Cold War Hysteria

March 16th, 2021 by S. Brian Willson

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“We are willing to help people who believe the way we do.”   —Dean Acheson, Truman’s Secretary of State, 1947

Introduction

I cannot stress enough the overwhelming toxic spell that Cold War propaganda cast on the minds of three generations, including some of the most intelligent people, and its influence continues today.

Relentless Cold War rhetoric accomplished a near total indoctrination of our entire US culture.

Religious institutions, academic and educational institutions from kindergarten through graduate school, professional associations, political associations from local to national, scientific community, economic system, entertainment industry from radio and TV to Hollywood and sports, fraternal organizations, boy scouts, etc.—all systematically colluded and cooperated to preserve unquestioning belief in the unique nobility of the US American system while instilling pathological, rabid, paranoid fear of “enemies”— in our midst as well as “out there”—in order to rationalize otherwise pathologically inexplicable behavior around the world as well as at home.

The atrocities committed in the name of defeating communist bogeymen are nearly beyond belief. As this example shows, our cultural schooling is so pervasive as to generate a universally compelling mythology powerful enough to conceal its own contradictions.

Our cultural corruption was so complete we proudly utilized B-52s blessed by God-fearing chaplains flying five miles high to bomb unarmed, mostly Buddhist peasants living nine thousand miles across the Pacific. It is very difficult to recognize in ourselves what would be considered criminally insane behavior if carried out by others.

Forty years of fanatical “good us versus evil them” leads directly from the 1917 Russian Revolution, the authentic beginning of the Cold War, leading to Korea and Viet Nam.

Prior to 1917, Russia has been a semi-colonial possession of European capital that had settled into typical “Third World” patterns, supplying raw materials to industrial countries while primarily internally developing with foreign capital while experiencing dramatic escalation of debt and impoverishment.

The Russian Revolution was a radical break from western-dominated exploitation, very unacceptable to the capitalist west, the so-called “advanced” industrial countries. It was, in effect, a radical alternative to the way things had been settling in among “moderns” around the non-indigenous global capitalist world.

During Russia’s 1918–1920 Civil War, a number of the allied nations and Japan invaded Russia in efforts to crush socialism.

Winston Churchill, England’s Minister for War and Air (1919–1921), sought desperately “to strangle at its birth” the Bolshevik state.[1] A determined effort by 11 Western nations and Japan to nip the revolution in the bud formed expeditionary forces that invaded Russia in 1918 with nearly nine hundred thousand troops in three regions.

Archangel in northern Russia, including five thousand US troops; the Odessa region and Crimea in Southern Russia; and Vladivostok in eastern Russia, including seven thousand US troops who remained there until 1920. US casualties during the occupation in northern Russia were nearly 2,900. The State Department told Congress: “All these operations were to offset effects of the Bolshevik revolution in Russia”.[2]

This US intervention into Russia occurred on President Wilson’s orders without a Congressional declaration of war. It also occurred during peace negotiations that had gotten underway on January 4, 1919 in Versailles, France, to formally end the First World War.

The Versailles Treaty was signed June 28, 1919, by Germany and Britain, France, Italy, and Russia, but not by the US. 

The intervention into Russia illustrates how terrified the US and the West were of the ideological alternative to capitalism that the Bolsheviks represented.

“High level US planning documents identify the primary threat as ‘radical and nationalistic regimes’ that are responsive to popular pressures for ‘immediate improvement in the low living standards of the masses’ and development for domestic needs, tendencies that conflict with the demand for a ‘political and economic climate conducive to private investment,’ with adequate repatriation of profits and ‘protection of our raw materials.’”[3]

In essence, the Soviet Union was considered a gigantic “rotten apple,” a “challenge . . . to the very survival of the capitalist order.” As Europe was beginning to self-destruct, the US was for the first time becoming a decisive world influence. The Bolshevik revolution, i.e., Communism, was seen as a global enemy that had to be crushed.[4]

The Truman Doctrine Ushers in a National Security State

Truman’s March 12, 1947 containment speech, often described as the formal declaration of the Cold War between the Free World and the forces of Communism, helped entrench the idea that the entire world is the specific business of the United States.

Expressing fear of an international Communist threat and marking the beginning of US containment policy, his appeal to congress officially launched the first of thousands of US covert and overt interventions around the world.

Despite Truman’s focus on Greece and Turkey in this speech, internal documents reveal that South Korea was as important, if not more important in terms of needing to be contained. This was made clear in 1949, when both Secretary of State Acheson and the head of State’s policy planning, George Kennan, (image right) concluded that successful suppression by Syngman Rhee of a Korean people’s independence movement would be a key litmus test of the US’s emerging policy of global containment of Communism, despite the Korean’s passion for self-determination.

Quelling popular self-determination aspirations (autonomy, democracy) around the world became critical for the assurance of continued global Western hegemony. Thus, the Cold War really was a series of hundreds of smaller, but brutal hot wars against popular and revolutionary movements in the “Third World” seeking liberation from historic colonialism (the essential lessons of the Russian Revolution), movements that were essentially supported by the alternative represented by the Soviet Union, in addition to the major post-WWII Third World revolutions in Korea and Viet Nam. In the first, we were stalemated in 1953; the second we lost militarily/politically in 1973, though in each case we decimated and destroyed each culture’s infrastructure while murdering a combined 10 million plus people.

NSC-68: The US, Not the Soviets, Possessed a Global Monolithic Plan

On April 14, 1950, President Truman approved a comprehensive National Security Council study known as NSC 68 (1949-1950). The most fundamental document of the US Cold War, its recommendations began to be implemented on the eve of our hot war in Korea.

NSC-68 asserted that the US had the unique right and responsibility to impose our chosen “order among nations” so that

“our free society can flourish. . . . Our policy and action . . . must be such to foster a fundamental change in the nature of the Soviet system” and “foster the seeds of destruction within the Soviet system” that will “hasten” its “decay.”

It added,

“The Soviet Union, unlike previous aspirants to hegemony, is animated by a new fanatic faith, antithetical to our own, and seeks to impose its absolute authority over the rest of the world.”

The foundation of the strategy was a “view to fomenting and supporting unrest and revolt in selected satellite countries” and “to reduce the power and influence of the Kremlin inside the Soviet Union.” Any less global imperial policy would have “drastic effects on our belief in ourselves and in our way of life.”

US ability to act had apocalyptic ramifications: “fulfillment or destruction not only of this Republic but of civilization.”

NSC-68 concluded that “the assault on free institutions is world-wide” and “imposes on us, in our own interests, the responsibility of world leadership” such that we must seek “to foster a world environment in which the American system can survive and flourish.” “Any measures, covert or overt, violent or nonviolent” will be called upon as necessary for “frustrating the Kremlin design,” which included “overt psychological warfare” as well as various kinds of “economic warfare.” Utmost care “must be taken to avoid permanently impairing our economy and the fundamental values and institutions inherent in our way of life”.[5]

NSC-68 went on to claim that even “if there were no Soviet Union we would face the great problem of the free society . . . of reconciling order, security . . . with the requirement of freedom.”

The subsequent Korean War was the first time the CIA operated in a hot war. Its arguments became the foundation for tripling the “Defense” budget, stationing troops in Europe, and significantly boosting US conventional and nuclear weapons systems, thus further escalating the arms race.[6]

NSC-68 reveals this incredible irony: Throughout the Cold War years, we were taught to fear the evil Soviets, while our government spent literally trillions of dollars defending our real monolithic plan from their fictional one. Further, the Cold War and its consequent expensive arms race only ensured preservation of an obsessively consumptive Western way of life that is literally destroying life on the planet as we face eco- catastrophe due to global warming. Industrial civilization is an intense heat engine.

Staggering Soviet Losses in WWII Ignored by the West

The US government knew that the Soviet Union was so devastated from the war that it had no capacity or will to imagine or carry out a monolithic plan to control the West. Yet, post -World War II hostility toward the Soviet Union resumed anti-Bolshevik and anti-Communist hatred that had begun in 1917-1918. This, despite the fact, as mentioned earlier in this chapter, that the Soviet armies essentially were responsible for the final defeat of the Nazis in World War II, a war in which the Soviets suffered incredible losses.

A 1994 study published by the Russian Academy of Science estimated USSR casualties at 26.6 million, or 13.5 percent, of its pre WWII war population of 196.7 million.[7]

Before their defeat in 1945, the Nazis had leveled or crippled 15 large Soviet cities, more than 1,700 towns, 70,000 villages, and nearly 100,000 collective farms, while devastating most of its factories, railroads, highways, bridges, and electric power stations.[8] In contrast, the US suffered less than 420,000 deaths, or only three-tenths of a percent of its population, and did not lose any infrastructure.

US Naval Intelligence reported in January 1946 that the USSR was “exhausted . . . not expected to take any action during the next five years which might develop into hostilities with Anglo-Americans.”

Its policies were determined to be defensive in nature, designed only “to establish a Soviet Monroe Doctrine for the area under her shadow, primarily and urgently for security”.[9] Honest historians, academicians, and political leaders knew the basis of Stalin’s insistence on having friendly neighbors and secure borders on its west flank. Unlike the US, the Soviet Union had no oceans to protect it from external aggression.

In 1812, Napoleonic France invaded Russia through Germany. Imperial Japan invaded Siberia in 1906.

Germany invaded Russia in 1914 and again in 1941.

And Poland invaded Russia in 1920 over an old territorial dispute and new ideological fears of Bolshevism.

Thus, Russia’s Western border had been invaded at least four times.[10] George Kennan, architect of the US containment policy, ultimately concluded that

“the image of a Stalinist Russia poised and yearning to attack the West was largely a fiction of the Western imagination.”

He reminded US Americans that the Russian people believed profoundly in “decency, honesty, kindness, and loyalty in the relations between individuals, in fact that the Russians are human beings after all”.[11]

It has been our delusions and arrogance under “God” ever since our own cultural origins in forceful dispossession of hundreds of “strange” Indigenous cultures, both in the Western Hemisphere stealing land and in Africa stealing chattel labor, that we have possessed the cultural DNA of selfishness and narcissism at the expense of others and the Planet Earth. Our Age of stupid and ecocide/suicide is not recognized, as we have depended upon the techniques of denial and the comforting trick of basking in the arrogance of exceptionalism. 

And this pattern of US-inflicted atrocities around the globe continues as a bi-partisan political plundering project of Democrats and Republicans, recently accentuated especially since Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 election with the hoax of Russophobia.

This 400-year bestial history of racism, classism, and sexism imposed by primarily White men, on virtually everyone else for 20 generations, was captured perfectly in the 8 minute 46 second video taken by a 17-year-old teenager of a Minneapolis White police officer with the full force of his knee on Black George Floyd’s neck as he tortured, then murdered him.

That knee is on all of our necks now. This has caused more reasons for millions of Whites people to intensely preserve their fantasy of denial.

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Brian Willson is a Viet Nam veteran and trained lawyer. He has visited a number of countries examining the effects of US policy. He wrote a psychohistorical memoir, Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson (PM Press, 2011), and in 2018 wrote Don’t Thank Me for my Service: My Viet Nam Awakening to the Long History of US Lies(Clarity Press). He is featured in a 2016 documentary, Paying the Price for Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson, and others in the Peace Movement, (Bo Boudart Productions). His web essays: brianwillson.com. He can be reached: [email protected].

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

Notes

[1] Michael Zezima, Saving Private Power: The Hidden History of the ‘The Good War’ (New York: Soft Skull Press, 2000), 26-7.

[2] Martin Gilbert, The First World War: A Complete History (New York: Henry Holt, 1994), 515-516; D. F. Fleming, The Cold War and Its Origins, 1917-1920, Vol I (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1961), 16-35; Howard Zinn, The Twentieth Century: A People’s History (New York: Perennial Library/Harper & Row, 1984), 110-111; David S. Foglesong, America’s Secret War Against Bolshevism: U.S. Intervention in the Russian Civil War, 1917-1920 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 2-9, 272-3.

[3] Noam Chomsky, “The Face of Colonialism a Century Later” (PeaceWork, July/August 1998), 19.

[4] Noam Chomsky, Year 501: The Conquest Continues (Boston: South End Press, 1993), 67; Chomsky, Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), 37.

[5] National Security Memorandum No. 68 (NSC-68) on “United States Objectives and Programs for National Security” written by a Joint State-Defense Department Committee, under the supervision of Paul Nitze, Director of the Policy Planning Staff, in April 14, 1950, pursuant to the President’s Directive of January 31, 1950.

[6] John Lewis Gaddis, We Know Now: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 84, 109.

[7] Michael Ellman and S. Maksudov, “Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: A Note,” Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 46, No. 4, 1994, 671-680.

[8] Harvey Wasserman, America Born & Reborn (New York: Collier Books/Macmillan, 1983), 168; Walter LaFeber, America, Russia, and the Cold war, 1945-1971 (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1972), 14.

[9] Lawrence Wittner, Cold War America (New York: Praeger, 1974), 9; Edward Pessen, Losing Our Souls: The American Experience in the Cold War (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1993), 63; Wasserman, 168.

[10] Marty Jezer, The Dark Ages: Life in the United States 1945-1960 (Boston: South End Press, 1982), 23.

[11] Wittner, 52; Wasserman, 169; Fleming, 538.

Exposing the Founding Fathers and the US Constitution

By S. Brian Willson, March 15 2021

“Founding Father” John Jay possessed a vision that “the people who own the country ought to govern it”. This referred to those who owned land, slaves, and commercial enterprises. Jay also believed that the upper classes “were the better kind of people”.

The Hidden Truth Behind the Too-Good-to-be True COVID-19 Vaccines: An Interview with Dr. Ronald B. Brown, PhD

By Dr. Ronald B. Brown and John C. A. Manley, March 15 2021

“Draconian public health measures are imposed on society with little proof of effectiveness, and much proof of collateral damage, there is little debate covered in the commercial media about public health issues.”

AstraZeneca Covid-19 Vaccine Suspended across Europe. “Possible Autoimmune Reactions, Blood Clotting, Stroke and Internal bleeding”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, March 15 2021

Several European countries have now suspended the mRNA AstraZeneka Vaccine including Denmark, Norway, Iceland, Austria, Bulgaria. And more recently: Germany, Netherlands, Ireland, France, Italy, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg and Romania. 

The US Strategic “Containment” of China: Will it Encourage the Creation of a “Russia- China- North Korea Missile Alliance”?

By Andrew Korybko, March 15 2021

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned last Friday that the US’ reportedly planned deployment of intermediate-range missiles to Japan “will certainly entail our retaliation”, which could realistically take the form of informally creating a Russian-Chinese-North Korean missile alliance.

Women Who Build the Future: Towards a Non Violent Culture. Vandana Shiva

By Dr. Vandana Shiva, March 15 2021

The renowned physicist, thinker and activist Vandana Shiva proposes ecofeminism as a response to the current moment, in which the capitalist patriarchy is leading us to destruction and death, after having colonized nature, women and the future.

Biden Urged to Force End to US-Backed Saudi Blockade After Chilling Report on Starving Yemeni Children

By Jake Johnson, March 15 2021

Progressive members of Congress are demanding that President Joe Biden bring pressure to bear on Saudi Arabia to end its yearslong blockade on Yemen—which has been maintained with U.S. help—after new reporting provided a closer look at the horrific suffering caused by the kingdom’s ongoing obstruction of food, medicine, and other essential supplies.

The U.S. Role in Plundering Syria’s Oil: Depriving the Syrians of the Wealth of Their Own Country.

By Khaled Iskef, March 15 2021

Last year, former US President Donald Trump announced very clearly, that part of the US forces mission in Syria is to protect the oil fields and to take a share of them. This statement was an official admission of the US forces’ plundering of Syrian natural resources.

Israeli Attacks on Iranian Oil Tankers, US Strikes in Syria and Sanctions: The Legacy of a Failed Policy of Regime Change

By Adeyinka Makinde, March 15 2021

The recent disclosure by the Wall Street Journal that Israel has been waging a covert war against Syria-bound Iranian oil tankers, using water mines and other explosives does not come as a surprise.

Video: Canadians Doctors Speak Out: Top Reasons Not to be Afraid of COVID-19

By Dr. Stephen Malthouse, March 15 2021

“As Canadian medical doctors, we’re gonna tell you what the best science now has to say and we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Research now shows that the PCR test is practically worthless. Only 3% of patients with a positive test actually have the coronavirus.”

Let’s Stop Pretending Russia and China Are Military Threats

By Dave Lindorff, March 15 2021

Somehow, the opinion-makers in the media, the bloated military brass, and the members of Congress who like to gin up fears among the voters so they’ll keep voting for them have gotten everyone thinking that Russia is still hell bent on world communist takeover and that China it trying to replace the US as global hegemon.

These ‘Inactive’ Ingredients in COVID Vaccines Could Trigger Allergic Reactions

By Children’s Health Defense, March 15 2021

COVID vaccine makers have not only introduced new primary ingredients to the U.S. vaccine stage, but they’ve bundled these new ingredients with “inactive” ingredients in unprecedented ways that raise the risk for dangerous allergic reactions.

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It Is Time to Remove the Debt Barrier to Economic Growth

March 15th, 2021 by Prof Michael Hudson

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Out of habit, American economists worry about federal debt. But federal debt can be redeemed by the Federal Reserve printing the money with which to retire the bonds.  The debt problem rests with individuals, companies, and state and local governments.  They have no printing press. 

We have explained that the indebtedness of the population means there is little discretionary income with which to drive the economy.  The offshoring of middle class jobs lowered incomes, and after paying debt service—mortgage interest, car payments, credit card interest, student loan debt—Americans’ pockets are empty.  

This situation has been worsened by Covid lockdowns.  In the US the federal government has sent out a few Covid payments to help keep people’s heads above water as they face expenses without income.  The financial press refers to these Covid checks as “fiscal stimulus,” but there is no stimulus.  The Covid checks do not come close to replacing the missing wages, salaries and business profits from lockdowns. 

Corporations have indebted themselves and impaired their capitalization by borrowing money with which to repurchase their stock. This has built up their debt in the face of stagnant or declining consumer discretionary income.  

We propose to deal with the debt crisis by forgiving debts as was done in ancient times.  Our basic premise is that  debts that cannot be paid won’t be. Widespread foreclosures and evictions would further worsen the distribution of income and wealth and further contrain the ability of the economy to grow.  Writing debt down to levels that can be serviced would clear the decks tor a real recovery.  Income that would be siphoned off in debt service would instead be available to purchase new goods and services.

A few economists muttered that we were overlooking the “moral hazzard” of absolving people of their debts.  But leaving the economy stagnated in debt is also a moral hazzard.

Policymakers did not endorse our proposal, but, in effect, policymakers adopted our policy.  However, instead of forgiving the debt itself, they forgave payment of the debt service.  Individuals and businesses who cannot pay their landlords or lenders cannot be evicted or foreclosed until June.  This doesn’t hurt the lenders or banks, because the loans are not in default, and their balance sheet is not impaired. The banks add the unpaid payments to their assets, and their balance sheets remain sound.

When June arrives, the prohibition against eviction and foreclosure will have to be extended as the accrued debt service cannot be paid.  Extending the moratorium on foreclosures and evictions will just build up arrears.  Is the implication a perpetual moratorium?

The question is: If policymakers are willing to forgive debt service, why not just forgive the debt.  The latter is neater and clears the decks for an economic renewal.

The US economy has been financialized. Debt has been built up without a corresponding gain in productive capital investment in order to carry the mounting debt.

In financialized capitalism, the main purpose of bank loans is to refinance existing investments, not to expand productive capacity with which to service the debt.  It is not possible to grow out of debt in a financialized economy, because too much income is used for debt service.  The way to deal with this problem is to write down debts.

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This article was originally published on PCR Institute for Political Economy.

Michael Hudson is an American economist professor of economics at the university of Missouri Kansas City and a researcher at the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College.

Paul Craig Roberts has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business. He is chairman of The Institute for Political Economy.

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Prominent signatories and five former OPCW officials are calling on the chemical watchdog to address the cover-up of its chemical weapons investigation in the Syrian city of Douma, and to hear out the dissenting scientists whose findings were censored.

Five former officials from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons have joined a group of prominent signatories to urge the OPCW to address the controversy surrounding its investigation of an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria in April 2018.

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.

The “Statement of Concern” is signed by five former OPCW officials, including the organization’s founding leader, José Bustani, and others including Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Tulsi Gabbard, John Pilger, Lord West of Spithead, as well two former senior UN officials, Denis Halliday and Hans von Sponeck.

“The issue at hand threatens to severely damage the reputation and credibility of the OPCW and undermine its vital role in the pursuit of international peace and security,” the statement says. “It is simply not tenable for a scientific organization such as the OPCW to refuse to respond openly to the criticisms and concerns of its own scientists whilst being associated with attempts to discredit and smear those scientists.”

Pushback host Aaron Maté details the letter and airs clips of his and Tulsi Gabbard’s recent “Tucker Carlson Tonight” appearance discussing the OPCW controversy.

Statement of Concern: The OPCW investigation of alleged chemical weapons use in Douma, Syria
March 11, 2021

We wish to express our deep concern over the protracted controversy and political fall-out surrounding the OPCW and its investigation of the alleged chemical weapon attacks in Douma, Syria, on 7 April 2018.

Since the publication by the OPCW of its final report in March 2019, a series of worrying developments has raised serious and substantial concerns with respect to the conduct of that investigation. These developments include instances in which OPCW inspectors involved with the investigation have identified major procedural and scientific irregularities, the leaking of a significant quantity of corroborating documents, and damning statements provided to UN Security Council meetings. It is now well established that some senior inspectors involved with the investigation, one of whom played a central role, reject how the investigation derived its conclusions, and OPCW management now stands accused of accepting unsubstantiated or possibly manipulated findings with the most serious geo-political and security implications. Calls by some members of the Executive Council of the OPCW to allow all inspectors to be heard were blocked.

The inspectors’ concerns are shared by the first Director General of the OPCW, José Bustani, and a significant number of eminent individuals have called for transparency and accountability at the OPCW. Bustani himself was recently prevented by key members of the Security Council from participating in a hearing on the Syrian dossier. As Ambassador Bustani stated in a personal appeal to the Director General, if the Organization is confident in the conduct of its Douma investigation then it should have no difficulty addressing the inspectors’ concerns.

To date, unfortunately, the OPCW senior management has failed to adequately respond to the allegations against it and, despite making statements to the contrary, we understand has never properly allowed the views or concerns of the members of the investigation team to be heard or even met with most of them. It has, instead, side-stepped the issue by launching an investigation into a leaked document related to the Douma case and by publicly condemning its most experienced inspectors for speaking out.

In a worrying recent development, a draft letter falsely alleged to have been sent by the Director General to one of the dissenting inspectors was leaked to an ‘open source’ investigation website in an apparent attempt to smear the former senior OPCW scientist. The ‘open source’ website then published the draft letter together with the identity of the inspector in question. Even more alarmingly, in a BBC4 radio series aired recently, an anonymous source, reportedly connected with the OPCW Douma investigation, gave an interview with the BBC in which he contributes to an attempt to discredit not only the two dissenting inspectors, but even Ambassador Bustani himself. Importantly, recent leaks in December 2020 have evidenced that a number of senior OPCW officials were supportive of one OPCW inspector who had spoken out with respect to malpractice.

The issue at hand threatens to severely damage the reputation and credibility of the OPCW and undermine its vital role in the pursuit of international peace and security. It is simply not tenable for a scientific organization such as the OPCW to refuse to respond openly to the criticisms and concerns of its own scientists whilst being associated with attempts to discredit and smear those scientists. Moreover, the on-going controversy regarding the Douma report also raises concerns with respect to the reliability of previous FFM reports, including the investigation of the alleged attack at Khan Shaykhun in 2017.

We believe that the interests of the OPCW are best served by the Director General providing a transparent and neutral forum in which the concerns of all the investigators can be heard as well as ensuring that a fully objective and scientific investigation is completed.

To that end, we call on the Director General of the OPCW to find the courage to address the problems within his organization relating to this investigation and ensure States Parties and the United Nations are informed accordingly. In this way we hope and believe that the credibility and integrity of the OPCW can be restored.

Signatories in Support of the Statement of Concern:

José Bustani, Ambassador of Brazil, first Director General of the OPCW and former Ambassador to the United Kingdom and France.

Professor Noam Chomsky, Laureate Professor U. of Arizona and Institute Professor (em), MIT.

Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor, Harper’s Magazine.

Daniel Ellsberg, PERI Distinguished Research Fellow, UMass Amherst. Former Defense and State Department official. Former official of Defense Department (GS-18) and State Department (FSR-1).

Professor Richard Falk, Professor of International Law Emeritus, Princeton University.

Tulsi Gabbard, former Presidential candidate and Member of the US House of Representatives (2013-2021).

Professor Dr. Ulrich Gottstein, on behalf of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW-Germany).

Katharine Gun, former GCHQ (UKGOV), whistleblower.

Denis J. Halliday, UN Assistant Secretary-General (1994-98).

Professor Pervez Houdbhoy, Quaid-e-Azam University and ex Pugwash.

Kristinn Hrafnnson, Editor in Chief, Wikileaks.

Dr. Sabine Krüger, Analytical Chemist, Former OPCW Inspector 1997-2009.

Ray McGovern, ex-CIA Presidential Briefer; co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.

Elizabeth Murray, former Deputy National Intelligence Officer for the Near East, National Intelligence Council (rtd); member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence.

Professor Götz Neuneck, Pugwash Council and German Pugwash Chair.

Dirk van Niekerk, former OPCW Inspection Team Leader, Head of OPCW Special Mission to Iraq

John Pilger, Emmy and Bafta winning journalist and film maker.

Professor Theodore A. Postol, Professor Emeritus of Science, Technology, and National Security Policy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Antonius Roof, former OPCW Inspection Team Leader and Head Industry Inspections.

Professor John Avery Scales, Professor, Pugwash Council and Danish Pugwash Chair.

Hans von Sponeck, former UN Assistant Secretary General and UN Humanitarian Co-ordinator (Iraq).

Alan Steadman, Chemical Weapons Munitions Specialist, Former OPCW Inspection Team Leader and UNSCOM Inspector.

Jonathan Steele, journalist and author.

Roger Waters, Musician and Activist.

Lord West of Spithead, First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff 2002-06.

Oliver Stone, Film Director, Producer and Writer.

Colonel (ret.) Lawrence B. Wilkerson, U.S. Army, Visiting Professor at William and Mary College and former chief of staff to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell.

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Aaron Maté is a journalist and producer. He hosts Pushback with Aaron Maté on The Grayzone. He is also is contributor to The Nation magazine and former host/producer for The Real News and Democracy Now!. Aaron has also presented and produced for Vice, AJ+, and Al Jazeera.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

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Pressenza opens the series “Women who Build the Future: Towards a Nonviolent Culture“, with Vandana Shiva‘s interview.

This is the first of a number of interviews with women from all continents who are committed to life. A project that has led us to a collective process that is allowing us to grow as individuals and as a whole.

The renowned physicist, thinker and activist Vandana Shiva proposes ecofeminism as a response to the current moment, in which the capitalist patriarchy is leading us to destruction and death, after having colonized nature, women and the future.

What do all the causes she defends have in common? She confesses,

Everything comes out of me, like the love of life and freedom, whether it is the defense of seeds or being with my peasant sisters defending the land… [everything I do] has to do with the defense of life and freedom, from a place of love and resistance also in the face of the lack of freedom.

 

 

Dr. Shiva proposes to take advantage of the ten-year window we still have to decolonize ourselves and change the direction we are taking, relying on feminist movements and young environmental defenders, thus saving the planet and, therefore, humanity and life.

Don’t miss the strength of her expression and listen to the words of a woman who is convinced and convincing about the fight for the future and life. Enjoy it!

Attached is the link to the Earth University courses, including the Ecofeminism course:

http://www.navdanya.org/site/latest-news-at-navdanya/629-courses-at-navdanya-bija-vidyapeeth-2020

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Prof. Vandana Shiva is a physicist, ecofeminist, philosopher, activist, and author of more than 20 books and 500 papers. She is the founder of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, and has campaigned for biodiversity, conservation and farmers’ rights, winning the Right Livelihood Award [Alternative Nobel Prize] in 1993. She is executive director of the Navdanya Trust.

Vandan Shiva is a frequent contributor to Global Research

Featured image is from Pressenza IPA/

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Netherlands Halts Use of AstraZeneca COVID-19 Vaccine

March 15th, 2021 by Channel News Asia

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The Netherlands will suspend the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine until at least March 29 as a precaution, the Dutch government said on Sunday (Mar 14).

The move, which follows a similar decision by Ireland earlier in the day, is based on reports from Denmark and Norway of possible serious side effects, the government said.

Three health workers in Norway who had recently received the vaccine were being treated in hospital for bleeding, blood clots and a low count of blood platelets, its health authorities said on Saturday.

No such cases had been found yet in the Netherlands, the Dutch Health ministry said in a statement, adding that there was no proof yet of a direct link between the vaccine and the reports from Denmark and Norway.

The government said it would now wait for an investigation by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

“We can’t allow any doubts about the vaccine,” Dutch Health minister Hugo de Jonge said.

“We have to make sure everything is right, so it is wise to pause for now.”

The Dutch late last week said there was no reason to stop using the vaccine, following reports of the formation of blood clots in some people who had been injected with it.

The EMA and the World Health Organisation have said there is no indication that these events were caused by the vaccination, and AstraZeneca has also said it had found no evidence of increased risk of deep-vein thrombosis.

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Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned last Friday that the US’ reportedly planned deployment of intermediate-range missiles to Japan “will certainly entail our retaliation”, which could realistically take the form of informally creating a Russian-Chinese-North Korean missile alliance in defensive response to that destabilizing scenario.

The US is so obsessed with attempting to “contain” China that it might ultimately be responsible for creating a Russian-Chinese-North Korean missile alliance if it doesn’t reconsider its reportedly planned deployment of intermediate-range missiles to Japan. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned last Friday that such a move “will certainly entail our retaliation” because it “would have an extremely destabilizing effect from the standpoint of international and regional security.” The Neo-Realist theory of International Relations preaches that states will always put their security interests first, which in this case could realistically lead to Russia, China, and North Korea coordinating their defensive response to America’s emerging missile-driven threat as is their right under international law. Such an outcome would arguably be against the US’ regional security interests, including those of its Japanese and South Korean allies.

It must be remembered that the Russian-Chinese Strategic Partnership received an enormous boost in 2014 following the simultaneous onset of Western sanctions against the Eurasian Great Power during the Ukrainian Crisis in parallel with the US’ doubling down on its provocative actions in the South China Sea. The US’ strategic rivals as it officially considers them to be nowadays were pushed closer together than ever before due to their shared interests in responding to these provocations along their peripheries. Nevertheless, neither feels comfortable becoming the other’s military ally because they don’t want to get caught up fighting their partner’s possible wars in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia respectively. That calculation might informally change as a result of the US’ reportedly planned intermediate-range missile deployment to Japan since such a move goes against both of their security interests in Northeast Asia, as well as that of their shared North Korean partner.

Russia and China already closely cooperate in the military sphere, with Moscow even helping Beijing construct a missile-attack warning system. This speaks to how much they trust one another. With that in mind, it’s only natural that they’d be pressed to take their military cooperation even further in the face of the US’ possible missile threats against them in Northeast Asia. North Korea might also coordinate with them in the event that it decides to double down on its missile program in response, thereby likely scuttling the already stalled denuclearization talks and possibly leading to another related crisis in the region. More multilateral pressure being put upon North Korea in that scenario would only push it closer to its Russian and Chinese neighbors, who both share Pyongyang’s concerns about the possible deployment of the US’ intermediate-range missiles in Japan. As such, an informal missile alliance between them wouldn’t be surprising.

The US doesn’t want Russia and China increasing their military cooperation even further than they already have, yet those two would have little choice but to do so as was argued, including through possible coordination with North Korea in the missile sphere. Some have previously speculated that such a scenario would be nightmarish for the US, but that’s exactly what the US is practically forcing them to do. In other words, from the American strategic standpoint, this outcome would be completely counterproductive for its interests. This observation raises the question of why responsible policymakers aren’t warning about that scenario considering how obvious it is. It can’t be known for sure, but it might very well be that the American strategic community has been captured by Sinophobic ideologues who are so blinded by their hatred of the People’s Republic that they don’t see how disadvantageous their so-called “missile diplomacy” with China is.

From the opposite perspective, those in favor of accelerating the onset of the Multipolar World Order will probably cheer the informal creation of a Russian-Chinese-North Korean missile alliance as a long-overdue development. They’ve been hoping that Russia and its partners would take such a step for a while already, yet it might ironically turn out that they needed American pressure to do so. It’ll remain to be seen what happens of course, but it seems unlikely that the US will hold back on its reported decision to deploy intermediate-range missiles to Japan or elsewhere in the region, thus catalyzing some form of the predicted response from Russia and its partners and thus potentially turning that scenario into a fait accompli. In any case, the world will find out soon enough what will ultimately happen, with the outcome interestingly being decided by none other than the US since its decision whether or not to provoke an Asian missile race will prove pivotal.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

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Quad: Say It Like Modi

March 15th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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This report, No-First Use of Nuclear Weapons: A Policy Assessment (by William A. Chambers; Caroline R. Milne; Rhiannon T. Hutton; and Heather W. Williams), mandated by Congress to assess No First Use (NFU), argues strongly and unambiguously against any change in declaratory policy, and concludes that “the weight of all the evidence indicates significant potential for NFU to impart more harm than good”.

It appears written as a justification for prior determined positions, and rehashes familiar arguments for the status quo.

It claims an extensive research base from interviews with unnamed individuals (presumably representative of defence establishments) in defending speculative conclusions expressed in robust and definitive terms with little to no evidence. This in spite of its initial acknowledgement that it is near impossible to verify any conclusions in this area.

The essence of the argument repeated many times in the report is outlined on page 30. A US NFU would reduce uncertainties in the minds of adversaries and potentially embolden them in crises. But for this to be significant there would need to be a strong presumption on the part of adversaries and allies that the US currently plans to and would intend to use nuclear weapons first in plausible scenarios. And if accepted it is an argument that would apply in all circumstances and in perpetuity, relevant against any proposal that limits the freedom of action of a US President to authorize nuclear use in any circumstance.

In other words, the arguments marshalled against NFU in this report are not specific to an NFU, but rather are arguments in favour of maximising the practice of strategic ambiguity. In arguing this point the report singularly fails to address the most important negative consequence of strategic ambiguity, namely its undermining international solidarity and trust, and its tendency to drive arms races amongst defence establishments predisposed to worst case scenario planning. It ignores the immeasurable damage to US credibility and interests within the international community arising from its attachment to strategic ambiguity and exceptionalism.

The reaction of allies

Chapter 5 on the reaction of allies is particularly depressing and is the focus of this response. It hinges essentially on the idea that an NFU declaration would be interpreted by allies as a signal that the United States is less committed to extending military capabilities to defending its allies, and so would demand compensation elsewhere (such as increased deployments of conventional capabilities in theatre). The logic is fallacious, and the idea that allies have the power to demand ‘material compensation’ from an NFU declaration is equally bizarre.

There is no direct connection between an NFU and actual reduced commitment, other than clarifying what must already be known by allies and adversaries… that there are no realistic scenarios in which the United States would benefit from using nuclear weapons first in any regional conflict. Yet the fallacy has swayed previous decisions in Washington over NFU, and this report argues should do so again. If this link is misperceived by allies and an NFU interpreted as a reduction in commitment, then US officials need to better explain the situation as they consult allies over the decision. An explicit NFU would simply clarify the situation and bring greater transparency and stability to nuclear diplomacy. The fact that the United States continues to offer an extended nuclear deterrent underlines its commitment to the defence of its allies in those remaining scenarios where an aggressor might contemplate nuclear first use.

The report even goes as far to suggest that an NFU would create a discomfort within the UK and France, and divergence within NATO that could then be exploited by adversaries.

This argument is bizarre and erroneous, and the fact that it is used damages the report’s credibility. Both states have a nuclear posture already very divergent to that of the United States. They both, for example, have a completely different force posture, policies of minimum deterrence, a different targeting approach, and no formal arms control arrangements that involve inspections and verification.

Should the United States declare NFU some defence officials may experience some discomfort. There may be political pressure internally to follow the lead of the United States. But there would be no logical or strategic reason that would force such a change, particularly if the United States made it clear that they themselves would not expect them to follow suit. The report’s conclusion that Russia and China “will seek to leverage [US NFU] to gain diplomatic capital and undermine alliances” [p.37] has no evidence or explanation, and is without merit. What possible diplomatic capital could accrue to these states from tighter US declaratory policy? The idea explicitly referenced in the report that any such difference would be interpreted as disarray and could embolden Russia in a crisis is preposterous, suggesting a fragility to the Alliance that borders on the paranoid.

So-called ‘deterrence gaps’

The chapter makes reference to ‘deterrence gaps’, a controversial concept resuscitated by the Trump Nuclear Posture Review. It implies a wide acceptance of the concept and its applicability that is simply not there. The example given is in relation to the possibility that a country like Russia might consider limited use of nuclear weapons to force the United States and allies to back down in a regional conflict. There is no suggestion that the United States does not have global military superiority over its competitors – this would clearly be preposterous. The issue is whether a competitor might believe it has a window of superiority in a particular region in a particular moment, such that they act fast and hard to deter any US response. It would be a fearsome and risky calculation for any adversary, given the global capabilities fielded by the United States. Yet these so-called deterrence gaps need to be filled with capabilities in that region, so the thinking goes.

The implied requirement for full spectrum dominance in every region rapidly deepens negative threat perceptions of the United States, forcing an extended arms race and driving counter moves that are destabilising (consider Putin’s announcement of novel nuclear weapons in March 2018). It illustrates an insatiable desire for total security through military dominance if states have the capacity to pursue it, or making alliance with other states willing to provide cover.

If there is any use in this report it is in exposing the poverty of thinking that has obstructed moves towards an NFU in the past. We can only hope that clearer thinking within the new US Administration and within allied governments prevail and that an NFU gets a fair hearing.

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Paul Ingram is an independent commentator on nuclear deterrence and disarmament and director of Emergent Change. He was Executive Director of the British American Security Information Council (BASIC) 2007-2019, and is now working closely with the Swedish Foreign Ministry on the Stepping Stones Approach, the basis of the 16 state Stockholm Initiative on global nuclear disarmament. He is also a core member of Middle East Treaty Organisation (METO), the civil society group working to realise a WMD free zone.

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Progressive members of Congress are demanding that President Joe Biden bring pressure to bear on Saudi Arabia to end its yearslong blockade on Yemen—which has been maintained with U.S. help—after new reporting provided a closer look at the horrific suffering caused by the kingdom’s ongoing obstruction of food, medicine, and other essential supplies.

“With 400,000 children now at risk of starvation in Yemen, the U.S. must tell the Saudis in no uncertain terms: immediately end the blockade and let humanitarian aid in,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Thursday.

A CNN investigation into the U.S.-backed Saudi blockade on Yemen, which began in 2015, found that it has been more than two months since the blockade “has allowed tankers packed with the necessary fuel for food and supplies to reach starving Yemenis [and] to dock at the crucial port Hodeidah, which is controlled by the Houthis.”

“Fourteen tankers scheduled to dock there are currently being held off the Saudi coast, according to a vessel tracking app,” CNN reported Wednesday. “All of which goes against a United Nations agreement.”

Nima Elbagir, an international correspondent to CNN, traveled to northern Yemen to observe—and to show the public—the appalling conditions that the head of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) described earlier this week as “hell.”

“We have a vaccine for this. It is called food,” said WFP executive director David Beasley, who warned that Yemen is on the brink of the worst famine in modern world history.

“Our window to save lives in Yemen is closing fast,” Beasley tweeted Friday. “We cannot turn our backs on the innocent victims of this war.”

Watch Elbagir’s dispatch (Warning: The footage is disturbing):

CNN‘s reporting prompted fresh pressure on the Biden administration—which has vowed to bring an end to the Saudi-led coalition’s war on Yemen—to use the U.S. government’s leverage as a major Saudi partner to force the brutal kingdom to lift the blockade, which the United Arab Emirates is also helping to enforce.

“President Biden should demand: ‘MBS, lift the blockade,'” tweeted Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), referring to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. “They will fold. They are desperate for American military aid, troop presence, and investment opportunities. This is a moment for moral clarity and bold leadership.”

Matt Duss, a foreign policy adviser to Sanders, noted that the “U.S. hasn’t just ‘partially funded’ this war. We’ve provided the planes, bombs, targeting intel, and midair refueling.”

“We are fully implicated in Yemen’s destruction,” said Duss. “We need to be an equal part of its reconstruction.”

Biden won widespread applause from peace organizations and progressive lawmakers for moving last month to end U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition’s “offensive operations” in Yemen, but observers questioned whether the administration’s move would have any impact on the devastating air, land, and sea blockade, which has persisted through the coronavirus pandemic.

“As long as the blockade is in place, millions of Yemenis will be at risk,” Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told Al-Jazeera last month. Last week, Riedel called the blockade an “offensive military operation that kills civilians.”

Writing for Responsible Statecraft on Friday, Middle East analyst Arwa Mokdad arguedthat “if Biden is truly dedicated to ending U.S. offensive support to the Saudis and supporting peace in Yemen, he must press the two Gulf powers to immediately end their blockade.”

“By lifting the blockade,” Mokdad wrote, “we can avert the looming famine and start productive peace negotiations.”

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Someone needs to say this, and it looks like it’s gotta be me: China and Russia are not our enemies.

Somehow, the opinion-makers in the media, the bloated military brass with all their ribbons and stars and with little to do but worry about how to keep their massively overbuilt operation afloat with ever more taxpayer money, and the members of Congress who like to gin up fears among the voters so they’ll keep voting for them have gotten everyone thinking that Russia is still hell bent on world communist takeover and that China it trying to replace the US as global hegemon.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

First let’s talk military forces:

The US has an army of 2.5 million — 1.5 million active duty and one million reservists and National Guard units,

Russia’s army numbers 2.9 million but only 900,000 of those are active duty, with two million being reservists.

China has 2.8 million active duty troops, but that number is deceptive. 800,000 of them are so-called armed police, the Wu Jing, and their job is keeping a restive population in check. They are not for fighting wars, but for controlling the people of the country.

Now let’s talk military budgets:

The US will spend, if we want to be purists, $716 billion on the military. It’s actually a lot more because the National Security Agency is part of the military, and the CIA to all intents and purposes is military in nature and between them their secret budgets top more than the $50 billion that was leaked in a Congressional hearing eight years ago, and could be double that now since so much more US military activity is now handled by Special Forces acting under the direction of the CIA, but for sake of argument let’s just leave it at $716 billion.

Russia’s military budget is $65 billion, and even if you tripled that to account for how much more expensive everything is in the US from soldiers’ pay to weapons systems would represent less than a third of what the US spends.

China’s military budget $183 billion, and again, you could double that if you like to account for different costs and it would be less than half of the US military budget.

That is to say, even if you put the Chinese and Russian militaries together, their budgets would be significantly smaller than the US military budget.

On top of that there’s the matter of where those three militaries are.

The US has 800 bases in 70 countries and at least the last time the White House reported on the subject, in a 2018 report to Congress, it had troops fighting in seven countries.

Russia, according to a report in Izvestia, has 21 military bases operating outside of the country, many of them in states that were formerly part of the Soviet Union until 1990, like Tajikistan, Armenia and Belarus. The only place it has soldiers fighting is in Syria.

China has four overseas basis — one in Djibouti, one in Tajikistan, and two signal facilities in Myanmar and at the southern tip of Argentina.

Finally, and this is important, the US has nine operational aircraft carrier battle groups, eight based in the US and one in Japan, all available for force projection anywhere in the world, and carrying more planes than almost any of the world’s other air forces not counting Russia and China. The US carriers are all nuclear powered and can remain away from home port indefinitely. US carriers have frequently been posted for operational use off the coast of Afghanistan, in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf and in the Mediterranean. One was even sent into the Arctic Ocean a few years back.

Russia has one oil-powered aircraft carrier. It rarely leaves port.

China has two aircraft carriers, which stay close to home.

In terms of nuclear weaponry, the US and Russia each have 1600 actively deployed nuclear warheads, limited by a treaty that is currently in fragile shape.   They each have a total of over 6000 nuclear warheads, with over 4500 of them in each country in storage.

China has 380 nuclear warheads, more than double what India has.

As far as delivery systems for those nukes, the US has 405 Minuteman III missiles, each capable of carrying three independently targetable and highly accurate warheads. It also has 14 Trident missile-firing nuclear submarines each capable of carrying 24 Trident missiles with up to 8 independently targetable warheads, though these subs are currently limited to carrying just eight missiles and four or five warheads on each, for a total of 40 nukes per submarine.

Russia in 202 claimed to have 517 land-based missile launchers on its territory to carry those warheads to targets.  It also has 11 missile launching subs each capable of carrying 16 missiles with multiple warheads.

China is estimated to have 100 nuclear capable missiles of various ranges. Not all could reach the US.  It has six nuclear missile carrying submarines.

While even one nuclear weapon striking a country — even a country as large as are Russia, China and the US — it is clear from all these figures that the US has by far the most dominant military in the world. 

Russia or China would be crazy to take on the US militarily, and in fact, there is no indication that either country is even considering doing such a thing. Indeed, where the US engages its military at will all over the globe, China and Russia have consistently limited their military activities to areas near their home countries.

The Pentagon and its backers in the US media and in Congress, have to strain like a person with severe constipation in order to produce anything resembling a threat from either country, as when Russia a few years ago flew one of its aging long-range bombers over the pole and landed with some supplies to donate to Venezuela, and the US press was filled with alarms that the jet was “capable of carrying nuclear weapons, as I Russia might decide to drop one on Miami of Boston on the return flight home. 

If readers could get past the heavy breathing of the reporters they might have recalled that the US sends it’s nuclear capable bombers, both B-52 Stratofortresses and the much more ominous B-2 Stealth bombers, half way around the world, to actively bomb other countries (with conventional ordnance) or to “send a signal” just by flying near a country like Iran.

The real threat posed by Russia and China is commercial. The US acts as though a Russian pipeline called Nordstream, being built under the North Sea to bring cheap Russian natural gas to Western Europe is a virtual act of war. And China, with its huge “belt and road” project to link eastern China to Europe with high-speed rail and all-weather highways to facilitate trade between Europe and Asia is some kind of devious military maneuver.

Let’s get real. The US military is the biggest threat to the future of the United States. It’s ravenous appetite for ever more money, which Congress obliges year after year, is gobbling up almost the entire discretionary budget of the federal government — an amount which, even if you just count the official numbers represents half of the total tax collection of the government each year.

A great example of this is the F-35 nuclear-capable fighter bomber, a $1.7-trillion dollar boondoggle which now, mid-way through its production process, the Pentagon admits is a complete failure as an aircraft, unreliable, incapable of flying at supersonic speed as it destroys its “stealth” coating, too heavy to engage other planes in aerial dogfights, and a danger to pilots because of avionics that are unreliable. It is likely to end up in a very expensive scrap heap and nobody is being blamed for this epic waste.

If we were actually concerned about national security, we would slash the US military by 90 percent and its budget by the same amount, bring all the ships and troops home from those 800 overseas bases, get out of all the conflicts into which the government injects our military — usually illegally—and start taking care of this country, which is, from the stand point of education, environment, health care, infrastructure, economy, and democratic governance in pretty sad shape.

Anyone who has traveled to Europe or Asia can attest that in many countries one feels like a visitor from the Third World. The US has abilities — like the landing of the Perseverance Rover on Mars — but meanwhile Japanese and Chinese people whisk between cities on smooth-as-glass high-speed trains while Europeans get their health care delivered free at point of service, mostly covered by taxes paid by all, get six or more weeks of paid vacation and retire without a suffering plunge in living standard. 

Lets us US citizens smarten up and start figuring out who our real enemies are. Guess what? They’re right here at home, not in Beijing or Moscow, and the biggest one is a big five-sided building across the Potomac River from the Lincoln monument.

Back in October 1967, Abbie Hoffman led a group of protesters during a huge antiwar demonstration outside the Pentagon in a mock attempt to levitate the monstrous building constructed during World War II. Maybe it would be better to just raze it, use eminent domain to evice Trump’s hotel from the old Washington Post Office building so it can house a much smaller and appropriately re-named War Department bureaucracy, and then force them tne new tenant to share the space with a new Department of Peace.

We and the peoples of the world would all be better off for the change.

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The recent disclosure by the Wall Street Journal that Israel has been waging a covert war against Syria-bound Iranian oil tankers, using water mines and other explosives does not come as a surprise. But it would be misleading to attribute this only to a continuing historic rivalry between Israel and Syria, or the contemporary one with Iran. Instead, it is clear that the actions of Israel along with the recent United States air strikes against purported Iranian-backed militias in Syria, as well as the imposition of sanctions against Syria represent the continuum of a failed policy to overthrow the government of Syria.

All of these ill-considered measures do not stand a chance of causing the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad, instead they risk prompting an all-out war between Iran and its regional adversaries Israel and Saudi Arabia. However, the fact that the Wall Street Journal used US government and regional officials as sources for the story may indicate that there are dissenting voices in Washington which seek to promote a different course from that taken by successive US administrations.

It has long been an open secret that the government of the United States has, with the connivance of its allies in the Middle East, sought to overthrow the Ba’athist government led by President Bashar al-Assad. This policy, revealed in a succession of position papers, economic manoeuvres and covert warfare, much of which was predicated on the utility of Islamist proxies, was an overarching one designed to reshape the Middle East and North Africa by taking down the governments in a number of countries, all of which shared a common opposition to the State of Israel.

The succession of policy documents prepared by Israel-friendly, often neoconservative, think-tanks, were often explicit about which countries to take down as well as the means of accomplishing this. General Wesley Clark’s recollection of a memorandum shown to him by former colleagues in the Pentagon in 2001 detailed how the United State was going to “take out seven countries in five years”. Those targeted were Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran. This was consistent with the ‘Statement of Principles’  of the now defunct Project for the New American Century, as indeed they were with the ‘Clean Break’ document, that is, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm, a policy document produced in 1996 for Binyamin Netanyahu during his first tenure as prime minister of Israel. Part of the strategy alluded to the “weakening, controlling and even rolling back” of Syria.

Other papers provided the suggested means of destroying these states. The RAND Corporation-produced and Pentagon-funded 2008 paper entitled Unfolding the Future of the Long War: Motivations, Prospects and Implications for the U.S. Army pointed towards the exacerbation of tensions between Sunni and Shia communities, while a declassified Defense Intelligence Agency document from August 2012 which was circulated to US government agencies such as the State Department, the CIA and the FBI, explicitly desired the creation of a “declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria”, a state of affairs which it suggested could be achieved by declaring a ‘No Fly Zone’ as had been done in Libya when NATO had given cover to Islamist militias, including the al-Qaeda-affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which had overthrown the government of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi during the previous year. There was evidence that a segment of the jihadists who were involved in the overthrow of Gaddafi were transferred to the Syrian theatre most notably through Turkey, which along with Israel and the Gulf emirates, was facilitating the infiltration of Syria by foreign Islamists.

It is against this background that Israeli strikes on Iranian tankers, the launching by the Biden administration of missile strike in Syria and the implementation of sanctions against Syria can be understood.

These actions come in the wake of the failure to unseat the government of Syria. At the heart of this were the actions of Syria’s regional allies, the component nations of the so-called Shia Crescent represented on the ground by the Lebanese militia Hezbollah and forces of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The intervention of Russia proved decisive in preventing the fall of the secular government of Syria. The Syrian Arab Army alongside its Shia allies and the use of Russian air power gradually reclaimed most of the major cities of the country. This reconquest from Islamist groups such as the so-called Islamic State would have been total but for the actions of the United States in occupying the oil-producing eastern part of the country and Turkey in doing the same along parts of its border with Syria. Turkey has also been instrumental in protecting the last bastion of Islamist control in the city of Idlib in north eastern Syria.

The substantive interest of the United States in taking down the government of Syria is not immediately obvious to an impartial observer. And with the perennial economic motives related to mineral wealth absent, the centrality of Israeli interests to which the United States has strenuously catered to for many decades becomes all the more apparent. Certainly, Roland Dumas, a former foreign minister of France, when speaking on the French Parliamentary TV network station LCP in June of 2013, was clear in his assessment that the war in Syria, which had been in his words “prepared, conceived and organised” at least two years before the insurgency began in 2011, was pursued for the benefit of Israel.

Israel’s influence on American foreign policy is well documented as is its historical mission to achieve and maintain its regional hegemony by a continuous policy of seeking to balkanise its Arab and Muslim neighbours. One clear motive for achieving the dismemberment of Syria would be the difficulty of successor statelets to reclaim the Golan Heights which it illegally annexed in 1981.

Israel has pursued its covert war on Iranian tankers with a well practiced amorality and cynicism. The damage or destruction of oil carrying vessels obviously runs the risk of polluting the oceans and nearby coastlines, and the revelations of this subterfuge puts into doubt Israeli accusations that Iran was responsible for the deliberate spilling of oil which reached its coastline and caused what is believed to be one of Israel’s worst ecological disasters. The suggested “environmental terrorism” on the part of the Iranians as claimed by Gila Gamliel, the Israeli Environmental Protection Minister, may likely be in fact the proceed of Israeli terrorism on the high seas.

The moral bankruptcy of the policy pursued by the United States and Israel in providing both direct and indirect aid to Islamist groups bent on overthrowing the Syrian government continues with the acts of terror committed by the Israelis on the oceans, a policy condoned by the Trump administration.

President Joe Biden’s decision to launch strikes into Syrian territory meant that he became the third successive U.S. President to do this against a sovereign country with which the United States is not officially at war.

It is disturbing to note that apart from some voices who questioned the constitutionality of taking such action given that War Powers Act of 1973 expressly prohibits the executive branch from committing the country to an armed conflict without prior authorisation from Congress, few political figures apart from former congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard have referred to the context of America’s strategy of regime change.

Also lacking a moral basis is the regime of sanctions imposed on Syria by the United States through the Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act of 2019 (the ‘Caesar Act’), an action which only serves to deprive the bulk of the Syrian population of food and medicine. The aforementioned occupation of Syrian territory by the United States and Turkey is depriving the war ravaged country of food which could be made from wheatfields and oil which would provide revenues desperately needed for national reconstruction.

Sanctions often only have the effect of increasing mass suffering in the countries which are targeted. One example is the estimated deaths of at least half a million children in Iraq during the regime of Saddam Hussein. The U.S. Secretary of State of the time Madeleine Albright unfortunately asserted that she believed that the price was “worth it.”

The cold-blooded callousness behind Albright’s words are no less relevant to what is being imposed on Syria today by the United States which bears responsibility as the grand author of the Syrian tragedy. There is less chance of the United States and Israel succeeding in overthrowing Assad through an economic war than there was in overthrowing him via a covert war. The combination of multiple airstrikes on Syrian territory by Israel and the imposition of sanctions only serves to prolong the presence of Iran and Russia in Syria, a country where as the invitees of the legitimate government of a sovereign state, they have a legal presence in contrast to the illegal occupation of the United States.

The prolongation of anti-Syrian actions risks sparking a destructive regional war between Iran and its regional allies on the one hand and the Israelis and the Saudis on the other, with the latter bloc hoping to involve the United States. Such a war would not only be catastrophic for the region, it would ensure that American moral authority would sink to greater depths after decades of waging a succession of illegal wars.

There is some hope perhaps that sanity will prevail because the help given by official sources to the Wall Street Journal which revealed the sabotage policy being pursued by the Israeli state, can be construed as a rebuke for the futile sustaining of a discredited and failed policy of regime change.

Time will tell.

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Adeyinka Makinde is a writer and law lecturer based in London who has an interest in geopolitics. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The University Deception: Rankings and Academic Freedom

March 15th, 2021 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

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Forget the global university rankings of any list.  The global university promotion exercise is filled with snake oil and perfumed refuse, an effort to corrupt the unknowing and steal from the gullible.  The aim here is to convince parents, potential students and academics that their institutions of white collar crime are appealing enough to warrant enrolment and employment at.  

Writing in 2019, Ellen Hazelkorn, who has had an eye on the rankings system for some years, observed that 18,000 university-level institutions could be found across the globe.  “Those ranked within the top 500 would be within the top 3% worldwide. Yet, by a perverse logic, rankings have generated a perception amongst the public, policymakers and stakeholders that only those within the top 20, 50 or 100 are worthy of being called excellent.”

Rankings are complicated by a range of factors: methodological problems in arriving at the figure, what institutions themselves submit, their wealth (endowments, well moneyed donors, grants received) and age (old ties, networks), and, fundamentally, what is being asked of that institution.  Such grading systems have been found, as Nancy Adler and Anne-Wil Harzing describe it, to be “dysfunctional and potentially cause more harm than good”.

One factor that does not find itself into the rankings bonanza is that of academic freedom.  This surely would be one of the primary considerations in what is irritatingly called the “knowledge economy”.  None of the three most consulted registers – the QS rankings, Times Higher Education or the Shanghai Academic Rankings of World Universities – makes mention of it. 

This has obvious implications.  Higher education institutions in countries where repression, censorship, surveillance and punishment of academics are condoned do not need to worry about being compromised in the climb up the ladder. An obvious example is the application of the Chinese National Security Law to Hong Kong, which has seen entities such as the Chinese University of Hong Kong sever ties with the freshly elected student union.  Campus events at both CUHK and the University of Hong Kong have also been cancelled for fears of violating the NSL.

The PRC is merely an obvious example.  Countries supposedly romping home in any academic freedom contest also face questions.  In Australia, thuggish administrators and academic turncoats are moving in on crushing the contrarians, reducing the entire teaching syllabus and research agenda to the drool of wonky projections and outcomes.  The idea is simple: You must be decent and liked, boringly acceptable in discourse and compliant in observing directives from management.  The project is guaranteed through such slime-coated documents as the “code of conduct”, which is meant to make everyone good by keeping education and incompetence in the higher echelons of university governance safe.  Discomfort is eschewed; different thoughts suppressed.

Australian learning and research institutions, as in other developed countries, have been tempted by various powerful financial incentives – money from Chinese sources, for instance – to make any campus criticism difficult.  Last year, the University of Queensland took a dim view of the protest efforts of student activist Drew Pavlou, citing 11 allegations of misconduct in a bulky 186-page document befitting any show trial process.  Pavlou was suspended for “prejudicing” the university’s reputation by, in his words, “using my position as an elected student representative to express support for Hong Kong’s democratic protesters.”  UQ’s Vice Chancellor Peter Høj was damning in silence, telling the university’s alumni in a July 17, 2020 email that UQ lived and breathed “an ongoing commitment to the protection and promotion of free speech every day.”

A number of scholars and activists have suggested an institutional corrective to the deceptive picture of rankings.  The Academic Freedom Index is one such proposal, developed by members of the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi), the Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU), the Scholars at Risk Network and the V-Dem Institute.

In their report Free Universities: Putting the Academic Freedom Index Into Action, Katrin Kinzelbach, Ilyas Saliba, Janika Spannagel and Robert Quinn hope to “bring a rights and freedoms perspective into debates on higher education governance and policy.”  They make the point that academic excellence and reputation are currently considered mere functions of outputs in the current scheme.  “As a result, institutions in repressive environments have climbed the reputation ladder and now occupy the top ranks.”  Confidently, the authors make the claim that featuring an adjusted rank “would lower the chances for institutions constrained by such restrictive environments to improve their international reputations and attract academic talents”.

The AFi is also drawn from 2,000 experts who were asked to contribute on various indicators “in the de facto realization of academic freedom”: the freedom to teach and research; freedom of academic exchange and dissemination; institutional autonomy; campus integrity; and freedom of academic and cultural expression.

As with any index, questions will be asked about what is left out.  There is also something inherently artificial in the exercise of correcting a ranking using the AFi measure.  Even the contributors to the report admit to not knowing “enough about academic freedom and the factors that sustain or threaten it.”  Declining levels of academic freedom are noted in Belarus, Hong Kong, Sri Lanka and Zambia; Gambia is earmarked as being stellar for permitting scholars’ freedom to collaborate and disseminate their findings.   

As Saliba explained, most states which had witnessed a deterioration of academic freedom relative to 2019 were those implementing “novel regulations that limit freedom to research, teach and publish” and initiated “repressive political acts against pro-democracy movements with a strong base among students and faculty.”  These are conventional measures, and do not consider the more subtle forms of suppression and regulation to be found in various Western states.  Australian institutions, for instance, maintain their undeservingly high rankings, suggesting that much more needs to be done to make the index accurate.

A recommendation to the collective can be suggested.  One of the most potent threats to the academy lies in the commercial and corporate bureaucratisation of the university, suggesting that the very notion of rankings, drawn from a global knowledge economy parcelled in the language of outcomes, is not only misplaced but deeply flawed.  The AFi has merit on some level, but does not shed light on the more sinister policies focused on reputation management.  In its current form, the index risks becoming a tool for managers keen to show they are making changes which leave no substantive effect.

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

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The number of doses to be administered in Ireland this week has been reduced by more than a third of the original plan due to the pause in the use of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The National Immunisation Advisory Committee (NIAC) has recommended that the administration of the Covid-19 AstraZeneca vaccine be temporarily deferred, pending the outcome of an investigation at EU level.

In a statement this morning, Deputy Chief Medical Officer Dr Ronan Glynn said the recommendation has been made following a report from the Norwegian Medicines Agency of four new reports of serious blood clotting events in adults after receiving the AstraZeneca vaccine.

“It has not been concluded that there is any link between the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca and these cases,” Dr Glynn said.

“However, acting on the precautionary principal, and pending receipt of further information, the NIAC has recommended the temporary deferral of the Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca vaccination programme in Ireland.”

80,000 vaccines were due to be administered in Ireland this week, the HSE told TheJournal.ie.

“We now expect to administer approximately 50,000,” the HSE said.

“While we are expecting to administer about 30,000 less than planned they would not all be ‘cancelled appointments’ as specific appointments would not have been made for many later in the week.”

The Health Products Regulatory Authority (HPRA) is in a continued dialogue with the EMA and national medicines regulators across Europe in respect of the ongoing European review.

Norwegian health officials yesterday reported a number of further cases of blood clots or brain haemorrhages in younger people who received the AstraZeneca Covid-19 jab, but said they could not yet say they were vaccine-related.

The Norwegian Medicines Agency said similar incidents had been reported in other European countries. While there was no proof of a link to the vaccine, anyone under 50 who felt unwell and developed large blue patches after vaccination should seek medical attention.

Yesterday, the Norwegian Medicines Agency said it had “received several adverse event reports about younger vaccinated people with bleeding under the skin (tiny dots and /or larger blue patches) after coronavirus vaccination.

“This is serious and can be a sign of reduced blood platelet counts,” it said.

“Today, we received three more reports of severe cases of blood clots or brain haemorrhages in younger people who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine. These are now receiving hospital treatment,” it added.

Geir Bukholm, director of Infection Control and Environmental Health at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said that following the decision to suspend the jab, it was now “the Norwegian Medicines Agency’s role to follow up on these suspected side effects and take the necessary measures”.

Explaining the concern regarding the latest clotting reports from Norway, Dr Glynn told RTÉ Radio One’s This Week that there had been a number of disparate reports during the week from a number of different places, and that “the majority of those reports were to do with clots in the leg or cloths in the lung,”

However, he added that:

“The four reports that have come through from Norway are specific to clotting events involving the brain, and again they’re clotting events in younger people in their 30s and 40s, which is unusual.

To date, the HPRA has received a small number of reports associated with blood clots following vaccination with the AstraZeneca vaccine. However, it has not received any reports of the nature of those described by the Norwegian Medicines Agency.

The HRPA said it will continue to monitor national reports “very closely”.

Speaking to RTÉ Radio One’s Brendan O’Connor this morning, NIAC chairperson Professor Karina Butler said the question currently is whether the newly reported clots are “totally coincidental, random events” or if “there could be a casual relationship that the vaccine may have triggered” the symptoms.

“We, above all, want to ensure that what we’re recommending is safe and that we can maintain confidence in the vaccine programme, we felt that we had to pause, just pause, until we get the additional information that could possibly, hopefully, give us the reassurance that this is fine,” Professor Butler said.

“We did this out of abundance of caution,” she said.

She added that she hopes if the roll-out of the AstraZeneca vaccine can resume, the public will have “even greater confidence that this has been looked at absolutely rigorously, absolutely thoroughly and there was no need to worry”.

Professor Butler said that it is hoped there will be a “conclusion” to this situation by “the end of the week”.

The World Health Organization has said no causal link had been established between the vaccine and blood clotting after Denmark, Norway and Iceland on Thursday temporarily suspended the use of the vaccine over concerns about patients developing post-jab blood clots.

The HPRA said in a statement this afternoon that “there is currently no indication that the vaccine was the cause of these events and there may be alternative explanations for their occurrence that are unrelated to the vaccine”.

“However, the safety of the public is of the utmost importance, and it is essential that reports of potential safety concerns, even if very rare, are rigorously and swiftly investigated so that the public can be reassured and if required, appropriate action can be taken,” it said.

Roll-out impact

It’s currently unclear how long the AstraZeneca vaccine roll-out will be suspended for.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s This Week, Dr Ronan Glynn said the EMA is due to meet again on Wednesday or Thursday to discuss data collected regarding the situation.

With regards to the roll-out of the Pfizer/Moderna vaccine, HSE’s Chief Clinical Officer Dr Colm Henry told the programme that the distribution of those will continue “without disruption”.

The people affected by the suspension of the AstraZeneca vaccine will be the remaining healthcare workers and, to some extent, the category of people aged 16-69 who have high risk conditions, according to Dr Henry.

“They are the group that for whom the vaccination appointments are suspended pending the outcome of the EMA [investigation],” Dr Henry said.

AstraZeneca response

AstraZeneca, an Anglo-Swedish company which developed the vaccine with Oxford University, has defended the safety of its product.

In a statement released this morning, a spokesperson for the company said an analysis of its safety data that covers reported cases from more than 17 million doses of vaccine administered “has shown no evidence of an increased risk of pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis or thrombocytopenia with Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca”.

“In fact, the reported numbers of these types of events for Covid-19 vaccine AstraZeneca are not greater than the number that would have occurred naturally in the unvaccinated population,” the spokesperson said.

“In clinical trials, no trends or patterns were observed with regard to pulmonary embolism, deep vein thrombosis, or events possibly related to thrombocytopenia,” they said.

“A careful review of all available safety data including these events is ongoing and AstraZeneca is committed to sharing information without delay. We also note that the European Medicine Agency (EMA) has asked for an assessment of events related to thrombocytopenia from other COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers (per communication 11 March).”

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Last year,  former US President Donald Trump announced very clearly, that part of the US forces mission in Syria is to protect the oil fields and to take a share of them.

This statement was an official admission of the US forces’ plundering of Syrian natural resources in a flagrant and declared violation of international laws, which prohibit a country from stealing another country’s  property, and depriving an entire people of the benefits of this wealth.

By the end of last June, it was announced from Washington the signing of an agreement between the “SDF” and an American oil company, regarding the extraction of oil from the Syrian fields, and the US Secretary of State at the time “Mike Pompeo” didn’t hesitate to announce that the agreement came under the direct supervision of the US State Department.

Sources reported that the stealing of the Syrian oil hadn’t stopped since the beginning of the American presence in the regions of the Syrian Jazeera under the pretext of fighting “ISIS”, indicating that the quantities of oil that the organization was stealing during the period of its control over the region are now going to the benefit of the Americans with giving a part of it in favor of the “SDF”.

The source pointed out that the stolen oil convoys from the fields of Deir Al-Zour and Al-Hasakah, especially the fields of “Al-Tanak” and “Al-Omar” in the countryside of Deir Al-Zour takes several routes to transport what is looted of oil, as some of them go to the east towards the region of “Kurdistan” Iraq through the illegal Al-Waleed corridor, and it’s sold there for the benefit of the Americans, as for the share that the SDF takes from the stolen oil, it’s either sold in the areas of the Syrian Jazeera under the control of the SDF, or it’s smuggled to the areas controlled by the Turkish forces and the factions loyal to it in northern Syria despite the declared hostility between “Ankara” and the “SDF”.

The source pointed out that the theft of oil, selling it, and ignoring that it belongs to the entire Syrian people, is a major source of the continuous bleeding of the Syrian economy and a major point in the accumulation of war losses, which figures indicate that they amounted to 1.2 trillion dollars during 10 years.

The source mentioned that when it contracted with An American company, it chose the newly emerging “Delta Crescent Energy” company, indicating that it wasn’t a coincidence and that the directives coming from “Washington” ordered the “SDF” to contract with this company in particular, despite the illegality of the contract by virtue of the fact that the “SDF” isn’t a legitimate authority empowered to control the country’s wealth.

But the striking point is that the company that was selected is related to the names of 3 former officials of the US administration, and they are the former US ambassador to Denmark James Kane, the retired officer from the Delta forces in the US army James Raine, and the director of the oil executive in the company “John Durrer”, who previously worked with American oil companies in the middle east and forged relations with American administration officials, so that the company was chosen to be the main investor in the oil fields.

The source indicated that the company was allowed to carry out all activities of energy development, transportation, refining, marketing and exploration in the Syrian fields, which means that it has acquired wide powers in controlling the oil production and determining its price and the destination to which it will be exported, in an organized and publicized theft of the capabilities of the Syrian people.

Despite the international condemnation for signing the contract, whether from the Syrian government or even from Turkey, Russia and many others, the American forces continued to steal the Syrian wealth, while the rest of the Syrians were deprived of their right to the wealth of their country in the middle of the increasing living difficulties due to the economic war waged by Washington against Damascus through sanctions.

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This article which is of relevance to the ongoing debate on the Covid-19 vaccine, was first published on the Duluth Reader in December 2019.

“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly 50% of its budget from private sources, including Big Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents and buys and (very profitably) distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which represents over 40% of its total budget.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) derives a majority of its outside contributions – estimated at more than $25 million per year – from pharmaceutical companies that make vaccines. The pediatricians that the AAP represents derive the majority of their annual revenues from the administration of vaccines to their pediatric patients.)J.B. Handley  

“Perhaps the most infamous example of corruption at the CDC is how the head of the CDC from 2002 to 2009, Julie Gerberding, left her government job to become president of Merck’s $5 billion dollar/year Vaccine Division. Merck’s CEO understandably described Gerberding as an “ideal choice”. She held that position until 2014 and currently holds the Merck job title of “Executive Vice President & Chief Patent Officer, Strategic Communications, Global Public Policy and Population Health”. That is to say, the former CDC director is now in charge of Merck’s propaganda efforts. One might say she’s basically doing the same job now that she did for the CDC, but even more lucratively. Apart from her salary, in 2015, Gerberding sold shares of Merck worth over $2.3 million. While at the CDC Gerberding shepherded Merck’s highly controversial and highly profitable Gardasil vaccine through the regulatory maize” — From Collective-evolution.com  

“The majority of studies that authorities point to as (contrived) proof that vaccines do not cause autism have been published in a journal called Pediatrics, the official journal of the AAP. As we know, the AAP is a trade union for pediatricians.” – J.B. Handley   “Since vaccines are liability-free – and effectively compulsory to a captive market of 76 million children – there is meager market incentive for companies to make them safe. The public must rely on the moral scruples of Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, and Pfizer. But these companies have a long history of operating recklessly and dishonestly, even with (the many drug) products for which they can be sued for injuries. The four companies that make virtually all of the recommended vaccines are all convicted felons.  Collectively they have paid over $35 billion since 2009 for defrauding regulators, lying to and bribing government officials and physicians, falsifying science, and leaving a trail of (incurable chronic illnesses) injuries and deaths from products they knew to be dangerous and still sold under pretense of safety and efficacy.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“I ate breakfast last week with the president of a network news division at CBS, and he told me that during non-election years, 70% of the advertising revenues for his news division come from pharmaceutical ads.  And if you go on TV any night and watch the network news, you’ll see they become just a vehicle for selling pharmaceuticals. He also told me that he would fire a host who brought onto his station a guest who lost him a pharmaceutical account.” — Robert F. Kennedy Jr  “Fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported. The CDC’s entire vaccination propaganda campaign rests on their claim that side effects from vaccination are exceedingly rare, but according to the blatantly pro-over-vaccination, and Big Pharma-funded CDC, in 2016 alone, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) received 59,117 vaccine adverse event reports. Among those reports were 432 vaccine-related deaths, 1,091 permanent vaccine-related disabilities, 4,132 vaccine-related hospitalizations, and 10,274 vaccine-related emergency room visits. What if these numbers actually represent less than 1% of the total as this report asserts? You multiply those numbers by 100.” – William Christenson  

Please study immediately below the following quotes about the Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccine Gardasil, which Merck’s propaganda/lobbying department has very successfully marketed, even acquiring fast-track status from the FDA that eliminated the need for long-term safety or efficacy studies.

Gardasil has been heavily marketed even prior to its FDA-approval in 2006 (for the Gardasil-4 vaccine – and again in 2014 for the Gardasil-9 vaccine) for the theoretical prevention of cancer of the cervix for young healthy adolescent females 30 – 40 years into the future that will require periodic vaccination booster shots that contain aluminum adjuvants for life – the exact frequency of which has yet to be determined, since the long-term efficacy and safety studies haven’t been performed!!

Incidentally, the following vaccines contain aluminum:  

“Anthrax, DT, DTaP (Infanrix), DTaP-IPV, DTaP-HepB-IPV (Pediarix), DTaP –IPV/Hib, Hep A, Hep B, HepA/Hep B (Twinrix), HIB (PedvaxHIB), HPV (Gardasil and Cervarix), Japanese encephalitis, MenB (Bexsero), Pneumococcal (Prevnar 13), Td, TDaP.” 

The following few quotes about the unacknowledged dangers of any aluminum-saturated vaccine (which applies to both HPV vaccines, including GlaxoSmithKline’s (Cervarix, approved by the FDA in 2009) come from Canadian research physician Dr Lucija Tomljenovic.   These important quotes were excerpted from Dr Tomljenovic’s alarming medical journal article that revealed the histologic findings of the cerebral vasculitis (toxic inflammation of the blood vessels in the brain) from two previously healthy young women following their deaths after their routine Gardasil vaccinations, see this 

Here are more important quotes:

“Gardasil is a recombinant vaccine and contains virus-like particles (VLPs) of HPV types 6, 11, 16, and 18 as active substances…The VLPs are adsorbed on amorphous aluminum hydroxyphosphate sulfate (AAHP) adjuvant nanoparticles. Animal models show that aluminum adjuvant nanoparticles are taken up by monocytes after injection, translocate to lymph nodes, then travel across the blood-brain barrier and eventually accumulate in the brain where they can cause significant immune-inflammatory adverse reactions. Thus, the presence of VLP particles in cerebral vasculature in the brain tissue specimens from young women who have died following vaccination with Gardasil may be explained by a “Trojan horse” mechanism that is dependent on circulating macrophages by which these particles adsorbed to aluminum adjuvant to gain access to brain tissue.”  

“Circulating immune complexes can result from either

1) normal responses to infection,

2) tissue injury or

3) artificial responses to vaccination.

The fact that vaccines are designed to hyper-stimulate antibody production (thus producing much higher antibody levels than what occurs following natural infection), suggests that vaccination may carry a much higher risk for immune vasculopathies (and other autoimmune disorders). Gardasil injections induce sustained antibody titers (for HPV-16) that are more than 10-fold higher than natural HPV infection titers.”

“Vaccine-induced cerebral vasculitis is a serious disease which typically results in fatal outcomes when undiagnosed and left untreated. The fact that many of the symptoms reported to vaccine safety surveillance databases following HPV vaccination are indicative of cerebral vasculitis, but are unrecognized as such (i.e., intense persistent migraines, syncope, seizures, tremors, tingling, myalgia, locomotor abnormalities, psychotic symptoms and cognitive deficits, etc), is a serious concern…It thus appears that in some cases vaccination may be the triggering factor of fatal autoimmune/neurological events. Physicians should be aware of this association.” – Dr Lucija Tomljenovic  

And here is what widely-published Canadian researcher Dr Christopher Shaw has to say about aluminum adjuvants in vaccines:  

“…our current results are consistent with the existing evidence on the toxicology and pharmacokinetics of Aluminum adjuvants which altogether strongly implicate these compounds as contributors to the rising prevalence of neurobehavioral disorders in children. Given that autism has devastating consequences in a life of a child, and that currently in the developed world over 1% of children suffer from some form of Autism Spectrum Disorder, it would seem wise to make efforts towards reducing infant exposure to aluminum from vaccines.“ C A Shaw, PhD

“There is a serious problem with vaccine safety. Vaccine aluminum adjuvant has adverse neurological effects, at dosages that are recommended by the US CDC. Vaccine critics are supported by the science. Parents refusing to vaccinate according to the recommended CDC schedule are supported by the science. Use aluminum-containing vaccines with great caution, or not at all.” Chris Shaw, PhD

See this.

And here is what Dr Christopher Exeley, the world-renowned British aluminum toxicologist reported recently about Alzheimers Disease (widely reported to be of “unknown origin”) which seems to affect mostly fully-vaccinated, fully-drugged older people:  

“We have made the first ever measurements of aluminium in brain tissue from 12 donors diagnosed with…Alzheimer’s disease. The concentrations of aluminium were extremely high, for example, there were values in excess of 10 μg/g tissue dry wt. in 5 of the 12 individuals. Overall, the concentrations were higher than all previous measurements of brain aluminium except cases of known aluminium-induced encephalopathy.” – Dr Christopher Exeley

Scandalously, for the volunteer patients that were included in the seven separate pre-clinical studies that Merck researchers performed, the researchers did NOT do any questioning of any of the study participants beyond 15 days after each of the series of 3 intramuscular vaccinations had been completed!! Therefore no safety studies beyond the exceedingly short-term were done and thus the “vaccine/industrial complex” has no justification in insisting that Gardasil is safe!!

Scandalously, the study participants were actually not questioned, but were simply told to fill out Vaccine Report Cards (VRCs) and send them in at 15 days following the most recent of the 3 injections!!

Scandalously, 5 of the 7 clinical trials used an aluminum adjuvant – instead of a saline control – as a “placebo”!!

Scandalously, only one of the 7 studies was properly controlled with a true saline placebo.

Scandalously, the seventh trial was totally uncontrolled!!

Scandalously, the seven groups of active vs. “placebo” were lumped together in the study’s conclusions, which made adequate interpretation of efficacy essentially impossible!!

Scandalously, the so-called “placebo” that was used in the vast majority of the trials was the known neurotoxin, Amorphous Aluminum Hydroxyphosphate Sulfate (AAHS), which was the very same adjuvant that was – and still is – in the active Gardasil shot!!

Scandalously, aluminum-containing AAHS, the highly neurotoxic and autoimmunity-inducing adjuvant, is in many other childhood and adult vaccines and is known to accumulate in the body with each injection!!

Scandalously, no mention was made by Merck that aluminum was in the so-called “placebo” shots until page 12 of the 28-page product information insert – and the amount of aluminum was only mentioned once!!

Scandalously, the participants that did not complete the entire series of 3 vaccinations were dropped from the final tabulations, meaning that those who died or had any of the most serious adverse outcomes (the reason for dropping out) were not included in the final statistics, deceptively minimizing negative outcomes!!

Scandalously, any trial drop-outs that died, had a stroke, developed seizure disorders, had a heart attack or had other serious adverse outcomes such as one of the many autoimmune disorders were not listed in the literature or product inserts if the victim did not receive all three shots!!

The following information is taken directly from Merck’s Gardasil product insert that accompanies each vial of vaccine and is to be made available to prospective patients before they give their consent:

The High Incidence of Headaches Following the Gardasil Vaccine Experiment is Likely Due to the Aluminum Adjuvant

The incidence of new-onset headaches in this healthy, previously headache-free population, for example, was the most commonly-reported systemic adverse reaction – with an incidence of 28% in both active and “placebo” treatment groups!!

(Note that Gardasil recipients experienced an incidence of > 28.2% and the aluminum-adjuvanted [AAHS] “placebo controls” had a headache incidence of > 28.4%!!)

This high incidence of serious headaches was highly likely a sign of cerebral vasculitis, which could then cause many of the other adverse effects commonly seen in these previously well patients including chronic fatigue syndrome, seizure disorders, narcolepsy, psychological illnesses or death!!

Among the causes of death listed in the product insert from 2010, there was printed the following Gardasil-associated deaths among the scrupulously-screened, exceptionally healthy study participants that completed the series of 3 shots:

  • 2 deaths from sepsis,
  • 1 death from pancreatic cancer,
  • 1 fatal arrhythmia,
  • 1 death from pulmonary tuberculosis, 1 death from hyperthyroidism,
  • 1 death from post-operative pulmonary embolism and acute renal failure,
  • 1 death from cardiac arrest and resultant traumatic brain injury, 1 death from systemic lupus erythematosus,
  • 1 death because of a stroke,
  • 1 death from breast cancer, and 1 death from nasopharyngeal cancer.

In the AAHS/aluminum adjuvant-containing, alleged “placebo” group there was reported:

  • 1 death from “asphyxia”,
  • 1 death from acute lymphocytic leukemia,
  • 1 death from “chemical poisoning” and
  • 1 death from myocardial infarction.
  • Significantly, zero deaths occurred in the true saline placebo group.

Fully-informed Consent to Potentially-Risky Medical Treatments Used to be a Part of Medical Ethics

The following Patient Counseling Information comes from the FDA-approved, Merck-generated 2010 Product Information Insert that licensed health practitioners (or the individuals delegated by them to inject the Gardasil) were advised to inform prospective vaccinees (or their parents or guardians) prior to proceeding with the potentially-dangerous, possibly even less-than-useless Gardasil vaccination protocol. (No Gardasil recipient has yet lived long enough to know if the vaccine will have actually prevented cervical cancer!)

It is highly likely that Merck’s legal advice below is not being followed by the vast majority of America’s medical professionals, whose clinics are profiting heavily by promoting Gardasil vaccinations (HPV vaccines are the most expensive vaccines in the history of the world) for their previously healthy adolescent female patients, who won’t know if it was worth all the shots and costs and risks of chronic illnesses until their reach their mid-40s – the peak age at which the diagnosis of cancer of the uterine cervix is made.

No matter, for patients harmed or killed by ANY vaccine – whether or not they were warned about adverse effects – cannot sue vaccine manufacturers, marketers or the vaccine-injecting medical profession for injuries or deaths. Scandalous!!

Most of the following excerpts are verbatim quotes from the product insert:

Patient counseling information for Gardasil vaccinations

  1. Vaccination does not eliminate the necessity for women to continue to undergo recommended cervical cancer screening.
  2. Women who receive GARDASIL should continue to undergo cervical cancer screening per standard of care.
  3. Recipients of GARDASIL should not discontinue anal cancer screening if it has been recommended by a health care provider.
  4. GARDASIL has NOT been demonstrated to provide protection against disease from vaccine and non-vaccine HPV types to which a person has previously been exposed through sexual activity.
  5. Since syncope (fainting) has been reported following vaccination sometimes resulting in falling with injury, observation for 15 minutes after administration is recommended.
  6. Vaccine information is required to be given with each vaccination to the patient, parent, or guardian.
  7. Information regarding benefits and risks associated with vaccination.
  8. GARDASIL is not recommended for use in pregnant women.
  9. Importance of completing the immunization series unless contraindicated.
  10. Report any adverse reactions to their health care provider

The remainder of this article contains information that was obtained directly from the Gardasil package insert (and sometimes paraphrased from what was printed there). I have also bolded, enlarged and/or italicized some of the words or phrases to point out and/or emphasize the not-so-subtle, frequent obfuscation of data that the FDA allowed Merck to publish, data which likely was designed to distort (or at least put a positive spin on) the information – for both patients and physicians:   5.1 Syncope Because vaccinees may develop syncope (fainting shortly after a Gardasil shot), sometimes resulting in injury, observation for 15 minutes after administration is recommended. Syncope, sometimes associated with tonic-clonic movements and other seizure-like activity, has been reported following vaccination with GARDASIL   When syncope is associated with tonic-clonic movements (tonic/clonic movements ARE SEIZURES!!), the activity is usually transient and typically responds to restoring cerebral perfusion by maintaining a supine or Trendelenburg position.

Some vaccine victims died, some had strokes, some had heart attacks, some developed chronic epilepsy, some developed chronic fatigue syndrome, etc.  

Table 5: Common Systemic Adverse Reactions in Girls and Women 9 Through 26 Years of Age

(GARDASIL ≥ Control) Adverse Reactions (1 to 15 Days Postvaccination) GARDASIL (N = 5088) AAHS/aluminum adjuvant “placebo” (N = 3790)

Fever 13% with Gardasil; 11.2% with AAHS/Aluminum adjuvant “placebo”, Nausea 6.7% Gardasil; 6.5% Aluminum, Dizziness 4.0% Gardasil; 3.6% Aluminum Diarrhea 3.6% Gardasil; 3.5% Aluminum Vomiting 2.4% Gardasil; 1.9% Aluminum Cough 2.0% Gardasil; 1.5% Aluminum Toothache, Upper respiratory tract infection, Malaise, Arthralgia, Insomnia, Nasal congestion all had an incidence over 1.0%. Many other adverse effects that had an incidence of less than 1.0% were not listed.

6.1 Clinical Trials Experience Studies in Girls and Women (ages 9 Through 45) and Boys and Men (9 Through 26 Years of Age) 18,083 individuals were administered GARDASIL or aluminum/AAHS “placebo” or saline placebo on the day of enrollment, and approximately 2 and 6 months thereafter, and safety was evaluated using Vaccination Report Cards (VRC) for 14 days after each injection.   The individuals that were monitored using the Vaccination Report Cards included 10,088 individuals 9 through 45 years of age at enrollment who received GARDASIL and 7,995 individuals who received the aluminum “placebo” or the saline true placebo.

99.8% of trial participants continued to the end of the 6-month trial despite many of them suffering significant adverse effects from both the vaccine and the aluminum adjuvant.

Table 9: Summary of Girls and Women 9 Through 26 Years of Age Who Reported an Incident Condition Potentially Indicative of a Systemic Autoimmune Disorder After Enrollment in Clinical Trials   (Recall that Aluminum adjuvants have a long history of causing autoimmune disorders.   It should be required for everybody to read and understand the extensive scholarly literature that had led to the identification of the ASIA Syndrome = “Autoimmune/Inflammatory Syndrome Induced by Adjuvants” here.

Note: Patients with the vaccine-induced ASIA Syndrome commonly present with post-vaccination symptoms such as chronic fatigue syndrome, cognitive impairment, arthralgias, myalgias, fevers, dry eyes and dry mouth, symptoms that are totally compatible with the ASIA Syndrome and are now found to occur following Gardasil vaccinations. Included are some of these disorders:  

  1. Arthralgia/Arthritis/Arthropathy   120 Gardasil-injected volunteers reported arthropathic signs and symptoms that were compatible with autoimmune arthropathies (and the ASIA Syndrome).   98 aluminum-adjuvanted “control group” members also reported arthropathies.
  2. There were 10 cases of Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus (a known autoimmune disorder) in the Gardasil group and there were 6 cases of IDDM among the aluminum-adjuvant group.
  3. Also occurring among these previously totally healthy groups of young women were cases of these autoimmune, ASIA disorders:   Autoimmune Thyroiditis, Celiac Disease, Erythema Nodosum, Hyperthyroidism, Hypothyroidism, Inflammatory Bowel Disease, Multiple Sclerosis, Nephritis, Optic Neuritis, Pigmentation Disorder, Psoriasis, Raynaud’s Phenomenon, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Scleroderma/Morphea, Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, Systemic Lupus Erythematosus, Uveitis.

6.2 Post-marketing Experience The following adverse events have been spontaneously reported during post-approval use of GARDASIL. Because these events were reported voluntarily (unsolicited) from a population of uncertain size, it is not possible to reliably estimate their frequency or to establish a causal relationship to vaccine exposure.

Blood and lymphatic system disorders: Autoimmune hemolytic anemia, Idiopathic (autoimmune) thrombocytopenic purpura, Lymphadenopathy. Respiratory, thoracic and mediastinal disorders: Pulmonary embolus. Gastrointestinal disorders: Nausea, Pancreatitis, Vomiting.

General disorders and administration site conditions: Asthenia, Chills, Death, Fatigue, Malaise. Immune system disorders: Autoimmune diseases, Hypersensitivity reactions including anaphylactic/anaphylactoid reactions, Bronchospasm/Asthma, and Urticaria. Musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders: Arthralgia, Myalgia. Nervous system disorders: Acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, Dizziness, Guillain-Barré syndrome, Headache, Lower motor neuron disease, Paralysis, Seizures, Syncope (including syncope associated with tonic/clonic movements and other seizure-like activity) sometimes resulting in falling with injury, Transverse myelitis.

Infections and infestations: Cellulitis. Vascular disorders: Deep venous thrombosis   GARDASIL is not indicated for women 27 years of age or older.   However, safety data in women 16 through 45 years of age was collected, and 3819 women (GARDASIL N = 1894 vs. AAHS control (aluminum adjuvant) or saline placebo N = 1925) reported at least 1 pregnancy each.   The overall proportions of pregnancies that resulted in an adverse outcome, defined as the combined numbers of: Spontaneous abortion, Late fetal death, and Congenital anomalies (45 cases in Gardasil vaccinees and 34 cases in aluminum-adjuvanted “placebo cases)out of the total number of pregnancy outcomes for which an outcome was known (and excluding elective terminations), were 22.6% (446/1973) in women who received GARDASIL and 23.1% (460/1994) in women who received AAHS control or saline placebo. Overall, 55 and 65 women in the group that received GARDASIL or AAHS control or saline placebo, respectively (2.9% and 3.4% of all women who reported a pregnancy in the respective vaccination groups), experienced a serious adverse reaction during pregnancy.

There were 45 cases of congenital anomaly in pregnancies that occurred in women who received GARDASIL and 34 cases of congenital anomaly in pregnancies that occurred in women who received AAHS control or saline placebo.   Further sub-analyses were conducted to evaluate pregnancies with estimated onset within 30 days or more than 30 days from administration of a dose of GARDASIL or AAHS control or saline placebo. For pregnancies with estimated onset within 30 days of vaccination, 5 cases of congenital anomaly were observed in the group that received GARDASIL compared to 1 case of congenital anomaly in the group that received AAHS control or saline placebo.

The congenital anomalies seen in (Gardasil-affected) pregnancies with estimated onset within 30 days of vaccination included

Pyloric stenosis, Congenital megacolon, Congenital hydronephrosis, Hip dysplasia, and Club foot.  

Conversely, in pregnancies with onset more than 30 days following vaccination, 40 cases of congenital anomaly were observed in the group that received GARDASIL compared with 33 cases of congenital anomaly in the group that received AAHS (aluminum!) “control” or saline placebo.

GARDASIL or AAHS control were given to a total of 1133 (breast-feeding) women (vaccine N = 582, AAHS control N = 551) during the relevant Phase 3 clinical studies.

Overall, 27 and 13 infants of women who received GARDASIL or AAHS control, respectively (representing 4.6% and 2.4% of the total number of women who were breast-feeding during the period in which they received GARDASIL or AAHS control, respectively), experienced a serious adverse reaction.   In a post-hoc analysis of clinical studies, a higher number of breast-feeding infants (n = 7) whose mothers received GARDASIL had acute respiratory illnesses within 30 days post vaccination of the mother as compared to infants (n = 2) whose mothers received AAHS control.

11. DESCRIPTION GARDASIL, Human Papillomavirus Quadrivalent (Types 6, 11, 16, and 18) Vaccine, Recombinant, is a non-infectious recombinant quadrivalent vaccine prepared from the purified virus-like particles (VLPs) of the major capsid (L1) protein of HPV Types 6, 11, 16, and 18. The L1 proteins are produced by separate fermentations in recombinant Saccharomyces cerevisiae and self-assembled into VLPs.

The fermentation process involves growth of S. cerevisiae on chemically-defined fermentation media which include vitamins, amino acids, mineral salts, and carbohydrates. The VLPs are released from the yeast cells by cell disruption and purified by a series of chemical and physical methods.

The purified Virus-Like Particles are adsorbed on pre-formed aluminum-containing adjuvant (Amorphous Aluminum Hydroxyphosphate Sulfate).

The quadrivalent HPV VLP vaccine is a sterile liquid suspension that is prepared by combining the adsorbed VLPs of each HPV type and additional amounts of the aluminum-containing adjuvant and the final purification buffer.   GARDASIL is a sterile suspension for intramuscular administration.

Each 0.5-mL dose contains approximately 20 mcg of HPV 6 L1 protein, 40 mcg of HPV 11 L1 protein, 40 mcg of HPV 16 L1 protein, and 20 mcg of HPV 18 L1 protein.  

Each 0.5-mL dose of the vaccine contains approximately 225 mcg of aluminum (as Amorphous Aluminum Hydroxyphosphate Sulfate adjuvant), 9.56 mg of sodium chloride, 0.78 mg of L-histidine, 50 mcg of polysorbate 80, 35 mcg of sodium borate.   And yet, despite the fact that there is no proof that Gardasil has prevented a single case of cervical cancer, the CDC website does not dare to discuss the details and personal stories of the thousands of young, previously health young women that experienced serious, even fatal, adverse effects both before the costly vaccine was marketed and after it was sanctioned by the CDC, the AAFP and the AAP.

Indeed, the CDC’s website (https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/pdf/data-summary-hpv-gardasil-vaccine-is-safe.pdf) reassuringly states, totally ignoring the warnings in the Gardasil product insert that medical ethicists say must be revealed to the patient or guardian prior to a vaccine injection or a drug prescription – per the age-old medical ethical standard of “fully informed consent”:

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Academy of Family Physicians, and American Academy of Pediatrics strongly recommend children receive all vaccines according to the recommended schedule.”

Here is that CDC-recommended schedule that is now mandatory, no questions to be asked, in California: After studying it and trying to calculate exactly how much injected mercury, aluminum, live viruses and the various impurities that the schedule will deliver to any California child that wants to go to public school, it is important to ask any physician that orders their patients to comply with the CDC schedule (exactly as posted) any of the questions listed further below this 2018 schedule that contrasts the number of vaccinations from previous years. This totally accurate diagram is posted at: http://somehelpful.info/Science/Vaccination-Russian-roulette.html.    

After being enlightened about America’s mandated, obvious over-vaccination schedule, are there any Questions?

Such as:

  1. What might happen if my baby doesn’t take ALL of the vaccines?
  2. What might happen if I delay having my baby start the vaccine schedule until he/she has reached blood-brain barrier and immunological maturity?
  3. Why are the unvaccinated people that I know also the healthiest people, the ones with the fewest chronic illnesses, the ones that aren’t on cocktails of potentially toxic drugs, the ones with no autoimmune disorders and the ones that never catch the flu anyway?
  4. What if there is a mis-match between the influenza viruses that circulated in Australia during their flu season last year and the viral antigens that were chosen to be included in the current flu shot?
  5. What if I had an adverse reaction to a previous vaccine, should I still be vaccinated with that shot? (And what is the strength of the evidence for your recommendation that my baby stick to the CDC’s mandated schedule?)
  6. What if there is a family history of vaccine adverse effects?
  7. Why should I have my baby follow the CDC schedule when my autistic first baby had his first seizure, near-SIDS event and his first autistic symptoms immediately after a cocktail of vaccinations that was given at your clinic?
  8. Did your medical school only teach you about the benefits of vaccinations and not about the actual risks?
  9. Were your medical school professors actual practicing physicians or were they mainly academically-oriented and therefore with minimal practical experience in pediatric patient care?

And here are some enlightening and very useful quotes from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who knows more and is more articulate about vaccines and the dangers of over-vaccinating American children than 99% of US physicians and 99.9% of US politicians.  

“For American kids born in 1986, only 12.8% had chronic diseases (especially autoimmune disorders). That number has grown to 54% among the vaccine generation (those born after 1986) in lockstep with the expanding schedule.”

“Safety testing, which typically requires months and years for other medical products, often lasts only a few days with vaccines – not nearly long enough to spot cancers or chronic conditions like autoimmune diseases (e.g., juvenile, insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis), allergic illnesses (e.g., food allergies, allergic rhinitis, eczema, asthma), or neurological and neurodevelopmental injuries (e.g., ADD, ADHD, narcolepsy, seizure disorders, and the spectrum of autistic disorders). The vaccine inserts that accompany every vial of mandated vaccines include warnings about these and over 400 other injuries including many serious immune, neurological, and chronic illnesses for which FDA suspects that vaccines may be the cause.”   “Many of these illnesses became epidemic in American children after 1986, coterminous with the exploding vaccine schedule. For American kids born in 1986, only 12.8% had chronic diseases. That number has grown to 54% among the vaccine generation (those born after 1986) in lockstep with the expanding schedule.”

“The children who comprise this vaccine-injured generation are now aging out of schools that needed to build quiet rooms and autism wings, install wobble chairs, hire security guards and hike special ed spending to 25% to accommodate them. They are landing on the social safety net which they threaten to sink. As lawmakers all around the nation vote to mandate more vaccines and call for the censorship of experts (including parents of vaccine-injured or killed children) that are expressing concerns about vaccine safety, Democratic Presidential candidates argue about how to fix America’s dysfunctional and unaffordable health care system without addressing the reality of the vaccine-related chronic disease and autoimmune disorder epidemic. The good news for Big Pharma, of course, is that many of these vaccine-injured children have lifelong dependencies on blockbuster drugs like insulin, Adderall, anti-psychotic drugs, Epi-Pens, asthma inhalers, and diabetes, arthritis, and anti-seizure meds made by the same companies that made the vaccines.”

“An overwhelming majority of the FDA officials directly charged with licensing vaccines, and the CDC officials who effectively mandate them for children, have personal financial entanglements with vaccine manufacturers. These “public servants” are often shareholders in, grant recipients from, and/or paid consultants to vaccine manufacturers, and, occasionally, even patent holders of the very vaccines they vote to approve. Those conflicts of interest motivate them to recommend ever more vaccines with minimal support from evidence-based science” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  

“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents   and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“An overwhelming majority of the FDA officials directly charged with licensing vaccines, and the CDC officials who effectively mandate them for children, have personal financial entanglements with vaccine manufacturers. These “public servants” are often shareholders in, grant recipients from, and/or paid consultants to vaccine manufacturers, and, occasionally, even patent holders of the very vaccines they vote to approve. Those conflicts of interest motivate them to recommend ever more vaccines with minimal support from evidence-based science” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  

“The FDA receives 45% of its annual budget from the pharmaceutical industry. The World Health Organization (WHO) gets roughly half its budget from private sources, including Pharma and its allied foundations. And the CDC, frankly, is a vaccine company; it owns 56 vaccine patents   and buys and distributes $4.6 billion in vaccines annually through the Vaccines for Children program, which is over 40% of its total budget.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“The HHS (US Health and Human Services partners with vaccine makers to develop, approve, recommend, and pass mandates for new products and then shares profits from vaccine sales. HHS employees can personally collect up to $150,000 annually in royalties for products they work on. For example, key HHS officials collect money on every sale of Merck’s controversial HPV vaccine Gardasil, which also yields tens of millions annually for the agency in patent royalties.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“In 1986, Congress—awash in Pharma money (the pharmaceutical industry is number one for both political campaign contributions and lobbying spending on legislators over the past 20 years) enacted a law granting vaccine makers blanket immunity from liability for injuries caused by vaccines. The subsequent gold rush by pharmaceutical companies boosted the number of recommended inoculations from twelve shots of five vaccines in 1986 to 54 shots of 13 vaccines today. A billion-dollar sideline grew into the $50 billion vaccine industry behemoth.” — Robert F. Kennedy, Jr  

“Since vaccines are liability-free – and effectively compulsory to a captive market of 76 million children – there is meager market incentive for companies to make them safe. The public must rely on the moral scruples of Merck, GlaxoSmithKline, Sanofi, and Pfizer. But these companies have a long history of operating recklessly and dishonestly, even with (the many non-vaccine) products that they must market to the public and for which they can be sued for injuries. The four companies that make virtually all of the recommended vaccines are all convicted felons.  Collectively they have paid over $35 billion since 2009 for defrauding regulators, lying to and bribing government officials and physicians, falsifying science, and leaving a trail of injuries and deaths from products they knew to be dangerous and still sold under pretense of safety and efficacy.” – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr

Addenda:

  1. The Health Resources Services Administration runs an under-advertised Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP). Information on how to file a vaccine injury claim is available at (https://www.hrsa.gov/vaccine-compensation/data/index.html).
  2. Scandalously, even your neighborhood pharmacy has been given approval to have poorly trained, vaccinology-ignorant sales staff, who don’t know a deltoid muscle from a triceps, to inject the full-gamut of 13 adult vaccines into anybody who asks for one or more of them at the store!! One wonders: Are risks or contraindications even inquired about? Is the concept of fully informed consent understood by the pharmacy employees when potentially toxic medical procedures are offered? Since vaccine-makers and physician clinics and hospitals are free from liability, does that hold for pharmacies as well?

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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

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“As Canadian medical doctors, we’re gonna tell you what the best science now has to say and we think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

Research now shows that the PCR test is practically worthless. Only 3% of patients with a positive test actually have the coronavirus.” – Dr. Stephen Malthouse

Watch the video below.

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Back in August 2020, Dr. Ronald B. Brown, PhD disrupted the academic world’s doomsday predictions about the COVID-19 pandemic when the journal Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness published his first paper on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As he told me in an interview:

The manuscript cites the smoking-gun, documented evidence showing that the public’s overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic was based on the worst miscalculation in the history of humanity, in my opinion.

On February 26, 2021, the peer-reviewed journal Medicina published another paper by Brown as part of a special issue, “Pandemic Outbreak of Coronavirus.” Brown’s paper, titled “Outcome reporting bias in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials” is also listed in the U.S. National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health.

In Brown’s first coronavirus paper, he showed how mistaking infection fatality rates for case fatality rates exaggerated the predicted lethality of the SAR-CoV-2 virus. In this second paper, he shows how relative risk reduction measures are being used to exaggerate the efficacy of the COVID-19 vaccines.

I’ve read the latest paper two-and-half times (but only claim to understand 90% of it). The overall conclusion, however, seems clear to me: The COVID-19 vaccine trials, in fact, only showed a negligible reduction in risk of acquiring a symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection; not the near perfect immunization the media is portraying.

As Dr. Brown writes in the paper’s conclusion:

Such examples of outcome reporting bias mislead and distort the public’s interpretation of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine efficacy and violate the ethical and legal obligations of informed consent.

The following is an informal interview I conducted with Dr. Brown, from his office in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario. It offers a layman’s interpretation of his findings and conclusions.

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MANLEY: I’ve run into many people who refuse to even look at the vaccine trial data. They say they leave interpretation of the data to the “experts.” So, I’m glad we now have an expert like yourself to offer another interpretation of the data.

BROWN: But regardless of my expertise, I don’t have the power or license to tell people what to do. I don’t advise people. As a researcher, my goal is to present evidence so that people can choose to make more informed decisions about their health. I can explain the scientific evidence in layman’s terms, but I don’t think anyone, layman or expert, should take anything I “explain” on face value alone. Other experts could look at the same evidence and rightfully interpret it in an entirely different way, leading to an academic debate.

MANLEY: A debate? Aren’t those illegal? I guess not yet. But then, many people like to argue that there is no “right answer” because it is open for debate, and that we must rely on a consensus.

BROWN: As the evidence is presented from both sides during a debate, eventually the “truth” will emerge. By truth, I don’t mean merely a consensus. You can have 100% consensus that turns out to be 100% wrong, as in groupthink. Rather, I mean that the evidence is so clear that there is little point in arguing anymore… there is no longer any “reasonable doubt.”

MANLEY: Considering how little open debate there has been regarding not only the vaccine, but also COVID-19 itself, how close would you say we are to the truth?

BROWN: Today, we are nowhere near possessing knowledge that is beyond reasonable doubt concerning infectious viral diseases like COVID-19. Yet, as draconian public health mitigation measures are imposed on society with little proof of effectiveness, and much proof of collateral damage, there is little debate covered in the commercial media about public health issues. In my opinion, public health officials and politicians are under pressure to do something to protect the public, even if they have no idea what actually works. They see an open debate in the media as something that weakens their power and control.

There are other issues. The world copied China’s mitigation measures because China’s reported case rates are so low. But China’s rates are low because they use different case definitions than we do. If you want to instantly reduce cases of a disease, change the case definition. I have written about this in more detail in a new manuscript undergoing peer review. Also, we have a multitude of genomic sequencing technicians who are newly sequencing every common cold virus and variant they can find. Their findings are often translated immediately by public health officials, without sufficient vetting by epidemiologists who can put the information into proper context and prevent hysterical overreactions by public health officials and politicians.

Virology Cannot Answer Basic Questions

MANLEY: In many ways, we still don’t even understand how a virus functions, do we?

BROWN: 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. I have spent the year reviewing the past and most recent virology literature, and I have come upon some astonishing evidence that could turn the whole infectious disease paradigm on its ear. That evidence will be presented in the near future in yet another manuscript currently under peer review.

MANLEY: Isn’t such exploration the basis of science? Wouldn’t such debate not only bring us closer to the truth, but also provide some sort of intellectual entertainment for the public?

BROWN: Yes, but a public health debate investigating these questions is being undermined by the official narrative dominating the commercial media. All other views are immediately dismissed in the commercial media as misinformation.

Modern Medicine Prone to Censorship

MANLEY: Would you agree that this type of censorship has been going on for probably as long as modern medicine has been around?

BROWN: Agreed, this is not unique to COVID-19. For example, I have tried to use the public media to report my novel evidence-based research findings about the cause of cancer, but with little success because my findings challenged the mainstream status quo (see Phosphate toxicity and tumorigenesis, 2018).

MANLEY: So how do we get the public more involved and interested in supporting open scientific debates?

BROWN: From open debates comes new knowledge, and new knowledge increases one’s power. The public must defend its right to access new knowledge, and the public should remain open-minded enough to consider all views. At the same time, one must remain skeptical and reject any explanation that is not backed up with sufficient evidence.

MANLEY: That’s where a lot of people have been trained to leave examining evidence to so-called “experts.”

BROWN: People can’t depend solely on the “approved” experts to tell them if the evidence is sufficient or not. We have so-called public health experts already telling us that now and look at the results. Experts from all sides must be given a fair hearing to present their case to the public and defend their case against the cases presented by other experts. It may be that pieces of evidence must be synthesized together from many sources to arrive at the final truth. That is the method I use to conduct my research. I look for pieces of evidence from a variety of research literature to synthesize together into a logical explanation or evidence-based theory (see Breakthrough knowledge synthesis in the Age of Google, 2020). If someone else presents additional evidence that refutes or proves my theory wrong, then everyone benefits and scientific knowledge advances.

MANLEY: Is that not where the public gets confused by their proud belief in “sound science” — relying on scientific theories rather than scientific evidence?

BROWN: Theories are just the starting point in the flow of scientific information, and the quality of a theory is related to the evidence upon which it rests. A good theory starts with a clean slate and inductively emerges out of the synthesis of reliable evidence. By contrast, evidence in a weak theory is cherry picked to support a predetermined conclusion or agenda, while ignoring contradicting or refuting evidence. But a weak theory doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.

In my vaccine manuscript, I included background information about Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM). Canada has been a major contributor to EBM through the work of David L. Sackett at McMaster University, who later worked at Oxford University. I added text to the manuscript citing Sackett’s research on clinical epidemiology. Sackett and Richard J. Cook, from the University of Waterloo, published clinical epidemiology tools to critically appraise the veracity and usefulness of clinical evidence in medical treatments and diagnosis. My manuscript attempts to carry on this great Canadian academic research tradition by applying these same clinical epidemiologic tools to a critical appraisal of mRNA vaccine clinical trials.

Why the COVID-19 Vaccine is Useless and Ineffective

MANLEY: Can you give us a layman’s explanation of your COVID-19 vaccine manuscript?

BROWN: The public and many health professionals are unaware of outcome reporting bias in COVID-19 vaccine clinical trials. Clinical trial outcomes reported by the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine manufacturers for their messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccines were reviewed and authorized for emergency use by an advisory committee of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

MANLEY: Do you know if the vaccines were actually approved or were they merely “authorized?” This is what the FDA did with the PCR tests, stating they were authorized for emergency use because they did not have an approved alternative. I was wondering if the same word game is being played here.

BROWN: It sounds like the same authorization for emergency use. The vaccines have not been officially approved, and the experimental trials are continuing. However, trial participants in the placebo group may choose to drop out to receive the vaccine, based on the too-good-to-be-true reported outcome of approximately 95% risk reductions in symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections.

MANLEY: Without an ongoing placebo group, would that mean, essentially, there is no long-term safety evaluation happening beyond the trial period?

BROWN: With more people dropping out, the statistical power of the study would weaken, although there are many thousands of people in the studies. More importantly, an ethical dilemma has surfaced to either encourage participants in the placebo group to drop out of a study and receive the vaccine benefits, or have those participants continue on with the placebo without the vaccine benefits. However, this dilemma assumes that the reported too-good-to-be-true efficacy of the mRNA vaccines is valid. My article uses clinical epidemiology tools to critically appraise the efficacy of the mRNA vaccine clinical trial outcomes. These tools are available online and may be used by anyone to verify the efficacy reported by the vaccine manufacturers, assuming that people can get their hands on reliable published data.

Also, since the article was published, follow up reports of observational studies have claimed that the vaccines are proving highly effective within the population. But the level of evidence in uncontrolled observational studies is inferior to that of clinical controlled trials, which is considered the gold standard of evidence. Observational studies may not compare results to control groups, and the studies don’t always adequately account for confounding factors, such as the deceleration of cases in the bell curve of seasonal influenza. Of course, people may protest that COVID-19 is much more lethal than seasonal influenza, but I exposed those biases in my first article. Furthermore, there are other biases in the reported high number of COVID-19 fatalities, which I critically appraise in my new manuscripts currently under peer review.

Relative Versus Absolute Risk Reduction

MANLEY: So exactly how much risk reduction are the manufacturers crediting their vaccine with?

BROWN: The reduced risk of COVID-19 infection reported by the manufacturers is approximately 95%, which is an accurate relative risk reduction measure. However, missing from the vaccine reports are absolute risk reduction measures which are much more clinically relevant to the reduced risk of COVID-19 infection. The absolute risk reduction of the vaccines in the present critical appraisal is approximately 1%, indicating practically no clinical efficacy or usefulness of the vaccines to reduce COVID-19 infection.

MANLEY: Essentially, then you are saying for all practical purposes, the vaccine is useless and ineffective?

BROWN: For applied clinical and public health interventions, yes, they appear to be almost completely ineffective. The members of the FDA advisory committee overlooked FDA guidelines to include absolute reduction measures when reporting clinical trial outcomes to the public, leading to outcome reporting bias in the FDA’s authorization of the mRNA vaccines.

MANLEY: Can you explain what is the difference between Relative Risk Reduction (RRR) and Absolute Risk Reduction (ARR)?

BROWN: Figure 2 in my article (shown below) sums up all the information you need to know as a layperson. The other calculations in the manuscript are intended for other researchers. You can calculate both relative risk reduction (RRR) and absolute risk reduction (ARR) from the same clinical trial data.

The Pfizer vaccine is represented by the column on the left of Figure 2, and the Moderna vaccine is on the right. The blue part of each column shows each vaccine’s relative risk reduction. This is the vaccine efficacy reported in the press.

MANLEY: So the Pfizer vaccine reduces the relative risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection by 95.1% and the Moderna vaccine reduces the risk by 94.1%, correct?

BROWN: Correct. So far, so good. However, what is not reported in the press, or in the clinical trial documents, is the orange portion of the columns showing the absolute risk reduction. This is only 0.7% (that’s seven-tenths of one percent) for the Pfizer vaccine, and 1.1% for the Moderna vaccine. These numbers are the most important numbers to consider when determining how much the vaccine will actually reduce your risk of infection. RRRs are intended for use in comparing an overall summary of one trial with other trials to determine which is more efficacious; RRRs are not intended for direct clinical and public health applications.

MANLEY: So, it appears as if they went with the relative risk reduction, because it looked more favourable?

BROWN: Yes, reporting relative risk outcomes, without absolute risk outcomes, has been a huge problem in research for decades. Notice that the ARR numbers are close to zero. The vaccines have almost no effect at all! In fact, the numbers are so low compared to the RRRs that I had to use a special percentage scale on the left of the figure that increases by ten times for each interval, otherwise the figure would be many times larger to span the enormous gap between the ARR levels and RRR levels.

MANLEY: Shouldn’t this be illegal? Or, at least, fall under the category of misleading advertising?

BROWN: The FDA guidelines say to report both RRRs and ARRs to the public, but the FDA advisory committees ignored the guidelines when they authorized the COVID-19 vaccines for emergency use, and they left out the ARRs. The New England Journal of Medicine also did not include ARRs when it published the clinical trial data for the vaccines. I agree with you that the people responsible for this misleading information should be held accountable. Check out the article’s reference to the roster members of the FDA advisory committee.

MANLEY: How do the COVID-19 risk ratios compare to influenza vaccines?

BROWN: That’s another bombshell in the article that people should be aware of. One of the peer reviewers suggested that I discuss other examples of outcome reporting bias involving relative risk measures in randomized clinical trials. My article shows that clinical trials of influenza vaccines have a 1.4% ARR compared to the usual 40% to 60% RRRs reported by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

MANLEY: So, people are being led to believe that the COVID-19 vaccine(s) will all but eliminate their risks, when, the data suggests, it actually only makes a barely detectable difference?

BROWN: Correct. Some people may point out that 1% of a million vaccinated people are still 10,000 prevented symptomatic infections. Fair enough; then report a 1% reduction and see how many people are still interested in getting the vaccine. Furthermore, there is no reliable evidence that even a reported 1% reduction is valid. For example, normal saline solutions used in the placebo groups are associated with fevers and other symptoms common to coronavirus infections. The credibility of the entire enterprise is compromised.

Violating the Right to Informed Consent

Brown: This type of outcome reporting bias violates the public’s legal and ethical right to informed consent about the true efficacy of the vaccines. Regardless if you are provax or antivax or are undecided, you have a right to all the facts to inform your personal opinion and choice. Bottomline: you have before you smoking-gun evidence of a huge public health scandal — if the word ever gets out! This problem has been ongoing for decades and really took off when the pharmaceutical companies were granted permission to advertise directly to consumers in the 1980s. Think of all the systematic reviews of clinical trials that could be compromised by this type of clinical trial outcome reporting bias.

MANLEY: You were born in New York, but have lived in Ontario, Canada for the last 46 years. How open do you feel Canadians are to dissecting the claims being propagated around this COVID-19 vaccine?

BROWN: A Canadian friend told me that the truth is bad news. I thought to myself, “Think what you’re saying. You’re saying it is better to go along with what you are told, even though it is a lie.” Where I was raised (New York City), people are encouraged to speak out when they see something wrong. Apparently, Canadians aren’t encouraged to do that. Rocking the boat doesn’t fit in with the Canadian motto: Peace, Order, and Good Government (not great government, mind you, just good enough. Mustn’t set our expectations too high).

MANLEY: Yes, a Canadian businessman recently told me, “If you’re going to tell the truth, have one foot on your stirrup.” It is interesting that you, who are one of the few doctors in Canada to be speaking out, were actually born in the States. Anthony Fauci was also born in New York, was he not?

BROWN: Yes. And David L. Sackett, a founder of EBM, was also an American who immigrated to Canada. I came to Canada, in 1975, to teach music and perform as a professional musician. Fauci is from Brooklyn, and I was born in the Bronx, so he and I are part of a traditional NY rivalry going back to the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Bronx Bombers (Yankees) when I was growing up in the 50s.

Fauci and I obviously don’t see eye to eye. In a recent interview about the AZT clinical trials for AIDS, Fauci described what to do if the efficacy of a treatment “has not yet reached statistical significance.” Fauci’s quick-fix solution is that “the data needs to be further analyzed.” I don’t know of any other data analysis method that increases statistical significance as quickly as relative risk reduction measures. The public should be cautious of modern day snake-oil salesmen. Characters like that make a buck by filling people with fear and then selling a worthless quick-fix remedy to them. In my opinion, that’s exactly what’s happening in this pandemic.

MANLEY: Well, I’m glad you are on our side and have been able to have your work published in peer-reviewed journals.

BROWN: We live in a time of censorship and suppressed debate. Fear based on ignorance is the rule. The only way out is to publish the truth and science, have the public weigh the evidence, and let people make up their own minds. It’s a painfully slow process, and that’s frustrating, but I believe the truth will eventually win out. In the meantime, the only advice I can offer is for people to have patience. Have faith that when this is all over there will be a call for change and accountability.

Image by Dr. Brown, reminiscent of the snake-oil salesman from the American Wild West.

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Ronald B. Brown, PhD has authored over a dozen peer-reviewed articles in the U.S. National Library of Medicine of the National Institutes of Health; as well as a chapter on breakthrough knowledge synthesis in Contemporary Natural Philosophy and Philosophies. In addition to his epidemiologic research on infectious disease and vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic, his current areas of research include prevention of cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and other chronic diseases. You can read his paper, “Outcome Reporting Bias in COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine Clinical Trials,” at the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.

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.

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Ilana Rachel Daniel, health advisor and politician, talked about Israel’s green passport that essentially creates a second citizenry, “a true medical apartheid, disallowing healthy law-abiding taxpaying citizens from entering their places of culture if they do not participate in this experiment.”  

“They’re making this green passport where half the population cannot get into theaters or malls or all sorts of things unless you have taken the vaccination. They are creating a medical Apartheid,” 

Part of a program dubbed Operation Back to Life , the “Green Pass” system restricts entry to registered gyms, theaters, hotels, restaurants, universities and secondary schools to holders of scannable vaccine passport only.

Watch her interview below.

The Lasalin Massacre and the Human Rights Crisis in Haiti

March 15th, 2021 by Judith Mirkinson

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This report was originally published in 2019.

Introduction

On November 13, 2018, police and other paramilitary personnel entered the neighborhood of Lasalin in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. What followed was a massacre of the civilian population. Buildings, including schools, were fired upon and destroyed, people were injured and killed, with some burned alive, women were sexually assaulted and raped and hundreds were forcibly displaced from homes. Bodies were either burned, taken away to be disappeared, buried, never to be found, or in some cases left to be eaten by dogs and pigs.

There has been widespread acknowledgement from the Haitian government, mainstream human rights groups and even the United Nations occupiers in Haiti, known by the acronym MINUJUSTH, that something terrible took place in Lasalin. However, in every case, there has been an attempt to downplay and obscure what actually happened. The numbers of the dead and wounded have been minimized, the extent of destruction to communities and displacement downplayed, and the violence has been primarily blamed on “gangs fighting over territory.”

The Lasalin massacre was designed to punish and destroy a neighborhood long known as a stronghold of the grassroots Lavalas movement and center of opposition. Our investigation determined that the narrative of “gang warfare” obscures the reality that the attack on Lasalin was government-orchestrated and supported, with police collaborating with and weaponizing criminal elements. According to many Lasalin residents and survivors, the coordinator of the massacre was Pierre Richard Duplan, alias Pierrot, of the PHTK (Parti Haïtien Tèt Kale, the ruling party of Jovenel Moise). Duplan had failed in his bid to become the mayor of Port-au-Prince and was now the government delegate for the West Department of Haiti.[1] A UN human rights report released on June 21st, 2019, also implicates Duplan.[2] The Miami Herald disclosed in a May 15th article that a police investigation had confirmed the involvement in the massacre of high-level government officials in the government of Jovenel Moise, tracing an assault rifle assigned to the National Palace to the massacre[3] These are just some of the examples of government involvement in the massacre.

On April 1, 2019, members of the Haiti Action Committee (HAC) and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG) went to Haiti to investigate the November 13th massacre in Lasalin as well as the ongoing pattern of repression and extrajudicial killings targeting the people of Lasalin and other neighborhoods known for their activism against the government. We found a clear pattern of paramilitaries/death squads being armed and abetted by the government in order to terrorize the population and prevent opposition. This level of violence and repression has not been seen since the 2004 coup against President Aristide which, according to a study published in the medical journal The Lancet, resulted in an estimated 8,000 deaths in the Port-au-Prince area alone.[4]

Our team included Judith Mirkinson, President of the San Francisco Chapter of the National Lawyers’ Guild; Margaret Prescod, producer of the “Sojourner Truth” radio program nationally syndicated on Pacifica Radio and member of Women of Color/ Global Women’s Strike; Ramiro Funez, assistant producer of “Sojourner Truth”, and Seth Donnelly, member of Haiti Action Committee  and the California Teachers Association. Margaret Prescod provided coverage of our delegation’s findings on “Sojourner Truth” and on “The Real News Network” television program.[5]

Report Methodology

On April 1, 2019, our team went to Lasalin and conducted interviews with residents who had witnessed the killings and/or who had lost loved ones in the massacre. We also gathered physical evidence of the killings. That same afternoon, we went to an abandoned market in Waf Jeremy and interviewed some of those residents who had been forced to flee from their homes in Lasalin.

We followed up these direct interviews on April 2nd by speaking to Haitian investigative journalists who had been closely following the situation in Lasalin, from before the massacre to the present day. We also met with Haitian human rights workers.
After our visit, another U.S. human rights delegation went to Haiti between April 24th and April 27th to follow up on our investigation. This second delegation included U.S. Representative Maxine Waters, investigative journalist Margaret Prescod, Haiti Action Committee co-founder Pierre Labossiere, actor Danny Glover, and NLG human rights attorneys Walter Riley and Brian Cocannon. The additional evidence gathered by this second delegation confirms the findings of this report.

As Walter Riley expressed:

“We have eyewitness reports that these attacks are not simply gangs as they are being referred to by the press and the US Embassy, but part of militias backed by some in the Moïse administration. The murder and brutality is a policy of the Haitian government which is backed by the United States.”

Similarly, Brian Concannon stated:

“I have worked on political violence cases in Haiti for 24 years and the witness reports from Lasalin, Tokyo and Site Vincent are all too similar to other notorious acts of state-sponsored oppression … With the Duvaliers’ Ton- Ton Macoutes, the FRAPH death squads and now the violent groups under the Moïse administration, the motive for each has been silencing calls for justice and democracy and terrorizing government opponents, while disguising government participation.”[6]

Congresswoman Waters said she was ‘appalled and shocked’ at the killings and promised to engage with her colleagues in Congress to use ‘whatever leverage and power we have to help make the violence cease because this is not conscionable and not tolerable.’”[7]

In addition to the information collected from these steps and sources, we have also read and analyzed reports by Haitian human rights organizations on the November 13th massacre. Furthermore, we have extracted corroborating evidence for our findings from investigative Haitian journalists and from a public interview with one of the key perpetrators of the massacre, former police officer Jimmy Cherizier, aka “Barbecue”.

Why Lasalin?

Lasalin is a neighborhood with a population of about 5,000 in the downtown section of Port- au-Prince. It is part of the West Department of Haiti and borders the infamous port of Croix des Bossales where enslaved Africans were first brought to Haiti by the French. The port is still heavily used for commercial traffic. Lasalin has been known as a stronghold of Lavalas—the
mass popular grassroots party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide—ever since President Aristide was a parish priest there in the St. Jean Bosco Church. During the Aristide period, hospitals, housing and schools were all built there in accordance with policies enacted throughout the country. These buildings were particularly targeted during the massacre.

The attack on Lasalin comes at a time of increasing violence and repression. Starting in July 2018, there have been massive demonstrations protesting the theft of 4.2 billion dollars of Petro-Caribe money: oil lent by Venezuela to Haiti which could then be sold for a profit. The extra money could then be used to fund social programs in Haiti. Instead, this money simply vanished. Over three days in July 2018, tens of thousands protested in the streets demanding an end to gas price hikes, an accounting for the missing funds and the resignation of President Jovenel Moise. The demonstrations brought Port-au-Prince to a virtual standstill and resulted in the resignation of Prime Minister Jacques Guy Lafontant. The demonstrations, which are met with tear gas, rubber bullets, and live ammunition continue to the present day.

Timeline of Events

Based upon extensive interviews with Haitian human rights workers, journalists, and the residents of Lasalin, we have constructed the following timeline of events leading up to and following the November 13th massacre.

  • On October 13, 2017, a government delegation including Haitian First Lady Martine Moise and then Minister of the Interior Roudolphe Saint Albin went to Lasalin and met with Herve Bonnet Barthelemy, known as “Bout Jan Jan”, and other community leaders. Among other matters discussed, the government delegation asked these leaders not to allow anti-government, opposition demonstrations within and through Lasalin, as well as in Saint Jean Bosco, an area in front of the nearby Tokyo neighborhood, close to an intersection frequently used for protests.[8]
  • On October 15, 2018, representatives of the political opposition held a press conference in Lasalin, supporting the PetroCaribe movement and demanding the end of the government of Jovenel Moise.[9]
  • On October 17, 2018, a national holiday commemorating the death of Haitian revolutionary leader Jean Jacques Dessalines, people in Lasalin refused to welcome President Jovenel Moise who came to the neighborhood in order to lay the traditional wreath at a monument for Dessalines.

Instead, Moise’s presence was protested vigorously by the community. Police responded with gun fire. Moreover, there was a massive Petro Caribe protest that occurred within and passed through Lasalin that day.[10]

  • According to Lasalin residents, First Lady Martine Moise visited Lasalin in October, 2018 days before the killings started in November. She reportedly tried bribing the community with offers of money. Her attempt to secure their loyalty was unsuccessful.
  • On November 1, 2018, a holiday known as “All Saints Day”, Serge Alectis aka “Ti Junior,” leader of Chabon—a paramilitary force working with the government—led an attack on Bout Jan Jan and Julio Pyram, aka “Kiki” in Lasalin, killing Kiki along with four others, and wounding Bout Jan Jan.[11] Police subsequently arrested Bout Jan Jan in the hospital despite community opposition and he remains imprisoned to this day. According to community members who met with us, Chabon was the only group in the larger area that had wanted former President Michel Martelly (who had picked Jovenel Moise to be his successor) to come to the neighborhood to perform during the past Mardi Gras festivities.
  • On November 13, 2018, Ti Junior and his group Chabon returned to Lasalin— heavily armed—and carried out the massacre. They were accompanied by other government-backed paramilitary elements, including the police officer Jimmy Cherizier, alias “Barbecue,” police officer Gregory Antoine, alias “Ti Greg,” and other police officers. The perpetrators used several vehicles, including an armored truck given to them by the Brigade of Operation and of Departmental Intervention (BOID), and several public transport vans. The residents reported that several police units, including one from BOID and Departmental Unit to Maintain Order (UDMO), involving officer Gustave Jouspite, were heavily involved in supporting Chabon, including providing them with munitions. The massacre, which started on November 13, continued intermittently for the following several days.[12] On June 21, the UN finally issued a report on the massacre that implicated Pierre Duplan as a coordinator, just as Lasalin eyewitness survivors had been doing since November. According to the UN report, Duplan reportedly admitted to direct communication with perpetrators of the massacre on the ground in Lasalin.[13]

Lasalin residents and Haitian journalists with Radio Timoun reported that there were as many as eight attacks by government-backed paramilitary forces on the people of Lasalin between the November 13th massacre and our arrival in Lasalin. In an interview with a Radio Timoun journalist who has reported consistently from Lasalin, we were told that over the last week in March one paramilitary attack burned down a popular market and killed 13 people. While in Lasalin, this reporter saw the remains of people who had tires put around their necks and were then burned to death.[14]

The Police and Right Wing Activists Boast of their Roles in the Massacre

Former Police leader Jimmy Cherizier (Barbecue) publicly stated that he had a number of police officers in his group block escape routes from Lasalin during the November operation. This statement corroborates the testimony given by survivors in Lasalin accusing him and other police officers of participating in the massacre. Cherizier has denied support from the government for his organization, correctly identified as a death squad by survivors. Yet, this denial is to be expected given Barbecue’s high profile status as a member of the PHTK and as someone who remains uncharged and at large. Significantly, Barbecue does publicly thank Reginald Boulos—widely regarded by the Haitian public as a right-wing oligarch—for his financial support. Boulos had been integral in financing the 2004 coup against the democratically elected and popular President Jean-Bertrand Aristide. During a radio interview, Boulos admitted that he was financially supporting paramilitary elements, claiming that they were providing social programs when the state was absent.[15]

They also took us to a small school riddled by bullets. We were told that five students and two teachers had been killed there.

Counting the Victims

Due to the fact that so many bodies were taken away and so many people displaced, it has been difficult to get an accurate number of those killed, injured and/or sexually assaulted The ages of those attacked on November 13th and the days following, ranged from 10 months to 72 years.

One Haitian human rights organization, RNDDH (Réseau National de Défense des Droits Humains), did interview many residents, and was able to identify 71 murdered. However, residents and local human rights defenders maintain that this number is deplorably low, based only on the number of bodies actually left on the ground and not taking into account either those buried or taken away.[16] The RNDDH report lists the names of the victims and describes in detail how each victim was killed, some being hacked to death with machetes with their body parts fed to pigs, some being burned alive, others being riddled with bullets.[17] The methodology employed by the RNDDH to reach these findings involved, among other steps, interviewing four hundred and thirty-nine (439) community members of Lasalin including victims and victims’ relatives. The December 1, 2018 report concludes with a decisive classification of the November 1st killings as a “state massacre” and categorically states that the killings could not have occurred without the current government’s support—on all levels—for the perpetrators.

French journalist Amelie Baron, reporting for Agence France-Presse from Haiti, initially placed the number at 283 in an article that no longer seems to be available online.

Journalists and human rights workers who visited the scene shortly after the massacre told us: “We will never know how many were killed”: many bodies were not identified, their surviving family members having been forced to leave the area. Other bodies and remains were soon disposed of; religious leaders claimed some, while many others, including those burned beyond recognition, were simply taken away by garbage trucks and dumped somewhere. Many people were also brought to hospitals: it’s estimated that hundreds were wounded in the attacks. Then there are tho se who were simply jailed, no records being taken. None of these additional numbers are accounted for in any issued reports. Since the PetroCaribe protests which began in the summer of 2018, hundreds have randomly been thrown in jail, without charges, never having seen a judge.

Women were assaulted and raped—some left pregnant. One 14-year old girl raped by Ti Junior actually went to radio stations to report the crime, but could not get help. Due to the continuing stigma surrounding rape and because many were forced to flee, the true numbers of those sexually assaulted is not known.

Click here to read the full report.

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All images in this article are from Haiti Action Committee

Lockdowns Wrecked Democracy Around the World

March 15th, 2021 by James Bovard

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While the number of fatalities attributed to Covid-19 is carefully tracked by governments, few people have recognized how pandemic-spurred crackdowns have devastated democracy around the world. Emergency proclamations have entitled presidents and other government officials to seize vast new powers previously forbidden to them. Government bureaucrats became a new priesthood that could sanctify unlimited sacrifices merely by invoking dubious statistical extrapolations of future perils. 

In October, Freedom House issued a report, Democracy under Lockdown – The Impact of COVID-19 on Global Freedom, which warned that since the pandemic started, “the condition of democracy and human rights has worsened in 80 countries.” Sarah Repucci, co-author of the report, warned that “governments’ responses to the pandemic are eroding the pillars of democracy around the world.” Abuses of power have been propelled by a presumption that government officials are entitled to all the power they claim to need to keep people safe. 

When the pandemic arrived in America, governors in many states responded by dropping the equivalent of a Reverse Neutron Bomb – something which destroys the economy while supposedly leaving human beings unharmed. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo set the standard when he effectively declared that he was entitled to inflict any burden on his state’s residents to “save just one life.” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer prohibited anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti banned people from walking or bicycling outside. More than ten million jobs were lost thanks to lockdowns, a major reason why life expectancy in the United States last year had its sharpest plunge since World War Two.

Australia imposed some of the most heavy-handed restrictions. In August, the state of Victoria dictated an 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew for the Melbourne area and prohibited people from venturing more than three miles from their residence. Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews decreed: “Where you slept last night is where you’ll need to stay for the next six weeks.” Melbourne has been hit by repeated lockdowns since then.

Britain unleashed some of the most absurd restrictions. In June, it prohibited couples who live in different homes from having sex indoors. The Independent (U.K.) noted, “People who have sex outside can be punished under pre-existing laws on outraging public decency and indecent exposure.” Steve Watson reported in January for Summit News that British cabinet ministers “have privately debated preventing people from talking to each other in the street and in supermarkets, and even preventing people from leaving home more than once per week, and introducing curfews.” British vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi fretted, “I’m worried about some of the pictures I’ve seen of social interactions in parks, if you have to exercise you can go out for exercise only.” Apparently, a national vow of silence is necessary to fight Covid. Summit News noted, “Police are also demanding new powers to force entry into the homes of suspected lockdown violators.” Former British Supreme Court Justice Jonathan Sumption complained last month, “Foreign travel is being prohibited, turning us into a hermit island on the basis we cannot know what mutations may be lurking out there. The logic of these policies is that we must be locked down for ever simply because the world is a dangerous place.”

New Zealand has imposed four separate lockdowns in its pursuit to banish the virus from the island, repeatedly placing residents in the capital city under house arrest. In October, the government announced it was creating “quarantine centers” for anyone who tests positive and refuses to obey government orders. One Twitter wag scoffed, “New Zealand went from gun bans to concentration camps in less than a year.”

Covid horrors have been more dramatic in some developing nations. In Uganda, as the Economist reported, Francis Zaake, a member of parliament, delivered food to his neediest constituents during a pandemic lockdown. But “Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has ordered that only the government may hand out food aid. Anyone else who does so can be charged with murder, Mr Museveni has threatened, since they might do it in a disorderly way, attract crowds and thereby spread the coronavirus.”

Police and soldiers forcibly entered Zaake’s house and “dragged him into a van and threw him in a cell. He says they beat, kicked and cut him, crushed his testicles, sprayed a blinding chemical into his eyes, called him a dog and told him to quit politics. He claims that one sneered: ‘We can do whatever we want to you or even kill you…No one will demonstrate for you because they are under lockdown.’”

In Kenya, police killed at least 15 people during brutal crackdowns on alleged violators of lockdown decrees. Amnesty International declared that the Covid-19 pandemic provided “the perfect storm for indiscriminate mass violence” by the police, thanks to the “pervasive culture of impunity among [police] service members who rely on systemic corruption.”

Journalists in many nations risked their hides if they violated politicians’ monopoly on fear-mongering. Almost a hundred nations have imposed new restrictions on freedom of speech and freedom of the press since the pandemic began. Freedom House reported: “Governments enacted new legislation against spreading ‘fake news’ about the virus. They also limited independent questioning at press conferences, suspended the printing of newspapers, and blocked websites.” Reporters Without Borders, a nonprofit for press freedom, warned, “Most governments yielded to the temptation, using a variety of repressive measures…, of making official channels the only credible and authoritative sources of information.” Many regimes have expanded the definition of “fake news” to justify repression:

  • “In Ethiopia, the definition of misinformation is so broad that it gives the authorities the discretionary power to declare any piece of information false.”
  • “In India, Egypt, Botswana and Somalia, only government statements on the subject may be published.”
  • “In Cambodia, the government gave itself the legal power to ban the publication of “any information that could cause unrest, fear or disorder.”
  • In Rwanda, the journalist who runs the YouTube news channel Ishema TV was imprisoned for violating Covid lockdown regulations. “At the time of his arrest he was reporting on the effects of the lockdown on the population and investigating allegations of rape committed by soldiers enforcing the lockdown,” Reporters without Borders notes.
  • In Zimbabwe, anyone “who publishes or disseminates ‘false’ information about an official, or that impedes the response to the pandemic, faces up to 20 years in prison,” the Economistreported.
  • Tanzania suffered a wave of censorship after the nation’s president publicly denounced Covid-19 as a “Western plot.” “Several news outlets, including the country’s leading Swahili-language newspaper Mwananchi, were closed down after publishing stories about Covid-19. Others were forced to broadcast apologies after carrying reports on the subject which angered the authorities,” Reporters without Borders noted.
  • In Thailand, Amnesty International reported, “authorities are prosecuting social media users who criticize the government and monarchy in a systematic campaign to crush dissent which is being exacerbated by new COVID-19 restrictions. Authorities have wasted no time using existing repressive laws in order to censor ‘false’ communications related to COVID-19.” The government decreed five-year prison sentences for any Thai journalists or media outlets that published information officials decree to be “capable of causing fear in the public.”

“Government knows best” is the subtext for arbitrary decrees issued around the world. An Associated Press article in January explained why Californians were denied access to the information that determined the fate of their freedom: “State health officials said they rely on a very complex set of measurements that would confuse and potentially mislead the public if they were made public.” But many data-driven dictatorial policies relied on data that was either fraudulent, politically contrived, or laughably inaccurate. On the day that Joe Biden was inaugurated as president, the World Health Organization changed the test standard for defining Covid cases, guaranteeing that far fewer “cases” would be reported and thereby making a mockery of the previous 10 months data.

The pandemic’s precedents pose a long-term peril for liberty around the globe. Freedom House expects that “official responses to COVID-19 have laid the groundwork for government excesses that could affect democracy for years to come.” This was foreseeable from the start of the pandemic but the media in some Western nations were the biggest cheerleaders for obliterating limits on political power. The secrecy that proliferated during the pandemic will make it harder for citizens to recognize how badly they have been misgoverned.

Going forward, citizens in many nations might appreciate this old adage from American politics: “The Constitution isn’t perfect but it’s better than what we have now.” Federal judge William Stickman IV declared in September, “Broad population-wide lockdowns are such a dramatic inversion of the concept of liberty in a free society as to be nearly presumptively unconstitutional.” But unless there is a similar stark ruling from the Supreme Court, shutdowns could return whenever politicians can panic enough citizens with some new threat.

Lockdown victims around the globe would be wise to heed Thomas Jefferson’s 1798 warning that the doctrine “that the general government is the exclusive judge of the extent of the powers delegated to it [is] nothing short of despotism; since the discretion of those who administer the government, and not the Constitution, would be the measure of their powers.” The pandemic painfully illustrated how government officials can always concoct the data to justify whatever decree they itch to issue. And regardless of the needless deaths and disruptions caused by government policies, it will be the opponents of lockdowns who will be labeled grandma-killers.

The Biden administration is reviving America’s proselytizing for democracy around the globe. But Covid-19 crackdowns are a warning for people to be wary of oppressive governments regardless of their purported mandate. The world doesn’t need any more Cage Keeper Democracies where citizens’ ballots merely designate who will place them under house arrest.

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James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a frequent contributor to The Hill, and a contributing editor for American Conservative.

Exposing the Founding Fathers and the US Constitution

March 15th, 2021 by S. Brian Willson

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Essentially property – in the form of stolen land, slave labor, and raw materials – serves as the foundation for our nation, along with the attendant desire for material prosperity. This is illustrated in an examination of the participants at the founding Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, May 25 to September 17, 1787, and the final document they authored, a convention held entirely in enforced secrecy during its 116-day duration.

Encroachments on Indian land was exacerbated by the amount of profit that was envisioned in acquiring this phenomenal resource.  The Ohio Company was formed in 1749 when the King granted the Virginia governors huge tracts of land that extended into the Ohio region.  It is noteworthy that many of the White men we call members of our “Founding Fathers” such as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Robert Morris, Patrick Henry, and Benjamin Franklin, were early speculators/investors collectively in hundreds of thousands of acres of land in association with a number of land companies.

It was in their financial interests to participate in various ways in the anti-Indian genocide, as their private land holdings could only dramatically appreciate in value once the Indigenous had been conquered. Most of their lands had been stolen from the Indians in illegal defiance of the Proclamation of 1763 which strictly prohibited colonial expansion and settlements west of a line parallel to the Appalachian Mountains. Those lands were reserved for Indians only.   From 1763 to the Revolution, settlers and investors in land were increasingly at odds with the British Crown, which seemed more interested in maintaining peace with the Indians than serving the expansionist desires of the European colonists.

In addition to the Ohio Company there were others such as the Potomac Company, the James River Company, the Mississippi Company, the Loyal Company, the Vandalia Company, the Indiana Company, the Walpole Company, the Greenbrier Company, and the Great Dismal Swamp Company.  

More than half of the selected delegates to the Convention were educated lawyers. The remaining were planters, merchants, physicians, and college professors. Not one member represented, in his immediate personal economic interests, the small farming or mechanic classes.  Most believed their property rights were adversely affected by the relatively “weak” Articles of Confederation government and thus they were highly economically motivated to reconstruct the system.   Thus the Founding Fathers reflected an extraordinary anti-majoritarian, i.e., explicitly anti-democratic bias.  This explains the Constitutional theme of preserving private property and commercial enterprises, controlled by a small minority, ultimately at the expense of human freedom and the health of the Commons.

“Founding Father” John Jay possessed a vision that “the people who own the country ought to govern it”.   This referred, of course, to those who owned land, slaves, and commercial enterprises. Jay also believed that the upper classes “were the better kind of people”, those “who are orderly and industrious, who are content with their situation and not uneasy in their circumstances”.

No less than 85 articles and essays, a collection of documents known as the Federalist Papers, were written in 1787-1788 to urge ratification of the newly drafted US Constitution. The authors were Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. Aristocratic Hamilton possessed such contempt for commoners he declared that “the people are a ‘great beast’ that must be tamed . . . rebellious and independent farmers had to be taught, sometimes by force, that the ideals of the revolutionary pamphlets were not to be taken too seriously”.

The Constitution was never submitted to the public for ratification. Since no direct popular vote was even attempted, it is impossible to know what the popular sentiment was.

A considerable proportion of the adult white male population was prohibited from participating in the election of the delegates to the separate ratifying state conventions due to property and disqualifications for voting. Historian Charles A. Beard conjectures that of the estimated 160,000 who voted in the election of delegates for the various state conventions, not more than 100,000 favored adoption of the Constitution.

And of course, women, African slaves, the original Indigenous inhabitants, un-propertied white adult males, and white males under 21 had no vote at all. The 1790 Census counted a total United States population of 3.93 million persons: 3.2 million free and nearly 700,000 African slaves. But of the 3.2 million “free” persons, the vast majority were prohibited from voting. So, in effect, the approximately 100,000 propertied white males who may have favored adoption comprised but two-and-a-half percent of the population. So it cannot be said that the Constitution was “an expression of the clear and deliberate will of the whole people” nor of a majority of the adult males, nor at the outside, of one-fifth of them.  In essence, debtors, the poor and un-influential, women, Indigenous natives, slaves – the overwhelming majority of all human beings living in the 13 states of the Union at the time – were either opposed to the Constitution or were not allowed to register a formal, legal opinion.

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Brian Willson is a Viet Nam veteran and trained lawyer. He has visited a number of countries examining the effects of US policy. He wrote a psychohistorical memoir, Blood on the Tracks: The Life and Times of S. Brian Willson (PM Press, 2011), and in 2018 wrote Don’t Thank Me for my Service: My Viet Nam Awakening to the Long History of US Lies(Clarity Press). He is featured in a 2016 documentary, Paying the Price for Peace: The Story of S. Brian Willson, and others in the Peace Movement, (Bo Boudart Productions). His web essays: brianwillson.com. He can be reached: [email protected].

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

Featured image is from Public Domain

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The CDC added more data today into the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), a U.S. Government funded database that tracks injuries and deaths caused by vaccines.

The data goes through March 5, 2021, with 31,079 recorded adverse events, including 1,524 deaths following injections of the experimental COVID mRNA shots by Pfizer and Moderna.

Besides the recorded 1,524 deaths, there were 5,806 visits to Emergency Room doctors, 630 permanent disabilities, and 3,477 hospitalizations.

The CDC also updated their Selected Adverse Events Reported after COVID-19 Vaccination page on March 9th this past week, and according to this report, VAERS has received 1,637 reports of death following COVID “vaccinations” – more than 100 deaths than are in the VAERS data dump released today.

The CDC continues to state that not one of these recorded deaths following experimental COVID injections are related to the shots.

A review of available clinical information including death certificates, autopsy, and medical records revealed no evidence that vaccination contributed to patient deaths. (Source.)

AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine Inoculations Halted in Many Countries Due to Fatal Blood Clots

As we reported yesterday, many countries in Europe (and now also Thailand) have halted the vaccinating of people with the AstraZeneca experimental vaccine after reports of fatal blood clots following the injections.

And while the AstraZeneca COVID shots are not yet authorized for emergency use in the U.S., some have commented that the side effects for the mRNA “vaccines” currently issued EUAs in the U.S. for Pfizer and Moderna have just as many, if not more, adverse side effects, questioning whether any of these new experimental and non-FDA-approved COVID vaccines should be continued.

So we searched today’s CDC data on adverse reactions to the two COVID “vaccines” being used in the U.S. for “pulmonary embolism,” which is an “acute lung disease caused by a dislodged blood clot,” and the reason why the AstraZeneca COVID shot is now being halted in about a dozen countries worldwide after two fatalities and others injured.

The CDC is reporting 120 cases of pulmonary embolisms, including 12 DEATHS following injections of the two experimental COVID mRNA injections currently in the U.S.

Seven of the deaths followed the Moderna mRNA COVID shot, while five deaths followed the Pfizer mRNA COVID shot.

This number is obviously far greater than the two deaths reported so far from pulmonary embolism following the AstraZeneca COVID shots being distributed around the world right now.

Can We Trust the CDC that NONE of These 1,637 Recorded Deaths are Caused by the Experimental COVID mRNA Shots?

The CDC has been caught many times since COVID-19 started elevating that death counts attributed to COVID by declaring that ALL deaths where there was a positive PCR test for COVID were assumed to be caused by COVID, even if the patient had pre-existing conditions, and even in some cases where the patient died due to an accident, such as a traffic accident.

Now it appears that they are doing the exact opposite, particularly with those over the age of 65 where the vast majority of recorded deaths have occurred following the experimental COVID injections, stating that pre-existing conditions are what caused the patient to die, and that in ZERO cases was the experimental COVID “vaccine” responsible.

However, there is probably a good reason why a majority of healthcare workers who work with seniors are refusing the experimental COVID shots, since they have a front row seat to see exactly how these patients react in the days and weeks following COVID injections.

One CNA (Certified Nursing Assistant) has gone public with what he has seen with the residents he has worked with, and the video of his testimony has now been viewed over 280,000 times on our Rumble Channel, and over 88,000 times on our Bitchute Channel.

One viewer offered their own observations with their mother after she received a COVID injection in the comment section on the Rumble video:

My 90 year old mother HAD beginning stages of dementia. Nothing terribly serious. She forgot things a lot, and would often tell you the same things over again whenever you talked to her.

But her mind was still pretty good for being 90. She liked to do Sudoku puzzles and Jumbles.

She had eye issues that she was dealing with for about a year. She had gotten periodic shots in her eyes this past year to help her with her eye issues. She could still see things, but maybe not as clearly as she should.

But…then she took the vaccine, when she had told me previously that she no intention of taking the vaccine. She would further state that she had never even taken a flu vaccine.

Less than 1 month later, her health has spiraled downward since then. Now her speech is slurred (as if she had a stroke–but she has not); her vision has gone down so much this past month, such that all she sees is colors and shapes; and her dementia has spiraled to the point that she thinks it’s 1935 or 1945.

She recently fell in her home and knocked over the TV and either broke or bruised her ribs–I assume because she couldn’t see, though she may be having balance issues now, as well.

Doctors are preparing to send her to a rehab facility for 3-4 weeks.

I doubt I’ll ever see her alive again–especially if she gets the second shot.

I don’t expect to be allowed to visit her in a facility in KY, which is backwards when it comes to dealing with COVID restrictions and lockdowns.

So, when I see a reasonably healthy 90 year old exhibit stroke signs (without having had a stroke), almost totally lose their vision, and begin exhibiting signs of advanced dementia all within a month period after having taken the experimental mRNA COVID Vaccine, I don’t think I can blame this all on a brown recluse spider bite or vitamin deficiency.

I only hope that this post will give you pause if you or someone elderly you know is preparing for this shot.

My one question is if you are not elderly, and are in somewhat good health and you don’t feel that you are in any danger from taking this shot, is it possible that side effects will just show up at a later time with you, perhaps when you are already sick and your health is compromised.

I mean, it’s not like my Mom had immediate side effects. Stories I have read indicate that it has often taken 3-4 weeks.

Again, no way will I ever take this shot. But I sincerely wish those getting the shot the best of luck!

This kind of information is being censored by the corporate media and Big Tech, and now they have begun to call those of us who publish this kind of information “domestic terrorists” for even daring to say or publish anything negative about these experimental COVID shots.

Please make an effort to share your own experiences with these experimental shots. The lives of many people are now at stake, and truthful information is empowering.

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Ignorant, backwards, unscientific, religious fanatics: This is how the western corporate media presents Pakistanis who don’t like vaccines produced in western countries.

I have covered their resistance to vaccines for over a decade now, and I view them very differently. They are perhaps one of the most knowledgeable and intelligent people anywhere in the world when it comes to understanding the dangers of vaccines.

Sadly, what they have learned about vaccines has come from experience, and not from watching talking head “experts” in the western media, mostly owned and controlled by Big Pharma.

They don’t care too much for Bill Gates and his “philanthropy” and “free” vaccines to supposedly make their lives better.

They’ve been on to him for years, and his eugenicist population control plans, long before COVID fearmongering invaded the planet last year, and when all of a sudden multiple documentaries about Bill Gates and his vaccine empire started appearing everywhere.

The anti-Big Pharma Pakistanis are perhaps the best example of “vaccine resistance” the world has seen during the past decade or so, as they fight against the odds by going up against the western military industrial complex and their weaponizing of vaccines, all in an effort to protect their families and children.

CIA Uses Fake Vaccine Program to Collect DNA in Pakistan and Capture Osama Bin Laden

In 2014 the Obama Whitehouse admitted that the CIA used a fake vaccination program in Pakistan to collect DNA and to find and kill Osama Bin Laden.

Here is the Press Release from then, originally published by Reuters.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The White House promised on Monday that the CIA will not use immunization programs for its operations following a complaint that the spy agency used such a campaign in its hunt for Osama bin Laden.

The deans of 12 public health schools had complained about a reported vaccination program conducted by a Pakistani doctor, who used a hepatitis immunization survey in the Pakistani city where bin Laden was later killed in a secret U.S. mission.

The CIA orchestrated the survey to try to obtain fluid containing DNA from relatives living near the bin Laden residence, the Washington Post reported. It said the effort failed and the surgeon, Shakil Afridi, was sentenced to 23 years in prison.

Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the White House National Security Council, said Obama homeland security adviser Lisa Monaco had assured the deans in a letter that CIA policy as of August 2013 makes clear “the CIA will make no operational use of vaccination programs, which includes vaccination workers.”

“Similarly, the agency will not seek to obtain or exploit DNA or other genetic material acquired through such programs. This policy applies worldwide, and to U.S. persons and non-U.S. persons alike,” she said. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Ken Wills)

Pakistanis Understood the Oral Polio Scam – And What it was Doing to Their Children

In 2015, The Guardian reported that 471 parents were jailed in Pakistan for refusing to give their children the oral polio vaccine.

I covered the story back then, and wrote:

Just to emphasize the point here, these are parents of children who are being rounded up and thrown into jail in Pakistan. Not terrorists, not murders, not thieves, but parents who do not want their children to receive the polio vaccine.

As can be seen in the photo above, the oral polio vaccine is being given right on the street, and not in a clinic. How many times were these children forced to receive this vaccine? How would the health worker even know the vaccine history of these children? Do they have pre-existing conditions that would make the vaccine a risk to harm them?

It would seem such basic health questions could not be answered when the order is to vaccinate every child by force right on the street, with no objections allowed.

The oral polio vaccine is so dangerous that it is no longer used in developed countries like the U.S. But, it is mandated, purchased, and distributed in poor countries.

The real tragedy with the live oral polio vaccines is that they can cause the very thing they are supposed to be preventing: polio.

Both “vaccine-associated paralytic poliomyelitis” and “non-polio acute flaccid paralysis” are known side effects of the live oral polio vaccine.

It sheds the virus from the vaccine through feces and into sewers and sanitation systems.

See:

Children Around the World Vaccinated at Gunpoint – Is the U.S. Heading in the Same Direction?

Even though the oral polio vaccine was banned in the U.S. many years ago, they still continued to deny that the vaccine was dangerous as it was distributed to poor countries.

But in 2019, in an almost unprecedented admission of vaccine failure in the corporate media, National Public Radio (NPR) published a show explaining how the present-day oral polio vaccine is a failure, and is actually contributing to the rise of polio in poor countries.

In it’s Weekend Edition Saturday show, NPR’s Scott Simon and Jason Beaubien produced a show titled: “How The Oral Polio Vaccine Can Cause Polio.”

They reported that the U.S. CDC is now recognizing that there is a problem with the oral polio vaccine, which as a live-virus vaccine is actually causing polio around the world, a fact reported here at Health Impact News for over 8 years now.

And the Pakistanis knew it all along.

Why Would Pakistanis Want an Experimental COVID “Vaccine”?

So here we are once again in 2021, and the Pakistanis are yet again being vilified for being skeptical of western vaccines, and this time the experimental COVID “vaccines.”

Vice.com published an article yesterday, In Pakistan, Legacy of Fake CIA Vaccination Programs Leads to Vaccine Hesitancy.

Don’t let the title fool you, however, that this is a pro-Pakistan piece.

The author, Zuha Siddiqui, makes it quite clear that the stereotypes of the “ignorant, religious fanatic anti-vaccine Pakistanis” are alive and well in this pro-vaccine piece, as he relates his encounter with a hospital employee at the beginning of the article.

When asked if he plans to participate in Pakistan’s coronavirus vaccine rollout, Qasim Gul laughs flippantly. Gul, 32, is a clerk at a teaching hospital in Pakistan’s southeastern city of Karachi. Over the past 10 months, he has been in close proximity with several coronavirus patients, and yet, he says, the virus is a hoax.

While speaking with me outside of his hospital, Gul drags his surgical mask down to his chin. I balk and ask him to cover his nose and mouth; he tells me to seek faith in God.

“Yeah, those stupid anti-vaxxer religious fanatics, what do they know. They’re a threat to public health.”

Oh wait. Those aren’t words just used for Pakistanis anymore.

But I wonder if Americans have as much faith as the Pakistanis have had all these past many years? Will Americans risk prison rather than allow their children to be forcibly vaccinated, as the Pakistanis have done over the years?

Will the Americans’ resistance be so strong that the military will need to be used to administer vaccines at gunpoint, by force, as has been done in Pakistan these past many years?

Judging but what we have seen so far, I doubt it.

But there is a day still coming, and it will probably be soon, where words will be meaningless, and actions will mean everything.

I know your deeds. See, I have placed before you an open door that no one can shut.

I know that you have little strength, yet you have kept my word and have not denied my name.

I will make those who are of the synagogue of Satan, who claim to be Jews though they are not, but are liars—I will make them come and fall down at your feet and acknowledge that I have loved you.

Since you have kept my command to endure patiently, I will also keep you from the hour of trial that is going to come upon the whole world to test those who live on the earth.

I am coming soon. Hold on to what you have, so that no one will take your crown. (Revelation 3:8-11)

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COVID vaccine makers have not only introduced new primary ingredients to the U.S. vaccine stage, but they’ve bundled these new ingredients with “inactive” ingredients in unprecedented ways that raise the risk for dangerous allergic reactions.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) claims that vaccines “use only the ingredients they need to be as safe and effective as possible.”  The star of the show in any vaccine is the “active” ingredient, which is the one designed to create an antibody response.

But the other, supposedly “inactive” ingredients — known as excipients — also play significant, and in many cases risky, co-starring roles.

Studies of licensed vaccines have identified many problems with these secondary ingredients — adjuvants like aluminum, preservatives like thimerosal and stabilizers like gelatin — not to mention highlighting the presence in vaccines of residual DNA from cell lines used in the manufacturing process as well as disclosed and undisclosed contaminants.

With the advent of three experimental COVID injections approved for emergency use in the U.S., manufacturers have introduced new primary ingredients to the U.S. vaccine stage — messenger RNA (mRNA) in the Pfizer and Moderna injections and an adenovirus vector in the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) injection.

Not only that, but vaccine makers have bundled these new primary ingredients with  “inactive” excipients in unprecedented wayspolyethylene glycol (PEG) in the case of the mRNA vaccines and polysorbate 80 in the J&J shot.

PEGs and polysorbates are structurally similar and are also sometimes combined in a PEG-polysorbate 80 mixture that is “substantially the same as that of … pure PEG.” Pre-COVID, both compounds had already been flagged for their ability to cross-react and produce immediate hypersensitivity reactions, a type of “exaggerated or inappropriate” immune response that can include anaphylaxis.

Given that at least 1,689 recipients of the Pfizer and Moderna injections have reported anaphylactic or serious allergic reactions (as of March 5), and that two J&J clinical trial participantsalso suffered severe allergic reactions, some allergy experts are recommending that closer attention be directed to the risks of both excipients.

Hypersensitivity to structurally similar excipients

Children’s Health Defense has written extensively about the risks of PEG, the coating for the lipid nanoparticle RNA delivery system in the Pfizer and Moderna injections. Two recent studies echo some of the concerns we raised.

Writing in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in February, physician-researchers Mariana Castells (Brigham and Women’s Hospital) and Elizabeth Phillips (Vanderbilt University) note that “no other vaccine that has PEG as an excipient has [ever] been in widespread use” until COVID. The two authors then zero in on the evidence linking PEG to anaphylaxis, suggesting that it may represent a “hidden danger.”

In fact, leading Food and Drug Administration (FDA) official Peter Marks acknowledged in December that PEG could be the “culprit” responsible for anaphylaxis observed following COVID vaccination.

Although Castells and Phillips state that the anaphylaxis risks of adenoviral-vectored vaccines formulated with polysorbate 80 — vaccines like J&J’s — are “currently unknown,” Phillips and other Vanderbilt colleagues published a paper in mid-2019 (in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice) that reported a startling discovery, namely that “Immediate hypersensitivity to polyethylene glycols and polysorbates” is “more common than we have recognized.”

In that paper, Phillips and her colleagues also warned their fellow allergists that the similarities between polysorbates and PEGs may produce cross-reactive hypersensitivity that is likely “under recognized in clinical practice.”

Unlike the PEGs making their debut as vaccine excipients, polysorbate surfactants (polysorbate 80or polysorbate 20) are already present in numerous licensed vaccines — including vaccines with diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis components, hepatitis A and B vaccines, vaccines against influenzaand rotavirus, meningococcal and pneumococcal vaccines, shingles injections and Gardasil 9.

Disturbingly, nearly all of these vaccines list anaphylaxis and anaphylactoid reactions as documented adverse events in their package inserts, although the inserts offer no explanation or even speculation about the specific triggering agent(s).

The use of polysorbate 80 in vaccines also raises other potential concerns that have not attracted sufficient attention, including the compound’s ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and potential evidence of carcinogenic activity in animal studies.

The mysteries of sensitization

Allergic sensitization is a complicated affair that even allergists do not fully comprehend, and there are ongoing questions about the mechanism of sensitization to PEGs (and, by implication, to polysorbates).

In their 2019 paper, Phillips and co-authors describe two case studies involving recurrent exposures to medical products relying on PEG excipients (colonoscopy preparations and corticosteroids), also describing occupational exposure from glycol-containing hydraulic fluids. In both instances, these exposures resulted in cross-reactivity to polysorbates.

In his final exposure to PEG, the first patient lost consciousness, “knocking a hole in the drywall with his head,” and after experiencing plummeting blood pressure of 60/20 spent a night in the emergency room. Subsequent skin testing showed positivity to polysorbate-80-containing products ranging from a corticosteroid (triamcinolone acetonide) and eye drops to a pneumococcal vaccine.

The scenario was similar for the second patient, who became dangerously hypotensive following PEG exposure, ended up in the emergency room and had a positive allergy skin test to the same polysorbate-containing corticosteroid.

Both case studies hint at one of the central problems with PEGs and polysorbates: They are everywhere, potentially offering numerous opportunities for sensitization. For example, PEGs are used in drugs, cosmetics, personal care items such as toothpaste and shampoo, bowel preparations for colonoscopy and as a food additive.

As a result of industry’s pervasive reliance on PEGs, approximately 72% of contemporary samples of human blood analyzed in 2016 revealed detectable and sometimes high levels of anti-PEG antibodies — with 8% displaying extremely elevated levels strongly associated with anaphylaxis.

No comparable study seems to be available for polysorbates, but a 2005 study drew attention to polysorbate 80 as “a ubiquitously used solubilizing agent that can cause severe nonimmunologic anaphylactoid reactions” and described its “current relevance as a ‘hidden’ inductor” of such reactions.

In addition to their presence in vaccines, the FDA allows polysorbates’ direct use in foods (“as adjuvants of flavoring agents or as multipurpose additives”) and also permits an “indirect” food additive role.

Examples of these food uses include as an emulsifier in ice cream and other frozen desserts, as a “solubilizing and dispersing agent” in pickles and as a “defoaming agent” for cottage cheese. The cosmetics and personal care industries make liberal use of polysorbates in skin products and makeup.

Phillips’ 2019 paper includes a medication excipient review. In the review, the authors identify 1,155 FDA-approved medications containing PEG 3350 (one type of PEG) as an active or inactive ingredient, most commonly in “film coated tablets, topical gels, and parenteral [intravenous or injected] steroids.”

In addition, about six times as many FDA-approved medications (N=6,821) contain polysorbate 80 (as either an active or inactive ingredient), mostly in the same types of products as well as in vaccines.

Recommendations ignored

CDC officials maintain that anaphylaxis following COVID vaccination is a “rare event,” but Castells and Phillips, in their 2021 NEJM paper, report that “the incidence of anaphylaxis associated with the Pfizer SARS-Cov-2 mRNA vaccine appears to be approximately 10 times as high as the incidence reported with all previous vaccines.”

They also note that “preexisting sensitization to a component of the vaccine” (such as a PEG or polysorbate excipient) could account for the types of reactions being observed.

Importantly, they not only recommend that patients who have experienced anaphylaxis after a Pfizer or Moderna injection avoid any further exposure to PEG-formulated mRNA vaccines, but also that such individuals avoid “all PEG and injectable polysorbate 80 products.”

Disturbingly, the CDC is ignoring this prudent recommendation. Au contraire — making no mention of the issue of potential PEG-polysorbate cross-reactivity, the CDC, according to a March 1 CNBC report, says “that people who have an allergic reaction to the first dose of either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine could get the J&J vaccine instead.”

On its webpage providing “Information about COVID-19 vaccines for people with allergies,” the CDC tells people who have had a severe or immediate allergic reaction to “any ingredient in an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine” not to get the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, and warns individuals who have had a severe or immediate allergic reaction to any ingredient in J&J’s COVID vaccine not to get that injection.

Allergy expert Scott Commins at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill endorses the J&J shot as “safe for the overwhelming majority of people with food or environmental allergies.” While conceding that polysorbates are associated with “very rare allergic reactions,” Commins states that because they are so common, “people with sensitivity to polysorbate may already know.”

However, the remarks of an individual who commented on a January STAT news report about vaccine-related allergic reactions illustrate the difficulty that members of the public may have in sorting through these complexities:

“I have stage 4 carcinoid cancer, medically induced diabetes, asthma … I want to take vaccine but have had mild to anaphylactic reaction to meds. Some like Contrast dye with iodine suddenly developed severe reaction after decades of no issues. Had terrible reaction to flu vac yrs ago … I don’t know which meds contain polysorbate or polyethylene glycol to know if I’m allergic to ingredients in vaccine.”

Writing in late January, a month before the FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization of the J&J COVID vaccine, the American Academy of Allergy Asthma & Immunology (AAAAI) stated that there is “no consensus” on how to evaluate a patient’s history of severe reactions to PEGs or polysorbates in advance of vaccination, but noted that “some would argue that [skin] testing to the vaccine is required.”

Although not foolproof (false negatives are possible), skin testing for PEG and polysorbate by an allergist can be informative for people who are uncertain of their allergy status. Some healthcare facilities are now offering such testing.

The AAAAI adds, “If skin testing is positive the individual is not a candidate for the currently available mRNA vaccines,” also stating that skin testing for polysorbate reactivity could become important should the J&J vaccine enter into general use.

Alarmingly, the media are fostering the perception that J&J’s vaccine is “allergy free,” even going so far as to state that “clinics may not need to watch patients for severe reactions for 15 minute after getting the shot.”

Even more sobering, Castells and Phillipps remind us that the uber-healthy individuals typically studied in clinical trials “may not reflect a predisposition to adverse events that may exist in other populations.”

Only time will tell whether the individuals taking J&J’s COVID injection because they believe it to be “allergy free” have been steered in a safe direction.

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Wir hätten es wissen müssen!

March 14th, 2021 by Bertolt Brecht

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In seinem im Juni 1939 erschienenen Gedicht „An die Nachgeborenen“ legte Bertolt Brecht ehrlich, erschütternd und mahnend Rechenschaft ab über sein Leben in finsteren Zeiten:

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„Wirklich, ich lebe in finsteren Zeiten!
Das arglose Wort ist töricht. Eine glatte Stirn
Deutet auf Unempfindlichkeit hin. Der Lachende
Hat die furchtbare Nachricht
Nur noch nicht empfangen. 

Was sind das für Zeiten, wo
Ein Gespräch über Bäume fast ein Verbrechen ist
Weil es ein Schweigen über so viele Untaten einschließt!
Der dort ruhig über die Straße geht
Ist wohl nicht mehr erreichbar für seine Freunde
Die in Not sind?“

Drei Generationen später leben wir wieder in finsteren Zeiten.
Die Nachgeborenen sollen transhumane Wesen werden,
entseelte Menschmaschinen, Diener und Energieträger
für die kleine Zahl „Auserwählter“.

Wir hätten es wissen können, wissen müssen!
Diese Zukunft, die nur noch ihre sein soll,
haben sie seit langem offen angekündigt.
Doch wir konnten die Flammenschrift an der Wand, dieses Menetekel,
nicht deuten – so wie Belsazar. Konnten nicht glauben,
dass die von Machtgier zerfressenen Despoten und Anhänger Satans
ihre teuflischen Pläne tatsächlich umsetzen werden.

Unser Geist ist nicht frei, wir haben die Ängstlichkeit nicht abgeworfen.
Von Kindheitstagen an glauben wir an Autoritäten, sind ihnen hörig,
übergeben ihnen die Macht und haben nicht den Mut, uns unseres
gesunden Menschenverstands zu bedienen
– wir sind nur in der Lage zu gehorchen.

Diese skrupellosen Despoten schüren die Ängste der Bürger
vor Hunger und Versklavung, vor dem Tod und der Hölle.
Auch bedienen sie sich der Dienste korrupter Philosophen, Psychologen
und Naturwissenschaftler, die ihre Seele verkaufen.
Ihr Ziel ist es, das Volk zu unterwerfen, ihnen alle Rechte zu nehmen,
sie in transhumane Wesen zu verwandeln, damit sie gehorchen
und dienen.

Dabei seien Thron und Altar Spießgesellen…, die sich verstehen
würden wie zwei Beutelschneider. Das meinte Jean Meslier,
der französische Philosoph des 17. Jahrhunderts,
ein Atheist im Priesterrock (1).

Im Vorwort seines berühmten „Memorandums der Gedanken
und Überzeugungen“, schrieb er, dass er unlängst einem Mann
begegnet sei, der „kein Studierter war, doch offenkundig genügend
Menschenverstand besaß, um die widerwärtigen Missbräuche zu erkennen
und zu verurteilen“, denn er habe gesagt,

„man solle alle Großen der Erde
mit den Gedärmen der Priester erwürgen und daran aufhängen…“

Meslier fügt hinzu:

„Diese Redeweise erscheint gewiss rauh, ungehobelt
und anstößig, aber man muss zugeben, dass sie offenherzig und
freimütig ist, kurzgefasst und eindrucksvoll.“ (2)

Zu den Großen der Erde gehören heute unter anderem die Rockefellers
und Rothschilds, die Brzezinskis, die Kissingers und Ihresgleichen,
die Coudenhove-Kalergis und die anderen Weisen.
Als sie die Neue-Welt-Ordnung – eine Eine-Welt-Regierung, eine
Eine-Welt-Religion und für uns normale Bürger Dantes Hölle –
ankündigten, waren sie sich sicher: sie werden gewinnen.
Und so sieht es auch aus!

Viele große Frauen und Männer – auch in der Neuzeit – versuchten,
uns aufmerksam zu machen, zu warnen: Zum Beispiel Baron d’Holbach
oder Fürst Peter Kropotkin, Michael Bakunin oder Karl Marx, Graf Tolstoi
oder Johannes Messner, Emma Goldmann oder Bertha von Suttner,
Siegmund Freud oder Alfred Adler, Aldous Huxley oder George Orwell,
Rosalie Bertell oder Maria Mies, Albert Schweitzer oder Carl Friedrich von Weizäcker, Hannah Arendt oder Michel Chossudovsky.

Doch wir hörten ihnen nicht zu, weil wir es besser wussten.
Auch wollten wir es nicht wissen, weil es unsere Kreise störte.
Deshalb stellt sich heute die dringende Frage: Was tun?
„Was tun?“, sprach Zeus, „die Götter sind besoffen und bekotzen den Olymp.“

Ein Freund meinte es gut und gab mir den Rat:
Wage es, weise zu sein und übergib keinem die Macht!
Lebe dein Leben, aber sei auch Hüter deiner Brüder und Schwestern!
Erhebe den Gemeinsinn zur leitenden Idee!
Schütze die Jugend, fördere und fordere sie!
Gib, wenn du kannst und hasse nicht, wenn möglich!
Mische dich als Intellektueller ein und zeige jeweils einen konstruktiven
und gewaltfreien Ausweg auf!
Habe Mitgefühl mit allen Geschöpfen, denn erst das macht dich
wirklich zum Menschen!

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Fußnoten:

1. Hagen, Friedrich (1977). Ein Atheist im Priesterrock. Jean Meslier und die französischen Freidenker des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts. Eine Streitschrift von Friedrich Hagen. Leverkusen und Köln, S. 42

2. a.O. Klappentext auf der Rückseite des Buches

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Why It’s Necessary to End NATO Now

March 14th, 2021 by Eric Zuesse

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In a previous article I argued “Why It’s Necessary to End NATO”. However, recent events are making clear that the urgency of this need is increasing, instead of decreasing.

In 2011, the U.S. Government started planning a take-over of Ukraine, which, at that time, was a neutral country that has a 1,625-mile border with Russia. At its nearest point to Moscow, that border is only 5 minutes flight-time away from Moscow, via the fastest missiles. Obviously, that’s far too little time for Russia’s Government to be able to evacuate themselves from Moscow and to launch a retaliation against a U.S. blitz-attack. The U.S. goal is to get Ukraine into NATO, so that America can position its missiles there and really achieve “Nuclear Primacy” (which I discussed in that earlier article as being America’s meta-strategy since at least 2006 — safely to destroy Russia, even though that won’t actually be possible).

On February 1st of 2021, Ukraine’s President, Volodmyr Zelenskyy, made undeniably clear his intention to fulfill on Obama’s plan, for Ukraine to become a NATO member. Whether Joe Biden is going to push for that will be the most important decision of his Presidency, because it would be a commitment to World War III. It would, in effect, be a U.S. declaration of war against Russia. Whether the blitz-invasion would come from the U.S. (presumably assisted by missiles placed in Ukraine), or instead from Russia (in order to wipe out those and all other U.S. missiles), would be the only remaining question. Who will try the blitz-attack first? Either way, the world — at least the biosphere that sustains human life — would end.

Zelenskyy said:

We are grateful for everything, but Ukraine is not just saying in words that it wants to be an equal member of the Alliance, an equal member of NATO, because this is one of the most important security points – the same security that President Biden is speaking about. How should we further state the desire to accede [join], if it is enshrined in the Constitution of Ukraine – the movement towards the European Union, European integration, as well as accession to NATO? Therefore, I have a very simple question – why is Ukraine still not in NATO? Putting away these phrases that we will all contemplate and communicate, the first simple question from me would be: “Mr. President, why are we not in NATO yet”?

If Ukraine becomes a NATO-member, then Ukraine will have the right to demand that America join its war to grab back the former Donbass region and also the former region of Crimea. The U.S. Government would then be put into the position of having to either fulfill its NATO commitment to the new NATO member (presuming that restoration of both Crimea and Donbass to Ukraine would be accepted as being a part of that commitment to what then would be a fellow-NATO-member) or else become very embarrassed by not doing so. If such a NATO commitment would be fulfilled, the world as it has always been known would end very fast — less than an hour.

The way that WW III would then start is that Ukraine would become more heavily armed by the U.S. and then would invade both Donbass and Crimea, Russia would then attack Ukraine for doing that, and the U.S. would then launch a blitz-attack against Moscow from Ukraine, and, simultaneously launch against all other command-and-control targets in Russia, so that before those have become hit, Russia would already have been decapitated.

The United States Government is fortunately not obliged to allow Ukraine into NATO and has many ways to prevent it from joining NATO. Some of these ways wouldn’t at all embarrass the U.S. Government, and the reason for this is that if any one NATO-member nation refuses to okay Ukraine as becoming a member, then Ukraine won’t become a member, and the scenario that has been described won’t then happen. The U.S. Government has enormous clout with each existing NATO member-nation, because NATO was created by the North Atlantic Treaty (also called the “Washington Treaty”) in Washington, DC, on 4 April 1949, at a conference that was chaired by U.S. diplomat Theodore Achiles, who subsequently retired to become a Director of the Atlantic Council, which also is in Washington, and which is the PR arm of NATO. The U.S. Government could easily get at least one NATO-member country to say no to Ukraine’s joining. However, if U.S. President Biden announces that the U.S. endorses NATO-membership for Ukraine, then that’s, in itself, virtually a U.S. declaration of war against Russia, and Russia might not wait for it to be made official before responding to it — blitz-invading the U.S. and its allies.

According to Achilles’s account of the creation of NATO:

The NATO spirit was born in that Working Group. Derick Hoyer-Millar, the British Minister, started it. One day he made a proposal which was obviously nonsense. Several of us told him so in no uncertain terms, and a much better formulation emerged from the discussion. Derick said, and I quote, “Those are my instructions. All right, I’ll tell the foreign office I made my pitch, was shot down and try to get them changed.” He did. From then on we all followed the same system. If our instructions were sound, and agreement could be reached, fine. If not, we worked out something we all, or most of us, considered sound, and whoever had the instructions undertook to get them changed. It always worked, although sometimes it took time. That spirit has continued to this day, I believe, although the size to which NATO has grown makes it far less easy. Two years later we began in London to put the “O” on the NAT by creating the organization. Some of the members of the delegations had been members of the Working Group, some had not. 

Was that the beginning of the end of the world? Perhaps Biden will decide whether it is, or not.

However, if he does decide to do it, then I doubt he’d do the attack prior to getting Ukraine into NATO — if he can do that. On March 10th, The Saker headlined “Is the Ukraine on the brink of war (again)?” and speculated whether Biden will provide now the backing that the Obama-installed stooge-regime there wants. Though the stooge-regime might re-invade Donbass (and maybe even attack Crimea), I doubt that Biden will provide the type of assistance that the U.S.-stooge regime in Kiev would need in order to retake that land (and certainly not Crimea). I would expect that Biden is therefore informing Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy not to try. So, I would expect that, instead, the crucial decision will be whether or not the regime in Washington will decide that it really does want Ukraine to become a member of NATO.

On March 10th, Sweden’s Defense Research Agency issued in two different parts, a 300-page report, “Western Military Capability in Northern Europe 2020,” which concluded that Russia would likely win WW III in Europe, and which analyzed only conventional war and virtually totally ignored even the possibility of the use of nuclear weapons in WW III — the presumption was instead that the meta-strategy “MAD” still would prevent that, and they ignored the U.S. regime’s actual abandonment of “MAD” and switch to “Nuclear Primacy”. They also simply presumed that the U.S. is their ally and non-aggressive and that Russia is their enemy and is aggressive. In other words: it is fantasyland, at least in the Swedish Government.

Furthermore: the core strategic question, of whether the loser in a conventional WW III would accept defeat instead of blitz-nuclear-attack the opponent so as to ‘win’ the war, was simply ignored, as if there would be a 100% likelihood that the conventional-war loser would just surrender and not escalate to a blitz nuclear attack against the opposite side in order to ‘win’ and would leave its enormous nuclear stockpile unused. They ignored the fact that NATO, after the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991, is the trip-wire to an all-out nuclear war — the exact opposite of an asset to its participants’ national security. NATO-participation makes all of them inevitably a part of the battlefield, and forces Russia to target them. Sweden’s Defense Research Agency produced there an insanely stupid study, and one which shows that Europeans, at least in Sweden, are being ‘defended’ by a government that is either in the pocket of the U.S., or else is simply idiotic. That study is shockingly stupid; it makes some of the craziest assumptions imaginable — assumptions that are tragically at variance with established facts (facts such as that America is, by far, the world’s most aggressive nation, and perpetrates far more coups, sanctions, and invasions, than does any other nation). At least regarding foreign relations, Sweden’s Government is monstrously disserving its public, and yet Swedes aren’t enraged against it. Are their news-media really that bad, so as for Swedes to tolerate a military alliance with the world’s most aggressive nation?

The only sane path forward for the nations that currently are NATO members (or “Partners” as Sweden is) is to withdraw and to urge other members (and Partners) likewise to withdraw, so that NATO will end — as it should have ended when the Soviet Union’s NATO-mirror organization the Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. End the Cold War, finally. NATO — the American military alliance against Russia — is simply the trip-wire to WW III. End it. Now. Even 30 years after 1991 isn’t, yet, too late to do it. But, maybe, 31 years would  be. That’s why it must be done now, delayed no further. Either NATO will end, or it will end all of us.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity. 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).

***

Nanna Skov Høpfner, or as she is known by her friends Nanna Fri (Nanna Freedom), talked at a rally against the Danish Government and their corona restrictions. In her speech she made many good points, but also ended with “lets go smash this town up in a non-violent way. Lets make some noise, so they can hear, we are here”.

For this she was sentenced 2 years in jail, because they used an option to double the sentence, when it’s corona related. The law was never meant to be used against activists, but to punish people committing coronary crimes like fraud. Nanna is 30 years old and the mother of 2 small children and has no background of activism or violent behavior.

Activist Per Brændgaard comments on Nannas case. Per is a Cand. Scient. in Human Nutrition, works as a nutrition consultant, author and lecturer on life quality and natural health. He is also one of the strongest public voices against corona restrictions in Denmark, also started a new party to fight political corruption. Per and other important groups in Denmark, such as The People’s Freedom Movement, the JFK21 Party, More Freedom Less Control – have helped to uncover the many incoherencies in the corona pandemic narrative, as well as the frightening tyrannical development in Danish politics during thi period.

Per comments on Nannas case:

It is my impression from here that the police have absolutely no evidence that Nanna Fri has done anything criminal. The police, on the other hand, are trying to set up Nanna Fri on a conspiracy theory that the police themselves have prepared. It is a theory about a conspiracy among protesters to commit violence against the police, which Nanna Fri was supposed to lead.

March 12, 2021 will go down in history as one of the darkest days in Denmark. Nanna Fri was today sentenced by the Copenhagen City Court to 2 years unconditional imprisonment for having said these words from a scene at a demonstration: “let’s smash the city – in a non-violent way”. Nanna was convicted of an undocumented conspiracy theory drawn up by police. I hope the three district court judges are well and truly ashamed now, but unfortunately they probably are not. I especially hope that many more Danes are now starting to wake up and realize what a system corona fascism has introduced in Denmark.

The Nanna Fri case is tragic in many ways. It is also tragic for the Danish police, which many Danes have probably now lost the last remnant of respect for. If the police think, and they obviously do, that a young mother must be punished so severely for uttering those words, yes it’s just WORDS, then it is very difficult to take the police seriously in other areas in the future. It is detrimental to the work of the police against real crime and to the protection of the population. I would urge every single police officer to look at the Nanna Fri verdict and decide for themselves whether it is such a fascist system one wants to work for or whether it is time to move on. If the police can not hire people to carry out the fascist tasks, then the fascists in suits behind the scenes will have to go on the streets themselves, and they probably will not dare, after all. We must have the police on our side, the people’s, by peaceful, lawful means. Let’s hug them over here – over here on Lyste’s page!

Here is a critical review of Per Brændgaard’s opinion of the city court against Nanna Fri.

Per Brændgaard: Nanna Skov Høpfner, who is also known as Nanna Fri, was sentenced by the Copenhagen City Court yesterday, 12 March 2021, to 2 years unconditional imprisonment.

The legal judge in the case was Uffe Habekost Sørensen. In addition, two lay judges participated in the verdict against Nanna. Judge Uffe Habekost Sørensen writes about himself on LinkedIn that he has previously worked for the Ministry of Justice as resp. clerk in 2016 and student in 2005-2007. He thus has a past in the executive branch before switching to the judiciary.

The Copenhagen City Court has published this justification for the verdict, which I assume was written by judge Habekost. Here is a list of points that I wonder about when reviewing the text.

I quote from the text of the judgment:

“It is thus proven that the accused approx. at 18.30 from a podium in front of about 400 demonstrators in the Town Hall Square over a loudspeaker, among other things, stated “Okay, are you ready to walk around and smash the city in a non-violent way? Just to make Copenhagen aware that we are here? ”,“ We ??are here.

We are angry and we are tired and we are going insane ”,

“ Is no one listening to us? There is no one listening to us friends. So what do we do? We get them to listen and how do we do it. Time will tell ”and“ Are you in? Are we done accepting that shit? So let’s smash it, friends! Democracy okay? ” and

“The people into the Folketing. Smash that system. Thank you. Fuck the system. Fuck Mette. Fuck Poli. Fuck it all man. Thank you ”, whereby she helped to light Roman candles, cannon shots and fired fireworks at Copenhagen City Hall during and after her speech.

Per Brændgaard’s comment: I simply do not see where there should be any incitement to violence or other forms of crime. It is a speech given in youth language in the context of a demonstration to mainly other younger people who, in my opinion, feel a completely just resentment over the corona-fascist abuses of national freedom and public health. It may be stupidly worded, but if it is to give two years in prison to make a stupid statement, then half the population should be behind bars now.

How can the judges misunderstand “smashing the city in a non-violent way”?

They can only do so when they choose to judge in favor of the executive, of which they themselves, unfortunately, are a part. How has the communication been between judge Habekost and the police / prosecution in the period up to the trial? Is it possible to gain insight into this with a view to investigating any crime committed by Judge Habekost?

The verdict further states:

“Furthermore, it is proven that shortly after the speech, the defendant participated in a serious disturbance of public order in, among other places, Rådhuspladsen, H.C. Andersens Boulevard and Blegdamsvej, as she repeatedly took the lead in the demonstration and by her presence, shouting, including using a megaphone, and behavior, in conjunction with her previous speech, participated in and encouraged others to attack by throwing objects, including cannon shots, fireworks, cans and stones, against the police officers present, injuring several of them and not less than 16 police officers were hit by objects.

Per Brændgaard’s comment: It is simply too vague! What did Nanna say? What has Nanna done? What is the documentation for this? And what about the video documentation that Nanna Fri was actually trying to calm the agitated protesters? Have the judges chosen to override this in order to instead believe in the police’s undocumented conspiracy theory about Nanna as the great mastermind in a coordinated attack on the police?

I have no doubt that there were police officers who were injured. But what about the evidence that the police themselves contributed to the escalation of the situation? And what about the many protesters who were beaten to death half by the police?

If this judgment sets a precedent, then one will e.g. could also be convicted of speeding if driving on a road where other cars are driving too fast. It is absurd that you can be convicted of the crime that others in a group may commit simply because you join the group yourself. We do not find ourselves being treated inhumanly like sheep that way!

Judge Habekost further writes:

It is also proven that the defendant failed to comply with the authority’s lawfully served order to the crowd to divorce and encouraged others to new gross disturbance of public order and violent behavior of the above-mentioned nature, while playing the police uplift form on HC Andersens Boulevard ca. at 19.35 in a megaphone stated “freedom for Denmark, we have had enough”, “up the ass with the queen” and “get some time in the drum there man”, just as the defendant participated in the run, including at the intersection Blegdamsvej / Tagensvej approx. at 20.50, where objects were also thrown at the police, until the riot was dissolved approx. at 21.00.

Per Brændgaard’s comment: So the police’s evidence is that Nanna has stated “freedom for Denmark, we have had enough” and “up the ass with the queen”, and that she has encouraged a drummer to play her instrument?

Judge Habekost continues to excel:

“The court finds in general that the defendants in the above statements and actions have contributed to gross disturbance of public order as well as the use of violence against the police officers present, including aggravated violence and attacks with objects. In this connection, the accused is found to have acted in association and by prior agreement or by common understanding with a larger group of identified and unidentified accomplices.

Here it is so black and white that the Copenhagen City Court chooses to believe the conspiracy theory that the Copenhagen Police has developed about Nanna Fri.

What is the evidence that Nanna Fri has entered into a “prior agreement” to commit criminal acts? It does not appear that there is any documentation whatsoever. It’s all based on presumptions, and that’s not how a district court should judge in a civilized legal society, in my opinion.

The madness of the city court ruling is further apparent from the text of the judgment in this continuing section: The court notes that the two police commissioners who have given explanations in the case have explained, among other things, that prior to the demonstration on January 9, 2021, organized by Men In Black , were concerns about violence against police. The background for this was, among other things, Men In Black’s previous activities and the storm at the US Congress on January 6, 2021.

So Nanna Fri has been convicted based on not only what other people have done at that demonstration but also what others have done on completely different occasions and in the US?

Judge Habekost continues:

The court finds it proven that the defendant at least had probable intent, as the defendant must have realized that it was overwhelmingly probable that she with her statements and actions contributed to the mentioned offenses. Emphasis has been placed on the information about the circumstances of the defendant’s speech at Rådhuspladsen, including that the defendant knew that arrests had been made and that she perceived that fireworks were being fired. It is also emphasized that it appears from the video recording of a speech that the defendant gave on 11 November 2020 that she was careful to avoid encouraging clashes with the police. Furthermore, it is emphasized that the defendant’s actions and statements took place over a longer period of time and continued after she had seen fellow demonstrators commit the offenses in question.

Per Brændgaard’s comment: In other words: The documentation that Nanna Fri actually tried to put a damper on the tempers is used by the Copenhagen City Court as proof that she is guilty of provoking violence against the police. If we had a Minister of Justice who was interested in people’s freedom, then he would fire Judge Habekost immediately and send him for a mental examination before he is given new tasks as a judge.

The text of the judgment from the Copenhagen City Court contains a large number of other nonsense that confirm to me that Denmark has become an idiocy and not a democracy.

Now this should not be seen as a call for criminal acts against the clearly incompetent judge Habekost. After all, he cannot pretend to be incompetent, or perhaps he has been subjected to pressure or bait, which he has not been able to resist. He is also only a human being. The Folketing, on the other hand, should make a proposal to the Minister of Justice that Habekost be dismissed immediately and that Nanna Fris’ city court ruling be overturned under the leadership of a competent and competent judge. At the same time, Nanna Fri should be set free now so she can go home to her children while she waits for the case to come before a new judge who will judge fairly and not politically.

All of this is merely an expression of my opinion as a politically committed non-lawyer. If the police should decide to arrest me for this, then I remind you of sections 71, 72 and especially 77 of the Constitution.

The Social Democrats and the Danish People’s Party report fascist suit

Per Brændgaard’s comment: S, DF and DR participate in advanced propaganda for continued corona fascism. In a new propaganda article from the state media DR with the headline Corona double punishment against 30-year-old woman arouses tremors at Christiansborg, S and DF state that they believe that double punishment for Nanna Fri is completely in place, as the case was connected to covid- 19.

It does not get behind me with S, who should immediately go to a numerologist and change his name from the Social Democrats to the Social Fascists, but DF you never quite know where you are, unless the case is about Muslims. Now the DF has also shown their true fascist suit with this announcement, and we know that the DF will in future stand for Danish Fascists. The more advanced propaganda in the DR article comes from statements from the Radicals and SF as well as from DR’s organization of the propaganda itself, which is disguised as a journalistic article by Nicolai S. Nielsen and Caroline Clante. The latter I return to at the end of this article.

Both the Socialist People’s Party and the Radicals disagree that the special corona clause should have been used in the Nanna Fri case, but with their statements they are interfering in a pending lawsuit. The Radicals’ legal spokesman Kristian Hegaard says: “- She has done something illegal.” SF’s legal spokesperson Karina Lorentzen-Denhardt says to DR: “- There is no doubt that some very serious things have been committed here. I will not defend that. This woman must also take her judgment for that. ” I assume that none of these politicians have read the reasoning for the verdict, which at least in my and many others’ point of view suggests that it is city court judge Habekost and not Nanna Fri who has done something illegal. She is convicted on a very extremely thin basis, which is not worthy of a society governed by the rule of law.

DR emphasizes this propaganda trick by taking something for granted – “Nanna is guilty” – even though it is definitely not a matter of course!

And then they use another propaganda trick to shift focus from Nanna’s guilt to the corona clause on double punishment, thereby derailing the debate. The case is about a judge in the Copenhagen City Court having made a political and not a legal judgment against a citizen who has had big enough balls (or ovaries) to stand up on a lectern and speak against the occupying power and its followers. Nanna Fri is a freedom fighter, a folk hero who should be praised instead of being subjected to this abuse in a system that gradually reminds a lot more of China than of Denmark.

DR starts the propaganda article as follows:

“It is a most sensational verdict that has been handed down by the Copenhagen City Court this afternoon. Not so much because a 30-year-old woman has been convicted of inciting violence against police during a demonstration against coronary restrictions. But because the punishment is double the normal. ” It is in this way that they make the readers accept that Nanna is guilty, even though that is exactly what the debate should be about now. The case is the worst judicial murder in recent times. Even committed against a young mother of two small children.

May the culprits of the police, the prosecution and the district court be ashamed and punished by the negative karma that their intentions and actions in this case must inevitably have brought!

Translated from Danish

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A controversial attempt to mark Pope Francis‘s March 7 visit to Iraqi Kurdistan with a commemorative postage stamp has stoked regional tensions, prompting irate reactions from Turkey and Iran.

The stamp portrayed Pope Francis partially superimposed on a map of territory claimed by Kurdish nationalists as “Greater Kurdistan” – a contested area that includes Iraqi cities such as Kirkuk and Nineveh, as well as large swathes of southeastern Turkey and western Iran.

The circulation of the design on the Internet was met with condemnation, especially from Turkey and Iran. The Turkish Foreign Ministry called on Kurdish regional authority to rectify the “error”.

“Certain presumptious authorties in KRG [the Kurdistan Regional Government] dared to abuse the mentioned visit to express their unrealistic aspirations against the territorial integrity of Iraq’s neighbouring countries,” a statement from the Turkish foreign ministry said.

“KRG authorities are in the best position to remember the disappointing outcomes of such deceitful aims,” the Turkish statement warned ominously

Iran characterised the publication of the stamp design as an “ unfriendly action.”

“What has been published by the Kurdistan Regional Government is against international laws and principles,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh was quoted by official news agency IRNA as saying.

KRG authorities responded with a statement saying the stamps were unofficial, having been presented by artists and designers rather than by any official body.

Hatem Al-Taie, a spokesman for the Arab Council in Kirkuk, said in a press statement on Friday that the stamps were “separatist”, adding that Kirkuk, a city retaken by Iraqi central government security forces from Kurdish peshmerga fighters in 2017, was not part of Kurdistan.

Kirkuk is a diverse city with an ethnically mixed population of Arabs, Kurds, Turkmen, and Assyrians.

However, many Iraqi Kurds consider it the “capital” of the Kurdistan Region, which is currently administered from Erbil.

Al-Taie added that the Kurdistan region was part of the Iraqi state and that the issuing of any postage stamp must be done through the Ministry of Transport.

Niyazi Mimaroglu, the leader of the Turkmen Front and a former member of the Iraqi parliament, accused the Kurdistan Regional Government of having “promoted such a map for years.”

During a televised interview he said that “the publication of the postage stamp was not spontaneous, but planned.”  He called on the Iraqi parliament to investigate and “not be silent about this sensitive issue.”

However, KRG spokesman Gutiar Adel said the stamp designs had not been approved by Kurdish authorities.

“Artists have submitted samples of proposed stamp designs to be printed on the occasion of the Pope’s visit to Iraq,” he said in a statement. “So far, none of these models have been approved.”

A member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party, the governing party in the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, confirmed in a phone call to The New Arab’s Arabic service that the stamps “are usually made as part of a design competition for artists and amateurs and are later approved by the government in Erbil.”

However, he said the stamps had never been made official. “This is just an excuse to persecute the Erbil government,” he said.

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Featured image: The stamp design caused outrage in Iran and Turkey [Getty]

Fresh Focus on a Stale Peace Process for Syria

March 14th, 2021 by Steven Sahiounie

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***

On March 11, the foreign ministers of Russia, Turkey, and Qatar met in a trilateral effort to push for a political resolution to the 10-year-old conflict in Syria.  They held a joint press conference in Doha and issued a broad statement concerning the future of Syria, and their joint commitment to the UN peace process under resolution 2254. 

The trio emphasized their commitment to preserving the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of Syria while stating that the only solution to the conflict was a political settlement, while all agreed on fighting terrorism which is part of the UN charter.

The next meeting will be held in Turkey, and later in Moscow. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s said,

“This is the first meeting at foreign ministers’ level on the Syrian crisis. We emphasized the importance of a political solution to the Syrian crisis, and this meeting is not an alternative to the Astana path.”

The joint statement:

1.  to preserve the sovereignty, independence, unity, and territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic under the UN Charter.

2.  no military solution, only a political solution in accordance with UN Security Council Resolution 2254 and Geneva Communique of 2012.

3.  to combat terrorism and stand against separatist agendas.

4.  to support the role of the Constitutional Committee without foreign interference.

5.  to support the efforts of the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General of the United Nations to Syria, Geir Pedersen.

6.  to support the Covax initiative, and prioritize vaccination inside Syria.

7.  to increase humanitarian assistance to all Syrians throughout the country.

8.  the safe and voluntary return of refugees and internally displaced persons.

9.  the release of detainees.

Russia

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the three countries were not seeking to replace the Astana process, in which Turkey, Russia, and Iran had jointly been meeting since 2017, to reduce fighting in Syria and discuss a political solution.

Lavrov said the meeting in Doha agreed on fighting terror, the free and peaceful return of Syrian refugees and displaced people to their homes, and called for the release of detainees.

Lavrov began his Middle East tour by paying a working visit to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on March 9 and later to Saudi Arabia and Qatar. Russian President Vladimir Putin maintains consistent contacts with leaders of Arab monarchies.

While in Abu Dhabi, Lavrov met with Crown Prince of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan.

Qatar

Qatar has supported Radical Islamic terrorists who sought to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.  Qatar’s role in the conflict was based on its support for the Muslim Brotherhood, which Turkey shares.  The former Qatari prime minister publically acknowledged that Qatar had funneled cash and weapons to the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria and that it was done at the behest of the US Obama administration.

Qatar currently supports Hayat Tahir al-Sham, formerly known as Jibhat al-Nusra, the Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria, which holds the civilian population of Idlib under occupation.

Qatar was important to the trio meeting in Doha since they are the only Arab country of the three.

Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani said the ministers had also discussed mechanisms for delivering humanitarian aid across the whole of Syria.  Presently, only Idlib receives humanitarian aid from international charities, which is seen as a reward for following Radical Islam or living under Sharia law.

Qatar upholds Syria’s suspension from the Arab League in 2011 and does not want Syria to be reinstated. Sheikh Mohammed made it clear that the reasons for the suspension of Syria’s membership remain, and Turkey and Qatar both remain opposed to engaging with Assad.

On March 11, the Permanent Representative of Qatar to the United Nations Office in Geneva, Ambassador Ali Khalfan al-Mansouri, delivered an address at the Human Rights Council with the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic.

Mansouri attacked the Syrian government using all the familiar western media litany of complaints, while accusing Russia of obstructing efforts to reach a political solution based on UN resolution 2254, thwarting the work of the Constitutional Committee, and seeking a military solution to the Syrian conflict.

While the Russian foreign minister was sitting in Doha, the Qatari Ambassador was attacking Russia to the UN concerning the very same points that were being agreed upon by Russia, Turkey, and Qatar on the very same day.

Turkey

Turkey has supported Radical Islamic terrorists who sought ‘regime change’ in Syria under an Obama-directed US-NATO project. The CIA under Obama was directed in a $3 billion program, Timber Sycamore, which funneled cash, training, and weapons to terrorists using Turkey as their transit point into Syria.  In 2017 Trump shut it down.

Turkey made a dramatic shift and began working with Russia in Syria once the US had supported the Syrian Kurds’ separatist terrorists, who Turkey views as aligned with the PKK, which is an internationally recognized terrorist group.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said,

“Today we launched a new trilateral consultation process,” while adding in Doha, “Our goal is to discuss how we can contribute to efforts towards a lasting political solution in Syria.”

Cavusoglu said recent international engagement with Syria’s Assad government hindered efforts for a political solution by giving it more legitimacy, and Ankara remains opposed to engaging with Assad, a point shared by Doha. Cavusoglu said Turkey would host the next round of talks.

Whether Turkey begins normalizing relations with Damascus depends on its relations with Washington, which have been frosty under Biden.  If it does not thaw, Turkey might reach out to Damascus.

UAE

Russia is pushing to end Assad’s isolation, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is ready.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov began a tour of the Gulf region with a meeting with UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan on March 9, who said that Syria’s return to the Arab fold is “inevitable”. Iraq’s Foreign Minister also called to restore Syria’s membership in the Arab League.

“The Caesar Act is the biggest challenge facing joint work with Syria,” the Emirati minister said about a US law that imposes sanctions on anyone dealing with the government of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met with Russia’s special envoy for Syrian settlement, Alexander Lavrentiev, in Riyadh on March 9.

USA

Lavrov noted that the unilateral sanctions imposed by the US and EU on the Syrian government are hindering the peace process in Syria.

The message by the three countries meeting in Doha appeared to be targeting the United States, which is defending Syrian Kurdish separatists in the oil-rich northeast of the country, with hundreds of US special forces occupying Syria, and no plans to leave.

“Turkey will continue to defend Syria’s territorial integrity, protect civilians and fight terror groups,” Cavusoglu said in Doha. He was referring to the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG), which is the US-led coalition’s top partner but is also linked to the PKK, an international terrorist group.

Lavrov concurred that separatism posed a threat to Syria’s neighbors.

“Our common goals — of Russia, Turkey [and] Qatar — are reflected in the joint statement that we have just approved, which confirms our determination to fight terrorism in all its forms and manifestations, to counter separatist plans that undermine the territorial integrity of the Syrian Arab Republic, which threaten the security of neighboring countries,” he said.

The UAE wants to accelerate recognizing President Assad, even though the US is pressuring them to abandon the plan.

Iran

In 2017, the Astana meetings were begun by Turkey, Iran, and Russia to find a solution to the Syrian war. Though ceasefires and de-escalation zones have been agreed to as a result, the process did not produce a solution.

Lavrov said the three countries meeting in Doha were not seeking to replace efforts which Turkey, Russia, and Iran had jointly been making since 2017.

Some experts and officials have tried to pressure President Joe Biden to link a new Iran nuclear deal with a Syrian peace deal.  Lavrov objects to this notion,

“There are growing voices that say more needs to be discussed, that Iran’s missile program needs to stop, that Iran’s regional activities need to stop. The Iran deal needs to be treated separately, we should not incorporate any other elements or concern no matter how grave they may be,” he said.

Russia may see the Doha trilateral group as a way to bring a potential resolution to Syria to the US, without Iranian involvement.

The Syrian government

UAE Foreign Minister joined Russia in its opposition to US sanctions on key Syrian government figures,

“It’s extremely difficult to co-operate with Syria in some issues because of this Act, not just at the state level but for the private sector as well. We expressed our opinion frankly to the US.”

UN, Refugees, and humanitarian aid inside Syria

The Doha meeting discussed providing humanitarian initiatives to deliver aid to all Syrian lands. This is in marked contrast to existing plans which deliver aid only to areas under the control of terrorists following Radical Islam, which is a political ideology.

Qatar Charity continues delivering aid to internally displaced Syrians in camps located in Idlib Province.

They agreed to support the negotiations of the Syrian Constitutional Committee and the safe and voluntary return of refugees, urged UN agencies and the World Health Organization to prioritize COVID-19 vaccinations inside Syria.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse


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***

It is still early to be certain what strategy the new US administration will adopt in the Levant. Yet the recent actions of the US and its allies can give a good indication of what is in store for the region. Especially when those actions reinforce the validity of some intelligence obtained from a well-informed source, and when they fit the facts on the ground.

For the past ten years, the US and its allies have been engaged in a war against Syria. However, this war did not achieve its main strategic objective. On the contrary, Syria has become involved with the Axis of Resistance more than ever. And despite the pitfalls in some places, and slow achievements in others, the Axis of Resistance has gained more influence in the Levant overall. One aspect of this is that the route from Tehran to Beirut, through Baghdad and Damascus, is solidifying every day. Securing this route can greatly facilitate trade and economic collaboration between those four capitals- something that will enhance the living situation of the people of those countries and fortify their resilience.

The US understands the strategic challenge that this poses to its influence in the Levant and indeed in West Asia in general; as it has been expressed in many pro-US-articles.

A vital result of securing this route is the leverage it provides to the Axis of Resistance to overcome

  • the ‘maximum pressure’ policy which the US has been pursuing of late, not just against Iran, but also against Syria using
  • the ‘Caesar Act’. And because the events of the past few years exposed the unreadiness of the US to engage in an all-out war against Iran and its allies, that leaves the ‘maximum pressure’ policy as the only cost-effective card for the US to play against the Axis of Resistance.

Another result of the events of the last ten years in the Levant is that the Iraqi and Syrian arenas have become more interconnected.

Hence, the aftershocks of any change in the political balance in one domain will be felt in the other. And because of the Russian presence in Syria, as well as the strategic alliance between Russia and the Syrian government, the US margin of manoeuvre within Syria is more constrained than it is in Iraq. Thus, it appears that the new strategy of Joe Biden’s administration is to work towards changing the status quo within Iraq to the advantage of the US, through targeted assassinations and special operations. It seems that the end goal is to strengthen the US allies within the Iraqi ruling class, benefiting from the volatile Iraqi political situation, so as to align Iraq with the US stance in the region.

This strategy, if it succeeds, will achieve two objectives for the US: breaking the Baghdad link in the afore-mentioned route chain, and tightening the economic sanctions imposed on Syria. The latter objective can then be used to force the Syrian government to make political concessions in the upcoming presidential elections and in the negotiations with the ‘separatists Kurdish factions’ in the east of the Euphrates, where the Syrian oil and wheat fields lie.

The latest US airstrike on the Iraqi security forces, the ‘Popular Mobilization Forces’ (PMF), is believed to be in this context despite the US pretexted justification. Choosing to bomb a position on the Syrian Iraqi borders and in the vicinity of a vital Syrian Iraqi crossing point cannot be at random.

Another sign of the US intent to change the political balance in Iraq is the recent lengthy interview with Raghad Saddam Hussein on the Saudi-owned news channel Al-Arabiya (the Saudis are a strategic US ally). In this interview, she spoke about internal Iraqi affairs, attacked what she called Iranian influence in Iraq, and refused to rule out a possible future role in Iraqi politics.

A well-informed source confirmed the existence of such a plan:

‘The US has put into action a new plan to shift the balance in Iraq to their advantage through targeted assassinations and inciting strife within Iraq. This plan is to be carried out in collaboration with some top positions in the current Iraqi government, and the Iraqi Ba’ath party’ the source added. On this question, it is worth noting the since-retracted statement by Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby that Iraqi authorities helped the US to carry out ‘successful strikes’ on Syria’s territory in February, and in spite of the Iraqi Defence Ministry denying any knowledge of this airstrike beforehand.”

If the next few weeks prove this analysis to be true, then it would be logical to assume that the Axis of Resistance will take countermeasures, and this would very likely raise the stakes in an already heightened situation in a volatile region.

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Amro Allan ([email protected]), is an independent Palestinian writer and Political researcher. He publishes in various Arabic news outlets, some of which are Al-Akhbar newspaper, Rai Al-Youm, and Arabi 21.

Featured image: A U.S. tank of the type that carried depleted uranium shells fires its main gun into a building in Fallujah, Iraq, in December 2004. A Dutch study found the U.S. used the radioactive shells in civilian areas (Photo: U.S.M.C./Wikimedia Commons).

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***

Reporters without Borders charges Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his accomplices with crimes against humanity for murdering Jamal Khashoggi and persecuting/torturing other Saudi journalists. 

Reporters Without Borders lawyer Paul Coppin talks about the 500-page complaint he has filed with a German court detailing the savage and inhuman treatment of Saudi journalists ordered by Prince Bin Salman and carried out by his close associates and other members of the Saudi Government. Coppin also explains why these activities are legally classified as crimes against humanity.

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***

The battlefield in Yemen is getting more volatile with each passing day.

On March 10th, the Saudi-led coalition released a video claiming to have destroyed an Ansar Allah air defense system.

The video shows a 2P25 transporter erector launcher of the system, a nearby missile depot and an unidentified radar system. All of them had been destroyed in airstrikes.

The Ansar Allah system reportedly comprising a Soviet-made SA-6 “Gainful” was positioned in the province of Marib. More specifically, the defense hardware is a locally upgraded version of the SA-6 air-defense system dubbed “Fater-1”.

In the days leading up to its alleged destruction, a Saudi Vestel Karayel drone was downed, and the air defense system might have been responsible for it. The UAV was downed on March 7th, and the Houthis released a video showing its debris.

The Saudi-led coalition is attempting to push back the Houthis with heavy airstrike activity. The ground offensive by Ansar Allah seems to only be challenged by air raids, and little else.

On March 9th alone, the Saudi-led coalition carried out at least 32 airstrikes, including some on the capital Sana’a.

The frontline is in a state of chaos, and a constant back and forth can be observed with the slight upper hand appearing to be for the Houthis, so far.

Elsewhere in the Middle East, in Syria, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) exchanged heavy fire with the al-Qaeda affiliated “moderate opposition” in Greater Idlib.

It all reportedly began after a joint shelling by Ansar al-Tawhid and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) on SAA positions in southern Idlib. The aim was to dismantle positions of the SAA’s 25th Special Forces Division, also known as the Tiger Forces.

Ansar al-Tawhid claimed that 8 Syrian soldiers were killed and more were injured. This was entirely denied. The attacks reportedly failed, as the Russian Aerospace Forces detected them early on and issued a warning.

In response, the SAA rained hell, allegedly killing dozens of militants. Videos of the exchange were released and they show the heavy shelling that took place.

In recent days, the SAA has been steadily carrying out various attacks and small-scale offensives all around Greater Idlib and the Aleppo countryside. A larger-scale operation is in the works, and it is likely a matter of days or weeks before the stage is set for a push to regain further areas, before HTS can be totally rebranded into non-terrorists.

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***

Since March 2011, Washington has led a coalition of NATO countries, Arab monarchies and Israel, in a proxy regime change war, using terrorist mercenaries as foot soldiers. Today, US troops illegally occupy nearly a third of Syria, containing much of Syria’s oil and gas and some of its best farmland. In addition, the US maintains a proxy army of Kurdish separatists in Syria’s north that seeks to dismember the country by carving out a Kurdish state where the population was overwhelmingly Arab prior to US intervention. The February 25th, 2021, US bombing of Syria signaled the Biden government’s intention to continue the US war of attrition on Syria.

Syria has defiantly resisted for ten years, in the face of illegal US attempts to dismember their sovereign state. These included false flag gas attacks by terrorists to blame the Syrian government – with the help of OPCWattempts by the International Criminal Court to indict President Assad; propaganda constructs like the White Helmets to support western military intervention; increasingly severe economic sanctions which devalued Syria’s currency, created widespread unemployment, impoverished millions, and created huge shortages in the midst of a pandemic; spurious propaganda like the “Caesar photos”; and covert operations to buy the support of western mainstream media.

With allies Russia, China, Iran, Hezbollah, and Palestinian militias; support of Venezuela and Cuba to North Korea; and supporters in the global peace movement, the Syrian government has frustrated most of the above schemes, and avoided becoming a Libya-style failed state.

Syria has paid a great price: nearly half a million dead; 6.6 million internally-displaced persons; 5.6 million refugees across the Middle East, Europe, and North America; enormous civilian infrastructure destruction; looting of archeological treasures; physical and psychological trauma to its citizens; and much, much more. All of these cry out for an international accounting with reparations from those responsible.

The wide portrayal of the conflict as a “revolution” or popular uprising ignores Wikileaks revelations that the US has been promoting destabilization and sectarianism inside Syria since 2005. The Syrian people have shown great courage and endured great sacrifices in order to preserve their secular, pluralistic, and Arab socialist state, with universal free education and medical care.

The Syria Solidarity Movement seeks to end the criminal war on Syria, and we call upon others to join this effort. In particular, we ask you to put pressure on your elected officials to

  • Stop the war against Syria;
  • Resume diplomatic relations with Damascus;
  • End the coercive economic measures against Syria and Syrians;
  • Support the reconstruction of SSM International, March 15, 2021.

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***

“We are on a path to a world in which it will be possible to decode people’s mental processes and directly manipulate the brain mechanisms underlying their intentions, emotions and decisions; where individuals could communicate with others simply by thinking“.

Those lines were written by 25 scientists in the article entitled “Four Ethical Priorities for Neurotechnologies and AI“ in the scientific magazine Natur in November 2017.

The scientists noted as well that “powerful computational systems linked directly to people’s brains“ will “aid their interactions with the world such that their mental and physical abilities“ will be “greatly enhanced“.

According to their estimates this situation could materialize already within years, since some of the biggest world investors, “including Elon Musk’s and Kernel start-up firm Neuralink“, launched in 2017, “are investing in the creation of devices that can both ‘read’ human brain activity and ‘write’ neural information into the brain” (it can be done rather easily, since the information in the brain is transmitted by number and frequency of nerve impulses and thus is in principle digital).

According to the scientists current spending on neurotechnology by for-profit industry in 2017 was “already US$100 million per year, and growing fast“ and the U.S. government has spent “500 millions dollars“ on development of neurotechnology since 2013. The companies Apple and Samsung had in 2017 already neuro gadgets connected to their Iphones, which could read brain activity via brain-computer interfaces based on EEG readings, and they expected that direct connection of brains and computers will gradually replace the use of keyboards, mouses and voice instructions (see this). Scientists from the University of California in 2018 developed a device which can collect the peoples brainwaves, analyze them to find among them vowels and consonants and then put people’ thoughts on display. A para lyzed man could in this way type without using the keyboard. The accuracy of this device in 2018 was 90% and the scientists believed that within the next five years they will develop a smart phone to which this device could be connected. Of course it would display hidden thoughts as well (see this and this).

To transmit thoughts into the brain you only need to transmit there electrical signals in the frequencies of the activity of targeted neurons, which will absorb this energy and thus the new neuronal activity produced from outside will appear in the brain. In this way human emotions, thoughts and decisions can be produced from the outside.

In August 2020 Rafael Yuste, the scientist, who collected the signatures for the article in the magazine Nature, told a journalist from The New York Times that “once the manipulation goes directly into the brain… you will not be able to tell you are being manipulated“ (see this) (Italian scientists in 2013 interconnected two brains of volunteers via electrodes and internet and they achieved extrasensorial communication among several pairs of them, when their brain frequencies synchronized depending on sound stimuli perceived by only one of them.

The scientists believed that in the future it will be possible to connect two brains with the use of the quantum physic’s principle of non local electron and photon connection Brain-to-Brain (Mind-to-Mind) Interaction at Distance: A Pilot Study by Patrizio E. Tressoldi, Luciano Pederzoli, Marco Bilucaglia, Patrizio Caini, Pasquale Fedele, Alessandro Ferrini, Simone Melloni, Agostino Accardo :: SSRN. See this. In such a case it would not be necessary to use any transmitter or energy passing through outside media to connect two brains or brain and computer.).

Connecting his brain to the internet will become a necessity for anybody, who will wish to be recognized for his intellectual activity, since without it he will not be able to compete with others on the labour market. According to scientists this submission to machines will produce the bypassing of the normal sensorimotor function of brains and bodies. The human being will no longer be in natural contact with its immediate environment and derive from this interaction its thoughts, deeds and decisions.

At least during the working hours people will resign on their independence in their decision making and thinking and at least during the working hours they will be losing their identity. But if there are no appropriate legislations they will keep losing their identities even at their leisure time, because the advertising companies will easily find ways how to manipulate their nervous systems and brains to make them buy products, for the marketing of which they are paid. Companies like Google, Disney, CBS and Frito-Lay used already in 2017 services of neuromarketing companies for measurements of customer preferences and impact of their advertisement on customers. Neuromarketing companies EmSense, Neurosense, MindLab International a Nielsen regularly use technics of nervous activity analysis to analyse and predict the customer’s behavior and even to influence it (see this).

If neuromarketing companies are allowed to manipulate the minds of customers, the governments would feel silly to not use it to “convince“ their citizens about the usefulness of their projects. Of course those projects will reflect the needs and opinions of the richest national and international corporations and bankers. If mankind will advance in this direction, it will basically accept the Chinese model of the governing of society and inevitably will abandon democracy, since it will be governed by principles that “someone“ will download on the internet. It is a question of how much the loss of identity, caused in this way, will cause people serious psychological problems resulting in rebellions and in case of their failures to suicides.

There is no doubt that the governments should start to solve this issues in the nearest possible future. But it is good to note, that the same effects as by sending electrical currents into the brain can be achieved by transmission of microwaves, pulsed in brain frequencies, or extra long electromagnetic waves in brain frequencies into the brain, or by any other energy devised by quantum physics transmitted into the brain, which will be converted there into electric currents in brain frequencies.

These technologies were developed by Russian and American and scientists from their allied nations since the fifties of the past century. Last news about the work of those researchers was published in 1974 by accident, when an American scientist published the research of a military scientist, who told him about it in a phone conversation. Ron Justesen wrote in the magazine Psychology Today that Joseph Sharp was transmitting by means of pulsed microwaves into his brain words that he could understand. (see this and this).

In 2007 The Washington Post wrote: “In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed for this article, the Air Force released unclassified documents“ concerning patent for microwave transmission of the sound into the brain and that those documents contained “records that note that the patent was based on human experimentation in October 1994 at the Air Force lab, where scientists were able to transmit phrases into the heads of human subjects, albeit with marginal intelligibility.

Research appeared to continue at least through 2002“ (see this). If those transmitted phrases were converted into ultrasound, people would not hear them and for that matter would not realize them, but the brain would accept them and in this way they would become the “thoughts“ of the targeted person. In 2020 the American Academy of Sciences wrote in the report on attacks on American diplomats in Cuba and China that the most probable cause of their problems were pulsed microwaves (see this). In October, 2020 the CIA employees complained that they were targets of the same attacks in Australia (see this).

Russian politician Vladimir Lopatin, who at the turn of the millenium, strived for the world wide ban of those weapons, wrote a book “Psychotronic War and the Security of Russia“, where he wrote, that “psychotronic war“ is “actually taking place without declaration of war”. In other words those technologies are already being used at the present time, but due to their classification people can not demand their ban. In case that they were used globally in the contest to gain control of the whole mankind, it would most probably provoke a world war with the use of nuclear weapons which would result in the destruction of civilisation and the extinction of mankind.

In 2018 at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where every year world politicians and managers of international corporations meet, Israelian historian Juval Noah Harari warned in his speech against the rise of  new totality based on the access to the human brain. He said:

“Once we have algorithms that can understand you better than you understand yourself, they could predict my desires, manipulate my feelings and even take decisions on my behalf. And if we are not careful the outcome can be the rise of digital dictatorships. In the 21st century we may be enslaved under digital dictatorships“ (see this).

The founder of the World Economic Forum Klaus Schwab wrote a book “Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution“, where he said  that looming technological changes will allow governments to “intrude into the hitherto private space of our minds, reading our thoughts and influencing our behavior.” (see this) Since Klaus Schwab is the founder of the World Economic Forum, it is evident that his ideas are widely discussed among top world entrepreneurs and politicians.

At the present time there exists no legislations banning the use of mind control technologies and  for that matter scientists feel free to work on the development of “nanobots”,- nanoparticles which can penetrate into the blood and connect the brain to internet, where it could collect information without being obliged to learn. Professor of mechanical engineering at the University in San Diego James Friend believed in 2017  that effective use of nanbotes could start in two to five years (see this). In 2018 James Giordano, working for The American Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency,  said in a lecture for military cadets that several weeks ago his agency succeeded in producing nanoparticles which can be aerosolised and when breathed in will penetrate into the brain and control its activity. Watch the video below 00:38.

Since the world media do not inform the populations in their countries about the growing danger that people will be deprived of their freeedom of thought, it is obvious that the governments are at least hesitating whether they prefer this kind of future.   One way to remind them that people care about their freedom of thought would be to form new parties or movements or at least Facebook groups, whose goal would be to defend the freedom of thought of people.

To  guarantee the freedom of human thinking it is necessatry to enact legislations which woudl ban (using harsh sentences) the transmissions in the air or into the  brain of any energy in frequencies corresponding to frequencies of the activity of the human  brain. The only way to connect the human brain to internet or other communication channels could be by voluntary decision of a person to connect  to to them with a cable.

The governments will have to provide for detection of banned transmissions and search for their sources. It must be established in the legislations that the representatives of  human rights organisations will participate in the detection of those transmissions.  Governments should also establish teams, with the particitapation of representatives of human rights organisations, capable of verifying the claims of their citizens about their exposure to energetic attacks at their nervous systems or bodies.

In the international politics the governments should work toward the international agreement banning manipulation of human minds or causing harm to bodies of citizens of foreign states by means of energies corresponding to frequencies of the activity of the human brain or body. It would also be useful if they made an effort to replace, in the world politics, the diluvial struggle for power by politics of good neighborhood.

Mojmir Babacek is the founder of the International Movement for the Ban of the Manipulation of the Human Nervous System by Technical Means,  He is the author of numerous articles on the issue of mind manipulation.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research

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Europe Call to Arms Against China and Russia

March 14th, 2021 by Manlio Dinucci

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 EU-China Investment Agreement, signed on December 30 by the European Commission, may not be ratified by MEPs on the grounds that Beijing violated human rights. It is the screen behind which the real reason is hidden: the growing pressure exerted on Europe by the United States to create a coalition against China. Washington’s strategy – from Obama to Trump and now Biden – is that of the “containment” of China, whose growth calls into question the world economic order, so far dominated by the United States and the major Western powers.

The multinationals and other US and European companies have relocated much of their production to China for decades, making huge profits. However, China did not remain simply the “factory of the world” where people go and produce because labor costs less. It has implemented its own production and technological development and, on this basis, projects such as the New Silk Road. At an advanced stage of construction, it consists of a road and rail network between China and Europe through Central Asia, the Middle East, and Russia, combined with a sea route through the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, and the Mediterranean. Investments of over $ 1 trillion are planned for road, rail, and port infrastructures in over 60 countries. 

In this context, China has become Russia’s main trading partner. Economic relations between the two countries have strengthened with an exchange that has exceeded 100 billion dollars a year and is growing, especially after the sanctions imposed by the United States and the EU on Russia.

Trade between the United States and China is six times greater. But, given that many products on the US market are manufactured in China by the US multinationals or supplied by Chinese companies, the US has a deficit of over $ 300 billion annually in bilateral trade. There was also a collapse in Chinese investments in the US for production purposes, which fell by 90% in three years (from 46.5 to 4.8 billion dollars), while US investments in China remained at around 13 billion. 

At the same time, China’s share of US debt $ 27 trillion or more  fell from 14% in 2011 to 5% in 2020. Even more serious for Washington is the fact that the dollar share of Chinese foreign exchange reserves has dropped from 79% to 59% in four years and that China is looking for alternative currencies to the dollar to be used in international trade. 

Unable to stop this process that can put an end to the economic dominance of the United States, Washington forced the situation. Economic “containment” becomes military “containment.”

Admiral Phil Davidson, who heads the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (its area of responsibility covers China and 35 other countries), has requested of Congress over $ 27 billion in five years to build a curtain of missile bases and satellite systems around China, including a space-platform radar constellation. “We have to start facing China from a position of strength,” Antony Blinken, the Biden Administration Secretary of State, told the Senate.

At the Munich Security Conference, on February 19, NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg reiterated:

“Europe and North America must defend the international order that China and Russia challenge by trying to rewrite its rules for the benefit of their own interests. ” After accusing Russia of “destabilizing behavior,” he declared that “the rise of China is a crucial issue for the transatlantic community.” He then announced an upcoming “update of NATO’s strategic concept” because “we need to strengthen ourselves militarily” together with “close partners like Australia and Japan.”

Therefore: a call to arms for US allies, not only against Russia in Europe but against China in Asia. As a result, Russia and China are also strengthening their alliance on the military level.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

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

You Know “We’ll Never Know,” Don’t You?

March 14th, 2021 by Edward Curtin

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***

In his new, six-part, seven hours plus documentary – “Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World” – the celebrated English documentary filmmaker, Adam Curtis, who has worked for the BBC for decades, tells us that nothing makes sense anymore and it is “pointless to try to understand the meaning of why things happen.” A profound shift in our understanding has occurred, he tells us early on, and he then proceeds to replicate this fragmented, unknowing modern mind by showing us an endless stream of video images from the BBC archives that jump from one seemingly disconnected subject to another to reinforce his point.

As the reviewer Lucy Mangan of The Guardian approvingly writes, the film is “a dazzling, overwhelming experience.”  This is true, but not in the way she thinks with her five-star rating. The film does dazzle, and fascinate, but in the sense of bewildering or casting a spell.  But to what end?

For Curtis maintains that there is no meaning anywhere (not even in a review); we are all living as if we are on “an acid trip”;  and we will never know what the hell is going on in the world because…well, because there is no logic to anything and our brains are scrambled with fragmented memories, fleeting images, and paranoid thoughts just like the movie Curtis narrates in his unemotional, matter-of-fact voice. He doesn’t have to say that he’s cool and everyone else is nuts. The style is the man when the authoritative voice calmly speaks above the din. Quite BBCish.

“Everything is relative,” is the underlying message, except that Curtis fails to spell out the contradiction in this post-modern meme: Everything is relative but the statement that everything is relative.  It is absolute. Some people know and others don’t.  Next video clip please.

After watching his pastiche film that is filled with his compulsively fragmented skepticism about “a world where anything could be anything because there was no meaning anywhere,” I was reminded of what a famous philosopher once wrote in his “Critique of Pure Dread”:

In formulating any philosophy, the first consideration must always be: What can we know?  That is, what can we be sure we know, or sure that we know we knew it, if indeed it is at all knowable.  Or have we simply forgotten it and are too embarrassed to say anything?  Descartes hinted at the problem when he wrote, ‘My mind can never know my body, although it has become quite friendly with my legs.’  By ‘knowable,’ incidentally, I do not mean that which can be known by perception of the senses, or that which can be grasped by the mind, but more that which can be said to be Known or to possess a Knownness or Knowability, or at least something you can mention to a friend.

Like Curtis’s title, I have never been able to get those profound words out of my head because they have always seemed in their own way to have captured the underlying zeitgeist of the past half-century and more – the unspoken message that has come to inform the neurotic skepticism of our times. And unlike Curtis’s  solemnity, at least Woody Allen makes me laugh.

Curtis is a serious man, and when he very seriously tells us in Part 1 that Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, who was the only person to ever bring a trial in the assassination of President John Kennedy, was a man devoid of logic who once wrote a memo to his staff urging them to think illogically and just look for patterns based on “time and propinquity,” he wishes us to consider Garrison a crazy conspiratorial thinker who saw strange patterns when there were none.  To see Garrison as a deranged man who used a pastiche method of cutting and pasting disparate unconnected facts to form a conspiracy theory to convince you that there were hidden forces operating behind the façade of American society.

Echoing the CIA’s famous memo to its agents and accomplices in the media to use the phrase conspiracy theory/theorist to ridicule its critics, Curtis so solemnly tells the viewer that such crazy conspiracy theories and the method for arriving at them and their claims that there were hidden forces operating behind the scenes are paranoid nonsense and that they would come to infect the modern mind.  Most of Garrison’s thinking, he says, was pure fantasy and he could produce no evidence for his claims.  In other words, Lee Harvey Oswald killed Kennedy, not the CIA.

This claim is factually false, but it becomes the basis for the next five parts of the documentary.  And perversely, the entire documentary is constructed using the same method of cutting-and-pasting, “time and propinquity,” pastiche/collage so beloved of postmodernists, that Curtis accuses Garrison of using, a method devoid of logic or meaning.

This is not a Woody Allen joke.

There is no doubt that Curtis has found and presents very interesting historical film footage that ranges back and forth across the world and time.  He knows how to engage an audience and to draw them into emotive and dreamy experiences of fear and paranoia. As one watches, one feels the walls closing in and terrible disasters lurking in the shadows because no one is in control, for control is an illusion. You’ll never know.  You’ll never know. Everything is relative.

Yet there is much to learn and consider from his footage.  But context is all, and the hours one spends watching lead to part six when Curtis circles back to part one to tie the knot on his “emotional history” within what the writer George Trow once called “the context of no context.”  We learn about chaos and complexity theories, artificial intelligence, multiple selves, drugs, how neuroscientists and psychiatrists have claimed that consciousness does not exist, and that even though people think they are individuals in the age of individualism, they are deluded.  In the digital age people are now doing exactly what Garrison did fifty years ago; now they are creating conspiracy theories from patterns of data on the internet and it’s all a form of madness.

Thrown in as an aside, Curtis says of the attacks of September 11, 2001, that “no one had seen them coming.”  This, of course, is blatantly false, since the U.S. government was not surprised, as is very well known and confirmed, but Curtis’s claim reinforces the idea no one knew or knows what’s going to happen, that incompetence is the norm, that “nothing makes sense anymore,” and that the official narrative on 9/11 is correct, just as it is regarding the assassination of JFK, for Jim Garrison, the man who bravely and brilliantly explored the case early on, was just a nut case who believed in strange coincidences. And his crazy way of connecting the dots has infected our world today.  We can’t get him out of our heads.

When he finally brings us into the present, Curtis tells us that COVID-19 “was a force that came from completely outside the systems of power.”  Of course!  Despite abundant evidence to the contrary, we are living in a world where the ruling elites are at the mercy of chance and we think they are in control.  No, that is our illusion.  Shit happens. After spending hours showing us how the world’s elites are corrupt and do all kinds of devious things to maintain their power – conspire to do so – we are also told there are no conspiracies.  There are and there aren’t.  We are trapped in an insane world of double-binds, “a world where anything could be anything because there was no meaning anywhere.”

I suppose this might apply to this film.  But no, it is very meaningful – in the way exquisite propaganda is.

Woody Allen can be hilarious, but Curtis is quite funny himself.  After seven plus hours of telling us we live in the world of nightmares where we are trapped and this sense of imprisonment is something we can’t get out of our heads and we’re all going bonkers, he ends by repeating his opening caption, which are the words of the anthropologist David Graeber:

The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make.  And could just as easily make differently.

Really?  I never knew that.  Did you?

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is the author of the new book: https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/

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***

Is Israel heading for mandatory covid jabbing or the equivalent through draconian policies?

Last month, energy minister Yuval Steinitz called for legislation to require Israelis to be jabbed for covid or face unspecified punitive measures.

Israeli health minister Yuri Edelstein warned that “(w)hoever does not get (jabbed for covid) will be left behind.”

While not mandated so far, refusniks may be denied access to workplaces, schools, air travel, retail shops and other public places.

Guidelines under consideration suggest that policies will be instituted to punish individuals who refuse to jeopardize their health on the phony pretext of public health protection.

Some employers said unjabbed workers will be denied access to their office, but allowed to work at home if their jobs permit operating this way.

In late February, Knesset lawmakers approved legislation to collect information on individuals unwilling to be jabbed for seasonal flu-renamed covid.

Physicians for Human Rights-Israel (PHR-I) denounced what it called passing “a draconian law which crushes medical ethics and patient rights.”

Collected information will be shared with national and local authorities, the equivalent of a yellow Star of David mandated for Jews by Nazi Germany.

Is this where things are heading in Israel, perhaps to be followed by the US and other Western countries?

Is the Nuremberg Code heading for what GW Bush once called the US Constitution: “Just a goddamned piece of paper.”

Medical ethicist Ezelyne Shuster earlier stressed the “significance of the Nuremberg Code,” as follows, saying:

Voluntary consent to all things medical “is absolutely essential…without the intervention of any element of force, fraud, deceit, duress, overreaching, or other ulterior form of constraint or coercion.”

Consent “is a personal duty and responsibility which may not be delegated to another with impunity.”

If mass-jabbing is mandated (directly or indirectly) by any nations for any reasons, the policy will be an unparalleled threat to health and well-being of their people.

If inoculation passports are required for unrestricted access to public places ahead, refusniks unwilling to jeopardize their health will be ostracized from society.

Individuals will be damned if they do or don’t go along with being jabbed by experimental, unapproved, high-risk, DNA altering drugs — what no one valuing their health should permit being jabbed into their bodies.

The Association for Civil Rights (ACRI) in Israel addressed the issue as follows, saying:

“Israel is not, and should not, enforce vaccinations.”

“We are following the situation closely, with an eye to the populations who cannot (or will not) get (jabbed).”

This includes individuals “16 years old and under, people with allergies or certain health conditions – as well as populations which, for institutional lack of trust in the government or lack of access to information and resources, are generally less likely to get the vaccination, mainly the Ultra-Orthodox and Arab communities.”

Along with PHR-I, ACRI “petitioned (Israel’s) High Court of Justice against the (now adopted Knesset) law (discussed above) on March 1, 2021.

“The law is dangerous and constitutes a violation of citizens’ privacy and a precedent of violating medical confidentiality,” said ACRI.

“We fear the likely misuse of information by local authorities.”

“The violation of privacy and medical confidentiality is grave, and the precedent of transferring medical information without consent to other authorities is a dangerous one.”

Israel’s largest labor union Histadrut proposed a way around the Knesset law.

It suggested that inoculation refusniks who cannot or won’t be allowed to work at home present negative PCR tests to employers every 72 hours.

Ignored was that nearly always when these tests are positive, they’re false.

Member of Israel’s Rappeh human rights group transformed into a political movement Ilana Rachel Daniel denounced the new reality in the country, saying:

Get jabbed for covid or “your life is basically over,” adding:

“No entrance to shopping malls. No more theater visits.”

“Children about 16 who did not take the injection are not allowed to take their exams.”

“Protesting parties in the Knesset are brought to silence and threatened by the military.”

“City council receives medical dossiers to check if you” were jabbed.

“Israel became the hell on earth because of the covid lie.”

“The rest of the world will follow if we do nothing.”

Is that where things are heading? Will Western and other nations go the draconian way of Israel?

Will our choice ahead be between risking our health and well-being or being ostracized from society?

What amounts to no choice at all requires mass resistance as the only viable alternative, pushing back against what no one should tolerate.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

Featured image is from Viacheslav Lopatin | Credit: scaliger – stock.adobe.com

Origins of the 2011 War on Syria. It Was a Conspiracy

March 13th, 2021 by Felicity Arbuthnot

Ten Years since the onslaught of the War on Syria, mid-March 2011.

The following article by Felicity Arbuthnot was first published in March 2012

***

We have met the enemy and he is us.” (Walt Kelly, 1913-1973.)

It was political analyst Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, in November 2006, who wrote in detail(1) of US plans for the Middle East:

“The term ‘New Middle East’, was introduced to the world in June 2006, in Tel Aviv, by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (who was credited by the Western media for coining the term) in replacement of the older and more imposing term, the “Greater Middle East’ “, he wrote.

Sanity dictated that this would be a U.S. fantasy rampage too far and vast – until realization hit that the author of the map of this New World, planned in the New World’s “New World Order”, was Lt. Colonel Ralph Peters, who, in one of the most terrifying articles ever published, wrote in 1997:

“There will be no peace. At any given moment for the rest of our lifetimes, there will be multiple conflicts in mutating forms around the globe. Violent conflict will dominate the headlines …The de facto role of the US armed forces will be to keep the world safe for our economy and open to our cultural assault. To those ends, we will do a fair amount of killing.”(2) (My emphasis.)

At the time, Peters was assigned to the Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, where he was responsible: “for future warfare.” His plans for Iraq worked out just fine – unless you are an Iraqi.

Peter’s Map of the New Middle East

Ralph Peters Map: The Project for the New Middle East

 

A month after Nazemroaya’s article was published, William Roebuck, Director for the Office of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, was composing an end of year strategy for Syria(3) from his study in the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, where he had been based between 2004-2007, rising to Deputy Chief of Mission.

The subject title was: “Influencing the SARG (Syrian Arab Regime Government) in the end of 2006.”

“The SARG ends 2006 in a much stronger position domestically and internationally (than in) 2005.” Talking of President Assad’s: “growing self-confidence”, he felt that this might lead to: “mistakes and ill-judged  … decisions … providing us with new opportunities.” Whilst: “additional bilateral or multilateral pressure can impact on Syria”, clearly he had even more ambitious plans:

“This cable summarizes our assessment of … vulnerabilities, and suggests that there may be actions, statements and signals, that the USG (US Government) can send that will improve the likelihood of such opportunities arising .”

The proposals would need to be: “fleshed out and converted into real actions and we need to be ready to move quickly to take advantage of such opportunities.” (no, not a Le Carré, Forsyth, or Fleming, “diplomat” in Damascus.)

“As the end of 2006 approaches” wrote Roebuck, “Bashar appears … stronger than he has done in two years. The country is economically stable …regional issues seem to be going Syria’s way.”

However: “vulnerabilities and looming issues may provide opportunities to up the pressure on Bashar … some of these vulnerabilities “(including the complexities with Lebanon)”… “can be exploited to put pressure on the regime. Actions that cause Bashar to lose balance, and increase his insecurity, are in our interest.”

The President’s: “ mistakes are hard to predict and benefits may vary, if we are prepared to move quickly and take advantage of opportunities …”

A “vulnerability”, wrote Roebuck, was Bashar al Assad’s protection of: “Syria’s dignity and international reputation.” Pride and “protection”, clearly a shocking concept.

In the light of the proposed Tribunal in to the assassination of Lebanon’s former`Prime Minister, Rafick Hariri (14th February 2005) killed with his friend, former Minister of Economy Bassel Fleihan and twenty colleagues and bodyguards, in a huge bomb, detonated under his motorcade, this “vulnerability” could be exploited.

Unproven allegations have pointed the finger at Israel, Syria, Hezbollah and myriad others, as behind another Middle East tragedy, but Roebuck regarded it as an: “opportunity to exploit this raw nerve, without waiting for the formation of the Tribunal.”

Another idea outlined under a further “vulnerability” heading, was the growing  alliance between Syria and Iran. “Possible action”, was to: “play on Sunni fears of Iranian influence.” Although these were: “often exaggerated”, they were there to be exploited:

“Both the local Egyptian and Saudi missions here … are giving increasing attention to the matter and we should co-ordinate more closely with their governments on ways to better publicize and focus regional attention to the issue.”

Concerned Sunni religious leaders should also be worked on. Iraq-style divide and rule model, writ large.

The “divide” strategy, of course, should also focus on the first family and legislating circle, with: “ targeted sanctions (which) must exploit fissures and render the inner circle weaker, rather the drive its members closer together.”

The public should also be subject to: “continual reminders of corruption … we should look for ways to remind …”

Another aspect to be exploited was: “The Khaddam factor.”

Abdul Halim Khaddam, was Vice President, 1984-2005, and acting President in 2000, during the months between Bashir al Assad’s accession and his father’s death.

Thought to have Presidential ambitions himself, there was a bitter split between Khaddam and al Assad after Hariri’s death. Allegations of treasonous betrayal by Khaddam have validity.

The ruling party, writes Roebuck: “…follow every news item involving Khaddam, with tremendous emotional interest. We should continue to encourage the Saudis and others to allow  Khaddam access to their media … providing him with venues for airing the SARG’s dirty laundry.”

Morever, it was anticipated that:  “an over reaction by the regime [would] add to its isolation and alienation from its Arab neighbours.”

On January 14th 2006, Khaddam had formed a government in exile, and had predicted the end of the al-Assad government by the year’s end.

He is currently regarded as an opposition leader, and has claimed, on Israel’s Channel 2 TV.(4) receiving money from the US and the EU to help overthrow  the Syrian government.

The ever creative Mr Roebuck’s further plans included:

“Encouraging rumours and signals of external plotting.” To this end: “Regional allies like  Egypt and Saudi Arabia should be encouraged to meet with figures like Kaddam  and Rifat (sic) al Assad, with appropriate leaking of the meetings afterwards. This … increases the possibility of a self-defeating over-reaction.”

Rifaat al Assad, Bashar’s uncle, was in charge of the Defence Brigade, who killed up to thirty thousand people in, and flattened much of, the city of Hama, in February 1982. So much for endlessly trumpeted concerns for: “human rights violations.” Rifaat al Assad lives in exile and safety, in London. Khaddam lives in Paris.(5)

Here is a serious cause for concern for the overthrow-bent: “Bashar keeps unveiling a steady stream of initiatives on reform and it is certainly possible he believes this is his legacy to Syria …. These steps have brought back Syrian expats to invest …  (and) increasing openness.”

Solution? “Finding ways to publicly call into question Bashar’s reform efforts.” Indeed, moving heaven and earth to undercut them, is made clear.

Further: “Syria has enjoyed a considerable up-tick in foreign direct investment”; it follows: foreign investment is to be: “discouraged.”

In May of 2006, complains Roebuck, Syrian Military Intelligence protested: “what they believed were U.S. efforts to provide military training and equipment to Syria’s Kurds.” The Iraq model, yet again.

The answer was to: “Highlight Kurdish complaints.”  This, however: “would need to be handled carefully, since giving the wrong kind of prominence to Kurdish issues in Syria, could be a liability for our efforts … given Syrian … civil society’s skepticism of Kurdish objectives.”

In “Conclusion”, this shaming, shoddy document states: “The bottom line is that Bashar is entering the New Year in a stronger position than he has been, in several years”, meaning “vulnerabilities” must be sought out.

“If we are ready to capitalize, they will offer us opportunities to disrupt his decision-making, keep him off balance – and make him pay a premium for his mistakes.”

The cable is copied to: The White House, U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Treasury, U.S. Mission at the UN, U.S. National Security Council, CENTCOM, all Arab League and EU countries.

The only U.S. Embassy which received a copy is that in Tel Aviv. William Roebuck worked at the Embassy in Tel Aviv (2000-2003) embracing the invasion of Iraq year.

In 2009, he was Deputy Political Consul In Baghdad: “leading efforts to support the critical 2009 Iraqi elections.” The “free and fair, democratic” ones, where people were threatened with the deaths of their children even, if they did not vote the “right” way.

The result was Nuri al Maliki’s premiership, complete with his murderous militias. The man under whose Ministry of the Interior, U.S. soldiers discovered tortured, starving prisoners.

The Damascus cable comes courtesy Wikileaks.

Lt. Colonel Peters called, on Fox News, for founder, Julian Assange, to be assassinated. The forty second clip(6) is worth the listen.

The Colonel also writes fiction and thrillers under the name Owen Patterson. Perhaps he is living the dream.

Felicity Arbutnot is Global Research’s Human Rights Correspondent based in London

Notes

1. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=3882

2. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3011.htm

3. http://wikileaks.cabledrum.net/cable/2006/12/06DAMASCUS5399.html

4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COqBQYcrd9Q

5. http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29501

6. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rS5h59iZg3o

First published on January 28, 2017.

Mid-March 2011. Ten Years Ago, Marks the Commencement of the War on Syria

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The following eight concepts are intended to clarify the nature of the war on Syria, which started ten years ago on March 17-18, 2011. 

It was never “a civil war”. It was an undeclared  war of aggression using Al Qaeda affiliated terrorists as the foot-soldiers of US-NATO and their Middle East allies.  

From day one, terrorists were involved in the killing of civilians. 

It started in Daraa as an insurgency integrated by Salafist mercenaries. 

Most of what is presented below is backed up by mainstream and official sources of information.  

1. The Daraa “Protest Movement” on March 17-18 2011

Daraa is a small border town.  National protest movements are invariably initiated in large urban areas.

The Daraa “Protests” had all the appearances of a staged event involving covert support to “Islamic terrorists”.

Government sources pointed to the role of radical Salafist groups.  In chorus, the Western media described the events in Daraa as a protest movement against Bashar Al Assad. Tacitly acknowledged by the media, many of the alleged “demonstrators” were professional killers.

In a bitter irony, the deaths of policemen were higher than those of “demonstrators”. It was not a protest movement, it was an armed insurgency.

In Daraa, roof top snipers were targeting both police and protesters  

Reading between the lines of Israeli and Lebanese news reports (which acknowledge the police deaths) a clearer picture of what happened in Daraa on March 17-18 had emerged. The Israel National News Report (which can not be accused of being biased in favor of Bashar al Assad) confirmed that:

“Seven police officers and at least four demonstrators in Syria have been killed in continuing violent clashes that erupted in the southern town of Daraa last Thursday. … and the Baath Party Headquarters and courthouse were torched, in renewed violence on Sunday. (Gavriel Queenann, Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests, Israel National News, Arutz Sheva, March 21, 2011, emphasis added)

The Lebanese news report also acknowledged the killings of seven policemen in Daraa.

[They were killed] “during clashes between the security forces and protesters… They got killed trying to drive away protesters during demonstration in Dara’a” 

The Lebanese Ya Libnan report quoting Al Jazeera also acknowledged that protesters had “burned the headquarters of the Baath Party and the court house in Dara’a” (emphasis added)

These news reports of the events in Daraa confirmed that from the very outset this was not a “peaceful protest” as claimed by the Western media.

Moreover, from an assessment of the initial casualty figures (Israel News), there were more policemen than “demonstrators” who were killed.

This is significant because it suggests that the police force may have initially been outnumbered by a well organized armed gang of professional killers.

2. Recruitment and Training of Terrorists From the Very Outset in 2011

Image on the right is from Massoud Nayeri

From Day One, the Islamist “freedom fighters” were supported, trained and equipped by NATO and Turkey’s High Command. According to Israeli intelligence sources:

NATO headquarters in Brussels and the Turkish high command are meanwhile drawing up plans for their first military step in Syria, which is to arm the rebels with weapons for combating the tanks and helicopters spearheading the Assad regime’s crackdown on dissent. … NATO strategists are thinking more in terms of pouring large quantities of anti-tank and anti-air rockets, mortars and heavy machine guns into the protest centers for beating back the government armored forces. (DEBKAfile, NATO to give rebels anti-tank weapons, August 14, 2011)

This initiative, which was also supported by Saudi Arabia and Qatar, involved a process of organized recruitment of thousands of jihadist “freedom fighters”, reminiscent of  the enlistment of  Mujahideen to wage the CIA’s jihad (holy war) in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:

Also discussed in Brussels and Ankara, our sources report, is a campaign to enlist thousands of Muslim volunteers in Middle East countries and the Muslim world to fight alongside the Syrian rebels. The Turkish army would house these volunteers, train them and secure their passage into Syria. (Ibid, emphasis added)

These mercenaries were subsequently integrated into US and allied sponsored terrorist organizations including Al Nusrah and ISIS.

3. June 2014. The Staged ISIS “Invasion” of Iraq

The Islamic State is protected by the US and its allies.

If they had wanted to eliminate the Islamic State brigades, they could have “carpet” bombed their convoys of Toyota pickup trucks when they crossed the desert from Syria into Iraq in June 2014.

\

The  Syro-Arabian Desert is open territory (see map below). With state of the art jet fighter aircraft (F15, F22 Raptor, CF-18) it would have been  -from a military standpoint-  a rapid and expedient surgical operation  

But the objective was not to eliminate them, the objective was to support them.

4. September 2014. Obama’s “Counter-Terrorism Campaign”. US-NATO and Coalition “Humanitarian” Airstrikes “Directed against ISIS”

In September 2014, Obama ordered a “counter-terrorism” bombing campaign against the ISIS in both Syria and Iraq.  This major bombing campaign was initiated two months months after the entry of the ISIS convoy of Toyota pickup trucks into Iraq in June 2014. The bombing campaign has now entered into its third year. Its objective was NOT to go after the Islamic State (ISIS-Daesh). The coalition consisted of some 4o countries five allied Arab monarchies, which are known to provide support to both ISIS and al Qaeda.  The “40-nation coalition that unleashed more than 200 airstrikes in Syria on a single night with state-of-the-art U.S. fighter planes and help from five allied Arab monarchies” Among the advanced weapons system allegedly used against the ISIS was the F-22 Raptor.

The total number of US and coalition sorties against Syria and Iraq is of the order of 111,410. This translates into an average of 147 sorties a day (over a period of 755 days).

  • More than 8,300 strike sorties have been carried out against Syria according to US Department of Defense sources.
  • The non-strike sorties have been used for the purposes of reconnaissance, logistics and coordination with terrorist commandos on the ground. 
  • 31,900 targets in Syria and Iraq have been hit by US war planes (see table below) including public buildings, residential areas, economic infrastructure (all of which was waged under a fake campaign against ISIS- Daesh).

Over a two year period (September 2014- September 2016)

Its all for a good cause. None of these strikes were directed at the Syrian people, according to official statements.

And these humanitarian statements have never been challenged by the Western media.

The initiative was part of the “Global War on Terrorism”. It was in violation of  international law. What we are dealing with are extensive war crimes directed against the people of Syria and Iraq. 

5. 2014-2016: 31,900 “Targets Damaged/Destroyed” by US and Coalition Air Raids

Source of Tables US Department of Defense, copyright US DoD, 2016

6. The Cost of Obama’s Air Campaign: 9.3 billion dollars 

755 days, 12.3 million dollars a day since August 2014

These are the costs of destroying Iraq and Syria. killing tens of thousands of Syrians, triggering a refugee crisis. These costs are ultimately financed by tax dollars. We are dealing with the conduct of extensive war crimes. The mainstream media remains on silent this issue. 

These 12.3 million dollars a day are the cost of destroying Syria and Iraq and killing their people.

In the table above the “official” breakdown is provided, the figures refer to US strikes against Syria and Iraq.

31,900 targets as part of a war on terrorism. Ironically, the number of terrorists has increased dramatically as a result of the “counter-terrorism” campaign, not to mention the NATO sponsored international campaign of recruitment of terrorists.

7. U.S. Weapons to Al Qaeda and ISIS 

According to Jane’s Defence Weekly, quoting documents released by the U.S. Government’s Federal Business Opportunities (FBO), the US –as part of its “counterterrorism campaign”– has provided Syrian rebels [aka moderate Al Qaeda] with large amounts of weapons and ammunition.

The US and its allies (including Turkey and Saudi Arabia) have relied on the illicit trade in light weaponry produced in Eastern Europe, the Balkans, China, etc. for delivery to rebel groups inside Syria, including ISIS-Daesh and Al Nusra. In turn, operating out of the occupied Golan Heights, Israel’s IDF has provided weapons, ammunition, logistical support to Al Qaeda rebels operating in Southern Syria.

While Washington’s Middle East allies undertake shady transactions in a buoyant market for light weapons, a significant part of these illicit weapons shipments is nonetheless directly commissioned by the US government.

These shipments of weapons are not conducted through internationally approved weapons transfers. While they are the result of  a Pentagon (or US government) procurement, they are not recorded as “official” military aid. They use private traders and shipping companies within the realm of a thriving illicit trade in light weapons.

Based on the examination of a single December 2015 Pentagon sponsored shipment of more than 990 tons, one can reasonably conclude that the amounts of light weapons in the hands of  ”opposition” rebels inside Syria is substantial and exceedingly large.

Screenshot from Jane’s Defense Report

For further details click here

8. Weapons “Made in Canada” Delivered to Saudi Arabia, A State Sponsor of Terrorism  

Ottawa’s deal with Saudi Arabia is coordinated with Washington. It essentially serves the Pentagon’s military agenda in the Middle East, it channels billions of dollars to the US military industrial complex.

Amply documented, Saudi Arabia is the state sponsor of Al Qaeda affiliated “opposition groups” in Syria including the Islamic State (ISIS). Riyadh –acting in liaison and on behalf of Washington– plays a central role in the financing of the Islamic State (ISIS) as well as the recruitment, training and religious indoctrination of terrorist mercenary forces deployed in Syria and Iraq.

What this signifies is that Canada is selling weapons to a country which is supporting and sponsoring terrorist organizations.  Moreover Saudi Arabia is currently involved in a war of aggression against Yemen in blatant derogation of international law.

The weapons are “Made in Canada” produced by General Dynamics Land Systems, London, Ontario., a subsidiary of US defense contractor General Dynamics.

General Dynamics has subsidiaries in 43 countries including Canada.

Ottawa’s official stance is that these weapons which include “combat vehicles with machine guns and anti-tank cannons” are to be used by Saudi Arabia solely for purposes of national defense. They are not be used against civilians.

Opponents of Canada’s $15-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia took Ottawa to court. The action was led by law Professor Daniel Turp together with students of the University of Montreal. In a recent judgment (January 23) by Federal Court in Montreal, the case was dismissed: “Justice Daniele Tremblay-Lamer ruled that the court’s role was not to “pass moral judgment” on the decision by then-foreign affairs minister Stéphane Dion to issue export permits allowing the deal.”

9. The Liberation of Aleppo

While Aleppo has been liberated against the scourge of US-NATO supported terrorism, most mainstream media are accusing Syrian government forces of committing atrocities against civilians, describing Aleppo as a humanitarian crisis. What they fail to mention is that for the last four years the Eastern part of  Aleppo has been occupied by Al Qaeda terrorists who are now upheld as “opposition” rebels.

The terrorists are described as the victims of Syrian government aggression. From the very outset, the atrocities committed by the terrorists are casually blamed on Syrian government forces and their allies.

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It’s no secret that Bill Gates and the advocates of the UN Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 are also devout promoters of human eugenics, the “thinning of the Human Herd” as Britain’s misanthropic Prince Philip once put it. Some such as Joachim Schnellnhuber, climate adviser to the Pope, openly welcome a human population below one billion as “sustainable.” Now serious research is emerging that one of the most effective reducers of the human population is being spread by so-called “modern scientific agriculture” through the select use of toxic agrochemicals, pesticides deemed safe which are anything but safe.

According to a new book by Dr Shanna Shaw, Count Down, the male sperm count in Western industrial countries, including the EU and USA, is falling at a dramatic rate. Shaw estimates that over the past four decades the average sperm count has dropped by 50% or more. In other words a young male today seeking to have a family has only half the sperm count his grandfather did, half the chance to conceive. Shaw estimates that unless toxic chemical exposures in agriculture and the environment are dramatically altered, we may not have the ability to reproduce naturally much longer, and that by 2050 most human beings in the industrial countries, including China, will need technological assistance to procreate.

Shaw’s book is a further elaboration of a 2017 peer-reviewed scientific paper which Shaw and colleagues published. In the paper, Shaw carefully analyzed a total of 244 estimates of Sperm Concentration and Total Sperm Count (TSC) from 185 studies of 42 935 men who provided semen samples in 1973–2011. What they found was alarming to the extreme. But beyond a few media headlines, no changes of consequence resulted, as the powerful agrochemical corporations such as Bayer-Monsanto, Syngenta, DowDuPont (now Corteva) lobbied regulators to ignore the findings.

Shaw found that “Among Unselected Western studies, the mean Sperm Concentration declined, on average, 1.4% per year with an overall decline of 52.4% between 1973 and 2011.” The same group of males, had “an average decline in mean TSC of 1.6% per year and overall decline of 59.3%.” That is a sperm count decline as of a decade ago of more than 59% in men, unselected by fertility, from North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand. And it continues to decline year by year.

Because of lack of serious support for new studies, updated data is limited. Fifteen years ago, over half of potential sperm donors in Hunan Province, China, met quality standards. Now, only 18% do, a decline blamed on endocrine disrupting chemicals according to one study. A similar fall in sperm count was registered by researchers in Taiwan, as well as a similar result for Israel. Shaw concludes, “male reproductive health, not just semen quality by the way, is in trouble, and this has consequences, not just for the ability to have a child, but it also impacts the health of the man.” She cites as examples, “low sperm count, infertility, testicular cancer, and various general defects. One of them is undescended testicles, another one is a condition where the opening of the urethra is not where it should be…”

Endocrine Disruptors

Swan, today with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, believes the cause is to be found in the huge rise in toxic chemical exposures in recent decades, especially of chemicals known as “endocrine disruptors” or hormone disruptors. She points to “chemicals that make plastics soft, which are phthalates, or chemicals that make plastics hard like Bisphenol A, or chemicals that are flame retardants, chemicals that are in Teflon, and so on, pesticides…”

The last, pesticides, is the group that should send loud alarm bells ringing because it is proven to get into groundwater and the human food chain. Today the two most widely used pesticides in the world are Bayer-Monsanto’s Roundup containing the probable carcinogen, glyphosate, and Azatrine made by Syngenta, which today is owned by ChemChina.

Atrazine effects

In 2010 a renowned University of California, Berkeley scientist, Tyrone B. Hayes, professor of integrative biology, led a major study of the effect of Atrazine exposure for frogs. He found that the pesticide, widely used on US corn crops and sugarcane, wreaks havoc with the sex lives of adult male frogs, emasculating three-quarters of them and turning one in 10 into females. He found ,“These male frogs are missing testosterone and all the things that testosterone controls, including sperm.” Moreover Hayes noted that the 10% of frogs exposed to Atrazine that “turn from males into females – something not known to occur under natural conditions in amphibians – can successfully mate with male frogs but, because these females are genetically male, all their offspring are male.” Hayes declared, “I believe that the preponderance of the evidence shows atrazine to be a risk to wildlife and humans.”

Atrazine is a potent endocrine disruptor. Atrazine is also the second-most widely used herbicide in the US behind Monsanto’s glyphosate product, Roundup. Despite the evidence, in a controversial ruling the US Environmental Protection Agency, in 2007 ruled that “Atrazine does not adversely affect amphibian sexual development and that no additional testing was warranted.” End of story? Hardly. But in 2004 the EU banned Atrazine saying Syngenta failed to prove its safety in drinking water.

Another agrochemical that has been determined to be an endocrine disruptor is Monsanto’s Roundup with glyphosate. Roundup is the world’s most widely used pesticide, in over 140 countries including Russia and China. Its use on US GMO crops has exploded in recent years as almost 90% of US corn is GMO, and a similar percent of its soybeans. Between 1996 when GMO Monsanto corn and soybeans were authorized in the USA, and 2017, Americans’ exposure to the chemical grew 500 percent. It has been tested in drinking water, cereals in stores and in urine of pregnant women. Almost all meat and poultry is saturated with glyphosate from animal feed.

A recent study carried out in Australia by researchers at Flinders University found that Roundup killed the cells that produce progesterone in women, causing their levels to drop. Glyphosate and Roundup have been “linked to birth defects, reproductive problems and liver disease, and it has been shown to have the potential to harm the DNA of human umbilical cord, placental and embryonic cells.”

In 2015 scientists in Nigeria examined the effects of combined exposure to both glyphosate and Atrazine on rats. They found the combination was even worse with effects on sperm, testosterone synthesis and male reproductive organs.

In 2016 China’s state-owned chemicals giant, ChemChina, bought Syngenta for a colossal $43 billion. At the time ChemChina had distribution rights in China and other Asian countries for Monsanto Roundup as well. On the ChemChina website it lists Atrazine among the herbicides it sells, calling it a “safe and efficient herbicide for corn fields…” ChemChina is also the leading producer of glyphosate for the Chinese agriculture market.

Today China is facing, by its own admission, a major agriculture crisis and is also struggling with ways to insure food security. Reports are that an increased role for GMO crops with Chinese patents will be a central part of a new five year plan which would undoubtedly mean using glyphosate and Atrazine. At the same time the state is increasingly alarmed by the falling birth rate which has not improved despite relaxations on the One Child policy. With Chinese farmers using significant amounts of pesticide chemicals including glyphosate and Atrazine to improve yields, they are pursuing a disastrous combination that will not only not solve the growing food crisis, but also may destroy the reproductive potential of a major portion of its 890 million rural population, as well as countless millions of urban citizens.

Are these dangerous endocrine disrupting agrochemicals allowed worldwide because of bureaucratic ignorance of the damage caused by glyphosates, Atrazine and other endocrine disrupters on the human reproduction? Is it only because of corporate greed for hyper profits that they exist? A 1975 quote from Henry Kissinger, author of the eugenics document NSSM-200 during the Nixon-Ford era is instructive: “Depopulation should be the highest priority of foreign policy towards the third world, because the US economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries.”

And from Bill Gates: \“The world today has 6.8 billion people…that’s headed up to about 9 billion. If we do a really great job on vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 to 15 percent.”

Or the grand old dog of eugenics, Prince Philip: “I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.” ~ Prince Philip, in his Foreword to “If I Were an Animal” – United Kingdom, Robin Clark Ltd., 1986.

We are rapidly making the human species extinct as we continue to ignore dangers of these toxins to human and other life forms.

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

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

Featured image is from New Eastern Outlook

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***

Syrian investors have about $42 billion in Lebanese banks. The corrupt Lebanese banking system has frozen those accounts and prevented withdrawals.  The Syrian economic crisis is caused in large part by the Lebanese crisis. 

In the summer of 2019, the Lebanese crisis began with street protests. This was instigated by the US to create the conditions needed to freeze the Syrian money in the banks, thus preventing the rebuilding of Syria now that the war is over.

The US strategy has two tracks: one to tie-up the Syrian money, and the other to put pressure on Lebanese President Michel Aoun and the Lebanese resistance.

Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Dr. Jamal Wakim, who holds a Ph.D. in International Relations and Modern Arab History from the Universite St Joseph, Beirut, Lebanon.  His answers illuminate the headlines of the current Lebanese news.

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Steven Sahiounie (SS):  One week ago, the Lebanese protesters attacked and destroyed a sign on Hamra street which was a memorial to the martyr Khaled Alwan, who carried out an operation against Israeli occupiers in the 1980s.  In your opinion, why did the protesters do that against the symbol of the operation, which was considered one of the biggest in Lebanon, against the Israeli occupation?

Jamal Wakim (JW):  The protesters did that because many of them are financed by the Americans and paid for their hidden agenda, which is to normalize relations with Israel.

SS:  The tension between President Aoun and Prime Minister Hariri plays a big role in the crisis in Lebanon. Do you think that the disagreement between them will continue, or is there a solution before the collapse of Lebanon?

JW:    I believe that the disagreement between them is due to a wider regional agenda of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the US to corner Hezbollah by exerting pressure on Michel Aoun, the strongest ally of Hezbollah. They think this way Hezbollah will not be represented in the government, hence they would be able to form a government that complies with US requirements to delegitimize Hezbollah weapons and impose western tutelage on Lebanon. However, based on the regional and international developments, this attempt will fail and an agreement might be reached between Iran and the West which would have a positive impact on Lebanon easing the tension and leading to a national compromise.

SS:  Many of the Lebanese people and politicians place the blame on Riad Salameh for the economic crisis. In your view do you think that he is solely responsible?

JW:  Actually Salameh is not solely responsible for the crisis, it is the whole financial capitalist class and its political allies which have imposed a monopoly on the country and benefitted from all economic and financial policies over the past three decades leading to the current crisis. That was the reason why all political parties in power were unanimous in voting for Salameh successive terms since 1992. And that is the reason why they refuse to dismiss him and put him on trial. They are all part of the same gang that has sucked off the blood of the Lebanese people.

SS:  The international community has pressured Lebanon because of their resistance stance against the occupation of Palestine, Lebanon, and Syria. How will the resistance react to this pressure?

JW:  The strategy of Hezbollah is to gain time until the regional and international situation changes to their favor as they think that what is happening in Lebanon is related to other controversial issues in the Middle East.

SS:  The Lebanese pound is at the lowest point and the Lebanese economy needs as much help as it can get. Do you see a foreign actor stepping in to help Lebanon?

JW:  Lebanon has always been a haven for French capitalist investments which were coupled with petrodollar money starting from the 1950s, in case of a regional and international agreement Lebanon might benefit from French capital investments, noting that petrodollar has left Lebanon to Dubai, Bahrain, and other Gulf financial centers.

SS:  Syria and Lebanon are historically one country and both need each other, but the Lebanese Pro-US politicians are refusing to improve this relationship. Do you think that all Lebanese politicians will get to the point that they will have to extend their hand and work with Syria?

JW:  On the geopolitical level, part of what is happening in Lebanon is directed against Syria, for an unstable Lebanon has always had a negative impact on stability in Syria. The US has lost much of its bargaining in Syria and is trying to make up for this loss by taking full control of Lebanon. On the economic level, Lebanon has always benefitted from being the gateway of western capital into Syria and the region via the port of Beirut-Damascus axis; many Lebanese capitalist families are of Damascene or Aleppan origins, so at a time when Syria was thinking of reconstruction, the Lebanese crisis, partly generated by US sanctions, was directed against Syrian efforts of reconstruction.

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

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The West-Iran conflict is extremely a-symmetric. It’s the West that has, historically, sought to influence, change, threaten, demanded obedience from, punished (with sanctions and more), liquidated high-level politicians and scholars, shot down a civilian plane, demonised and excluded Iran. Not to speak of giving Saddam Hussein the chemical weapons and the green light for his war on Iran in 1980.

Iran has not done similar harm to the West.

The conflict’s roots go back to 1953 when the US’s CIA and the UK’s MI6 orchestrated a coup d’état, or regime-change, in Tehran and deposed the democratically elected Prime Minister, Dr Mohammad Mossadegh and installed the Shah and made Iran the most militarised country in the region (and gave it nuclear power).

Iran and the West have been on a collision course ever since around various issues. The biggest has been whether or not Iran should be “allowed” to have nuclear weapons. In addition to strong Western political pressure, sanctions and embargo have been imposed since 1987.

From Day One this whole affair has been a sort of the Theatre of the Absurd. Here sits a series of nuclear weapons powers – the US, Russia, the UK, France and China – which for decades have arrogantly ignored every attempt at real nuclear reductions, nuclear abolition and the UN goal of general and complete disarmament – and force through a deal that tells Iran to not acquire what they themselves obviously cannot live without.

Furthermore, next door is heavily-armed nuclear weapons state, Israel, that – in contrast to Iran – became a nuclear weapons state in the 1960s with the full blessings of the West, accepts no inspections, is not a member of the NPT (the Non-Proliferation Treaty) and is the only country violating the UN’s normative work which dates back to the 1970s to establish a legally binding Weapons Of Mass Destruction-free zone in the Middle East.

We should be grateful that Iran has put up with it and joined the nuclear deal in 2015, the JCPOA.

President Trump withdrew the US from that deal and few have understood that that was a gross violation of international law because the JCPOA was part of a UN Security Council resolution. And in addition to the psychological effects of dropping what has been one of the most important deals ever negotiated – in my view, the alternative at the time would have been war – he also slammed new sweeping suffocating sanctions on Iran that increased further the very serious suffering of country’s innocent citizens.

I want my readers to be aware that these sanctions also include humanitarian aid. In 2019 and just as a test, I tried to donate the equivalent of US $ 5 to the Iranian Red Crescent – when millions of people were hit by floods. The Nordea bank blocked the transfer with a blurred reference to there being “sanction in the country.” I have written the story here and published my Open Letter to the Chair of Nordea’s Board. Not a word in response.

And what was – and is – the reason? It is that anyone who does business transactions with Iran will be punished by the US Treasury. Other countries such as the EU have de facto and de jure accepted that American sanctions on Iran shall also be applied by them which means that US law is applied in otherwise sovereign states. That’s why my Nordea bank would not transfer those US $ 5 to help Irans in need.

No media among a few thousands I sent the above article to took up that story.

Even US State Department has acknowledged that Iran was in compliance with every aspect of the JCPOA until the US scrapped it. Thereafter, it increased the level of enrichment but, as stated repeatedly by Iran’s brilliant foreign minister (and West connoisseur), Javad Zarif, it will be adjusted down again immediately after the sanctions that should have been lifted from 2015 are finally lifted.

The Future

Let me admit two things before I continue here. One, we have listened more than enough to the general US/Western view and perspectives on Iran – in politics, media and research. We have listened far too little to what the conflict is about and to what Iran’s views of the West and the conflict are and what its future goals may be.

Two, I do not believe that even 1% of the people who shape and conduct the media war and the political war on Iran have ever visited the country or have any deeper sense about its culture, history and people – and the suffocation of the later by sanctions. If you don’t, you should forget about finding a peaceful solution.

The difference between the generalised Western image of Iran and the reality any visitor will experience is, simply put, mind-boggling.

While the Biden-Blinken team states that the US is back and totally different from the Trump days, there is nothing new. Instead, it takes advantage of Trump’s withdrawal. Because what it says is this:

Iran must first come into compliance with the deal and then the US may re-enter – depending, it seems, also on Iran being willing to negotiate a new deal in which several other non-nuclear issues shall be included – such as what conventional missiles and what influence it can have in the Middle East in general and in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere, and with Hezbollah.

And to make its point and to continue stealing Syria’s oil, Biden authorised military attack on Iran-supported militias inside Syria on February 25, 2021 – not one comment pointing out that this was an act of aggression or asking why the US still has hundreds of military facilities in Iraq and 11 bases in Syria around the main oil fields and re-enforcing them.

There is in my view not 1% of a chance that a sovereign state should or would accept such dictate. None of the existing nuclear weapons powers waited for a kind of permission from anyone when they decided to go nuclear; they just did it.

In addition, the religious Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, has repeatedly stated that nuclear weapons are ”Haram” – forbidden – according to the Quran. It is my impression from a number of visits to Iran and conversations with various experts, scholars and media people that Iran does not want to become a nuclear weapons power. They see that that would mean escalation and automatically legitimise Israel’s existing up to 400 nuclear weapons.

This entire issue now has a new frame. As of January 22, 2021, all nuclear weapons exist in violation of the new, truly historical, UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, TPNW. In other words, Iran is in a legally correct position, the majority of those imposing themselves on its policies do so from a position of illegality.

As I said, Iran cannot be expected to accept such injustice, such bullying in response to its status as a non-nuclear weapons state.

My prediction, therefore, is – and I hope by all my heart that I am wrong and some miracle happens – that the Biden Administration will conclude that Iran is not bowing down to US dictates and will neither accept its content nor its sequencing.

Iran is not Iraq where soldiers rapidly put on civilian clothes and ran away in March 2003. But Iran is a very small military power when compared with those who could, and probably, would gang up against it – the US, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and members of NATO. And while Iran is rapidly turning its back on the West and its face to China and Russia, they would hardly intervene military in support of Iran.

Iran does have some advantages in that equation of power – such as closing the Hormuz Strait – but, again, US military power would then probably just increase as would the suffering of the Iranian people.

What could prevent such a terrible military scenario?

The only other scenario is that the other parties, China and Russia in particular, to the JCPOA as well as all of the EU with one voice tells Biden this: 1) Rejoin the JCPOA, 2) lift the sanctions on Iran according to the JCPOA and the secondary sanctions on us, 3) let’s dialogue with Iran about how to pick up the pieces and begin various types of civilian interaction and 4) let’s find a formula that enables us all to discuss a new stable order for security and peace in all the Middle East.

With just one positive move by the West, I am positive that Iran would immediately come into compliance again with all provisions and would be eager to cooperate with the West.

It would be reasonable also that the US paid reparations for the harm done to Iran and its suffering people. Remember, that more people died from 13 years of sanctions in Iraq than from the military violence.

However and to my chagrin, the EU has proven unable to deal with anything important with the one voice stipulated in the Lisbon Treaty. It could not get its acts together concerning the refugees in 2015; it has accepted US policies vis-a-vis Iran and also faltered miserably when it comes to the Corona crisis. Nationalisms prevailing.

Under Trump, the US has undermined its own diplomatic capacity. It is a declining super power that is only second to none in one field – the military. The US does not have a MIMAC – Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex; rather, towards its end, like the Soviet Union at its end, is is a MIMAC. There may be quite a few in Washington who see a new armament drive and a new war as a welcome distraction/cover-up for the deep inner crisis that existed and has now become much worse because of the Corona.

If the West and the JCPOA countries could come together and offer Iran something reasonable and fair in the direction of the four points above, we would avoid a terrible war (or some nasty military actions) with unavoidable regional and global consequences. And we would see the world moving in a better, more balanced direction in which Iran plays its rightful role as one of the world’s oldest continuous civilizations with a history going back to 7000 BC.

And my long-term vision in such a perspective?

Iran as “different” as it is, could become a kind of Switzerland of the Middle East and a central player on the new Silk Roads, an important connector of the Far, the Middle and the Near East and the West (Venice, the Arctic, Belgrade and London) – and also include the US if it should decide to become one among equals and seek permanent cooperation instead of permanent confrontation.

*

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Prof. Jan Oberg, Ph.D. is director of the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research, TFF and a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. CV: https://transnational.live/jan-oberg
https://transnational.live

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***

I have a new book out, Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism. For those who don’t use Amazon, here is a mini-guide on how to order and buy the book. 

The journey of a book finding its readers is always an idiosyncratic, mysterious and fascinating process. To set the scene, permit me a short presentation drawn from the book’s introduction.

The Raging Twenties started with a murder: a missile strike on General Soleimani at Baghdad airport on January 3. Almost simultaneously, that geopolitical lethality was amplified when a virus trained its microscopic missiles on all of humankind.

Ever since, it’s been as if time had stood still – or imploded. We cannot even begin to imagine the consequences of the anthropological rupture caused by SARS-CoV-2.

Throughout the process, language has been metastasizing, yielding a whole new basket of concepts. Circuit breaker. Biosecurity. Negative feedback loops. State of exception. Necropolitics. New brutalism. Hybrid neofascism. New viral paradigm.

This new terminology collates to the lineaments of a new regime, actually a hybrid mode of production: turbo-capitalism re-engineered as rentier capitalism 2.0, where Silicon Valley behemoths take the place of estates, and also of the state. That is the “techno-feudal” option, as defined by economist Cedric Durand.

Squeezed and intoxicated by information performing the role of a dominatrix, we have been presented with a new map of Dystopia – packaged as a “new normal” featuring cognitive dissonance, a bio-security paradigm, the inevitability of virtual work, social distancing as a political program, info-surveillance and triumphant trans-humanism.

A sanitary shock was superimposed over the ongoing economic shock – where financialization always takes precedence over the real economy.

But then the glimpse of a rosy future was offered towards more “inclusive “capitalism, in the form of a Great Reset, designed by a tiny plutocratic oligarchy duly self-appointed as Saviors.

All of these themes evolve along the 25 small chapters of this book, interacting with the larger geopolitical chessboard.

SARS-CoV-2 accelerated what was already a swing of the power center of the world toward Asia.

Since World War II, a great deal of the planet has lived as cogs of a tributary system, with the hegemon constantly transferring wealth and influence to itself – via what analyst Ray McGovern describes as the SS (security state) enforcing the will of the MICIMATT (Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank) complex.

This world-system is irretrievably fading out – especially due to the interpolations of the Russia-China strategic partnership. And that’s the other overarching theme of this book.

As a proposal to escape our excess hyper-reality show, this book does not offer recipes, but trails: configurations where there’s no master plan, but multiple entryways and multiple possibilities.

These trails are networked to the narrative of a possible, emerging new configuration, in the anchoring essay titled Eurasia, The Hegemon and the Three Sovereigns.

In a running dialogue, you will have Michel Foucault talking to Lao Tzu, Marcus Aurelius talking to Vladimir Putin, philosophy talking to geoeconomics – all the while attempting to defuse the toxic interaction of the New Great Depression and variations of Cold War 2.0.

With the exception of the anchoring essay, this is a series of columns, arranged chronologically, originally published here by Asia Times and also by Consortium News/Washington D.C., and Strategic Culture/Moscow, widely republished and translated across the Global South.

They come from a global nomad. Since the mid 1990s I have lived and worked between (mostly) East and West. With the exception of the first two months of 2020, I spent the bulk of the Raging Twenties in Asia, in Buddhist land.

So you will feel that the scent of these words is inescapably Buddhist, but in many aspects even more Daoist and Confucianist. In Asia we learn that the Dao transcends everything as it provides serenity. There’s much we can learn from Daoist humanism, no metaphysics necessary.

The year 2021 may be even fiercer than 2020. Yet nothing condemns us to be lost in a wilderness of mirrors while, as Pound writes:

a tawdry cheapness / shall reign throughout our days.

The hidden “secret” of this book may be actually a yearning – that we’re able to muster our inner strength and choose a Daoist trail to ride the whale.

*

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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


Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism in the Era of COVID-19 by [Pepe Escobar ]Raging Twenties: Great Power Politics Meets Techno-Feudalism in the Era of COVID-19

by Pepe Escobar

Publisher: Nimble Books LLC (February 10, 2021)

ASIN: B08WHKK3XN

Print length: 170 pages

Click here to order.

.

.

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Our Lives Between the Covers of the Raging Twenties: Pepe Escobar’s New Book

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***

Nowadays, there is a relative consensus among international analysts about the escalation of the military-politic-economic struggles among the great powers, mainly the United States, China, and Russia. The roots of this process were at the end of the Cold War when the United States reshaped its global geostrategy and established opposition to all regional threats to its global hegemony.

Instead of reducing its foreign military presence after its victory against the Soviet Union, the United States has expanded its military bases in the world since then. For example, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has enlarged by including twelve new members since 1999. Around the world, the United States owned eight hundred foreign military bases in 2015, whereas the rest of the great powers altogether had only thirty outside of their territories.1 Furthermore, the United States and NATO have carried out different conflicts, interventions, and wars since 1991. Firstly, one could mention the interventions in the Balkans during the nineties and, later in the Great Middle East, the sequence of wars and actions against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, for example.

By the way, all this strength requires an ability to support expenses in a bigger proportion than other countries. Besides, it isn’t the American citizens who pay for all these military actions, presence, and structure in all parts of the world. It comes from: the position of the American currency in the international monetary system; and the way this system has worked since the eighties.

All the public and private international agents have to act based on the U.S. dollar to carry out their operations abroad. They also have to pile up positive balances in this currency. Only this way, public authorities can deal with the unstable capital flows so typical of the current international economic system. Otherwise, they couldn’t act to preserve the value of their currency in the exchange markets and, also, to ensure the autonomy of their economic policy. For these reasons, the best economic-political strategy is to pile up foreign exchange reserves in the American dollar to stabilize the national exchange rate and also provide some kinds of capital controls avoiding unstable movements.

Therefore, associated with the diffusion of this economic-political strategy among countries, there is a strong demand for dollar-denominated financial assets. All countries in the world have been trying to obtain growing U.S. dollar reserves, mainly the U. S. government debt securities (bills, notes, and bonds). It looks as if there was limitless demand for this kind of asset in the current system. This fact has been allowing the U.S. governments out of proportional spending capacities and chronic macroeconomic imbalances. By and large, the whole world has made it possible for the United States to wage wars and interventions in all continents of the globe.

Considering these arguments are corrected, one may ask, what are the foundations of the dollar position as the monetary standard? During the Second World War, the United States was able to impose its currency by different means. First of all, there was the lend-lease policy: a program under which the United States supplied food, oil, and armies to the allies. All countries ended the conflict dollar indebted, even the defeated, mainly Germany and Japan, whose war repair debts were defined in American dollar, by the Treaties of Yalta and Potsdam.

Second, the United States was the “center of gravity of world oil production” until the end of the war, and since 1945 it has set control of the new center, Saudi Arabia, ensuring the pricing of oil in U.S. dollar. From that time, every country that needed to import oil had to pay in dollars.

Third, in the post-war, all the new multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, had the U.S. currency as the reference in their original agreements.

Finally, the strategy of rebuilding Japan and Western Europe, known as the Marshall Plan and associated with the Truman Doctrine, reinforced the position of the U.S. dollar as the international monetary standard. Hence, the U.S. dollar was the mean to access financial support and other ways of assistance. Since then, the oil pricing and the monetary reference in the multilateral institutions have become two central pillars of the U.S. diplomacy in defense of the dollar as the international standard.

It has never been a market choice nor the result of extensive negotiations among different States. It has always been the output of disputes among great powers by advantages related to the monetary standard. First, the international currency allows the expansion of the spending capacity of the issuer state, due to the demand increasing for assets denominated in it. Besides, it creates advantages to the internationalization of their banks, which can operate with the international monetary standard easier than any other. Finally, the currency becomes a foreign policy tool since the State, whose money is the international standard, can provide liquidity to allies and squeeze rivals.

In this context, two recent initiatives hit straight in the most important bases of the U.S. currency in the world. The first one has been the new multilateral financial institutions capable of competing with the IMF and the World Bank for stabilization loans and international financing. The BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement and the New Development Bank of the BRICS, if consolidated, they would empty the Bretton Woods institutions’ power of framing. In the event of success and global projection, the BRICS institutions would gain the potential to put pressure on the current international monetary hierarchy by the diffusion of a currency other than the U.S. dollar.

The second initiative of real de-dollarization is the disputes over the currency of quotation (pricing) of oil traded internationally. In 2018, China launched the first renminbi (petroyuan) oil futures contracts traded on the Shanghai futures market, competing with the New York and London markets, where one negotiates such contracts in dollars. Therefore, there is already an organized global oil market outside the U.S. dollar. Russia, for its part, has increased bilateral agreements for non-dollar trading, including its oil. It has also divested a significant share of its dollar reserves and announcing the issuance of sovereign debt securities in Chinese currency. The Venezuelan government has stated a similar intention to reduce its dollar operations in its international transactions. The point here is the fact that Venezuela has become the world’s most important oil reserve, even surpassing Saudi Arabia. Other countries, such as Iran, have also implemented similar policies.

In an interview in 2019, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, former president of Brazil (2003-10), disclosed the problem to the journalist Pepe Escobar.

 “At the BRICS meeting in Fortaleza [2014], I talked with my companion of party Dilma [then president of Brazil, 2011-16] that Brazil should make a pact more or less the same as what Russia had done with China. A great pact. The BRICS was not created as a defense instrument but as an attack one. It was to coin its currency in order not to depend on the dollar in commercial relations. And the U.S. was very afraid of it. Obama once called me asking if we were looking to create a new currency, and I said no, I’m just trying to get rid of the dollar. I don’t want to be dependent.” (TV 247, Aug 22, 2019).2

It is interesting to remember that, simultaneously to this event in 2014, it occurred a summit between BRICS and the Union of South American Nations (USAN), in which were present leaders from Russia, China, India, South Africa, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Brazil. The USAN created for the first time a space for negotiation to the south American countries without the United States, which is different from the Organization of American States (OAS). Indeed, through BRICS and the USAN, Brazil became the connection between South America and the current U.S. challengers in the international system, Russia and China.

Two years later, Dilma Rousseff had the mandate interrupted, and after other two years, Lula da Silva, the most popular politician in the country, was arrested. It is no for small reason that Brazilian foreign policy has changed since 2016, returning to a tradition of automatic alignment with Washington, a direction not favorable neither to the USAN nor BRICS.

*

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Mauricio Metri is a Professor Associate at the Institute of International Relations and Defense of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil, and the Graduate Program in International Political Economy (UFRJ). PhD, Master and Graduate in Economics.

Notes

Vine, Davi. Base Nation: how U.S. military bases abroad harm America and the world. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2015. (pp. 5).

On Modern Feminism

March 13th, 2021 by Prof. Ruel F. Pepa

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***

“Other people will call me a rebel, but I just feel like I’m living my life and doing what I want to do. Sometimes people call that rebellion, especially when you’re a woman.” — Joan Jett

“Feminism is not a dirty word. It does not mean you hate men, it does not mean you hate girls that have nice legs and a tan, and it does not mean you are a ‘bitch’ or ‘dyke’; it means you believe in equality.” — Kate Nash

“I’d like every man who doesn’t call himself a feminist to explain to the women in his life why he doesn’t believe in equality for women.” — Louise Brealey

The present discussion specifically focuses on

(1) second-wave feminism, also called modern feminism (which emerged in the 1960s and was highlighted by the publication in 1963 of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique) whose principal aim is to end gender discrimination and

(2) post-modern or third-wave feminism (which came out ca. 1990s) whose centerpiece is sexuality as a significant foundation of female empowerment. Antedating these two waves was the pre-modern or first wave ( in the 19th century) feminism whose main concern was on woman’s suffrage or right to vote.

One presupposition that stands out though in dealing with this issue is the fact that feminism as an ideology and a movement is unilaterally a western socio-cultural and politico-economic concern. The height of its assertive defiance is in the context of a western industrial society whose fundamental landscape has been dominated by the male species being simply a continuation and perpetuation of patriarchy in the preceding civilizations both ancient and medieval. If however, we find feminist movements in Asian societies, these are almost certainly the more heavily western-influenced ones.

Feminism, in general, is an assertive stance against social prescriptions that undermine the dignity of the woman as a human being.

We find this woman-debasing condition in almost all social institutions where the rules of the game–both implied and expressed–are almost always male-centered, male-promoting and hence absolutely advantageous to the social standing of the man. In this kind of social arrangement, the man is in full control of major concerns such as organizational leadership, decision-making, rules-formulation and institutional administration among others. In this state of affairs, it is the man who calls the shots, so to speak. It is against this pernicious social setting that the woman has rebelled to actively assert her rights, her dignity, her creativity, her competence, her humanity and the distillation of all these is cogently imbued in the ideological framework of feminism.

Pushed against the male-dominated social wall, the prejudiced woman of the modern western industrial society has seen her disparaged condition and resolved once and for all to rise up and subvert the imbalanced system. With an unwavering will power that even surpassed that of a man’s heart, she has moved onward traversing old and seemingly secured cultural frontiers to claim territories society bestowed on her male counterpart since time immemorial. In this particular instance, feminism is not only an ideology but a movement. Along the rugged socio-cultural terrain, the woman succeeds in demonstrating not only to the man but likewise to the docile segment of her species the reality that she is perfectly able to dabble and accomplish a lot of endeavors culturally assigned to the man without necessarily losing her femininity.

We’ve seen her as an accomplished engineer directing an army of construction workers in a high-rise building project smack at the center of the metropolis.

We’ve witnessed her mettle operating a bulldozer in a highway construction project. Right in the busy inner-city streets,  we have boarded countless times the bus or the taxi she drives, or the subway train she operates. Nowadays, she is no longer as defiant and angry as in the past several decades ago hollering invectives against the system in mass mobilizations.

With the total confidence of a seasoned performer, she soberly does her job today with a high sense of achievement while reminiscing the past when such kind of a job was  specifically categorized within the exclusive domain of the male species. Neither is her competence being challenged by anybody anymore for her place in society being equal to that of the man is already established and secure. These are among the many positive gains of feminism.

However, the struggle is not over yet. Conservative fundamentalist religions which are mainly of so-called Christian rootage in western societies are still around asserting their irrational dogmatism and freak stubbornness despite obvious irrelevance. Suffused with their counterfeit spirituality, these so-called conservative fundamentalists have formulated self-serving moral guidelines to perpetuate the notion that the woman ought to be subjected to the headship of the man. More repugnant than this general mandate is the particular injunction that the woman has no “god-given” right over her body. In other words, she has no choice at all to determine what she thinks is best for her condition in physical terms. The loudest voices from which this notion emanates are those of the fundamentalists–both catholic and evangelical–whose nauseating slogan is “All life is sacred.”

In the light of this imminent concern, post-modern or third-wave feminism is here yet to stay until the moral legitimacy of feminine sexuality is fully achieved over and against the distorted morality of religious fundamentalism and when total woman empowerment is finally an unconditional reality.

*

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Prof. Ruel F. Pepa is a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia Pacific Research.

The Ides of March: Ten Years of Bloodshed in Syria

March 13th, 2021 by Michael Welch

“The “protests” did not emanate from internal political cleavages as described by the mainstream media. From the very outset, they were the result of  a covert US-NATO intelligence operation geared towards triggering social chaos, with a view to eventually discrediting the Syrian government of Bashar Al Assad and destabilizing Syria as a Nation State.”

– Prof Michel Chossudovsky, Syria: NATO’s Next “Humanitarian” War?

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It was billed as another ‘humanitarian war.’ [1]

In Syria, according to UN numbers, over 400,000 people had died in the war in Syria. According to UNICEF, 12,000 children have died or been injured during the conflict – that’s more than three per day. Since 2011,according to the UN Refugee Agency, 5.5 million are living abroad as refugees and 6.7 million are internally displaced within Syria.

According to multiple reports throughout Western mainstream media the brutality began ten years ago, in the Southwestern Syrian town of Daraa. What started with children getting arrested for scribing anti-government propaganda evolved into protests in cities throughout the country on March 15, 2011. Reportedly, fierce crackdowns on the population left dozens of people dead on the 24th. The ‘peaceful’ demonstrations turned into an organized resistance.[2][3][4]

In 2012, the fighting erupted in cities across the country, with rebels taking hold of many regions including Al-Qusayr, Saraqeb, a section of Aleppo, Maarat Al-Numan and Douma. What apparently started as a peaceful appeal for political and economic reforms, and an action in sympathy with the ‘Arab Spring’ quickly moulted into violence for control of the nation.

Now with retaliation involving Russia, the tide has turned and the rebellion is in retreat.

There are other voices telling an unsettling tale, however. They indicate that the ‘civil war’ is in fact a foreign fueled insurgency largely indifferent to the current lot of the Syrian people. And according to the Global Research dossier Syria: NATO’s Next “Humanitarian” War, the attitude of Syrians was overwhelmingly opposed to the fight and the aims of this cause:

The majority of Syria’s population (including the opponents of  the Al Assad government) do not support the “protest movement” which is characterized by an armed insurgency. In fact quite the opposite.

Ironically, despite its authoritarian nature, there is considerable popular support for the government of President Bashar Al Assad, which is confirmed by the large pro-government rallies.

A war has been fought on Syrian soil almost as long as World War I and World War II combined. If the people of Syria support Bashar Al-Assad (at least as far as the 2014 election results indicate) then why exactly is a mountain of corpses and unrelenting echoes of wailing grief animating ten years of torment and suffering? This is among the many questions we seek answers to in the one hour broadcast of the Global Research News Hour.

Coming up first, we have statements by journalist Steven Sahiounie. He talks about the lies about the start of the war, the Free Syrian Army, and the role of Turkey in this endeavor. Acclaimed journalist Gareth Porter comments on the many ways in which the U.S. became a pivotal force of financing, arming and helping the Islamist forces attacking Syria as ‘freedom fighters.’ Finally, the renowned journalist Vanessa Beeley makes her appearance to expand on attitudes toward the Syrian president and the Syrian Arab Army, her pivotal reporting on the White Helmets as fueled and funded by the West, and the continued propaganda role of mainstream media.

Toward the end, all three guest express their attitude of where Syria is headed going into the future.

Steven Sahiounie is a journalist and commentator writing in English and Arabic. He is Syrian and living in Latakia. He specializes in Syrian affairs.

Gareth Porter is an independent investigative journalist, historian and author who has covered U.S. wars and interventions in Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen and Syria since 2004 and was the 2012 winner of the Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. His most recent book is “Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare” (Just World Books, 2014).

Vanessa Beeley is an independent researcher, writer, photographer and peace activist. She has researched the background of the White Helmets and has been visiting Syria since July 2016. In 2017, Vanessa was a finalist for the prestigious Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism which was won by the much-acclaimed Robert Parry that year. In 2019, Vanessa was among recipients of the Serena Shim Award for uncompromising integrity in journalism. She currently lives in Damascus.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 308)

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

Other stations airing the show:

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Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in  Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.

CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am. 

Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time. 

Notes:

  1. www.huffpost.com/entry/humanitarian-intervention-and-just-war-in-syria_b_1707436
  2. edition.cnn.com/2012/03/01/world/meast/syria-crisis-beginnings/index.html
  3. www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26116868
  4. www.cbsnews.com/news/how-schoolboys-began-the-syrian-revolution/

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***

There’s so much to take issue with in this recent Atlantic Council report by arch Russophobe, Swedish economist and senior fellow at the Council Anders Aslund, that it’s hard to know where to begin.  His paper, written jointly with Russian social activist Leonid Gozman, entitled ‘Russia after Putin: How to rebuild the state’ is a masterpiece in western pro-regime change propaganda.

The ‘Regime is falling apart’ the report asserts, ‘we do not know when and how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s regime will end, but there are signs that it is struggling and the end could come in the foreseeable future’. Anders Aslund is not alone of course in predicting the imminent collapse of Russia. Many ‘Russia experts’ are at it. Take this piece from 2016 entitled ‘Lights out for the Putin Regime: The Coming Russian Collapse’.  5 years on, and Russia is still going strong.

Aslund and his colleague have skipped the difficult bit of course – explaining how the Russian state would collapse – and instead they fantasize as to how they would rebuild the country from scratch. They’d start by dismantling the FSB, of course.

As they put it: ‘Normal countries do not have secret police that suppress their citizens’. Really?

Firstly, what on earth is a ‘normal country’?

Secondly, has Aslund never heard of the CIA, MI5 or even the 77th brigade?

Censorship on social media is taking place all the time. What does he think MI5’s remit is in the UK? We know, for example, that there have been attempts for years to infiltrate the Scottish independence movement, using agents to sow division. And what about the forces that led to the incarceration and arrest of Julian Assange? Authorities in Sweden, the UK and US were all complicit in his persecution.

Each state’s security apparatus plays a role in restricting its citizens, particularly if their activities are deemed a threat to national security. As such the authors are either ignorant in this regard, or are deliberately trying to obfuscate the reader.

The report repeatedly refers to the opinions of ‘ordinary Russians’ throughout, without any data to back up such statements. As an academic, Aslund should be aware of the need for evidence to support sweeping statements like the ones he makes. As a result the paper comes across more like a piece of propaganda.  Take, for example, his reference to the recent vote on amendments to the Russian constitution.  He states: ‘Russians describe these changes as a ‘nullification’ because they perceive the essence of these changes to be that Putin’s four previous terms as president no longer count.’

Which ‘Russians’ did Aslund talk to? He doesn’t tell us, and doesn’t quote a single survey. In reality, 78% of the Russian population voted for the constitutional amendments. Even the BBC ran with the headline at the time: ‘Putin strongly backed in controversial Russian reform vote.’  The vast majority agreed that the amendments should take place.

Aslund talks about the ‘unfortunate situation of the Russian people.’ On the contrary, Russians’ living standards have increased substantially in the last two decades. Back in 2000, around 29% were living in poverty, now that figure is around 13.5%. Life expectancy was reported in 2019 as 73.4 years – compare that to 65 years back in 2000.

One can also compare Putin’s approval rating to that of other world leaders. One recent poll on Biden’s position rates the newly elected President at 49%. The UK’s Boris Johnson gets a meagre 41%. Putin in February 2021 was rated at 65%, and that figure is pretty consistent for the Russian leader. If the Russian people indeed felt they were hard done by they’d be unlikely to give their leader such an approval rating, surely?  The report authors really need to be providing data to support their accusations that Russians themselves want regime change. So far, it looks like Anders Aslund wants it more than anyone else.

There are also somewhat sinister undertones of some of the points made.  Leonid Gozman is quoted as saying ‘Russians’ apathy, which is based on a sense of hopelessness, can be turned into hate and aggression towards the authorities. This absolutely stinks of a pro-regime change strategy, an attempt to use weaknesses in the population to further a western imperialist agenda. It’s straight out of the classic regime change manual ‘from dictatorship to democracy’ by Gene Sharp which speaks of identifying the ‘Achilles’ heel’ in the country in order to engineer its collapse:  ‘The general public may over time become apathetic, sceptical and even hostile to the regime’ is identified as one of the weak points.

There are many, many problems with this Atlantic Council report for anyone who has lived in, and knows Russia. Too many problems, in fact, for the length of this article. It does not reflect public opinion or take into account Russia’s cultural values which differ from those of the West. It does not reflect Russia’s unique geographical position and historical experience. On the contrary, it puts forward a western agenda, pushing western values, for a western model of what Russia should look like. Keep dreaming about your Russian regime change, Anders Aslund.

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Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland. You can follow the author on Twitter.

Before COVID, Gates Planned Social Media Censorship of Vaccine Safety Advocates with Pharma, CDC, Media, China and CIA

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr, March 12 2021

In October 2019, shortly before the COVID outbreak, Gates and other powerful individuals began planning how to censor vaccine safety advocates from social media during a table-top simulation of a worldwide pandemic, known as Event 201.

3 More EU Countries Hit Pause on AstraZeneca After Reports of Illness and Deaths

By Megan Redshaw, March 12 2021

Denmark, Norway and Iceland today announced they are joining other European countries in temporarily suspending use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine following reports of blood clots in people who got the vaccine.

7 European Nations Halt AstraZeneca Jabs on Reports of “Serious” Blood Clots

By Zero Hedge, March 12 2021

Iceland has become the latest European nation to suspend the AstraZeneca jab. The tiny island nation has confirmed roughly 6K COVID cases since the start of the pandemic, which is roughly 2% of the population.

Thailand Halts AstraZeneca Vaccinations Following Concerns in Europe

By Praphorn Praphornkul, March 12 2021

The Prime Minister and Cabinet have put off on receiving the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination after reports emerged from Europe of blood clots forming among some recipients and a pending review by the European Medicines Agency (EMA) expected to take one to two weeks.

China – Leading to World Recovery – And Beyond

By Peter Koenig, March 12 2021

China’s currently ongoing (4-11 March 2021) annual parliamentary meeting, known as the “Two Sessions”, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC), may be the most important of such meetings in recent years.

Video: Fauci Admits There Is No ‘Science’ Behind Continued Lockdown

By Steve Watson, March 12 2021

In a rare moment of truth of CNN Wednesday, Anthony Fauci admitted that there is no scientific reason why people who have had the COVID vaccine are still having their freedoms restricted.

COVID-19, Trust, and Wellcome: How Charity’s Pharma Investments Overlap with Its Research Efforts. BMJ

By Tim Schwab, March 12 2021

An increasingly clear feature of the covid-19 pandemic is that the public health response is being driven not only by governments and multilateral institutions, such as the World Health Organisation, but also by a welter of public-private partnerships involving drug companies and private foundations.

“COVID Denialism” Now Enshrined in Case Law

By Makia Freeman, March 12 2021

COVID denialism – a broad term leveled at those who have seen through lies regarding the COVID scamdemic – has been enshrined in legal history and case law, at least in Canada.

“Domestic Terrorism” Goes Transnational: The War on Dissidents Picks Up Momentum

By Philip Giraldi, March 12 2021

Now that we have an identified “domestic terror” problem one should expect at a minimum a massive increase in surveillance of innocent citizens couple with arbitrary arrests and incarcerations. Indeed, the process is already well underway.

Ten Problems with Biden’s Foreign Policy – And One Solution

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, March 12 2021

Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past twenty years, a far cry from his campaign promise to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy. In this respect, Biden is following in the footsteps of Obama and Trump.

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“COVID Denialism” Now Enshrined in Case Law

March 12th, 2021 by Makia Freeman

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COVID denialism – a broad term leveled at those who have seen through lies regarding the COVID scamdemic – has been enshrined in legal history and case law, at least in Canada.

This is another horrendous yet sadly predictable step of the COVID agenda, which is none other than the agenda to steal your rights and freedom.

MSM outlet CBC reported last week that a judge stripped a man (who remains anonymous at this stage) of his custody rights in his divorce case with his ex-wife due to his belief that COVID was a hoax, and his subsequent decision to defy social distancing and mask wearing rules. In other words, he was stripped of some of his rights due to his COVID denialism.

The case was heard in late 2020 in the Ontario Superior Court, however Justice George W. King delivered the written decision at the end of January 2021, and the story was just picked up by The Free Thought Project.

Judge Considers Man’s Belief that COVID is a Hoax to be a Factor in Determining his Worthiness as a Father

I have been unable to locate the link to the original ruling, and the CBC article does not link to it, however the article reported that the judge explicitly wrote that the man’s public promotion of his opinions was affecting the health and welfare of his children:

“Ontario Superior Court Justice George W. King denied a Windsor man interim custody of his kids because the man’s fervent anti-masking beliefs means he wouldn’t take appropriate actions to keep them safe from COVID-19. The decision notes the man believes COVID-19 to be a hoax and has boasted in public about flouting health restrictions such as masking and social distancing.

“The health and welfare of the children (and by extension their principal caregiver) should not be jeopardized because of [his] public behaviour in promotion of his opinions,” he wrote.”

This is quite an astounding thing for a judge to write, since it shows how the judge has bought the official COVID narrative hook, line and sinker. The judge is saying that if you challenge the theory (i.e. brainwashing propaganda) that COVID is a highly lethal dangerous disease, that can only be contained or avoided with mandatory social distancing and masking, that therefore you are “jeopardizing” the health of your kids. Wow. It is truly shocking a judge could be so out-of-touch with scientific reality. However, it gets worse. The CBC further reported:

“I have concluded that the respondent’s behaviour is dictated by his world view. Everything else is subordinate to that view, including, but not limited to, his love for his children,” the decision by Justice King read.”

Now that is a supremely arrogant opinion. This man’s love for his children is subordinate to perspective that COVID is a hoax? WTF? I seriously doubt that is true for any parent – that any intellectual belief or world perspective would outweigh their love for their children – and even if it were, how could the judge possibly know that? Only the man himself would know. Besides, he is providing immense care for their welfare by REFUSING to put masks on his kids or allow them to be scared of ginned up COVID fear. He is proving his worth as a father by leading by example and being a good role model in showing his children that one must stand up for truth, freedom and inherent rights rather than be bullied by corrupt authorities. He would be doing great damage to the “health and welfare” of his children by forcing them to go along with the absurd, unscientific and freedom-crushing COVID dictates being foist upon the public.

Judge Blames Man for COVID Denialism When Governmental Lockdown Policies are the Real Culprit

Finally, it turns out this judicial decision will impact whether his children could get vaccinated:

“Justice King called some of what the man had posted about COVID-19 not being real as erroneous, pointing out rise in hospitalizations and deaths due to the virus as well as the effect that has had on health care providers having to delay other medical procedures because of the tax the virus has placed on the system. 

“The long-term effects of the pandemic and of delayed treatments to persons with other health conditions is currently unmeasurable,” justice King wrote.

“All of this has occurred while a percentage of our population, including [the man], continue to deny the existence, significance and/or impact of COVID-19.”

The ruling includes giving the mother the power to make decisions around vaccination. But it noted the interim custody was awarded wholly within the context of the pandemic and can be revisited once it subsides.”

This is problem when people can’t distinguish between different causes. The effect of COVID on the health system and the “significance” and “impact” of COVID are all due to governmental reactions and lockdown policies not the virus itself. As I have extensively and exhaustively documented, the virus has never been isolated nor proven to exist as a purified, separate entity. Meanwhile, judges like this ‘Justice King’ character, who being part of the judicial branch is therefore part of the government, are blaming and punishing members of the public (and depriving them of their rights) for standing for the truth and not going along with the COVID Cult, when it is the government itself that is the culprit! The virus didn’t crush small businesses; the government did. The virus didn’t throw people into poverty; the government did. The virus didn’t put a strain on hospitals and the medical treatment system; the government did by mass inculcation of fear. So-called COVID denialism is not the problem; rather, the problem is when people are so programmed they can’t see beyond their noses. It is all the more dangerous when these people occupy positions of power.

And now one potential consequence of this decision is these children may end up getting vaccinated, either in general or specifically with the COVID vaccines, which are not really vaccines but gene editing tools.

This is truly a gross and outrageous betrayal of justice. May the day come soon when the people who have orchestrated and perpetuated this colossal fraud be brought to justice. Some modern Nuremburg Trials would be appropriate.

The implications of such a decision could be far-reaching if it becomes established precedent in Canada and elsewhere. This means that we could be entering an Orwellain dystopia where your unalienable, inherent, sovereign rights can be deprived based on your ideas, theories, beliefs, opinions and world perspectives. In other words, wrongthink is a crime. This case mark another stepping stone into descent for humanity. Hopefully, the pushback against the COVID Cult – led in part by 16 US states who are re-opening – can counterbalance the betrayal of justice that has happened here.

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

Sources

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/windsor/windsor-covid-19-custody-decision-1.5937278

https://thefreethoughtproject.com/court-removes-children-from-fathers-custody-covid-beliefs/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/10-reasons-sars-cov-2-imaginary-digital-theoretical-virus/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/do-mandatory-masks-vaccines-break-10-points-nuremburg-code/

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

https://thefreedomarticles.com/toxic-vaccine-adjuvants-the-top-10/

https://thefreedomarticles.com/not-a-vaccine-mrna-covid-vaccine-chemical-pathogen-device/

https://www.aier.org/article/16-states-are-now-following-the-science/

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 Biden presidency is still in its early days, but it’s not too early to point to areas in the foreign policy realm where we, as progressives, have been disappointed–or even infuriated.

There are one or two positive developments, such as the renewal of Obama’s New START Treaty with Russia and Secretary of State Blinken’s initiative for a UN-led peace process in Afghanistan, where the United States is finally turning to peace as a last resort, after 20 years lost in the graveyard of empires.

By and large though, Biden’s foreign policy already seems stuck in the militarist quagmire of the past twenty years, a far cry from his campaign promise to reinvigorate diplomacy as the primary tool of U.S. foreign policy.

In this respect, Biden is following in the footsteps of Obama and Trump, who both promised fresh approaches to foreign policy but for the most part delivered more endless war.

By the end of his second term, Obama did have two significant diplomatic achievements with the signing of the Iran nuclear deal and normalization of relations with Cuba. So progressive Americans who voted for Biden had some grounds to hope that his experience as Obama’s vice-president would lead him to quickly restore and build on Obama’s achievements with Iran and Cuba as a foundation for the broader diplomacy he promised.

Instead, the Biden administration seems firmly entrenched behind the walls of hostility Trump built between America and our neighbors, from his renewed Cold War against China and Russia to his brutal sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, Syria and dozens of countries around the world, and there is still no word on cuts to a military budget that has grown by 15% since FY2015 (inflation-adjusted).

Despite endless Democratic condemnations of Trump, Biden’s foreign policy so far shows no substantive change from the policies of the past four years. Here are ten of the lowlights:

1. Failing to quickly rejoin the Iran nuclear agreement. The Biden administration’s failure to immediately rejoin the JCPOA, as Bernie Sanders promised to do on his first day as president, has turned an easy win for Biden’s promised commitment to diplomacy into an entirely avoidable diplomatic crisis.

Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA and imposition of brutal “maximum pressure” sanctions on Iran were broadly condemned by Democrats and U.S. allies alike. But now Biden is making new demands on Iran to appease hawks who opposed the agreement all along, risking an outcome in which he will fail to reinstate the JCPOA and Trump’s policy will effectively become his policy. The Biden administration should re-enter the deal immediately, without preconditions.

2. U.S. Bombing Wars Rage On – Now In Secret. Also following in Trump’s footsteps, Biden has escalated tensions with Iran and Iraq by attacking and killing Iranian-backed Iraqi forces who play a critical role in the war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Biden’s February 25 U.S. airstrike predictably failed to end rocket attacks on deeply unpopular U.S. bases in Iraq, which the Iraqi National Assembly passed a resolution to close over a year ago.

The U.S. attack in Syria has been condemned as illegal by members of Biden’s own party, reinvigorating efforts to repeal the 2001 and 2002 Authorizations for the Use of Military Force that presidents have misused for 20 years. Other airstrikes the Biden administration is conducting in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are shrouded in secrecy, since it has not resumed publishing the monthly Airpower Summaries that every other administration has published since 2004, but which Trump discontinued a year ago.

3. Refusing to hold MBS accountable for the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khasssoghi. Human rights activists were grateful that President Biden released the intelligence report on the gruesome murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi that confirmed what we already knew: that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman (MBS) approved the murder. Yet, when it came to holding MBS accountable, Biden choked.

At the very least, the administration shcould have imposed the same sanctions on MBS, including asset freezes and travel bans, that the U.S. imposed on lower-level figures involved in the murder. Instead, like Trump, Biden is wedded to the Saudi dictatorship and its diabolical Crown Prince.

4. Clinging to Trump’s absurdist policy of recognizing Juan Guaidó as President of Venezuela. The Biden administration missed an opportunity to establish a new approach towards Venezuela when it decided to continue to recognize Juan Guaidó as “interim president”, ruled out talks with the Maduro government and appears to be freezing out the moderate opposition that participates in elections.

The administration also said it was in “no rush” to lift the Trump sanctions despite a recent study from the Government Accountability Office detailing their negative impact on the economy, and a scathing preliminary report by a UN Special Rapporteur, who noted their “devastating effect on the whole population of Venezuela.” The lack of dialogue with all political actors in Venezuela risks entrenching a policy of regime change and economic warfare for years to come, similar to the failed U.S. policy towards Cuba that has lasted for 60 years.

5. Following Trump on Cuba instead of Obama. The Trump administration overturned all the progress towards normal relations achieved by President Obama, sanctioning Cuba’s tourism and energy industries, blocking coronavirus aid shipments, restricting remittances to family members, putting Cuba on a list of “state sponsors of terrorism,” and sabotaging Cuba’s international medical missions, which were a major source of revenue for its health system.

We expected Biden to immediately start unraveling Trump’s confrontational policies, but catering to Cuban exiles in Florida for domestic political gain apparently takes precedence over a humane and rational policy towards Cuba, for Biden as for Trump.

Biden should instead start working with the Cuban government to allow the return of diplomats to their respective embassies, lift all restrictions on remittances, make travel easier, and work with the Cuban health system in the fight against COVID-19, among other measures.

6. Ramping up the Cold War with China. Biden seems committed to Trump’s self-defeating Cold War and arms race with China, talking tough and ratcheting up tensions that have led to racist hate crimes against East Asian people in the United States. But it is the United States that is militarily surrounding and threatening China, not the other way round. As former President Jimmy Carter patiently explained to Trump, while the United States has been at war for 20 years, China has instead invested in 21st century infrastructure and in its own people, lifting 800 million of them out of poverty.

The greatest danger of this moment in history, short of all-out nuclear war, is that this aggressive U.S. military posture not only justifies unlimited U.S. military budgets, but will gradually force China to convert its economic success into military power and follow the United States down the tragic path of military imperialism.

7. Failing to lift painful, illegal sanctions during a pandemic. One of the legacies of the Trump administration is the devastating use of U.S. sanctions on countries around the world, including Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, North Korea and Syria. UN special rapporteurs have condemned them as crimes against humanity and compared them to medieval sieges. Since most of these sanctions were imposed by executive order, President Biden could easily lift them. Even before taking power, his team announced a thorough review, but, three months later, it has yet to make a move.

Unilateral sanctions that affect entire populations are an illegal form of coercion, like military intervention, coups and covert operations, that have no place in a legitimate foreign policy based on diplomacy, the rule of law and the peaceful resolution of disputes. They are especially cruel and deadly during a pandemic and the Biden administration should take immediate action by lifting broad sectoral sanctions to ensure every country can adequately respond to the pandemic.

8. Not doing enough to support peace and humanitarian aid for Yemen. Biden appeared to partially fulfill his promise to stop U.S. support for the war in Yemen when he announced that the U.S. would stop selling “offensive” weapons to the Saudis. But he has yet to explain what that means. Which weapons sales has he cancelled?

We think he should stop ALL weapons sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, enforcing the Leahy Law that prohibits military assistance to forces that commit gross human rights violations, and the Arms Export Control Act, under which imported U.S. weapons may be used only for legitimate self defense. There should be no exceptions to these U.S. laws for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Israel, Egypt or other U.S. allies around the world.

The U.S. should also accept its share of responsibility for what many have called the greatest humanitarian crisis in the world today, and provide Yemen with funding to feed its people, restore its health care system and rebuild its devastated country. A recent donor conference netted just $1.7 billion in pledges, less than half the $3.85 billion needed. Biden should restore and expand USAID funding and U.S. financial support to the UN, WHO and World Food Program relief operations in Yemen. He should also press the Saudis to reopen the air and seaports, and throw U.S. diplomatic weight behind the efforts of U.N. Special Envoy Martin Griffiths to negotiate a ceasefire.

9. Failing to back President Moon Jae-in’s diplomacy with North Korea. Trump’s failure to provide sanctions relief and explicit security guarantees to North Korea doomed his diplomacy and became an obstacle to the diplomatic process under way between Korean presidents Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in, who is himself the child of North Korean refugees. So far, Biden has continued this policy of Draconian sanctions and threats.

The Biden administration should revive the diplomatic process with confidence-building measures such as opening liaison offices, easing sanctions, facilitating reunions between Korean-American and North Korean families, permitting U.S. humanitarian organizations to resume their work when COVID conditions permit, and halting U.S.-South Korea military exercises and B-2 nuclear bomb flights.

Negotiations must involve concrete commitments to non-aggression from the U.S. side and a commitment to negotiating a peace agreement to formally end the Korean War. This would pave the way for a denuclearized Korean Peninsula and the reconciliation that so many Koreans desire — and deserve.

10. No initiative to reduce U.S. military spending. At the end of the Cold War, former senior Pentagon officials told the Senate Budget Committee that U.S. military spending could safely be cut by half over the next 10 years. That goal was never achieved, and instead of a post-Cold War “peace dividend,” the military-industrial complex exploited the crimes of Sept. 11, 2001 to justify an extraordinary one-sided arms race. Between 2003 and 2011, the U.S. accounted for 45% of global military spending, far outstripping its own peak Cold War military spending.

Now the military-industrial complex is counting on Biden to escalate a renewed Cold War with Russia and China as the only plausible pretext for further record military budgets that are setting the stage for World War III.

Biden must dial back U.S. conflicts with China and Russia, and instead begin the critical task of moving money from the Pentagon to urgent domestic needs. He should start with at least the 10 percent cut that 93 Representatives and 23 Senators already voted for. In the longer term, Biden should look for deeper cuts in Pentagon spending, as in Rep. Barbara Lee’s bill to cut $350 billion per year from the U.S. military budget, to free up resources we sorely need to invest in health care, education, clean energy and modern infrastructure.

A Progressive Way Forward

These policies, common to Democratic and Republican administrations, not only inflict pain and suffering on millions of our neighbors in other countries, but also deliberately cause instability that can at any time escalate into war, plunge a formerly functioning state into chaos or spawn a secondary crisis whose human consequences will be even worse than the original one.

All these policies involve deliberate efforts to unilaterally impose the political will of U.S. leaders on other people and countries, by methods that consistently only cause more pain and suffering to the people they claim – or pretend – they want to help.

Biden should jettison the worst of Obama’s and Trump’s policies, and instead pick the best of them. Trump, recognizing the unpopular nature of U.S. military interventions, began the process of bringing U.S. troops home from Afghanistan and Iraq, which Biden should follow through on.

Obama’s diplomatic successes with Cuba, Iran and Russia demonstrated that negotiating with U.S. enemies to make peace, improve relations and make the world a safer place is a perfectly viable alternative to trying to force them to do what the United States wants by bombing, starving and besieging their people. This is in fact the core principle of the United Nations Charter, and it should be the core principle of Biden’s foreign policy.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

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).

***

The claim is often made that President George W. Bush’s war on terror, which produced legislation that was employed to attack Iraq in 2003, eventually morphed into the worst foreign policy mistake in U.S. history when that conflict destabilized the entire region and led to an American multifront military engagement that now appears permanent. Few of those in the policymaking business appreciated that by turning “terrorism” into an especially invidious form of evil allowing governments to arrest or even assassinate without due process and bomb civilians if they fit a profile, Pandora’s box was being opened to expand that authority to commit other heinous abuses of authority.

Jim Bovard has described how post 9/11 there were hundreds of arrests for no good reason, in some cases only because someone had a name or countenance that appeared to be “Arabic.” Congressman Ron Paul and a handful of others observed at the time that the legislation would inevitably be used against domestic enemies of the state as well as against foreign or foreign-linked groups, meaning that the real damage done by the Patriot Act, the Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) and the Military Commissions Act would be felt somewhere down the road, possibly at a point where the original objective of the legislation would be more or less forgotten.

Now that we have an identified “domestic terror” problem one should expect at a minimum a massive increase in surveillance of innocent citizens couple with arbitrary arrests and incarcerations. Indeed, the process is already well underway with FBI Director Christopher Wray announcing that there are several thousand terror “cases” under development. There will also be increasing calls to take away guns and to control what is allowed to appear on the internet. Soon Americans will have nothing to measure their remaining liberties by and will be less free to exercise rights including free speech, possibly dramatically so.

So now we have reached a point where we have a government that is committed to further reducing one’s rights in order to “keep us safe” from a domestic threat and congress critters are openly speaking of bringing in “war on terror” type expedients to make sure that they have the tools available to do just that. The Joe Biden White House has made clear that it has embraced fighting domestic terrorists as a top priority. Last week, the Administration sought authorization from the Pentagon to keep thousands of national guard troops in the District of Columbia for 60 days more, presumably to protect the government buildings and staff. The pretext for the continued presence was a vaguely described plot constituting a “potential threat” to overrun the Capitol building on March 4th, a day when it was apparently anticipated that Donald Trump would miraculously be returned to office. The House of Representatives even canceled a session over concerns that they were about to be invaded by a hostile “militia.” Just how “real” the threat was has not been made clear beyond suggestions of “chatter” over the internet, nor has there been any explanation of why the 2,200 strong Capitol Police force is unable to deal with the problem.

Be that as it may, the Biden Administration thinks it knows exactly who the enemy is. The government already has a working definition of a domestic terrorist, i.e. “If you advocate violence as a tool to further political ends, and take concrete steps to do that, you’re a terrorist.” But if you thought that included groups like Antifa and Black Lives Matter (BLM) you would be wrong. For the Biden Administration it is the stereotyped right-wing extremist, who, among other attributes, is represented by the media and government as coming from the class that Hillary Clinton once described as “deplorables.”

The accepted definition of the enemy defies logic as the rioting, arson, and killing that has taken place over the past year has generally been inspired by Antifa and BLM, resulting in major damage and destruction in various cities and states. But the mobs who wrecked and looted have been mostly set free by the courts in the Democratic Party dominated cities. In Portland Oregon 90% of the rioters were not prosecuted, presumably because the local judicial system believed that their “cause was just.” Against that is the trauma of the January 6th incident at the Capitol, much smaller in scope and damages but obviously terrifying to the media and Congress. Also what did occur bore a more comfortable theme for the Democrats which they have been beating to death ever since – “insurrection caused by right wing extremists who were overwhelmingly white and support Donald Trump.” That’s apparently all one needs to initiate a campaign to get rid of such dissidents.

For some suggestions about the direction the Biden Administration will be going in to eliminate domestic terrorism, one only has to review the comments of Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland at his Senate confirmation hearing on February 22nd, where he declared that going after domestic terrorists would be a top administration priority. When asked if he regards the numerous attempts by Antifa and BLM rioters to destroy federal courthouses in Portland and Seattle as acts of domestic extremism or terrorism, he hedged on the issue and replied:

“So an attack on a courthouse while in operation, trying to prevent judges from actually deciding cases, that plainly is, uhm, domestic extremism, uhm, domestic terrorism. An attack simply on a government property at night…or any other kind of circumstances, is a clear crime and a serious one and should be punished. I don’t mean…I don’t know enough about the facts of the example you’re talking about, but that’s where I draw the line. One is…both are criminal, but one is a core attack on our democratic institutions.”

According to the man who almost became a Supreme Court Justice and now appears to be on his way to becoming Attorney General if you attack and seek to destroy a government building when there is no one in it is a different level of criminality than seeking to disrupt what is going on inside during business hours. It clearly is a fine line, or at least Garland sees it that way, but in either case you are making the building non-functional in terms of its intended use. Indeed, groups like BLM have regularly condemned the criminal justice system and if you burn the building down it will be unusable for a long, long time. So clearly what makes something “terrorism” as opposed to only “criminality” is the expectation based on the events of 1/6 that it will be right-wing whites who will be doing the disruption. They are the terrorists.

So, it seems pretty clear that the Biden Administration is now preparing to go after the people that it objects to and will create new laws as necessary to do so. Garland will certainly have a hand in that development. And if anyone is thinking of leaving all of this behind by fleeing to another country where there is an actual rule of law, it would be best to consider the matter again. On February 22nd, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that white supremacy right-wing nationalist movements have become a “transnational threat” that has exploited the fear of the coronavirus pandemic to gain support. He said that “White supremacy and neo-Nazi movements are more than domestic terror threats. They are becoming a transnational threat. Today, these extremist movements represent the number one internal security threat in several countries. Far too often, these hate groups are cheered on by people in positions of responsibility in ways that were considered unimaginable not long ago. We need global coordinated action to defeat this grave and growing danger.”

It means you can run but you can’t hide. It looks like there will be a worldwide coalition to extirpate the evils that come automatically with whiteness and, as BLM is now de facto a major constituency of the U.S. Democratic Party, you know that Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi will be leading the charge.

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

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Storming of the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 (TapTheForwardAssist/Wikimedia Commons)

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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In October 2019, shortly before the COVID outbreak, Gates and other powerful individuals began planning how to censor vaccine safety advocates from social media during a table-top simulation of a worldwide pandemic, known as Event 201.

Over the last two weeks, Facebook and other social media sites have deplatformed me and many other critics of regulatory corruption and authoritarian public health policies. So, here is some fodder for those of you who have the eerie sense that the government/industry pandemic response feels like it was planned — even before there was a pandemic.

The attached document shows that a cabal of powerful individuals did indeed begin planning the mass eviction of vaccine skeptics from social media in October 2019, a week or two before COVID began circulating. That month, Microsoft founder Bill Gates organized an exercise of four “table-top” simulations of a worldwide coronavirus pandemic with other high-ranking “Deep State” panjandrums. The exercise was referred to as Event 201.

Gates’ co-conspirators included representatives from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum (Great Reset), Bloomberg/Johns Hopkins University Populations Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, various media powerhouses, the Chinese government, a former Central Intelligence Agency/National Security Agency director (there is no such thing as a former CIA officer), vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson, the finance and biosecurity industries and Edelman, the world’s leading corporate PR firm.

At Gates’ direction, these eminences role-played members of a Pandemic Control Council, wargaming government strategies for controlling the pandemic, the narrative and the population. Needless to say, there was little talk of building immune systems, off-the-shelf remedies or off-patent therapeutic drugs and vitamins, but lots of chatter about promoting uptake of new patentable antiviral drugs and vaccines.

But the participants primarily focused on planning industry-centric, fear-mongering, police-state strategies for managing an imaginary global coronavirus contagion culminating in mass censorship of social media.

Oddly, Gates now claims that the simulation didn’t occur. On April 12, 2020, Gates told BBC, “Now here we are. We didn’t simulate this, we didn’t practice, so both the health policies and economic policies, we find ourselves in uncharted territory.”

Unfortunately for that whopper, the videos of the event are still available across the internet. They show that Gates and team did indeed simulate health and economic policies. It’s hard to swallow that Gates has forgotten.

Gates’s Event 201 simulated COVID epidemic caused 65 million deaths at the 18-month endpoint and global economic collapse lasting up to a decade. Compared to the Gates simulation, therefore, the actual COVID-19 crisis is a bit of a dud, having imposed a mere 2.5 million deaths “attributed to COVID” over the past 13 months.

The deaths “attributed to COVID” in the real-life situation are highly questionable, and must be seen in the context of a global population of 7.8 billion, with about 59 million deaths expected annually. The predictions of decade-long economic collapse will probably prove more accurate — but only because of the draconian lockdown promoted by Gates.

Gates’ Event 201 script imagines vast anti-vaccine riots triggered by internet posts. The universal and single-minded presumption among its participants was that such a crisis would prove an opportunity of convenience to promote new vaccines, and tighten controls by a surveillance and censorship state.

Segment four of the script — on manipulation and control of public opinion — is most revealing. It uncannily predicted democracy’s current crisis:

  • The participants discussed mechanisms for controlling “disinformation” and “misinformation,” by “flooding” the media with propaganda (“good information”), imposing penalties for spreading falsehoods and discrediting the anti-vaccination movement.
  • Jane Halton, of Australia’s ANZ Bank, one of the authors of Australia’s oppressive “no jab, no pay” policy, assured the participants that Gates Foundation is creating algorithms “to sift through information on these social media platforms” to protect the public from dangerous thoughts and information.
  • George Gao, the prescient director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control, worries about how to suppress “rumors” that the virus is laboratory generated: “People believe, ‘This is a manmade’… [and that] some pharmaceutical company made the virus.”
  • Chen Huang, an Apple research scientist, Google scholar and the world’s leading expert on tracking and tracing and facial recognition technology, role-plays the newscaster reporting on government countermeasures. He blames riots on anti-vaccine activists and predicts that Twitter and Facebook will cooperate in “identify[ing] and delete[ing] a disturbing number of accounts dedicated to spreading misinformation about the outbreak” and to implement “internet shutdowns … to quell panic.”
  • Dr. Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at Bloomberg School of Health’s Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, worries that pharmaceutical companies are being accused of introducing the virus so they can make money on drugs and vaccines: “[We] have seen public faith in their products plummet.” She notes with alarm that “Unrest, due to false rumors and divisive messaging, is rising and is exacerbating spread of the disease as levels of trust fall and people stop cooperating with response efforts. This is a massive problem, one that threatens governments and trusted institutions.”

Sell reminds her fellow collaborators that “We know that social media is now the primary way that many people get their news, so interruptions to these platforms could curb the spread of misinformation.” There are many ways, Sell advises, for government and industry allies to accomplish this objective: “Some governments have taken control of national access to the Internet. Others are censoring websites and social media content and a small number have shut down Internet access completely to prevent the spread of misinformation. Penalties have been put in place for spreading harmful falsehoods, including arrests.”

  • Matthew Harrington, CEO of Edelman Public Relations agrees that social media must fall in line to promote government policy: “I also think we’re at a moment where the social media platforms have to step forward and recognize the moment to assert that they’re a technology platform and not a broadcaster is over. They in fact have to be a participant in broadcasting accurate information and partnering with the scientific and health communities to counterweight, if not flood the zone, of accurate information. Because to try to put the genie back in the bottle of misinformation and disinformation is not possible.”
  • Stephen Redd, the Admiral of the Public Health Service, has the sinister notion that government should mine social media data to identify people with negative beliefs: “I think with the social media platforms, there’s an opportunity to understand who it is that’s susceptible … to misinformation, so I think there’s an opportunity to collect data from that communication mechanism.”
  • Adrian Thomas of Johnson & Johnson announces “some important news to share from some of “our member companies [Pharma]”: We are doing clinical trials in new antiretrovirals, and in fact, in vaccines!” He recommends a strategy to address the problems to these companies when “rumors were actually spreading” that their shoddily tested products “are causing deaths and so patients are not taking them anymore.” He suggests, “Maybe we’re making the mistake of reporting and counting all the fatalities and infections.”
  • Former CIA deputy director, Avril Haines unveiled a strategy to “flood the zone” with propaganda from “trusted sources,” including “influential community leaders, as well as health workers.” He warns about “false information that is starting to actually hamper our ability to address the pandemic, then we need to be able to respond quickly to it.”
  • Matthew Harrington (Edelman CEO) observes that the Internet — which once promised the decentralization and democratization of information — now needs to be centralized: “I think just to build a little bit on what Avril said, I think as in previous conversations where we’ve talked about centralization around management of information or public health needs, there needs to be a centralized response around the communications approach that then is cascaded to informed advocates, represented in the NGO communities, the medical professionals, et cetera.”
  • Tom Inglesby (John Hopkins biosecurity expert advisor to the National Institutes of Health, the Pentagon and Homeland Security) agrees that centralized control is needed: “You mean centralized international?”
  • Matthew Harrington (Edelman) replies that information access should be: “Centralized on an international basis, because I think there needs to be a central repository of data facts and key messages.”
  • Hasti Taghi (Media Advisor) sums up: “The anti-vaccine movement was very strong and this is something specifically through social media that has spread. So as we do the research to come up with the right vaccines to help prevent the continuation of this, how do we get the right information out there? How do we communicate the right information to ensure that the public has trust in these vaccines that we’re creating?”
  • Kevin McAleese, communications officer for Gates-funded agricultural projects, observes that: “To me, it is clear countries need to make strong efforts to manage both mis- and disinformation. We know social media companies are working around the clock to combat these disinformation campaigns. The task of identifying every bad actor is immense. This is a huge problem that’s going to keep us from ending the pandemic and might even lead to the fall of governments, as we saw in the Arab Spring. If the solution means controlling and reducing access to information, I think it’s the right choice.”
  • Tom Inglesby, director of Bloomberg’s Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security concurs, asking if “In this case, do you think governments are at the point where they need to require social media companies to operate in a certain way?”
  • Lavan Thiru, Singapore’s Finance Minister suggests that the government might make examples of dissidents with “government or enforcement actions against fake news. Some of us, this new regulations are come in place about how we deal with fake news. Maybe this is a time for us to showcase some cases where we are able to bring forward some bad actors and leave it before the courts to decide whether they have actually spread some fake news.”

Read the attached transcript to see how Gates and his government, pharma and intelligence apparatus telegraphed their plans to censor and control the media during the pandemic. In yet another uncanny coincidence, COVID-19 began circulating among global populations within days of Gates’ meeting.

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s reputation as a resolute defender of the environment stems from a litany of successful legal actions.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

China – Leading to World Recovery – And Beyond

March 12th, 2021 by Peter Koenig

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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China’s currently ongoing (4-11 March 2021) annual parliamentary meeting, known as the “Two Sessions”, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC), may be the most important of such meetings in recent years. The event is also celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC). 

The conference will define China’s internal and external development strategies, as well as her future role on the world stage. China is the only major economy that has mastered the covid-induced economic crisis, ending 2020 with a 2.3% growth. Compare this with economic declines way into the red for the US and Europe, of 25% to 35%, and 10% to 15%, respectively.

These figures may only be indicative. The bulk of the economic fallout from western governments’ mishandling of the covid crisis, i. e. bankruptcies, trade disruption, unemployment and housing foreclosures – a massive slide into poverty – may only be registered in 2021 and beyond.

The greed-driven capitalist system has already plunged tens of millions of westerners – and perhaps hundreds of millions in the Global South – into destitution.

What China decides, at the “Two Sessions” Conference will undoubtedly have an impact on the entire world – in the medium-term (2025) as well as long-term (2035) – and beyond. China’s socialism “with Chinese characteristics” will be an influence for peace, justice and equality, as well as for a multi-polar world.

China’s thousands of years of cultural history and the ensuing Tao-philosophy of non-aggression and conflict avoidance, of a societal spirit of endless creation, as well as long-term thinking, contrasts radically with western conflict and instant-profit seeking.

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The summit is addressing ambitious but attainable 2035 targets, including a 6%-plus growth in the foreseeable future; reduction of unemployment with urban focus; continued food self-sufficiency and environmental improvement targets, a gigantic 18% CO2 reduction, largely through a significant drop in energy consumption (13.5%) per unit of GDP – and this with a projected higher than 6% annual economic output. Environmental improvement and protection targets are way above any environmental objectives of western countries.

The conference may also define China’s guiding role in a worldwide recovery from a covid-related devastated economy. China’s economy has suffered, mainly during the first half of 2020, but her decisive actions have successfully overcome the pandemic’s path of destruction. By the end of 2020, China’s production and services were back to 100%. Thanks to this stellar efficiency, the west and Global South may continue relying on China’s supply of such vital goods as medical equipment, medicines, electronics and more.

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What China’s 2025 Plan and 2035 / 2050 visions may include, is a strong emphasis on economic autonomy and defense.

Economy

Western China bashing with related sanctions, trade and currency wars, may continue also under the Biden Administration – because US / European policies on dealing with China – and Russia for that matter – are made well above the White House and Brussels.

Rapid dedollarization may be an effective way to stem against the western “sanctions culture”. China may soon roll out her new digital Renminbi (RMB) or yuan, internationally, as legal tender for inter-country payments and transfers, and as an international reserve currency.

Reduce demand for US-dollars may incite worldwide investments in the new digital RMB.

Detaching from western dependence, China is focusing trade development and cooperation on her ASEAN partners. In November 2020 China signed a free trade agreement with the ten ASEAN nations, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, altogether 15 countries, including China.

The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, covers some 2.2 billion people, commanding some 30% of the world’s GDP. This agreement is a first in size, value and tenor – worldwide.

China, Russia, as well as the Central Asia Economic Union (CAEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are likewise integrated into the eastern trade block.

RCEP’s trade deals will be carried out in local currencies and in yuan – no US dollars. The RCEP is, therefore, also an instrument for dedollarizing, primarily in the Asia-Pacific Region, and gradually moving across the globe.

Defense

China provides the West’s main supply chain, from medical goods to electronic equipment to almost every sector important to humanity. Yet, western political interference in China’s internal affairs, like in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Tibet, are endless. Overcoming these aggressions and threats of armed conflicts, is part of China’s forward-looking plan and defense strategy.

Mr. Wang Yi, China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently warned the White House to stop meddling in China’s internal affairs; that reunification with Taiwan is a historic tendency and was the collective wish of the Chinese people. He added, this trend cannot be reversed.

As a forerunner to China’s CPPCC Summit, in his address to the virtual World Economic Forum (WEF) on 25 January 2021, President Xi Jinping stated that China’s agenda was to move forward in the World of Great Change, with her renewed policy of multilateralism, aiming for a multi-polar world, where nations would be treated as equals.

China will continue to vouch for strong macroeconomic growth with focus on internal development which, in turn, will stimulate and contribute to international trade and investments. – China pledges assistance for those that are suffering the most during this pandemic-induced crisis.

President Xi emphasized, there was no place in this world for large countries dominating smaller ones, or for economic threats and sanctions, nor for economic isolation. China is pursuing a global free trade economy. BUT – and this is important – when talking of “globalism” – respect for political and fiscal sovereignty of nations, is a MUST.

On a global scale, President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) embraces currently more than 130 countries and over 30 international organizations, including 18 countries of the European Union. BRI offers the world participation – no coercion. The attraction and philosophy behind BRI, is shared benefits – the concept of win-win. BRI may be the road to socioeconomic recovery from covid-devastation and cross-border cooperation for participating countries.

China’s achievements in her 71 years of revolution are unmatched by any nation in recent history. From a country largely ruined by western colonization and conflicts, China rose from the ashes, by not only lifting 800 million people out of poverty, becoming food, health and education self-sufficient, but to become the world’s second largest economy today; or, if measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), since 2017 the world’s largest econmy. China is poised to surpass the US by 2025 in absolute terms.

On 4 March, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Children’s Health Defense), asked the pertinent question, “Can We Forge a New Era of Humanity Before It’s Too Late?” – His answer is simple but lucid: “Unless we move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to a life-affirming, ecological civilization, we will continue accelerating towards global catastrophe.”

This understanding is also at the forefront of China’s vision for the next 5 and 15 years – and beyond. A China-internal objective is an equitable development to well-being for all; and on a world-scale, a community with shared benefits for all.

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This article was originally published on New Eastern Outlook.

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.

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Israeli Violence in Arab Cities Reaches Intolerable Levels

March 12th, 2021 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Much is said in the international media about the Palestinian issue, but the internal ethnic crisis in Israel is ignored. Levels of violence against Arabs in Israeli territory have increased exponentially and this has led to the revolt of several social leaders in these Arab communities. The Israeli authorities justify their violence on the basis of a “policy to combat organized crime”, but, in fact, this rhetoric has been used simply to cover up the killings of Arab youth and children.

On March 10, in a shootout in the Arab-Israeli city of Jaljulia, Muhamad Abdelrazek Ades, a 14-year-old teenager was murdered and his friend, Mustafa Osama Hamed, a 12-year-old child, was injured and is hospitalized in serious condition. Local residents accuse the police of having acted negligently and shot indiscriminately at the population. A member of the Muhammad’s family said the boys left the house at the time of the shooting and were hit by about 20 shots at close range. The case would be tragic if it were unique, but this is a growing phenomenon. Muhammad has been the 23rd fatal victim of Israeli police violence against Arab citizens since the beginning of this year.

More and more young Arabs in Israel are dying in police operations carried out with malpractice and neglect. The head of the Jaljulia city hall, commenting on the case, said that the violence against the Arab community exceeded all possible limits and that the country is at a real civil war. In fact, the situation is one of absolute insecurity for the Arabs. For them there are no laws or guarantees, just endless violence.

The case of Muhammad and Mustafa triggered revolt in the Arab community. Israeli police, on the other hand, respond to criticism only by stating that it was “a mistake” and emphasizing that the families of the youth were involved in organized crime. And, in fact, this has been the practice of the Israeli authorities in cities with an Arab majority: systematically exterminating young people whose families are supposed to be involved in the crime. The high degree of marginalization and exclusion to which the Arabs are subjected on Israeli soil makes organized crime a recurrent practice in some of these communities, especially with regard to economically motivated crimes. However, the Israeli police does not act to combat such crimes using intelligence techniques or investigating the real offenders, but simply systematically exterminating members of these communities, in an act of true ethnic and social cleansing.

Police violence is also intense when Arabs take to the streets to protest and claim their civil rights. In Umm al Fahem, in northern Israel, protests have been almost daily. In a recent demonstration, the number of 10,000 participants was reported, a record for popular demonstrations in these regions. The reason for such an exponential increase is certainly due to the fact that weeks ago, in protests with a much smaller number of participants, police officers wounded 35 protesters, even though the acts were peaceful. In the same vein, after Muhammad’s death, a general strike was declared in Jaljulia. The unnecessary violence of the police only encourages more and more people to take to the streets and with this an endless cycle of popular dissatisfaction and police brutality emerges.

In institutional politics, the Arab community is agitated as much as possible. Community members in Parliament have publicly condemned the recent attacks. The Arab Deputy Aida Touma Silman made harsh statements against the Israeli police, but also emphasized the importance of fighting organized crime, saying that Arab criminals are also responsible for the killings. Although combating all forms of crime is necessary in any region of the planet, it is important to note the high degree of asymmetry in police violence. There is nothing that can explain how a child is shot 20 times at close range simply because his family is involved with criminal organizations.

In parallel to the unrest, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced last week that his government will invest around 45 million dollars to combat violence in the Arab cities. The Arab community leaders did not interpret the government’s attitude as positive, as they rightly believe that this money will be used not to improve social rates in these cities, but to further arm the police and generate more chaos and violence.

In fact, international society remains silent on this, when it should not. Tel Aviv is responsible for the death of every Arab youth. When the policemen who executed the shots against children are spared from any punishment, the state practically takes part in favor of the violence.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from Palestine Solidarity Campaign

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Update (0954ET): Iceland has become the latest European nation to suspend the AstraZeneca jab.

The tiny island nation has confirmed roughly 6K COVID cases since the start of the pandemic, which is roughly 2% of the population.

Back on the Continent, the EMA (the European equivalent of the FDA) confirmed that it has counted no fewer than 30 incidents of harmful blood clots in patients who received the vaccine, including at least one case in Denmark where the patient died.

That doesn’t sound good.

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Update (0820ET): More countries have followed Denmark by suspending approval of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine. Norway, Denmark, Estonia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, and Italy have now opted to halt use of the vaccine, creating more problems for Europe’s sluggish vaccine rollout.

The halts follow incidents involving blood clots in patients who recently received the vaccine. Two incidents were reported in Austria, although Vienna is allowing the vaccine to continue to be used, at least for now. Serious cases of blood clotshave been reported in Denmark and other countries as well.

Writer and skeptic Alex Berenson noted in a tweet that the AZ jab isn’t the only COVID shot suspected of causing harmful side effects in a small number of patients.

In a tweet confirming the suspension, Denmark’s health minister said there’s currently no way to know for certain whether the cases of serious blood clots are connected to the vaccine, but the situation certainly warrants ore investigation. “We acted early, it needs to be thoroughly investigated,” he said.

Just days ago, Italian PM Mario Draghi halted a shipment of AstraZeneca jabs to Australia, marking the first time an EU leader invoked rules to prioritize domestic vaccine access. Now, Italian authorities are suspending vaccinations from a current batch of the AstraZeneca jab following a pair of suspicious deaths.

Meanwhile, health authorities in Brussels and London have dismissed these concerns, insisting that the AZ jab is safe, while moving ahead with plans to approve Johnson & Johnson’s single-dose jab.

The EU medicines regulator said it was recommending the vaccine be authorized for all adults over 18 “after a thorough evaluation” of JNJ’s data found the vaccine met the criteria for efficacy, safety and quality. The JNJ jab is the fourth to be licensed for use inside the EU.

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Europe’s much-criticized vaccination rollout has just hit another snag, as Danish health authorities are increasingly concerned about harmful side-effects believed to be associated with the AstraZeneca-Oxford jab, the cheap COVID remedy that was supposed to help Europe catch up with the US, UK and Israel.

Danish authorities on Thursday temporarily suspended AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 shot following reports of cases of dangerous blood clots forming inside patients, including one such incident that took place in Denmark. Authorities didn’t specify exactly how many reports of blood clots there had been, but Reuters reports that Austria has also stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots while investigating a death attributed to coagulation disorders, along with an illness attributed ot a pulmonary embolism, a condition where one or more of the lung’s arteries becomes blocked by a blood clot. Six other European countries have also reportedly halted distribution of the COVID jab.

“Both we and the Danish Medicines Agency have to respond to reports of possible serious side-effects, both from Denmark and other European countries,” the director of the Danish Health Authority, Soren Brostrom, said in a statement.

The Danish Medicines Agency said the suspension would last for 14 days as authorities launch an investigation into the blood clots, with assistance from other EU member states.

They did not say how many reports of blood clots there had been, but Austria has stopped using a batch of AstraZeneca shots while investigating a death from coagulation disorders and an illness from a pulmonary embolism.

AstraZeneca claims its vaccine is subject to strict and rigorous quality controls and that there have been “no confirmed serious adverse events associated with the vaccine.” It said it was in contact with Austrian authorities and would fully support their investigation.

“Both we and the Danish Medicines Agency have to respond to reports of possible serious side-effects, both from Denmark and other European countries,” the director of the Danish Health Authority, Soren Brostrom, said. “It is important to emphasize that we have not opted out of using the AstraZeneca vaccine, but that we are putting it on hold.”

The European Medicines Agency said Wednesday there is no evidence linking AstraZeneca to the two cases of blood clots in Austria. The company said the number of (thromboembolic events” (blood clots forming) in people who have received the AstraZeneca vaccine is no higher than that seen in the general population, with 22 cases of such events being reported among the 3MM people who have received it as of March 9.

And at least one investor claimed Denmark’s suspension of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine on blood clot concerns shows “the detection systems that look for potential safety issues are working,” and that most of these “safety events” would ultimately be linked to natural processes, not the jab.

“It’s good to see the safety signal detection systems working and it’s important that any safety signal is followed-up using the correct protocols,” Shore analyst Adam Barker told Bloomberg. Data from the vaccine’s phase three trials suggests that “you would expect that most safety signals won’t ultimately be linked to the vaccine,” he said.

However, “it’s hard to make judgments on the impact on shareholder value,” he added, given there are “a lot of moving parts.” But ultimately, a risk-reward trade-off with any therapy; “you can only confidently make judgments on that decision when all the data is finalized and clear”

Nevertheless, shares of AZ tumbled on Thursday on signs that the European vaccine rollout is facing fresh skepticism and obstacles. Shares were down more than 2% in London’s mid-morning trade.

Whether Austria and other EU states will follow suit remains to be seen, though at least one other national health authority is reportedly considering a halt: the Norwegian Institute of Public Health and the Medicines Agency are meeting to discuss Denmark’s decision to halt vaccinations using doses of the vaccine, according to reports from state broadcaster NRK.

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Denmark, Norway and Iceland today announced they are joining other European countries in temporarily suspending use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine following reports of blood clots in people who got the vaccine.

Denmark suspended the shots until further notice after a 60-year-old woman died from a blood clot which formed after she was vaccinated, reported Reuters.

The Danish decision came days after Austrian authorities announced they were suspending a batch of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine while investigating the death of one person and the illness of another after receiving the shots. The same batch used in Austria was used in Denmark, according to Reuters.

In Austria, a  49-year-old woman died of severe coagulation disorders, and a 35-year-old woman developed a pulmonary embolism –– an acute lung disease caused by a dislodged blood clot –– and is recovering, said The Federal Office for Safety in Health Care (BASG) in Austria.

Austrian newspaper Niederoesterreichische Nachrichten, broadcaster ORF and the APA news agency reported that both women were nurses at the same clinic where the vaccine batch was used.

In a statement provided to Reuters, AstraZeneca said the safety of its vaccine had been extensively studied in human trials and that peer-reviewed data had confirmed the vaccine was generally well tolerated.

Earlier this week, AstraZeneca reported “no confirmed serious adverse events associated with the vaccine” during trials and said it was working with Austria in its investigation.

Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Luxembourg have suspended all or part of their AstraZeneca vaccine roll-out as a precaution while they investigate concerns related to blood clots, reported France 24.

According to Reuters, Italy announced it banned a batch of the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine following the deaths of two men who had recently been vaccinated. One man was a 43-year-old naval officer who died after a suspected heart attack the day after his shot. The second man, a 50-year-old policeman, fell ill within 24 hours of his injection, never recovered and died 12 days after being vaccinated. Both men had received shots from AstraZeneca’s ABV2856 batch.

As of March 10, 30 cases of thromboembolic events had been reported to  EudraVigilance, the system for managing and analyzing information on suspected adverse reactions to medicines which have been authorized or are being studied in clinical trials in the European Economic Area.

As The Defender reported today, 12 prominent doctors and scientists are demanding that EU regulators address seven critical safety issues relating to the AstraZeneca, Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines, or withdraw approval of the vaccines for use in the EU.

The UK government is meanwhile urging people to “still go and get their COVID-19 vaccine,” stressing the suspension in multiple countries “is a precautionary measure,” reported EuroNews.

The UK’s Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency also urged people to still get vaccinated, as it had not been confirmed that the COVID vaccine caused the blood clot in the woman in Denmark.

On March 2, The Defender reported that government data showed 43% more reports of injuries related to the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine in the UK, including 77% more adverse events and 25% more deaths compared to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

Britain’s regulator, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA), runs YellowCard, which is the nearest British equivalent to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System or VAERS in the U.S.

The MHRA expressed no concern about the number of reports of adverse events connected with AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine.

“The problem with spontaneous reports of suspected adverse reactions to a vaccine are the enormous difficulty of distinguishing a causal effect from a coincidence,” Stephen Evans, professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine told France 24.

Last month two regions in Sweden temporarily halted AstraZeneca COVID vaccinations after 400 people received the vaccine and 100 people experienced adverse reactions leaving them unable to work. Another region observed a surprising number of side effects after a mass vaccination effort of more than 500 people, reported The Defender.

South Africa halted the roll-out of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine due to low efficacy in February, and European countries France, Germany and Sweden reported more side effects from the AstraZeneca COVID vaccine than from the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.

The World Health Organization approved the AstraZeneca-Oxford COVID vaccine for emergency use last month, despite growing safety concerns in other countries and questionable clinical trials.

AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine has not yet been approved for use in the U.S. but the drugmaker plans to file for Emergency Use Authorization with the U.S Food and Drug Administration in the upcoming weeks pending the results of a clinical trial, according to CBS News.

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

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

All Global Research articles can be read in 27 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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In a rare moment of truth of CNN Wednesday, Anthony Fauci admitted that there is no scientific reason why people who have had the COVID vaccine are still having their freedoms restricted.

CNN host John Berman asked Fauci “What’s the science behind not saying it’s safe for people who have been vaccinated – received two doses, to travel?”

“When you don’t have the data and you don’t have the actual evidence, you’ve got to make a judgment call,” Fauci replied, declaring that Americans will just have to trust the CDC:

As we reported this week, CNN announced that the CDC is graciously allowing vaccinated Americans some ‘limited freedoms’, prompting a huge backlash on social media where people pointed out that the health body doesn’t grant anyone their God given freedoms.

So, there is no science and the CDC is making a judgement call about how ‘free’ Americans can be. Hmmm.

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