instead, he praises the COVID-19 vaccine — merely claiming that it is the “wrong weapon” at the “wrong time.” Ignoring any of its innate dangers and risks, he says that its belated use in the midst of this (invisible) pandemic will trigger more lethal variants.

Super deadly variants: Where have we heard that line before?

His solution to stop these mutant ninja viruses (resulting from an experimental mRNA vaccine)? More vaccines! Yes, he advises mass vaccinating with an even more experimental vaccine.

The idea is this new type of vaccine will stimulate our innate immune system to produce more natural killer (NK) white blood cells.

The natural killer vaccine. Boy, that should sell well.

How many red flags can we plant around this doctor (whose resumé includes helping out the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI and GSK)?

First off, let me be clear, I think the vaccine is innately dangerous. In animal studies, after being re-exposed to the virus, vaccine trials left a pet cemetery of dead ferrets (according to the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy).

But the idea that an “under-performing” vaccine is going to make the virus even more deadly makes no sense to me. If anything, would not an under-performing vaccine make the virus even weaker?

Also, the proposition that inoculating people (while the virus is already in circulation) would finally lead to this monstrous killer coronavirus (that the WHO has been praying for) makes even less sense. As science writer Rosemary Frei’s explains in her excellent article, The Curious Case of Geert Vanden Bossche:

[Viral resistance] it’s not the major threat Vanden Bossche attempts to scare us about by saying the virus is likely to mutate so much and so quickly because of the current mass vaccination campaigns that soon it could escape all current attempts to stop its spread. Remember, for example, that yearly flu mass vaccination hasn’t caused influenza to spiral out of control and decimate the global population.

In truth, science still has not even proven that viruses are contagious, no less that they can become super-contagious. As Thomas Cowan writes in his book, The Contagion Myth:

It was Louis Pasteur who convinced a skeptical medical community that contagious germs caused disease. However, he eventually admitted that the whole effort to prove contagion was a failure, leading to his famous deathbed confession that “the germ is nothing, the terrain is everything.”

Viruses may be at the scene of the “crime.” But so are police and paramedics. That doesn’t necessarily mean they are to blame. Indeed, a virus may be part of some type of healing or detoxification process. Maybe they even help devour cancer cells? ScienceDaily says that in addition to rejecting virally infected cells, NK cells also reject tumours. Could there be a connection?

As epidemiologist Dr. Ron Brown said in a recent interview:

What is a virus, where does it come from, what is its purpose, and what happens to it in the body? How pathogenic is it, and how infectious is it? Virology does not have the full answers to these basic questions, and yet, public health policy is predicated on assumptions about the nature of viruses that may prove to be the complete opposite of reality.

Therefore, out of everything Dr. Boosche said about the virus (his “enemy”) and vaccines (his “weapon”), these words made the most sense to me:

We don’t understand our weapon… We don’t understand exactly what a virus is, do we? So we go to a war and we don’t know our enemy. We don’t understand the strategy of our enemy. And we don’t know how our weapon works. I mean, how is that going to go? That’s a fundamental problem to begin with.

Bossche’s interview and letter are full of so many contradictions, it’s hard to know where he is coming from. Is he struggling to see through decades of cognitive bias, slowly realizing that pharmaceutical vaccines are not the answer to disease? Is he trying to tell the truth without ending up in the trunk of some car at the bottom of a lake? Is he just confused?

Or is he trying cover up the fact that the COVID-19 vaccine is going to kill people in and of itself? As a means to deflect liability, he may have been hired to deflect blame from the vaccine and, instead, on super-variants that adapted to the belated vaccine.

Seems like a great backup plan for Big-Pharma: Oh, sorry, that vaccine didn’t work. Whoops! Oh, and look, more people are dying! Double whoops! But don’t worry, we have this new vaccine instead to solve the problem we created with the first vaccine.

This reminds me of when a country unjustly attacks another country. The politicians argue not over whether they should attack or not, but whether they should be using air force or ground troops.

I know it sounds crazy, but that’s basically what he seems to be saying. All the while he says almost nothing about the fact we could just strengthen (or stop abusing) our immune systems. To me, it looks like we have far more to fear from lockdowns, vaccines, masking and (anti-)social distancing. In short, it’s the weapons being used against “the enemy” that may be the real threat to our own safety.

I suspect that this idea of “the vaccine mutating the virus” is just a way to get the rest of us to believe in a pandemic of killer variants. Given how long humans have been on the earth, I think common sense tells us that nature is not very likely to concoct some killer virus to wipe us out. The “Wuhan laboratory theory” (whether true or not) provided the conspiratorial community a stronger reason to believe — at the beginning of the scamdemic, at least — that a genetically-modified SARS-CoV-2 may actually have been a threat to humanity.

Well, they’re doing it again, by suggesting that vaccine-induced mutations may actually produce a real pandemic. After all, even the mainstream crowd isn’t (on the whole) too worried about these theoretical variants. As Jordan Schachtel (the brilliant and witty writer behind the The Dossierblog) recently wrote, in his article “The Chicken Little act isn’t working – COVID Mania is wearing off”:

The “public health experts” are scrambling to remain in the spotlight, and even their most reliable scare tactics are failing to keep the masses compliant, paranoid, and afraid. For the “public health” cartel, 2020 was the best year of their lives, and it seems that after one year of “two weeks to slow the spread,” they just can’t muster up the momentum needed to replicate that power high….

For the last few months, the ruling class has settled on promoting “new variants” of the coronavirus in order to keep the power grab going…

But now, the new mutation panic is simply not imprinting in the collective mindset in the same way that the old tactics were deployed. The ruling class feels their control slipping away. For the first time in a full year, they’re losing the argument. The momentum for their causes are collapsing. “New variants” just don’t hit hard enough for people to care.

If man-made mutant pathogens were truly so deadly, you’d think by now that, after all the sanitization of 2020, the entire human race would have died out from Incredible Hulk MRSA mutations. Instead, such microbial doomsday predictions have yet to even cause a significant rise in all-cause mortality.

In conclusion, this paragraph from Rosemary Frei’s article, sums up my feelings on the matter:

COVID has an extremely high survival rate. So why develop yet another expensive, invasive and experimental solution to a problem that barely exists, if it does at all?

We have far more serious problems to contend with: Mass vaccination. Lockdowns. Social distancing. Forced masking. And a generation of children being raised in shame of their own respiratory system.

Natural or otherwise, I suggest we forget about the variant fear-mongering, and focus on the real monsters in our midst.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, naturopaths and chiropractors. Since March 2020, he has been writing articles that question and expose the contradictions in the COVID-19 narrative and control measures. He is also completing a novel, Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story. You can visit his website at MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Image license to the Incredible Hulk purchased by the author through Shutterstock, coronavirus image in the public domain from Wikicommons

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).

***

Rola Al-Khatib, a journalist for Al-Hadath, and Al-Arabiya, media outlets from Saudi Arabia, were attacked by children at the Al-Hol camp in north-eastern Syria which houses ISIS families.  

The children had been indoctrinated by their mothers to regard any female not wearing a black headscarf and full-length cloak as an ‘infidel’.  The children threatened to kill the journalist.  She explained to them she wanted to help them by interviewing them, but the children reacted violently.

The video shown by Al-Hadath on Saturday showed the children hurling insults at the reporter, calling her an infidel and showering her and her camera crew with stones.

Al-Khatib was reporting on conditions in the dangerous camp housing 62,000 people, who are the families of ISIS, mainly women, and children.

“I’m not carrying a gun or anything, I just want to talk to you, why do you say I’m infidel?” Al-Khatib asked.

“You should wear a hijab before we talk to you,” one of them said.

“What you are wearing is not hijab, not this color, it’s not black.”

She asked the children how would they react to the situation later, as adults, and they replied immediately:

“We will kill you, we have prepared killings for infidels.”

The female ISIS ideology enforcers

The camps suffer from a female band of ISIS loyalists who are extremely radicalized and exert enormous pressure on the women and girls who do not conform to their dictates. There have been many murders in the camp which have been blamed on these fanatics.  They slip into a tent at night and slit the throat of any woman or girl who fails to comply with their demands and dogma.

Shamina Begum claims she “had no choice but to say certain things” to journalists “because I lived in fear of these women coming to my tent one day and killing me and killing my baby.”

Al-Hol camp

Al-Hol camp is a hell-hole housing 62,000 people living in dire conditions with children from 60 different countries.  The camp houses mainly foreign families of ISIS and the children are being raised indoctrinated with extremist ideology.

Radical Islam is neither a religion nor a sect; it is a political ideology. ISIS is only one of many groups following Radical Islam; others include Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.

Dozens of murders have occurred at the camp and are thought to have been carried out by female extremists who target other females of all ages for failing to follow the strict orders and ideology.

These women and children were among the last remaining ISIS families to be captured after years of living rough in the Syrian desert.  Their fight is over, but their rejection of peace continues. They are waging a psychological war against the world and in defiance of all laws.  They do not represent Islam, or Muslims, but only represent themselves and their death cult.

The camp is administered by the Kurdish separatist militia SDF, who were partners with the US military in the past fight to defeat ISIS.

Roj camp 

Camp manager Nora Abdo of the SDF said Roj camp houses 2,618 persons and is more secure and better provisioned than Al-Hol camp.  Abdo said her biggest concern was the children growing up in the camp abandoned by their governments.

“When they grow up they will hate their homeland, and this will have consequences,” she said. “This should not be their life. What about their future?”

Spanish director Alba Sotorra went to Roj camp in March 2019 and shot a film, “The Return: Life After ISIS,” a documentary shown at the online Texas-based South By Southwest festival. The film features the British ISIS bride Shamina Begum as well as other women from Canada, the US, France, and Germany.

Begum said in the film, “I would say to the people in the UK, give me a second chance because I was still young when I left.”

Begum was a teenager in 2015 when she left Britain with two other girls to travel to Syria to become an ISIS bride.  She married an ISIS fighter from the Netherlands, and is now a widow, and has lost all three children she bore.

Britain’s Supreme Court rejected Begum’s bid to return to challenge a decision stripping her citizenship on national security grounds. Five Supreme Court justices unanimously turned down her request to be able to return to the UK to fight for her citizenship to be restored. Their judgment came six years after the then 15-year-old left east London with friends to join ISIS.

UK Home Secretary Priti Patel welcomed the news, saying it “reaffirmed the home secretary’s authority to make vital national security decisions”.

Begum was discovered by British journalists in 2019 in a camp, but her defiant lack of remorse drew outrage from the British public and leaders alike.

The Kurds as prison guards

Both camps, Roj and Al-Hol, are administered by the US-backed Kurdish separatist militia SDF.

President Trump gave President Erdogan of Turkey the green-light to invade Syria to fight the SDF, which Turkey regards as terrorists, aligned with the PKK.  In October 2019, an estimated 750 ISIS fighters and their women and children escaped from Ain Issa camp where they had been housed.  During the chaos of the invasion, the Kurds were unable to properly secure the inmates of the camp.  Those ISIS men and their families may have made their way through Turkey, who is in support of ISIS, and possibly have found their way on the smuggling boats from Turkey to Europe.

The US-Kurdish alliance

The US illegally invaded Syria during their fight to defeat ISIS.  The Syrian Arab Army and their Russian allies were already fighting ISIS in Syria, but the US refused to coordinate with the two large and powerful military groups already on the ground.  Instead, the US partnered with a small militia, SDF, which are Syrian Kurdish separatists, which Turkey views as terrorists.  It was the Russians who bombed the caravans of stolen oil which kept ISIS financed by selling to President Erdogan.

Western IS brides await going home

Begum and fellow Westerners including the American Hoda Muthana portray an apologetic tone in Sotorra’s film.

 “It was known that Syria was a warzone and I still traveled into it with my children — now how I did this I really don’t know looking back,” says one Western woman.

“I will never be able to understand how a woman from the West can take this decision of leaving everything behind to join a group that is committing the atrocities that Daesh is committing,” Sotorra told AFP.

On March 14 Begum was photographed in Roj camp wearing western clothes.  Gone were the headscarf and cloak, as she wore a t-shirt and sunglasses.  It was obvious she is trying to change her image from an ISIS loyalist to a typical British young woman who seeks to return home. She shook hands with The Telegraph journalist but refused to be interviewed due to legal advice.

Radical Islamic ideology

While ISIS may have been defeated on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria, their ideology remains and continues to attract followers, as well as retaining the ISIS loyalists in the camps who are mainly sisters, wives, widows, and mothers.

Experts have warned that the Al-Hol camp and others have become an incubator for extremism.  The female ISIS ideological warrior is teaching their children to grow up to take revenge on everyone who is not exactly like them.  ISIS has been termed a death-cult and a fascist ideology.  There is still no comprehensive plan on how to deal with the women and children in the various camps in Syria.  Similarly, the US-run Guantanamo Bay facility has inmates who have been all but forgotten.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist. 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).

***

Prevailing financial sector “wisdom” holds that while the bond and stock markets of the US and EU are dangerously inflated following huge COVID borrowings and unprecedented central bank measures, that China is the one example of a market suitable for investment as it has managed to get beyond COVID and restart its economy.

A closer look at recent official measures by Chinese financial regulators and the Bank of China suggest it is anything but safe, and that its domestic real estate sector could be a bubble whose collapse can trigger a global financial catastrophe beyond any seen in modern history.

In 1931 the world financial architecture of Versailles was bankrupt, but not yet in financial collapse. The key trigger to pull the world into the Great Depression was not the 1929 Wall Street stock crash, but rather the collapse of a relatively small Austrian bank.

In ways remarkably analogous to the unfolding global financial crisis of today, world credit had been built after 1919 on a pyramid of increasingly dubious debts, with the House of Morgan and Wall Street financial firms sitting at the peak of the pyramid.

Most of Europe and a large number of developing countries from Bolivia to Poland were linked into the Wall Street credit pyramid. In 1929-1931, the domino-style failure of those Morgan-initiated credit links to Europe and beyond turned a manageable American stock market crash into the worst deflation crisis in American history, precipitating a global depression.

The amount of foreign bonds issued by Wall Street in the decade until the 1929 market crash was about $7,000,000,000, a huge amount equal to nearly 10% of total US Gross Domestic Product. The war-damaged European economies used more than 90% of these American loans to buy American goods, a boon to major US corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange.

When the buying collapsed after 1929, however, Wall Street’s foreign lending boom became a vehicle that severely worsened the US industrial depression. The whole edifice of dollar credits that supported Europe’s debt pyramid during the 1920’s rested on the loans of New York banks, above all from J.P. Morgan & Co., to Europe to refinance short-term credits. The US Government had insisted at Versailles in 1919 that Britain, France and Italy repay its US war loans in dollars.

Much of the credit from New York banks had flowed into Germany after the 1924 Dawes Plan currency stabilization. Within six years, various German municipalities, private companies, port authorities and other entities, had issued bonds underwritten by New York banks and sold to American investors. Germany borrowed nearly $4 billion from abroad during this period.

In the period from 1924 to 1931, almost $6 billion in American credit poured into Europe, equivalent in 2021 to some $92 billion. If US war loans by the Treasury, and the costs of the War itself were added, a total of $40 billion in US funds had gone into Europe in less than 15 years, fully one-fifth of total American GDP in 1914.

America’s conspicuous consumption during the ‘Roaring Twenties’ was based on an illusion of rising household wealth for the majority of its citizens. This debt-driven consumption created the nation’s illusory wealth — the Achilles Heel of the economy. In America, by 1929 fully 60% of all cars and 80% of home radios were bought on installment credit. Behind the façade of American prosperity of the 1920s was an edifice built on debt and illusions of permanent prosperity and rising stock prices, in many ways similar to China since 2000. Once the consumer credit carousel stopped in 1929-1931, the consumption boom collapsed, as the majority of Americans simply could not afford to buy on credit any longer.

In March 1931, Austria, a tiny shard of the prewar Austro-Hungarian Empire with 6 million people, announced it had entered talks with Germany to create a common customs union to boost trade, as depression threatened. Such a union would not even be a technical violation of the Versailles Treaty. It was certainly no threat to world security.

The Government of France reacted swiftly and demanded immediate repayment of some $300 million in short-term credits owed by Germany and Austria to French banks, to pressure both countries to halt their customs union. The demands triggered a panic flight from the shaky Austrian currency. The weakest link in the Austrian financial system was the Vienna Credit Anstalt Bank. It was also the largest bank in Austria. The collapse of the Credit Anstalt led to a depositor panic run on the Darmstaedter-und Nationalbank or Danat-Bank in Germany, and created a currency crisis for the Brüning government, as well. At that point, the Bank of England, the US Federal Reserve, the German Reichsbank, and the Bank of France met to discuss an emergency credit infusion to try to stop the spread of currency panic. It was too late.

China As the new Credit Anstalt?

The analogy today with the unsound Austro-German credit bubble of the 1920s lies ironically, not with the United States, but rather with the Peoples’ Republic of China, and the staggering growth of personal household debt there since the 2008 global financial crisis. The Beijing central authorities in a panic reaction, released an unprecedented volume of $504 billion in credit to local authorities with a mandate to invest to spur the economy. Nowhere was the investment more than in housing, where a new middle-income population was willing to borrow to get their own home.

By 2016-17 Beijing authorities realized that a dangerous speculative bubble in rising house prices threatened the economy. Restrictive measures only drove local authorities and banks into covert “off-balance sheet” lending via so-called local government financing vehicles (LGFV), where the local governments create an investment company that sells bonds to finance real estate or other local projects. With real estate prices inflating at double digits annually to the present, the size of real estate debts has grown to the point today the Peoples’ Bank of China and other regulators openly warn of a bubble as many families rush to borrow for a second home for speculative gain.

Total household debt including mortgage and consumer loans for cars and household appliances in 2020 was a whopping 62% of GDP. The Institute of International Finance (IIF) estimated that China’s total domestic debt rose to 335 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2020. Some have drawn comparisons to the insane real estate inflation in Japan in 1990-91 before the collapse.

In 1998 the Beijing Government allowed citizens to own their own home. The emerging middle class eagerly bought new apartments that were rising everywhere in the major cities. Real estate was viewed as the only safe investment as stocks and bonds were volatile, and capital export was controlled. For the past two decades home price valuations have risen significantly, leading many Chinese to believe it could never stop. This February, despite official measures, China home prices rose year-year by 16.8 %. According to data from China’s National Bureau of Statistics the total market value of China’s real estate is currently around 65 trillion US Dollars– that’s trillion. In 2019, China’s GDP was $14 trillion US, making China real estate far more inflated than USA or EU values by a big margin. A 2018 study found Chinese home prices averaged 9.3 times annual incomes, outstripping inflated San Francisco’s 8.4 times.

Beijing is clearly alarmed and since January has issued strict measures to force local governments away from continuing to feed the real estate bubble. In 2020 to counter the corona lockdowns and economic recession, Beijing issued major stimulus measures. Now with the economy slowly restarting, Beijing is determined to deleverage the bubbles in stocks as well as real estate in hopes of creating what Xi Jinping calls “dual circulation” which in effect, means while trying to maintain growth of exports, that China increasingly gets its 1.4 billion citizens to consume more domestically to lessen dependence on risky exports. This will be no easy job, even for the formidable Chinese.

What Beijing authorities are attempting to do is to cap the real estate bubble, to block speculative borrowing for second homes, in hopes the funds will go to other consumption.

China Debt Pyramid

Xi Jinping and the central government face a high risk dilemma. With the world economy descending by the day deeper into decline, Xi recently issued orders for local governments to insure spending on infrastructure to maintain “dual circulation” economic growth. Yet at the same time, to deflate what it sees as a potentially systemic real estate bubble, Beijing demands local authorities stop new lending off-balance sheet to finance home buying via LGFVs. Something has to give, and it could be default of millions of Chinese on their mortgage loans as unemployment, largely hidden in government data, reportedly grows significantly.

Last September, China’s Evergrande Group, as of 2018 the world’s most valuable real estate company with some $121 billion in real estate and related debt, underwent a cash crisis owing to its excessive debt burden and the slowing economy. In a desperate effort to develop new revenue sources, the real estate group has diversified into solar panels, pig farming, agribusiness, and baby formula. Not a reassuring sign.

The Evergrande crisis is for the time being under control, as it sells billions of assets to reduce debt. However the scare led Beijing authorities to double down on local hidden real estate debts.

According to the state’s National Institution for Finance and Development estimate, total local hidden debt reached an impressive 14.8 trillion yuan or $ 2.3 trillion in 2020. That’s likely very conservative. Standard & Poors estimates the total at between 30 trillion yuan (US$4.2 trillion) to 40 trillion yuan (US $6.1 trillion). Even that may be conservative, as it is deliberately hidden. Since January strict new rules from the central authorities seek to kill or cap such hidden real estate loans in a drive to shift investment into local infrastructure and industry—dual circulation.

On March 16 Liu Guiping, a deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China wrote about financial risk, “We need to… actively and effectively curb the spread of financial risk contagion, and resolutely maintain the bottom line of avoiding systemic financial risks.” That however is easier said than done.

China’s domestic debt has been growing at an average annual rate of around 20 per cent since 2008, far faster than its gross domestic product, a recipe for serious trouble. Official data showed that outstanding household debt, including mostly real estate debt, at the end of 2020 stood at 63.19 trillion yuan (US$9.7 trillion). That’s equivalent of 62 per cent of Chinese gross domestic product.

In 2021 a record 7.1 trillion yuan ($1.1 trillion) of such special local bonds come due and must be rolled over to avoid collapse of local governments. That will mean that the big state banks must somehow finance the local debt, much of it of dubious or “junk bond” value. This, just as Beijing demands the banks finance new infrastructure and growth initiatives outside real estate while also reducing own debt. Despite official loans from Beijing to local authorities to finance small and mid-size business, South China Morning Post reports that in some cases the financing was being obtained by dummy shell corporations and then used illegally for real estate investments.

If troubles in this local bond market spill over into the national sovereign bond market, a huge market worth a staggering $18 trillion, that would drive bond rates far higher, triggering a wave of local defaults in less viable projects including real estate. It is certain that the PBOC, the state central bank, would then pump liquidity to save its giant state banks. But given the scale of the debt, that could well force liquidation of China dollar assets abroad, including its estimated $1.04 trillion of US Treasury debt, as well as Euro bonds.

Ironically, major Wall Street firms such as Ray Dalio’s Bridgewater or BlackRock, and major Wall Street banks, have been investing in the promise of a China economic recovery. With the US bond markets on a razor’s edge in recent weeks with a new $1.9 trillion Biden stimulus and national debt soaring skywards, it would take little from a China bond crisis to trigger a repeat of the 1931 Austria crisis. Only this time, the entire world economy is bound in a debt system that is out of control. As of January, global debt has climbed to a record $281 trillion, adding an unprecedented $24 trillion in 2020 for corona measures. It looks like this is all part of the Great Reset plan: Blame China for what the BIS central bankers, the real gods of money have engineered since 2008.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

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

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

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

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

***

The efficacy of the RT-PCR test used to identify infection by the SARS-CoV-2 virus and ”cases” of the Covid-19 disease is widely disputed. In these discussions it is often maintained that the test produces 97% false positives. Reference for that claim is made to a study by a Marseille-based group who communicated their results in a letter to the editor on September 28th, 2020.[1]

The first author is R. Jaafar, so it is hereafter referred to as the Jaafar-paper. It represents an expanded data set compared to an earlier study[2] spearheaded by B. La Scola. This publication is referred to as the La Scola-paper.

In sum, the results presented in the Jaafar-paper do not provide a stand-alone proof for the test producing 97% false positives. The present comment is an attempt to distil the essential conclusions from their data.

In the semi-public domain, it has been another matter of confusion that the abbreviation “RT-PCR” is sometimes referred to as “Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction”, while in other cases one may see it explained as “Real Time PCR”.

It is both. It is Real Time RT-PCR.

The enzyme reverse transcriptase addresses single-stranded RNA fragments in the swab and converts them into double-stranded DNA in a series of steps. Thereafter, the polymerase enzyme begins to make copies of selected DNA. The selection is determined by a pair of so-called primers which are necessary for initiating the process.

The replication occurs in cycles. Each cycle begins by heating the sample in order to separate the DNA double-helix into two free DNA strands. These serve as templates for the polymerase to produce complementary strands of each out of the building blocks present in the soup. Upon cooling the strands recombine. The cycle has ended. The result is a doubling of the number of DNA molecules present prior to the cycle.

During production the DNA is tagged by a probing molecule which fluoresces only when it is incorporated into the DNA. Thus, the sample emits visible light when irradiated with a little laser. The fluorescence intensity is recorded for each cycle of the PCR as a measure of the amount of DNA being produced. That is where the real-time comes in. When a pre-determined level is reached, the multiplication process is stopped and the test termed “positive”.

The number of cycles needed to produce the critical level of fluorescence is called the cycle threshold, Ct, which is a characteristic of each sample. Obviously, if the process starts with a huge number of RNA-fragments, the threshold fluorescence intensity is reached early and the Ct is low. If the initial loading is only a few RNA molecules, or maybe even a single piece, it may take many cycles to get the critical fluorescence signal.

This means that the Ct–value has the potential to provide a quantitative measure for the viral load of any person. It can be convenient if you want a quantitative measure for your temporary condition.

A future conversation may go like this:

“How do you do?”

“I went to the test center. They told me, that I feel fine. I have a Ct of 42 today.”

As will be understood from the following, this exchange may imply that person #2 had a cold last fall but no clinical symptoms today.

All samples are positive if 60 cycles are applied because “PCR makes something out of nothing”, as Kary Mullis – the Nobel Prize-winning inventor of the PCR technology – once said.

When it is only a matter of cycles before the test is positive, we must all have DNA and/or RNA fragments – foreign or domestic – in our body, which are targeted by the primers in current use. At high Ct values you end up amplifying “the background molecular noise” of benign genetic fragments.

We all have a CT all the time!

The Jaafar-paper is a contribution to the important discussion of the therapeutic utility of the PCR methodology. More specifically: “What is the tipping point for Ct below which a PCR provides a meaningful test for Covid-19 and above which it is meaningless”?

From the beginning of the Covid-19 outbreak until the research being wrapped up in said publication the Marseille institute performed 250,566 SARS-CoV-2 tests for 179,151 patients.

Of these, 13,161 tested positive within 35 cycles of the RT-PCR. That is 7.3%.

Out of these positive samples, 3790 were inoculated and managed for culture. The process of inoculation is more-or-less described in the La Scola-paper.2

They write, that “0.5 mL swab fluid was centrifuged and inoculated onto VERA cells (monkey kidney cell line) and observed for cytopathogenic effect” – in an undisclosed number of days.

That is, did the cells die and disintegrate? This observation must have been done under an optical microscope. If they observed cell death a liquid sample was taken from the vial and processed accordingly for observation in a scanning electron microscope.

The authors call this “Presumptive detection of virus in supernatant showing cytopathogenic effect.”

In translation, this means: “If we see the monkey cells die and disintegrate in the optical microscope we take the sample to the electron microscope and believe that whatever we see there, must be the virus.”

However, no electron microscope pictures were provided.

The presence of virus is further “confirmed” with RT-PCR on said liquid. Very importantly, the Ct values for these RT-PCRs run on the samples subjected to electron microscopy are not provided. If the DNA/RNA selected by the primers before and after inoculation targeted the same virus, the latter Ct’s should be substantially lower than the Ct’s obtained from the raw swabs.

If they were not, we really do not know why the cells died.

But let us assume for now that cell death is a criterion for a successful inoculation and that the deaths are caused by the same virus being quantified in the RT-PCR test.

Thus, Jaafar et al. report that the inoculation was successful in 1941 cases out of the 3790 PCR-positives being managed for culture.
This leads us to the immediate assessment that 49% of the positive PCR-tests may have been false in the sense, that the viral load of the patient must have been insignificant.

Whether the 51% successfully inoculated samples do represent a positive diagnosis for the disease called Covid-19 depends on whether SARS-CoV-2 really is a singular entity and whether it has been isolated and shown to be the pathogen of the disease.

In this evaluation we therefore reserve the term “positive” to a sample reaching the critical fluorescence threshold. The “positives” comprise the inoculable and the non-inoculable samples (which are false positives).

The data from the Jaafar-paper are reproduced in Figure 1. It shows the distribution between inoculable and non-inoculable samples for each group of Ct’s, ranging from 11 (Ct11) to 37 (Ct37) cycles.

True, the inoculables comprise only 3% of the Ct35-group. But since there were only 74 samples needed to be taken that far, it does not mean, that the RT-PCR test produces 97% false positives overall. The picture is more diverse.

Figure 1. From Jaafar et al. Shows inoculable samples (brown) together with non-inoculable (grey) for each Ct.

The same data are displayed in a more traditional manner in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Same data as Figure 1, displayed traditionally. The black line represents how many samples are subjected to cell culture at each Ct-group.

We seek an answer to the question: How many cycles should be standard if we want 80% of the positives to represent an inoculable sample?

Figure 3. Top: Integration of #inculables and #non-inculables curves in Figure 2. That is, sum of inoculable and non-inoculable, respectively, registered up until a given Ct. Bottom: Same, as percentage of sum of cultured samples at Ct.

In figure 3 (top), the number of inoculables and non-inoculables, respectively, are summed up to the Ct value. That is, the curves in figure 2 are integrated.

In Figure 3 (bottom) the same data are displayed as percentage of the total number of cultured samples up until that Ct.

It is seen that at Ct25, 80% of the samples termed “positive” by the RT-PCR test will be inoculable. However, 20% of the “positives” will be false, if inoculation is a bench-mark for efficacy of the RT-PCR. Some may find that to be a fair trade off.

So, if 1) there exists such a thing as a singular SARS-CoV-2 virus, if 2) this virus causes serious respiratory symptoms, if 3) the virus is inoculable in VERA cells, if 4) VERA cells are a valid representation of human ditto, and if 5) the Corman-Drosten test really detects SARS-CoV-2 specifically, it MAY have some benefit for a doctor in a clinical setting with a patient having serious respiratory symptoms to run an RT-PCR until Ct = 25 as a supplementary test.[3]

A bit far out, isn’t it?

It really boils down to the primers, their specificity and applicability at low concentrations. How can they target a fatal SARS-CoV-2 virus when its very existence remains to be demonstrated? Furthermore, the sequences of the various primers being used are found not only in ca. 100 bacteria but are also abundant in the human genome.[4][5]

Pairing of two DNA strands – hybridization – doesn’t have to be perfect to occur. If the two strands are, say, only 80% complementary, the binding constant will be reduced. But hybridization happens nevertheless. When a vastly exaggerated concentration of primers are used in the standard Corman-Drosten test[6] it is deliberately bound to pick up other DNA floating around, whether these have been produced by the reverse transcriptase or not.[7]

An RT-PCR test run at CT25

What outcome can be expected IF the Corman-Drosten test did detect a thing called SARS-CoV-2 and was operated at maximum of 25 cycles?

Figure 4. Top: Sum of RT-PCR positives managed for culture up until the Ct-group (integration of black line in figure 2). Bottom: Same data displayed as % of total sum positives managed for culture (3790).

Consider in Figure 4 (top) how the total number of cultured samples increases partly linearly with the number of cycles. This is in agreement with the notion, that the number of cultured per Ct-group reaches a plateau beyond Ct ~ 20 (figure 2) but only noteworthy if the selection of samples subjected to culture was random.

Of this sub-group (3790) subjected to culture – selected among those termed positive by the RT-PCR test within 35 cycles – only 1813 would have been registered as positives had only 25 cycles been applied (Figure 4, top), corresponding to 48% of the sub-group (Figure 4, bottom).

Since 7.3% were tested positive by RT-PCR within 35 cycles, it can be expected that 7.3 x 0.48 = 3.5% will be returned as positives if the number of cycles is confined to 25.

Of these, 2.8% may be trustworthy (80% according to inoculation) while 0.7% may be false positives – IF inoculation is a valid means of confirmation and all other conditions are met!

Closing remark

To be sick is to have symptoms. If you are not sick, you are not contagious. It used to be common sense that you are healthy unless you are not.

Sense is not common anymore during the alleged Covid-19 pandemic. Now you are sick until proven healthy – and contagious by default. The vehicle for this scam is the RT-PCR test run at >35 cycles and beyond. Stop testing and survive.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Niels Harrit is Associate Professor of Chemistry (retired) at the University of Copenhagen. He was first author of the groundbreaking paper Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe

Notes

[1] Correlation Between 3790 Quantitative Polymerase Chain Reaction–Positives Samples and Positive Cell Cultures, Including 1941 Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Isolates.

[2] Viral RNA load as determined by cell culture as a management tool for discharge of SARS-CoV-2 patients from infectious disease wards.

[3] WHO Information notice for IVD users.

[4] The scam has been confirmed: PCR does not detect SARS-CoV-2, philosophers-stone.info.

[5] Conversations with Tom Cowan, at 18.13.

[6] Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR

[7] Review report Corman-Drosten et al. Eurosurveillance 2020.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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).

***

Christopher J. Portier, Ph.D., former director of the National Center for Environmental Health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), and a scientific advisor for the World Health Organization (WHO), recently completed an expert report on brain tumor risk from exposure to radio frequency (RF) radiation used in cellphone technology.

After completing a comprehensive review of the scientific literature, Dr. Portier concluded:

“In my opinion, RF exposure probably causes gliomas and neuromas and, given the human, animal and experimental evidence, I assert that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, the probability that RF exposure causes gliomas and neuromas is high.”

In 2011, Dr. Portier was selected to represent the CDC on an expert working group convened by the WHO International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) to review the carcinogenicity of RF radiation. Based upon recommendations of the expert panel, the IARC declared RF radiation “possibly carcinogenic to humans” (Group 2B) and the following year issued a monograph summarizing the evidence. Because the preponderance of the peer-reviewed research published since 2011 supports the need to upgrade this classification, the IARC has prioritized a new review to be conducted by 2024.

Dr. Portier’s 176-page expert report including 443 references was prepared for the plaintiffs in a major product liability lawsuit, Murray et al. v Motorola, Inc. et al., filed in the Superior Court for the District of Columbia against the telecommunications industry. The report appears as Exhibit 3 in a recent filing with the Court.

Christopher J. Portier. Expert Report. Exhibit C. Murray et al. v. Motorola, Inc. et al. Superior Court for the District of Columbia. March 1, 2021. pp. 1-176.

The report can be downloaded here.

Summary Statements from the Expert Report

***

4.1.5 Conclusions for Gliomas (p. 51)

“The evidence on an association between cellular phone use and the risk of glioma in adults is quite strong. While there is considerable difference from study to study on ever versus never usage of cellular phones, 5 of the 6 meta-analyses in Figure 1. are positive and two are significantly positive. Once you consider latency, the meta-analyses in Figure 2 clearly demonstrate an increasing risk with increasing latency. The exposure response meta-regressions in Table 10 and Table 11 clearly indicate that risk is increasing with cumulative hours of exposure, especially in the highest exposure groups. There is a strong tendency toward gliomas appearing on the same side of the head as the phone is generally used and the temporal lobe is strongly suggested as a target. These findings do not appear to be due to chance. The cohort studies appear to show less of a risk than the case-­control studies, but one study is likely to be severely impacted by differential exposure misclassification (Frei et al., 2007) and the other (Benson et al., 2012) is likely to have a milder differential exposure misclassification. The case-control studies are possibly impacted by recall bias although that issue has been examined in a number of different evaluations. Selection bias could have been an issue for the lnterphone study, but their alternative analysis using different referent groups reduces that concern. Confounding is not an issue here. In conclusion, an association has been established between the use of cellular telephones and the risk of gliomas and chance, bias and confounding are unlikely to have driven this finding. The ecological studies are of insufficient strength and quality to fully negate the findings from the observational studies.

The data in children is insufficient to draw any conclusions.”

4.2.5 Conclusions for Acoustic Neuromas (p. 72)

“The evidence on an association between cellular phone use and the risk of acoustic neuromas [ANs] in adults is strong. While there is considerable difference from study to study on ever versus never usage of cellular phones, 3 of the 4 meta-analyses in Figure 3 are above 1 although none-significantly. The meta-analyses in Figure 4 demonstrate an increased risk in the highest 2 latency groups for the case-control studies that gets slightly higher when the cohort studies are added. For latency >=5 years, the mRRs are significantly elevated for the case-control studies and the combined case-control and cohort studies. The exposure response meta-regressions in Table 19 indicates that risk is increasing with cumulative hours of exposure, especially in the highest exposure groups. This finding, however, is sensitive to the inclusion of the Hardell et al. (2013) [160] study. There is a strong tendency toward ANs appearing on the same side of the head as the phone is generally used, especially as the exposure increases. These findings do not appear to be due to chance. The cohort studies appear to show less of a risk than the case-control studies, but one study is likely to be severely impacted by differential exposure misclassification (Schuz et al. (2011) [99]) and the other (Benson et al. (2013) [102]) is likely to have a milder differential exposure misclassification. Both studies have very few cases. The case-control studies are possibly impacted by recall bias and this cannot be ruled out for the ANs. Selection bias could have been an issue for lnterphone (2010) [67], and, unlike their analysis of the glioma data, they have not looked at an alternate referent population for their analyses of AN. Confounding is not an issue here. In conclusion, an association has been established between the use of cellular telephones and the risk of ANs and chance and confounding are unlikely to have driven this finding. Potential recall bias and selection bias may still be an issue with some of these findings.”

5.5. Summary and Conclusions for Laboratory Cancer Studies (p. 86-88)

“The central question to ask of animal cancer studies is “Can RF increase the incidence of tumors in laboratory animals?” The answer, with high confidence, is yes. Table 20 summarizes the findings from the chronic exposure carcinogenicity studies for RF.

For rats, the NTP (2018) [177] chronic exposure bioassay in male Sprague-Dawley rats, including in-utero exposure, is clearly positive for acoustic neuromas of the heart, malignant gliomas of the brain and pheochromocytomas of the adrenal gland. These findings are further supported by the presence of preneoplastic lesions and tissue toxicity in the heart, brain glial cells and adrenal glands. The less convincing findings in the study by Falcioni et al. (2018) [178] of heart acoustic neuromas in male Sprague-Dawley rats and a marginal increase in malignant gliomas in females provides additional support for this finding….

In conclusion, there is sufficient evidence from these laboratory studies to conclude that RF can cause tumors in experimental animals with strong findings for gliomas, heart Schwannomas and adrenal pheochromocytomas in male rats and harderian gland tumors in male mice and uterine polyps in female mice. There is also some evidence supporting liver tumors and lung tumors in male and possibly female mice.”

6. Mechanisms Related to Carcinogenicity (p. 91)

“There is sufficient evidence to suggest that both oxidative stress and genotoxicity are caused by exposure to RF and that these mechanisms could be the reason why RF can induce cancer in humans.”

7. Summary of Bradford Hill Evaluations (p. 109)

“RF exposure probably causes gliomas and acoustic neuromas, and given the human, animal and experimental evidence, I assert that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, the probability that RF exposure causes these cancers is high.” 

Table 22: Summary conclusion for Hill’s nine aspects of epidemiological data and related science (p. 110-111)

Final Conclusion (p. 111)

“In my opinion, RF exposure probably causes gliomas and neuromas and, given the human, animal and experimental evidence, I assert that, to a reasonable degree of scientific certainty, the probability that RF exposure causes gliomas and neuromas is high.”

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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).

***

The Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals, the Club of Generals and Admirals of Serbia and a number of other independent, non-partisan, non-profit organizations have been continuously marking March 24th 1999, the date of the beginning of NATO military aggression since the year 2000 to date, organizing commemorative ceremonies, domestic and international conferences, laying wreaths at the memorials dedicated to the victims of aggression, publishing books, releasing statements, and reminding friends and partners in the country and abroad to also take part in these activities. This makes a distinct part of the overall commemorative activities of the Serbian society and, as of lately, of the state institutions of Serbia as well. This year’s activities had to be in line with the measures effected due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The first and the foremost reason is the sense of moral duty towards human victims, military, police and civilian ones alike, because all of them are innocent victims fallen on the soil of their own country from the foreign aggressor’s weapons. The aggression itself took between 3,500 – 4,000 human lives, of whom more than 1,100 were military and police personnel, whereas the rest comprised civilians, women and children, workers, the public TV-broadcaster’s employees, passengers in trains and busses, displaced people on the move. The numbers of those who died after the armed aggression, firstly from among some 10,000 wounded, then of those who perished from the scattered cluster bombs, and of those who succumbed to consequences of the use of missiles filled with depleted uranium and of the poisoning by noxious gasses generated upon the bombing of refineries and chemical plants, are yet to be determined. We remember them all today and pay our deepest homage. We are confident that today’s youth and all future generations will also remember those victims, aware of this remembrance being the moral duty of entire nation, a precondition for preserving dignity and peaceful future.

The second reason is to defend the truth, to leave no room for forgeries, lies and trickeries aimed, then and now, to diminish the aggressor’s responsibility by inculpating the victim. This is why we have to clarify that the NATO war was neither an intervention, nor an aerial campaign, nor a “small Kosovo war”, not even a mere bombing, but instead an illegal aggression committed without a United Nations Security Council’s approval, blatant violation of the UN Charter, the OSCE Final Act, the fundamental principles of international law and, most notably, violation of the NATO Founding Act of 1949 and respective national constitutions of the latter’s member states. This was the first war on European soil since World War II, waged against an independent and sovereign state which neither attacked nor otherwise threatened either NATO or any of its individual member states.

Thus, NATO inflicted a heavy blow to the legacies of World War II and of the agreements reached in Tehran, Yalta, Potsdam and Helsinki. Its aggression on Serbia (the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia) in 1999 undermined the basic principles of international relations and the security system, for which tens of millions of people were killed. March 24rth, 1999 has entered history as a turning point in the world relation symbolizing the peak of uni-polar domination, the beginning of its downfall and emerging multi-polar world order. Not once, we heard that by launching attack on Yugoslavia NATO and its leading power wanted to preserve its international credibility. What came as the result was just the opposite.

The aggressor wanted the war by all means, not any peaceful and sustainable solution for Kosovo and Metohija, the least to protect human rights or avoidance of “humanitarian catastrophe”. It wanted a war to justify NATO’s existence in the post-Cold War era and enormous budget appropriations for armaments, that is, the huge profits for military-industrial complex. NATO wanted a war to demonstrate in practice implementation of the doctrine of expansion to the East, to Russian boarders and also to create a precedent for the globalization of armed interventionism devoid of observance of international law and the role of the UN Security Council.

It was cover-up for deployment of American troops in the Balkan Peninsula an mushrooming of a chain of the new USA military basis from Bond Steel in the province of Kosovo and Metohija to a dozen of other bases from Black to Baltic Seas. Europe sank deep conceding to participate in a war on itself. The fact that Europe still fails to put focus on itself, its own interests and identity, while pressuring Serbia to accept forcible theft of a part of her state territory (Kosovo and Metohija) and agree to the Dayton Agreement’s revision and the creation of a unitary Bosnia and Herzegovina, only testifies to a worrying syndrome of the past now threatening its independence, unity, and development.

Thirdly, because we do not assent to defeatism and propensity of some media from the so-called non-governmental sector and some public figures who interpret NATO aggression in a way that reduces the aggressor’s responsibility, while suggesting that Serbia, in the name of a purported realism and for the sake of a “better future”, should shelve the topic of aggression and ‘relieve herself’ of Kosovo and Metohija as of a burden choking her progress. However, NATO’s responsibility for aggression and alliance with the terrorist and separatist KLA cannot be reduced in any way, the least of all could it be transferred onto Serbia. This would be shameful for Serbia and the Serbian people, and very detrimental for Europe and the future of global relations. The future of Europe’s identity, autonomy, security and cooperation is highly dependent on reexamining 1999 aggression on Yugoslavia, accepting it was historic mistake. Otherwise it will continue to seriously hinder its own interests.

Although devoted to Europe, Serbia cannot pay the price of re-establishing perturbed unity of the EU and NATO and/or of pursuing geopolitical goals of their key members, by means of renouncing Kosovo and Metohija, her state, cultural, and spiritual foundation. I am confident that Serbia will remain committed to a peaceful, just, and sustainable solution in line with the basic principles of peace, security and cooperation, while observing her Constitution and UN Security Council Resolution 1244. By far largest share of humanity has come to understanding that there are no humanitarian wars or wars to protect population. “Colored revolutions” and cruising missiles do not help ‘export’ democracy and human rights but rather serve interests of domination of liberal multinational corporate capital. In contrast to whatever the policy of force and the self-proclaimed ‘exceptionality’ may presume, history cannot be halted, nor uni-polarity reincarnated.

Fourthly, we are deeply concerned over the unending escalation of global relations, the arms race, the absence of dialogue among the leading powers and the deepening of mistrust among the key stakeholders in European and global relations. Public denominating of nuclear powers and permanent UN Security Council members as adversaries, plans to create ‘democratic coalitions’ aimed at confrontation with ‘authoritarian systems’, mass-scale military exercises deployed from the Atlantic and Baltic to the Indo-Pacific to ‘contain’ the ‘malign influences’ – signal a serious deterioration of global relations and risk unpredictable consequences. All this does not concern the great powers only, although is mostly dependent on them, but also reflects adversely on the position and development of all countries in the world, including also the position of Serbia and other small and medium size countries. As peace is indivisible, so are the dangers to peace and security. Hence we call on the dialogue on the highest level of permanent members of UN Security Council, urgent relaxation tensions, halt of deepening mistrust, respect for equality and partnership in resolving main urgent international challenges and problems, such as Covid 19 pandemic, deepening global economic and social gaps, climate warming, arms race and many of actual or potential conflicts.

Fifthly, because we do not want to witness a repeat of the anguish, victims, and devastation suffered by our nation during and after NATO’s 1999 aggression ever, anywhere in the world. The tragic destiny of children in Belgrade, Varvarin, Korisha, Kosovska Mitrovica, Murino, must not be repeated.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

Živadin Jovanović is President of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals. he is a frequent contributor to global Research. 

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).

***

Let’s start with comic relief: the “leader of the free world” has pledged to prevent China from becoming the “leading” nation on the planet. And to fulfill such an exceptional mission, his “expectation” is to run again for president in 2024. Not as a hologram. And fielding the same running mate.

Now that the “free world” has breathed a sigh of relief, let’s return to serious matters – as in the contours of the Shocked and Awed 21st Century Geopolitics.

What happened in the past few days between Anchorage and Guilin continues to reverberate. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov stressed that Brussels “destroyed” the relationship between Russia and the EU, he focused on how the Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership is getting stronger and stronger.

Not so casual synchronicity revealed that as Lavrov was being properly hosted by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Guilin – scenic lunch in the Li river included -, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken was visiting NATO’s James-Bondish HQ outside Brussels.

Lavrov made it quite clear that the core of Russia-China revolves around establishing an economic and financial axis to counterpunch the Bretton Woods arrangement. That implies doing everything to protect Moscow and Beijing from “threats of sanctions by other states”; progressive de-dollarization; and advances in crypto-currency.

This “triple threat” is what is unleashing the Hegemon’s unbounded fury.

On a broader spectrum, the Russia-China strategy also implies that the progressive interaction between the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU) will keep apace across Central Asia, Southeast Asia, parts of South Asia, and Southwest Asia – necessary steps towards an ultimately unified Eurasian market under a sort of strategic Sino-Russo management.

In Alaska, the Blinken-Sullivan team learned, at their expense, that you don’t mess with a Yoda such as Yang Jiechi with impunity. Now they’re about to learn what it means to mess with Nikolai Patrushev, head of the Russian Security Council.

Patrushev, as much a Yoda as Yang Jiechi, and a master of understatement, delivered a not so cryptic message: if the US created “though days” for Russia, as they “are planning that, they can implement that”, Washington “would be responsible for the steps that they would take”.

What NATO is really up to

Meanwhile, in Brussels, Blinken was enacting a Perfect Couple routine with spectacularly inefficient head of the European Commission (EC) Ursula von der Leyen. The script went something like this. “Nord Stream 2 is really bad for you. A trade/investment deal with China is really bad for you. Now sit. Good girl.”

Then came NATO, which put on quite a show, complete with an all-Foreign Minister tough guy pose in front of the HQ. That was part of a summit – which predictably did not “celebrate” the 10th anniversary of NATO’s destruction of Libya or the major ass-kicking NATO “endured” in Afghanistan.

In June 2020, NATO’s cardboard secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg – actually his US military handlers – laid out what is now known as the NATO 2030  strategy, which boils down to a Global Robocop politico-military mandate. The Global South has (not) been warned.

In Afghanistan, according to a Stoltenberg impervious to irony, NATO supports infusing “fresh energy into the peace process”. At the summit, NATO ministers also discussed Middle East and Northern Africa and – with a straight face – looked into “what more NATO could do to build stability in the region”. Syrians, Iraqis, Lebanese, Libyans, Malians would love to learn something about that.

Post-summit, Stoltenberg delivered a proverbially somnolent press conference where the main focus was – what else – Russia, and its “pattern for repressive behavior at home, aggressive behavior abroad”.

All the rhetoric about NATO “building stability” vanishes when one examines what’s really behind NATO 2030, via a meaty “recommendation” report written by a bunch of “experts”

Here we learn the three essentials:

1. “The Alliance must respond to Russian threats and hostile actions (…) without a return to ‘business as usual’ barring alterations in Russia’s aggressive behavior and its return to full compliance with international law.”
2. China is depicted as a tsunami of “security challenges”: “The Alliance should infuse the China challenge throughout existing structures and consider establishing a consultative body to discuss all aspects of Allies’ security interests vis-à-vis China”. The emphasis is to “defend against any Chinese activities that could impact collective defense, military readiness or resilience in the Supreme Allied Commander Europe’s (SACEUR) Area of Responsibility.”
3. “NATO should outline a global blueprint (italics mine) for better utilizing its partnerships to advance NATO strategic interests. It should shift from the current demand-driven approach to an interest-driven approach (italics mine) and consider providing more stable and predictable resource streams for partnership activities. NATO’s Open Door Policy should be upheld and reinvigorated. NATO should expand and strengthen partnerships with Ukraine and Georgia.”

Here’s to The Triple Threat. Yet the Top of the Pops – as in fat, juicy industrial-military complex contracts – is really here:

The most profound geopolitical challenge is posed by Russia. While Russia is by economic and social measures a declining power, it has proven itself capable of territorial aggression and is likely to remain a chief threat facing NATO over the coming decade.  

NATO may be redacting, but the master script comes straight from the Deep State – complete with Russia “seeking hegemony”; expanding Hybrid War (the concept was actually invented by the Deep State); and manipulating “cyber, state-sanctioned assassinations, and poisonings – using chemical weapons, political coercion, and other methods to violate the sovereignty of Allies.”

Beijing for its part is using “force against its neighbors, as well as economic coercion and intimidatory diplomacy well beyond the Indo-Pacific region. Over the coming decade, China will likely also challenge NATO’s ability to build collective resilience.”

The Global South should be very much aware of NATO’s pledge to save the “free world” from these autocratic evils.

The NATO interpretation of “South” encompasses North Africa and the Middle East, in fact everywhere from sub-Saharan Africa to Afghanistan. Any similarity with the presumably defunct “Greater Middle East” concept of the Dubya era is not an accident.

NATO insists this vast expanse is characterized by “fragility, instability, and insecurity” – of course refusing to disclose its own role as serial instability perpetrator in Libya, Iraq, parts of Syria and Afghanistan.

Because ultimately…it’s all Russia’s fault: “To the South, the challenge includes the presence of Russia and to a lesser extent China, exploiting regional fragilities. Russia has reinserted itself in the Middle East and the Eastern Mediterranean. In 2015, it intervened in the Syrian Civil War and remains there. Russia’s Middle East policy is likely to exacerbate tensions and political strife across the region as it extends an increasing amount of political, financial, operational, and logistical assets to its partners. China’s influence across the Middle East is also growing. It signed a strategic partnership with Iran, is the largest importer of crude oil from Iraq, wedged itself into the Afghanistan peace process, and is the biggest foreign investor in the region.”

Here, in a nutshell, and not exactly in code, is the NATO road map all the way to 2030 to harass and try to dismantle every relevant nook and cranny of Eurasia integration, especially those directly linked to New Silk Roads infrastructure/connectivity projects (investment in Iran, reconstruction of Syria, reconstruction of Iraq, reconstruction of Afghanistan).

The spin is on a “360-degree approach to security” that will “become an imperative”. Translation: NATO is coming for large swathes of the Global South, big time, under the pretense of “addressing both the traditional threats emanating from this region like terrorism and new risks, including the growing presence of Russia, and to a lesser extent China.”

Hybrid war on two fronts

And to think that in a not so distant past there used to be some flashes of lucidity emanating from the US establishment.

Very few will remember that in 1993 James Baker, former Secretary of State under Daddy Bush, advanced the idea of expanding NATO to Russia, which at the time, under Yeltsin and a gang of Milton Friedmanesque free marketeers, was devastated, but ruled by “democracy”. Yet Bill Clinton was already in power, and the idea was duly discarded.

Six years later, no less than George Kennan – who invented the containment of the USSR in the first place – determined that the NATO annexation of former Soviet satellites was “the beginning of a new Cold War” and “a tragic mistake”.

It’s immensely enlightening to relieve and re-study the whole decade between the fall of the USSR and the election of Putin to the presidency through the venerable Yevgeny Primakov’s book Russian Crossroads: Toward the New Millenium,  published in the US by Yale University Press.

Primakov, the ultimate intel insider who started as a Pravda correspondent in the Middle East, former Foreign Minister and also Prime Minister, looked closely into Putin’s soul, repeatedly, and liked what he saw: a man of integrity and a consummate professional. Primakov was a multilateralist avant la lettre, the conceptual instigator of RIC (Russia-India-China) which in the next decade evolved towards BRICS.

Those were the days – exactly 22 years ago – when Primakov was on a plane to Washington when he picked up a call by then Vice-President Al Gore: the US was about to start bombing Yugoslavia, a slav-orthodox Russian ally, and there was nothing the former superpower could do about it. Primakov ordered the pilot to turn around and fly back to Moscow.

Now Russia is powerful enough to advance its own Greater Eurasia concept, which moving forward should be balancing – and complementing – China’s New Silk Roads. It’s the power of this Double Helix – which is bound to inevitably attract key sectors of Western Europe – that is driving the Hegemon’s ruling class dazed and confused.

Glenn Diesen, author of Russian Conservatism: Managing Change Under Permanent Revolution, which I analyzed in  Why Russia is Driving the West Crazy , and one of the best global analysts of Eurasia integration, summed it all up: “The US has had great difficulties in terms of converting the security dependence of the allies into geoeconomic loyalty, as evident by the Europeans still buying Chinese technologies and Russian energy.

Hence permanent Divide and Rule, featuring one of its key targets: cajole, force, bribe and all of the above for the European Parliament to scotch the China-EU trade/investment deal.

Wang Yiwei, director of the Center for European Studies at Renmin University and author of the best made in China book about the New Silk Roads, clearly sees through the “America is back” bluster: “China is not isolated by the US, the West or even the whole international community. The more hostility they show, the more anxiety they have. When the US travels around the globe to frequently ask for support, unity and help from its allies, this means US hegemony is weakening.”

Wang even forecasts what may happen if the current “leader of the free world” is prevented from fulfilling his exceptional mission: “Don’t be fooled by the sanctions between China and the EU, which is harmless to trade and economic ties, and EU leaders won’t be that stupid to totally abandon the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment, because they know they would never get such a good deal when Trump or Trumpism returns to the White House.”

Shocked and Awed 21^st Century Geopolitics, as configured in these crucial past two weeks, spells out the Unipolar Moment is six feet under. The Hegemon will never admit it; hence the NATO counterpunch, which was pre-designed. Ultimately, the Hegemon has decided not to engage in diplomatic accommodation, but to wage a hybrid war on two fronts against a relentlessly demonized strategic partnership of peer competitors.

And as a sign of these sorry times, there’s no James Baker or George Kennan to advise against such folly.

*

Note to readers: please click the share buttons above or below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture in Moscow. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from http://nousnatobases.org