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[A] return to normalcy will require subduing radical factions that agitate for oppression. Restrictions such as mask mandates are like oxygen to followers of radical fundamentalist Covidianism — the abiding belief that only lockdowns, social distancing, and masks can deliver us from the deadly pandemic.  The longer mandates stay in place and experts continue promoting mask use — “My mask protects you! Your mask protects me!” — the stronger and more widespread the extremism will grow, and the less influence experts will have over their behavior.  Georgi Boorman, The Federalist, 22 September 2020

Non-objective law is the most effective weapon of human enslavement: its victims become its enforcers and enslave themselves.  Ayn Rand, The Nature of Government

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Universities and colleges are working to adapt and respond to a mix of information, signals and intentions concerning the Covid phenomenon, especially involving what conditions will be imposed in order to fully “re-open” (the assumption that a state of normalcy will greet everyone at the other end of current “lockdown” and other related “orders,” is not reasonable).

Those have fairly significant policy implications that may range from screening, testing and vaccination (increasingly seen as “at gunpoint”), to tracing, profiling and tracking, among other authoritarian methods under consideration, including “health passports.”

The modern university campus may eventually resemble the modern airport in how students, faculty, staff, alumnae and visitors are processed, screened and approved for entry onto the campus and its facilities.  The scope of such institutional reactions will be comprehensive, as the reputational stakes are thought high: divergent thinking, or a challenge to consensus, is often deemed dangerous, conspiratorial, or even sociopathic.

Indeed, universities believe they face a heavy hammer of government intimidation and sanctions, in addition to nearly unlimited private legal action, if risks are not seen as managed within the expectations that have been set through repeated conditioning.  Indeed, “Coronavirus” has now taken its place in what I call the campus “Ideological Iron Square” that consists of terror, race, climate and covid.  These phenomena are most fundamentally centered in fear: Such fear conditioning and response has led to an effective cult formation that has been termed “Branch Covidianism.”

It is also no coincidence that covid and partisan politics are thematically mixed together. Covid has provided a full spectrum of pretexts that range from changing state election rules, reinforcing absentee voting liberties, and voter ID relaxation.  But beyond election politics, Covid has also created an entire “world view” of social engineering.  In the University of Chicago’s case, this new view was put forth by its original founding family, and its Rockefeller Foundation, whose 2010 white paper “Future Scenarios” was fascinatingly prescient, if even outright prescriptive:

During the pandemic, national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets. Even after the pandemic faded, this more authoritarian control and oversight of citizens and their activities stuck and even intensified. In order to protect themselves from the spread of increasingly global problems — from pandemics and transnational terrorism to environmental crises and rising poverty — leaders around the world took a firmer grip on power. At first, the notion of a more controlled world gained wide acceptance and approval. Citizens willingly gave up some of their sovereignty — and their privacy — to more paternalistic states in exchange for greater safety and stability. Citizens were more tolerant, and even eager, for top-down direction and oversight, and national leaders had more latitude to impose order in the ways they saw fit. In developed countries, this heightened oversight took many forms: biometric IDs for all citizens, for example, and tighter regulation of key industries whose stability was deemed vital to national interests. In many developed countries, enforced cooperation with a suite of new regulations and agreements slowly but steadily restored order.  The Rockefeller Foundation, Future Scenarios, 2010

In the context of higher education, various government agencies have effectively adapted and reconfigured their priorities and objectives: the CDC (Center for Disease Control) and the largely captured World Health Organization (WHO) have together become a de facto Department of Education, as it meters out its information and judgments that universities are waiting on (raising an interesting question as to whether there is really a “private” university with its own legal Charter and Articles).

But there’s more to the CDC’s sudden intrusion into higher education: a large-scale social experiment is underway—explicit or an effect—that is pitting one student group against another.  It is turning our college campuses into a “Lord of the Flies” island, and the results can be dangerous in several dimensions including morally and psychologically.

It works precisely against intellectual independence, and against the fundamental purpose and aspiration of higher education (as Nietzsche said in The Dawn, “The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently”).  This dynamic also works toward a subtle prompting of obedience and reward:  “Humans intuit the in-group/out-group dynamic. We are sensitive to lines drawn between insiders and outsiders and, whether consciously or subconsciously, modify our behavior to fit the mold of the inside group. If outsiders can be convinced that the “insiders” in society get vaccinated, they are more likely to adopt conforming behavior as a result”  (from Social Engineers Use Weaponized Psychology to Push Unproven Vaccines). Group consensus will create pressure to conform.

Consensus political behavior is also reinforced by other institutional influences.  Organized campus political interests and actors—including the overhanging influences of the largely inept “radical-socialist” Chicago alumnae trio of Obama, Sanders and Lightfoot whose ideology is propagated by David Axelrod’s Institute of Politics (IOP)—also distort the larger campus political culture, and reinforce the covid narrative, as it encapsulates the Left’s state-centered designs and strategy.  Axelrod has otherwise inserted the IOP on campus as an effective student indoctrination and Democratic National Committee (DNC) campaign center that, while hosting occasional ‘contrarian” opinions, carefully advances a very mainstream DNC institutional framework and agenda, while Axelrod himself is an active public relations and media agent disseminating strategic partisan positioning and often, hyperbole.

The “Chicago School” of Inquiry

Standing in the middle of all of the complex information flows between health and politics that are emanating from institutions, private interests and media, are the students themselves (and their families).  How can they make sense of it all?  In the case of the University of Chicago, it has historically advanced a philosophy of inquiry that focuses on facts and data, and openly looks for disconfirming or inconvenient information–the “Chicago School” of inquiry.

The term has otherwise been variously described (and abused) over the years, but it boils down to an unusually healthy skepticism, combined with determined curiosity directed at uncovering facts and data that confirm or falsify an assertion or hypothesis. 

This applies across all the arts, and all the sciences, including social.  But it’s not only an analytic frame of mind; it’s an intuitive and even spiritual aspect as well.  Alongside all of Chicago’s famous Nobel physicists and economists, stand its humanitarians like writers Saul Bellow, Hannah Arendt, Leo Strauss or Kurt Vonnegut, who knew what oppression was, and embodied an instinctive rebellion that is also part of the “Chicago School,” as is the pragmatist philosophy of Richard Rorty, or the jurisprudence of Robert Bork.

Freedom fighters all.  The Chicago School, from my experience as a Booth student, is also at its center, an economic and political philosophy that advances a general belief in individual autonomy and free markets, over collectivism and institutions. This isn’t just ideological, but pragmatic: free individuals who are freely associating, tend to economically outperform collective bodies that are collectively managed.

Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman: University of Chicago Ph.D (’68) and Stanford economist Thomas Sowell nicely describes through his many interviews and books what such a school meant to him.  He relates how coming to UChicago from Harvard, for example, changed his life.  His Chicago advisor, Nobel economist Milton Friedman (author of “Free To Choose”), and the larger Chicago research culture he was a part of, upended his own generally Marxist belief structure.  At Harvard, he said, professors and students generally made economic determinations framed in opinion, ideology, and mere assertion.   When he came to Chicago, he was asked to actually prove them, and to be willing to do so in a “gloves off” intellectual fight where such questions are pursued as a “contact sport.”  Humans, with their ability for abstract thought, also share or transmit information with intentions. Those intentions are necessarily subject to discovery, and until discovered, such informational veracity must be treated as tentative.

Is the “Chicago School” philosophy still equally alive today?  What happened to Chicago’s famed intellectual defiance?  What would Friedman, Arendt, Vonnegut, or Strauss think about state biosecurity policy, or the avalanche of eyewitness testimony concerning voting manipulation stemming from the DNC and its financial syndicate that used this biosecurity as a pretext to change voting procedures?  It’s hard to say given institutional, financial and cultural pressures to “normalize the abnormal.”  But one thing is likely: their personification of skepticism, rebellion, relentless questioning and reasoned consideration with facts and experience, might provide a lasting model of thought and conduct.  Such a philosophy is not indestructible.  It is ultimately reliant on individuals, not institutions, and comes with a demand for personal resolve and intellectual integrity in the face of many pressures and conflicts.

As Kant said, Sapere aude.  Dare to think.

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This article was originally published on Dissident Proof.

Matt Andersson is a science and technology professional, a graduate of the University of Chicago, and the author of the upcoming book “Legally Blind: How Ideology Has Captured the Law School, the Judiciary, and the Constitution.”

All images in this article are from Dissident Proof

Like his predecessor, Biden and hardliners surrounding him invent reasons to bash Iran unjustifiably.

On Monday, multiple rockets struck a Pentagon airbase in Erbil, Iraq, killing a US contractor and wounding nine others, at least one individual in critical condition.

A group called Saraya Awliya al-Dam claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it targeted the “American occupation” in Iraq, adding:

The Americans “will not be safe from our strikes in any inch of the homeland, even in Kurdistan, where we promise we will carry out other qualitative operations.”

According to the area’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the incident was a “big security breach and major failure for all the main Kurdish security agencies,” adding:

“How the rockets entered the region remains unclear, but it is possible that personnel within the Kurdistan region’s security and military force may have collaborated with the perpetrators.”

Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq denied that any of its militias were responsible for what happened.

Its Northern Front head of relations Sayed Ali Hosseini said he never heard of a group called Saraya Awliya al-Dam.

Was the incident carried out by Iraqi elements opposed to unacceptable US occupation or was it a Biden regime/CIA false flag to wrongfully blame Iran for what happened?

Asked about the incident, Blinken implied Iranian involvement, saying the following:

“(W)e’ve seen these attacks in the past. We’ve seen Iraqi militia, Iranian-backed militia in many cases, be responsible,” adding:

The Biden administration will “investigate and hold accountable those responsible.”

In response, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh slammed what he called “suspicious rumors” that link the Islamic Republic to what it had nothing to do with, adding:

“Iran not only strongly rejects these rumors, but also flatly condemns suspicious attempts to attribute the attack to Iran.”

“Iran regards stability and security of Iraq as a key issue for the region and neighbors, and rejects any measure disrupting order and calm in that country.”

The US is implacably hostile toward Iran, opposing conflict resolution while pretending otherwise.

There’s virtually no prospect that Biden regime hardliners will change what’s been hard-wired US policy against Iran for 42 years.

Separately on Tuesday, Iraqi Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) representative in Tehran Nazim Dabaq said the following:

“The Kurdistan region is waiting for the central government in Iraq to declare its official decision to expel (hostile) US forces.”

Like its predecessors, the Biden regime and Pentagon support permanent US occupation of Iraq.

According to the Middle East Eye (MEE), ISIS is “regrouping in northern Iraq.”

Its fighters are conducting “attacks from (the group’s) base in the Hamrin Basin, (a) rugged and impenetrable” area.

It’s “one of the largest and most dangerous havens in which radical Sunni and Kurdish armed groups have concentrated for decades, and where IS fighters fall back to whenever security becomes too tight in other areas.”

ISIS is a US creation. So are al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot, and likeminded terrorist groups – used by the Pentagon and CIA as proxy troops.

Obama once claiming that ISIS will “be defeated” and Trump earlier saying that “we’re knocking the hell out of” the terror group were gross exaggerations.

Russia in Syria, the country’s military, Iraqi troops, and Popular Mobilization Forces knocked the hell out of ISIS for real.

Along with other US-supported jihadist groups, numbers in their ranks fluctuate.

When greatly reduced, they can be significantly increased by the Pentagon and CIA at their discretion.

As needed in pursuit of their imperial agenda, their fighters are recruited, armed, trained, directed, and shifted to areas where wanted to be used as US proxies.

MEE noted a “marked increase in (ISIS) activity north or Baghdad.”

In recent weeks, their fighters carried out major attacks killing dozens.

According to an unnamed Iraqi military commander:

“We recorded a remarkable increase in the organization’s activities…during the last month, compared to the months preceding it.”

ISIS fighters “carried out three big operations, and this is something that cannot be overlooked or ignored.”

“They still pose a real threat, but their current attacks are aimed only at proving their existence, as the organization is no longer able to hold territory.”

That can change significantly as happened earlier when the Pentagon and CIA mobilized large numbers of its fighters in Iraq and Syria.

They captured, held and established strongholds in both countries.

If pressure mounts for expulsion of Pentagon forces from Iraq and/or Syria, a US strategy similar to what happened earlier could repeat for them to stay — based on the phony pretext of combating the scourge of ISIS that are Pentagon/CIA proxies.

The group may never again gain control of around one-third of Iraqi and Syrian territory as before.

Yet they and likeminded jihadists remain as threatening as their US handlers want them to be in pursuit of its regional aims.

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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/

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A leaked email suggests that there are plans to keep the National Guard in Washington DC beyond the previously discussed deadline of March 12th, and throughout the Summer AND Fall.

A report by FOX 5 cites an internal email seen by reporters that reveals The National Security Council is asking the Department of Defense to engage Capitol Police on planning for post-March 12th support.

The report notes that there will be a meeting for agencies to discuss the matter next Wednesday, February 17th.

The email was written by Robert Salesses who is covering the duties of Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Global Security.

It states:

“If it’s not possible to sustain at the current level with NG personnel, we need to establish the number of NG personnel (DCNG and out-of-state) we can sustain for an extended period – at least through Fall 2021 – and understand additional options for providing DoD support, to include use of reserve personnel, as well as active component.”

While troops were expected to stay in DC for the duration of the impeachment sideshow, owing to “security concerns,” it now appears that they will remain even longer.

The Pentagon has confirmed that there are still around 6000 National Guard troops in DC. While there have been indications that the number will be reduced to 5000 within a month, there have been no other indications of when troops will be stood down.

There is also no indication of when the huge razor wire topped security fencing will be removed from around Capitol Hill.

The Guard have been given virtually no information about what they are required to do, with one soldier previously describing the situation as “very unusual for any military mission.”

As we reported last month, thousands of the troops were forced to sleep OUTSIDE and in a parking Garage near the Capitol building after a Democratic lawmaker complained that ONE guardsmen was not wearing a face mask.

The estimated cost of keeping the security measures is so far close to $500 million.

Without a legitimate reason to keep troops in DC any longer, Americans can only assume that the Biden administration and the Democrats feel their grip on power needs protecting by a permanent military presence.

Featured image courtesy of Summit News

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In a move that was entirely predictable after the UK’s Office of Communications (Ofcom) banned China’s CGTN from operating in the UK, China has reciprocated by banning BBC World News from broadcasting in China.

The BBC in its own article titled, “China bans BBC World News from broadcasting,” would claim:

China has banned BBC World News from broadcasting in the country, its television and radio regulator announced on Thursday.

China has criticised the BBC for its reporting on coronavirus and the persecution of ethnic minority Uighurs.

Without any sense of irony – and following the UK’s own banning of CGTN –  UK’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, claimed the BBC’s banning was an “unacceptable curtailing of media freedom.”

Part of China’s criticism, explained in a CGTN article titled, “China pulls BBC World News off air for serious content violation,” was that the BBC:

…seriously violated regulations on radio and television management and on overseas satellite television channel management in its China-related reports, which went against the requirements that news reporting must be true and impartial, and undermined China’s national interests and ethnic solidarity.

The BBC’s official statement in response to China’s recent banning of the British media corporation would claim:

Yet, China’s criticism of the BBC is far from a politically-motivated tit-for-tat from Beijing. It echoes complaints against the BBC from within the UK itself – and complaints that span at least two decades.

The BBC is Untrustworthy – Says the UK Itself

A 2003 Guardian article titled, “Study deals a blow to claims of anti-war bias in BBC news,” would reveal the BBC’s leading role in promoting the now verified lies that led to the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq – a war that constitutes one of the worst crimes against humanity of the 21st century.

A Cardiff University study showed that the BBC “displayed the most “pro-war” agenda of any broadcaster.”

More recently, a November 2020 article from The National titled, “BBC: Ofcom report shows corporation’s impartiality score at record low,” would admit:

Fewer people believe the BBC to be an impartial broadcaster than ever before, with the corporation’s news output falling below Sky, ITV/STV, Channel 5, and Channel 4 in the latest Ofcom report.

 

The results make the BBC the lowest-ranked channel in the UK, with just five in 10 Scots believing it succeeds in “providing impartial news and information to help people understand and engage with the world around them”.

 

Trust in the BBC is slightly higher in the other UK nations, with six in 10 people in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland saying the BBC succeeds in that task.

Thus, the UK’s own Ofcom fully refutes the BBC’s claims of being “trustworthy,” “impartial,” or “fair.”

The BBC’s Long History of Undermining China

Those familiar with the BBC’s coverage of events unfolding within China are well aware of just how untrustworthy, partial, and unfair its coverage has been.

Whether it is reporting grisly terrorism in China’s western region of Xinjiang one year, then omitting mention of it to portray Chinese security operations in response to it as “oppressive,” or omitting any mention at all of the true historical context of Hong Kong’s “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement and Western interference deliberately organizing unrest in Hong Kong’s streets – the BBC operates more like an instrument of foreign policy somewhere between soft and hard power and even bordering the realm of an intelligence agency, than anything journalistic.

The BBC performs a similar role everywhere it operates – begging the question as to how long it will be until other nations start following China’s example and begin expelling the BBC from within their information space as well.

Aside from the “international norm” China is setting an example for, targeted nations could use the UK’s own Ofcom and its standards to determine the BBC as partial, unfair, politically-motivated, and acting inappropriately thus warranting expulsion.

This is not simply the silencing of a foreign state-funded and directed media organization, it is the expulsion of one of the worst propaganda operations of its kind – if not the worst.

Far from mere tit-for-tat – critics of China’s CGTN have yet to cite any examples of abuse that remotely matches that of the BBC over the past two decades. The BBC has directly abetted Western wars of aggression that have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the ruining of the lives of tens of millions.

The BBC helped promote the wars of aggression against Libya and Syria in 2011 – the ongoing war in Yemen – and US-engineered regime change operations in places like Ukraine, Hong Kong, Thailand, and now Myanmar.

No nation would tolerate another nation’s military conducting information warfare openly within their borders.

The BBC all but does this under the guise of civilian journalism.

The trappings of civilian journalism should not be a deterrence from effectively dealing with this form of foreign interference. Instead, these trappings should be carefully peeled away before dealing effectively with the BBC itself, using mechanisms nations like Russia and China have used to retake and/or protect their respective information spaces – and even mechanisms the UK itself uses in an attempt to portray a well-regulated and healthy media within their borders. 

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Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from NEO

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The United States has already started bearing the consequences of the decision of the Biden administration to halt the troop drawdown from the Greater Middle East.

On February 15th, 14 rockets struck the area of the US military base near Erbil International Airport, 4 of them within the compound, 10 of which were near strikes. One private contractor was killed and 5 were injured. In a rare event, 1 US service member was also wounded.

The location of the attack coincides with Turkey’s operation “Claw Eagle 2” which targets the alleged Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) positions. Most of northern Iraq was on edge, as a result.

Turkey and the US, as NATO allies appear to not be cooperating whatsoever, as they’re pursuing separate goals in largely the same areas of the Middle East.

Ankara’s activities contribute to the chaos of the Middle East situation, as it targets the PKK, while the US mostly targets and is targeted by Iranian-backed forces.

Another US ally, this time one that aligns its activities with it – Israel struck unknown targets around Damascus.

It launched missiles from the occupied Golan Heights, and many of them were intercepted by Syrian air defenses, however, some landed on their targets. It is unclear what was targeted and what the damage was.

There have been no strikes by Israel through Lebanese airspace after a drone was downed, and Hezbollah vowed to attempt to destroy any Israeli aircraft that encroaches on its airspace.

Movements throughout the Middle East are beginning for the US and its allies.

In Iraq, many of the targeted convoys in the last several weeks have reached their destinations.

With a lack of reports of convoy targeting, it would appear that the currently static positions are under threat.

Iran is continuing its movements, undermining US and Israeli influence, and it has had general success in recent weeks. The US is fighting back against it.

On February 11th, a truck moving supplies for an Iranian-backed unit, al-Haydariyun, was targeted near Syria’s border with Iraq.

According to the Resistance Media Network, the truck was targeted by a drone likely operated by the US military.

In Yemen, the US said it would attempt to impose a peace deal, on its own terms. It claims to stop supporting Saudi Arabia’s genocidal intervention. Washington, however, also continues providing defensive services and intelligence.

Following Joe Biden’s first foreign policy speech, the time for the US to move has come. In the coming days, the “fight against ISIS” is sure to ramp up, alongside various other movements throughout the Middle East.

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Many people give chocolates as a symbol of love on Valentine’s Day, but for some the popular candy is more bitter than sweet.

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The belief in freedom and the rule of America are irreconcilable, for American hegemony has globalised the power structure of serfdom and by means of corporate domination of technology has protected it with surveillance architectures. If there is a necessary symbol of Liberty, it is Wikileaks, which subjects American power to the discipline of transparency and gifts the public with a revolutionary technology that provides a check and balance on national security elites.

The idea of accountability is central to theories and practices of democracy. It is an argument for increasing public control over government, inimical to tyranny. One cannot equate the secretive governance of the national security state with democracy. It violates the constitution. For example, during the war on terror, extraterritorial jurisdictions have appeared all over the world in which American power egregiously violates common human rights ethics.

In our own time, however, Wikileaks, a political movement to render the hegemon accountable, has gained momentum, a far reaching development in the attempt to reconcile mass media to progress. With a light that could scare a thousand kings, Wikileaks re-established the ideals of the Paris commune within the context of the information age, democratically redistributing power within the political economy of communication.

Wikileaks has not been met with the understanding and respect it deserves. Public discourse on its activism has degenerated into an echo of propaganda enforced by the intelligence community, whose irrational privileges it threatens. Instead of being celebrated as a benevolent civilisational gift, Wikileaks is wrongly maligned as a malicious, cynical conduit of Russian power. Ad hominem attacks on Julian Assange have become an instrument of policy for elites, who manage media narratives.

Julian Assange has assumed the duties of a conscientious objector, and has thus faced a concerted attempt at suppression. The whole thrust of propaganda against him has sought to discredit and destroy his reputation, as a means to undermine his alternative authority. Propaganda while being in the domain of ideas is nonetheless the use of the force, the force of organised lies against the public imagination. America’s militant force against transparency activism gives lie to democracy.

Wikileaks is a spanner in the mechanics of tyranny. It is a highly sophisticated counter strategy against imperialism that has shown American power to be incompatible with democratic legitimacy and norms of civility. The general development of society in the age of the internet relies on revolutionary applications of technology and in very many ways Wikileaks has fulfilled this promise.

By creating a database immune to error, Wikileaks has created a superior point of reference for research, in which consists its special utility. In Wikileaks, the media has acquired a rival as the primary reference point for knowledge of issues that go beyond oneself.

In a true democracy oppression would be impossible and power universal and thus it is impossible to establish a relationship between contemporary American power and democracy without distortions and betrayals of logic.

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A top court in The Hague issued a “shock” ruling that curbs the power of civic authorities to impose sweeping coronavirus-related curfews which should have significant reverberations legally for similar scenarios in other countries.

“The curfew must be lifted immediately,” the court said in a statement, underscoring that the Dutch government is abusing its powers by violating freedom of movement and assembly in particular. The pandemic curfew must be reversed immediately, the government has been told, which comes after weeks of fierce protests by an angry population which seems to have rejected it in unison.

In the official court statement, the Hague deemed the invocation of the Extraordinary Powers of Civil Authority Act to impose a national curfew is not justified on the basis of the COVID-19 emergency. The law allows the government to circumvent normal legislative channels to impose curfew in “very urgent and exceptional circumstance”.

“The curfew is a far-reaching violation of the right to freedom of movement and privacy and (indirectly) limits, among other things, the right to freedom of assembly and demonstration,” The Hague court said.

“The Preliminary Relief Judge ruled that the introduction of the curfew did not involve the special urgency required to be able to make use of the [act],” the Hague said. One key issue cited is that the government had plenty of time to discuss and consider such a curfew through the normal legislative process, thus “the use of this law to impose curfew is not legitimate,” according to the ruling.

The Netherlands’ curfew had been among the most draconian in Europe and the world. While early in the pandemic during the first wave of lockdowns a number of countries had imposed such curfews, since January 23 Dutch citizens were ordered to remain home between the hours of 9pm and 4:30am, which would result in steep fines if violated. It was to be in effect until March 2.

The curfew, the first in the Netherlands since World War II, sparked several days of riots when it was introduced on 23 January https://t.co/SeOaDKuTrr

— RTÉ News (@rtenews) February 16, 2021

While there were “exceptions” in cases of medical emergencies or work deemed “essential”, Dutch citizens by and large were outrage, expressing their frustrations through multiple nights of protests and rioting, which resulted in hundreds of arrests.

The Hague ruling was triggered by the Virus Truth Foundation filing a lawsuit which sought to get the curfew overturned as a violation of civil rights and the national Constitution.

Meanwhile, in a sign of a continuing legal fight to come… because “science”:

DUTCH PM RUTTE: CURFEW STILL NEEDED EVEN AFTER A COURT FOUND IT HAS NO LEGAL BASIS

— *Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) February 16, 2021

Virus Truth Foundation noted on its website, “We fight for the preservation of a democratic constitutional state in which our children still have the opportunity to develop themselves in freedom and to live a life with their own beliefs and opinions.” It’s hailing the ruling as a major victory.

Crucially this had been the first such curfew imposed on The Netherlands since World War II, which is in part why it was greeted with such hostility among the public. Demonstrators noted it was neither wartime, nor is the country under threat of invasion.

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We are exactly two months into the COVID 19 vaccine rollout, which began on Dec. 14, 2020. Each Friday The Defender  reports on the latest vaccine reaction numbers from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) database.

As of Feb. 4, 12,697 reactions, including 653 deaths, had been reported to the system, out of 35 million doses of vaccines administered.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is using the VAERS system as an passive reaction surveillance tool following the fast-tracked, Emergency Use Authorization of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines. Other systems being used are V-Safe and the Vaccine Safety Database.

We looked at the data we have so far to see if we could identify any emerging patterns. What immediately stands out is that the 12,697 reactions reported as of Feb. 4 are not limited to injection-site reactions. These appear to be serious reactions reported by medical personnel from all over the country.

One trend worth noting is the number of reported cardiological reactions, including myocardial and tachycardia disorders. We found 1,171 cases using the more common symptoms reported, including 134 cases where the patient died — or 21% of the total COVID vaccine deaths reported to VAERS.

According to VAERS data, of the 1,171 serious cardiac-related cases reported, 1,021 (87.2%) occurred within 48 hours of receiving the vaccine. Of the 134 cases where the patient died, 50% occurred within 24 hours and 60% within 48 hours.

Temporality and strength of association are major contributors to causality according to the most robust diagnostic criteria used by doctors, the Bradford Hill Criteria:

“Temporality is perhaps the only criterion which epidemiologists universally agree is essential to causal inference.” and “the larger an association between exposure and disease, the more likely it is to be causal.”

If we compare the 653 COVID-19 vaccine death reports to flu vaccine deaths reports, a shocking statistic emerges. There have been only 20 flu vaccine-related deaths so far in the 2020/21 flu season when more people received the flu vaccine than ever before — 193.6 million doses, and only one of those reported deaths was related to a cardiac disorder.

This means that so far, with only 35 million COVID-19 vaccine doses administered (as of Feb. 4), numbers of total reported deaths and also cardiac-related reported deaths are already exponentially higher than deaths reported following flu vaccines.

We understand that causality has not been determined to be the vaccine, but we do know that the CDC uses the VAERS system to monitor for serious signals. Could this be one of the most serious? Is it possible that the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine contribute to heart problems?

Some doctors think so. We know that the mRNA vaccines program cells into producing the spike protein to arm the immune system against an infection. What if the spike protein the body generates is also contributing to heart problems the same way that the virus would?

We know from recent research that the COVID-19 spike protein alone, without the virus, appears to be the culprit that triggers a cascade of events that results in inflammation and the formation of microthrombi (small blood clots) in vessels throughout the body. So it makes sense that many of the adverse reactions that we will see from the mRNA vaccines will parallel the injuries we also see from the COVID-19 infections.

The U.S. is not the only country to report these symptoms following the vaccine. The UK government’s “Yellow Card” system has so far reported 590 cardiac disorders for Pfizer and 12 fatalities, and 212 reports for the Astra Zeneca vaccine, including one death.

The World Health Organization’s (WHO) vaccine injury reporting system, “Vigiaccess” has recorded 3,234 reports relating to cardiac disorders. Vigiaccess is a database of reactions of reports from 142 countries, but so far the 67,277 COVID 19 reports are mostly from Europe (81%), the U.S. (19%) and Asia (1%). It is unclear if there is duplication with VAERS and Yellow Card system.

Both the UK’s and the WHO’s systems are not accessible by the public, so further scrutiny is difficult without assistance from the respective agencies. As with VAERS, there is always a causality disclaimer which usually serves to dismiss all reactions despite temporality or  association between exposure and disease.

For now, we can only use these systems as helpful tools to see if there are signs of inherent dangers in these experimental vaccines that may be cause for alarm.

The details of the cases on VAERS relating to cardiac disorders merit the highest medical scrutiny, if for no other reason than that they account for 21% of the deaths reported in the first eight weeks of the vaccines’ administration.

Unfortunately, the CDC and the media collectively sing the praises of the vaccines’ success, while silencing those who dare to ask the important questions that need to be asked about safety.

On Feb. 10, the Instagram account run by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., was removed for questioning the very data highlighted here. In response, Kennedy issued a statement which included this observation:

“The pharmaceutical industry is hastily creating vaccines using taxpayer money and untested technologies. These include a rash of risky new products that are exempt from liability, from long-term safety testing and that have not received FDA approval. Emergency Use Authorization is a mass population scientific experiment. If it has any prayer of working, it will require extraordinary scrutiny from the press and the public.”

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).

***

Most recent works on the United States accept that it is an empire, perhaps not in the traditional landholding sense, but in the extent of its power and control of others. 

In “American Empire – Global History,” A. G. Hopkins accepts the idea of empire with several qualifications and with a precise focus on certain aspects of that empire.  His overall intention is to compare his outlook on empire with the features of other empires contemporary with the development of the U.S. empire.  His arguments are good proof to his overall thesis that the development of the U.S. empire, while being a latecomer, had many features and parallels to the problems of other empires.

The critical time span he covers are from the Spanish War to the end of World War II.   He does not ignore aspects beyond that, but the fullest development is concentrated on the U.S’ insular empire – the islands of the Spanish empire taken over after the 1898 war (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines) and the Hawaian Islands.

Native Americans don’t count

Hopkins accepts the warlike takeover of the U.S. continental empire, and while not calling it an empire per se, does write, “Territorial expansion across North America was a form of settler colonialism involving conflict with indigenous societies and neighbouring states, as well as discord among the settlers themselves.”

This “assertive territorial expansion” was an “imperialism of intent” arriving at the conclusion “It is hard to argue that the United States created a continental empire in the nineteenth century.”

While using descriptions that fit the bill, he also does not use the words ethnic cleansing nor genocide for the destruction of the indigenous Americans.  Racial supremacy is recognized after the Civil War and Indian Wars, but not acknowledged as being a foundational transfer of principle from the original religious settlers and the white supremacy as supported by the Papal Bulls of 1452.

His counter arguments run from:  scale (there was only a “tiny fraction” of the population as indigenous); to other states deliver the same kind of violence; and finally “imperialist expansion” does not equate with “the formation of the type of territorial expansion discussed in this study.”

 These are a rather disingenuous argument as it is rather easy to argue that the U.S. created a continental empire.

Essentially Hopkins self-defines empire for his own purposes while not successfully contradicting that there are various types of empire that are all true empires.

The ‘real’ empire

The above fault aside, Hopkins focus on the insular empire is detailed and instructive.  One of the facets seldom explored in this empire is the extent to which the U.S., while gaining rhetorical and political independence, did not gain financial independence from Britain until after World War II.

As a sidebar for today, the power of the City of London (its financial district) still holds enormous sway over financial markets through its crafting of the London Inter-bank Offered Rate (LIBOR – interest rates) and its control of two important commodities markets, silver and gold.

Image on the right: PopularResistance.Org

Empires, U.S. or otherwise, are best described in three words:  guns, debt, and racism (white supremacy).

Frequent references are made to guns.  At inception, being the revolution, Hopkins writes, “The outcome of these concerns [land owners and finance] was the installation of elements of a military fiscal state imported from Britain.”   These military endeavours “nurtured a belief in the  efficacy of force that has survived to the present….Martial values became embedded in the concept of liberty in the United States to a degree that made the use of force…seem natural and therefore normal.”   The use of firearms did not stand alone as it acquired colonies “by deploying the standard tools of the trade: firearms and finance.”

Finance

One aspect of the financial empire is indicated above, the U.S.’ dependence on British financial systems and power.  The other aspect is the transfer of these systems of financial power to their own empire.  The insular colonies of the U.S. earned money by exporting cash crops:  sugar from all the islands; coffee as well from Puerto Rico; and pineapple from Hawaii.

However the success of these early agro-industries were dependent on competition from the mainland States where sugar beets were becoming competitive and dependent on the political whims of the mainland in instituting tariffs and quotas to gain political support at home.  A rich elite system in the colonies with many living in poverty created an environment that not surprisingly made for ongoing counter imperialist strategies, including outright rebellion and strikes for field and factory workers.

The financial system was essentially the same as today’s IMF ‘structural adjustment programs’ utilized throughout the third world – mostly Africa and Latin America – in order to place the target state into debt to the financial power of the U.S. and its western allies.   The Philippines became a financial burden that the U.S. finally gave nominal independence to.  Cuba had a full successful insurgent revolution but was then ignored by the U.S. for its financial needs, leading it to work with the USSR.  Puerto Rico eventually became a commonwealth – not a colony, not a state, sort of halfway between – and is still stuck in the cycles of poverty it started with as magnified by Hurricane Maria in 2020 and the later earthquake – all leading to Trump throwing out toilet paper in an ignorant display of the status quo.

Race

Much of the history of European/western empires finds its most common denominator in race relations, in white supremacy.   “Negative stereotypes of societies beyond the frontier reinforced a developing ideology of white supremacy that helped to shape national identities throughout the Anglo-world.  Supremacy and certainty produced the “civilizing mission” which was a common feature of all these frontiers.”   Anglo-Saxonism “was the most commanding of the pan-national racial theories.”

Regardless of the arguments used by its proponents – all of which are incorrect – the U.S. fully adopted its attributes to the extent of “exceptionalism” and superiority over all other people and nations in the world.  As others are deemed inferior, arguments then allow for violence within the “civilizing mission” in order to bring the “savages” at least up to a level where they might be able to be independent i.e. live and work by our “exceptional” rules.

In his summary Hopkins writes, “Policy in all the Western empires drew on shared intellectual foundations of racial superiority.  American rule was distinctive to the extent that it was particularly marked by the influence of segregation on colonial policy.”   Comparisons – mostly similarities – are made with the other Anglo-Saxon elements of the empire –  Canada, South Africa, and Australia – where indigenous populations were/are highly segregated from society.

Another faultline

There is another element of Hopkin’s thesis which is arguable, but fortunately does not detract from his overall presentation, more of a semantic argument that does not contradict the factual information.

In broadest terms he outlines the development of the U.S. empire as being at the start a “military-fiscal” arrangement, leading then to the status of a “nation-state” empire, and then finally into being an “aspiring hegemon.”   The military-fiscal state disappears under the influences of the nation-state – the empire of the nation state then becomes the aspiring hegemon, with the implication that it is not truly an empire ( and certainly not within the limited definitions provided as above).

It is hard to argue – well, sorry no it is not, that the U.S., since even before its official inception was a military-fiscal arrangement borrowed from their Anglo-Saxon roots.   Since Eisenhower’s time, the phrase “military-industrial complex” has been widely used, with some more recent modifications and variations.   It is easy to argue that “military-fiscal” describes the U.S. (and other empires) much more broadly and accurately than military-industrial.

The word fiscal covers immense territory, from our consumer lifestyle, the debt creations of large corporations, the huge profits harvested by the FANG companies (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google), the widespread debt instruments placed on the citizen from education to mortgages and on into health care, the large corporations harvesting wealth from al citizens as they produce the materials to support the militarized state (G.E., Raytheon, Boeing et al).  It fits beautifully within previous empires and certainly within today’s U.S. empire.

Modern empire – the military-fiscal state

Image below is from Strategic Culture Foundation

This history of empire more or less ends with the transformations of the insular empire into the units described above.  An attempt is made to outline events post World War II, and succeeds within a very narrow scope.  The United States today still remains very much a military-fiscal state even though the author turns to fiction (Captain America and the Avengers) to posit his concluding question:  “Will Captain America persist with military force to advance freedom and democracy or will he adopt a form of smart diplomacy…?”

From Hopkins’ own arguments in  “American Empire – A Global History” and current events within the U.S. and its current attituces globally, the answer is easy:  he will persist with military force to advance freedom and democracy, a statement that is self-contradictory as freedom and democracy do not come from the barrel of a gun as indicated by the U.S.’ many failed wars around the globe.

One of the problems sometimes when writing history is knowing when to quit.  By trying to be fully up to date, Hopkins misses too many points about empire:  China and Russia acting in tandem are not noted; the huge debt based society, now surviving on enormous quantities of money printing by the Federal Reserve in order to sustain the military and maybe the collapsing society in general; the large problems of environmental pollution and climate change;  and finally the always immediate threat of nuclear war.

Not quite so final.  When examining empire, race, debt, and white supremacy, Israel, as a large component of the current U.S. empire (consisting of many sycophantic allies and over 800 military bases in over 135 countries) is not mentioned.  This is possibly the author’s attempts to avoid the now racially biased charges of anti-semitism which might sink the book before publication, but it could also be another ingrained denial of the state of the U.S. empire and its miltary-fiscal association with Israel and all the tensions created in the Middle East.  You will not find it in the index nor anywhere else passim in the text.

Sum

“American Empire – A Global History” is an enormous academic undertaking, and conforms to all the requirements of academia.  It has numerous citations/references for anyone wanting to search out the sources of information.  It is written in classic academic style: intro chapter with a preview of the main thesis and chapter contents, each chapter with its own introduction and summary sandwiching the overall arguments, and a conclusion/summary outlining again the main thesis.

In that regard it is an exceptional read, and a lazy reader could understand the whole book by reading the first and last chapter, and the first and last section of each chapter.  However it is not a book that will be a bestseller on its own merits as it is complex, detailed, and requires the reader to have a bit more than a basic understanding of the flow of modern history in order to follow the arguments.  It is a history, but it is not strictly linear, and it bounces back and forth with its different concepts from different places and different times.  Without some global background knowledge the work remains too esoteric for general consumption.

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Jim Miles is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Amazon.com

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***

A presidential candidate speaks the truth and demands long-term strategies for the real dangers we face.

In the midst of the 2020 presidential campaign, muddied by hype and poisoned by corruption, a single candidate stepped forward to limn with unwavering scientific accuracy the decay that has crept over our society. Emanuel Pastreich declared that only an independent candidate can serve as president in light of the collapse of political parties into warring crime syndicates. He presents us with a concrete plan to transform our nation in a series of eloquent speeches that assume we are citizens capable of action, not passive consumers.

Pastreich refuses to pin the blame on any one person, or group, but suggests that we return to the spirit of the Constitution and, like Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, discover the ethical foundations for good governance that have been buried in a shallow grave by public relations firms, investment banks, and legions of politicians and self-appointed experts.

About the Book

This book consists of a series of speeches that Emanuel Pastreich gave as an independent candidate for president of the United States after his first announcement of the intention to run in February (2020). He gave speeches, met with fellow Americans, especially those who are suffering the consequences of the profound moral rot in our country. With their input, with their help, he started to map out a positive direction for the United States, a future in which we move away from the dangerous culture of consumption, extraction and endless war that has infected the nation like a horrific virus and that has been amplified by dangerous parasites.

About the Author

Emanuel Pastreich has emerged over the last two decades as the leading voice for a rational American policy in diplomacy and security with a laser focus on climate and biodiversity collapse, the catastrophic impact of new technology on human society, the exponential concentration of wealth, and the global arms race.

Pastreich strives to reinvent the traditions of internationalism pursued Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adlai Stevenson in his writings and in his speeches.

He demands that the trillions given to corporations over the last year be returned, that conglomerates like Amazon and Facebook be run as regulated cooperatives, and that the assets of fossil fuel corporations be seized immediately and their owners and administrators charged for the criminal action of presenting fraudulent information to the government and the people about climate change.

An Asia expert fluent in Korean, Japanese and Chinese, Pastreich started his career as a professor at University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign in 1998. He currently serves as president of the Asia Institute, a think tank focused on diplomacy, security and technology located in Washington D.C., Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi.

You may download the free e-book here.

Here is the link to Emanuel Pastreich’s campaign page.

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I Shall Fear No Evil

Why we need a truly independent candidate for president

Author: Emanuel Pastreich

Paperback ISBN: 9781649994509

Pages: 162

Click here to order.

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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).

***

Crocodiles are resilient animals from a lineage that has survived for over 200 million years. Skilled swimmers, crocodiles can travel long distances and live in freshwater to marine environments. But they can’t roam far overland. American crocodiles (Crocodylus acutus) are found in the Caribbean and Pacific coasts of the Neotropics but they arrived in the Pacific before Panama existed, according to researchers from McGill University.

Over 3 million years ago, the formation of the Isthmus of Panama altered global ocean circulation, connecting North and South America and establishing the Caribbean Sea. This resulted in widespread mixing of species on the continent and separation in the seas. On land, mammals from North America such as mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, horses, and camels invaded South America, and strange mammals like giant ground sloths, armadillos, and opossums from South America invaded North America. This event is known as the Great American Interchange, and the opposite happened in the seas, where new species of corals, clams, and fishes evolved in the separated Pacific and Caribbean waters.

The question a group of McGill and Panamanian researchers asked was: how distant are the Pacific and Caribbean populations from each other and does it match the geological record? Researchers have long suspected that American crocodiles living on the Pacific coast should have diverged genetically enough from Caribbean populations to become unique species.

José Avila-Cervantes captured and took blood samples of crocodiles from several populations living on both coasts of Panama. (Credit: Luis Felipe Estrada)

“We assumed we would detect significant genetic differences between Pacific and Caribbean crocodile populations that were isolated for the past 3 million years,” thought José Avila-Cervantes, a recent PhD graduate of McGill University under the supervision of Professor Hans Larsson.

Capturing crocodiles

To test this, Avila-Cervantes captured and took blood samples of crocodiles from several populations living on both coasts of Panama. Back at McGill University, he sequenced their genomes to look for small variations in their DNA. He used the genetic differences to estimate how much evolutionary divergence and gene flow existed between populations. With this information, the team found that Pacific and Caribbean crocodile populations have been separated for only about 100,000 years.

“This time of separation is a far cry from the 3 million years we were expecting,” said Professor Larsson, Director of the Redpath Museum at McGill. “But it did match the last interglacial period of the Ice Age.”

Glacial and interglacial cycles in the Ice Age mark periods of peak polar glaciations separated by relatively warm times. These warm times caused sea levels to rise over 100 meters globally compared to present-day levels. Using the record of Ice Age sea levels, Avila-Cervantes was able to reconstruct what Panama would have looked like during these peak cold and warm periods of the Ice Age.

At McGill University, researchers sequenced the genomes of crocodiles to look for small variations in their DNA. Credit: José Avila-Cervantes

Coastal movements explained

“It surprised us to see that during the warm inter-glacial periods, most of Panama was underwater with the coasts separated by brackish lagoons, small rivers, and thin stretches of land,” said Avila-Cervantes. “These are the reasons why we think crocodiles were able to pass from coast to coast freely and explain why their oldest genetic signature of separation coincides with this time.” A second younger signature of genetic separation is timed to about 20,000 years ago and coincides with the last glaciation cycle that they found made Panama about twice as wide as it is today, and probably a good barrier for these crocodiles. “This is one of the first studies to implicate Ice Age glaciation-interglaciation cycles with the evolution of a tropical organism.”

Yet the researchers discovered there is some genetic divergence between the populations on each coast despite the frequent inter-glaciations, and this diversity is at risk due to habitat destruction from human development. “It was difficult to find any population living on the Pacific coast near the Panama Canal,” said Avila-Cervantes.

One of the best-preserved populations is in the middle of the Panama Canal on the Barro Colorado Island Nature Monument. “Preserving the population around this island may be our best chance to preserve the unique genetic signatures of Panamanian American crocodiles,” said Professor Larsson. “Our study not only highlights the resilience of crocodiles to ancient climate changes and their great capacity to survive large geological events, but also their vulnerability to our voracious need to modify their environments.”

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Featured image: Crocodile from a population living on the coast of Panama. Credit: José Avila-Cervantes

Western Governments Are Killing Their Own People … Again. Experimental mRNA Injections in Nursing Homes

By Mark Taliano, February 16 2021

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).

***

Rechtsanwalt Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, Stiftung Corona Ausschuss, fordert nach der öffentlichen Anhörung eines Augenzeugen zu den Folgen massenhafter Impfungen: „Dieser tödliche Menschenversuch muss schnellstmöglich beendet werden!“

„Wenn die Mitbürger das erste Mal von den diabolischen Plänen der Wegbereiter und ‚Vollstrecker‘ der ‚Neuen Normalität‘ erfahren, werden viele von ihnen einen seelischen Schock erleiden. Bewährte Abwehrmechanismen werden dann nur bedingt und für kurze Zeit funktionieren. Freie, mutige und redliche Intellektuelle sollten deshalb alles in ihrer Macht Stehende unternehmen, die interessierten Mitbürger auf dieser Reise ‘vom Dunkel ins Licht‘ behutsam Schritt für Schritt mitzunehmen. Denn es braucht die Zusammenarbeit aller Menschen guten Willens, um den seit langem geplanten ‚Anschlag‘ auf die Menschheit abwehren zu können. Und der Weg zu dieser Zusammenarbeit muss im Herzen der Menschen seinen Anfang nehmen“ (1).

Der Autor dieser Zeilen bittet um Nachsicht, dass er aus seinem eigenen „psychologischen Manifest des gesunden Menschenverstands“ zitiert, das er im Verlauf des zweiten Halbjahrs 2020 unter dem Titel „Keinem die Macht übergeben!“ veröffentlichte. Zu dieser Zeit ahnte er nicht, dass er als erfahrener Psychologe und ehemaliger Psychotherapeut circa ein halbes Jahr später aufgrund gewisser Nachrichten ebenfalls einen seelischen Schock erleiden könnte.

„Das schreckliche Sterben nach der Impfung“

Rechtsanwalt Dr. Fuellmich interviewte zusammen mit seiner Anwaltskollegin und der Volkswirtin Viviane Fischer – zwei von vier Leitern der Stiftung Corona Ausschuss – einen Whistleblower, das heißt, einen mutigen Pfleger aus einem Berliner Altenheim. Dieser gab als Augenzeuge schockierende Einblicke in die scheinbar gängige Impfpraxis in Heimen betagter und teilweise dementer deutscher Bürger (2).

Diese Wohnheime für pflegebedürftige ältere Menschen werden nach Aussage des Pflegers von Ärzten in Begleitung von Bundeswehrsoldaten in Uniform regelrecht überfallen. Anschließend werden sie – wo auch immer man sie in den Fluren oder Zimmern antrifft – zum Teil unter Anwendung körperlicher Gewalt geimpft. Die Zustimmung der Angehörigen dementer Heiminsassen wird zuvor eingeholt. Dieses zutiefst menschenunwürdige Impfgeschehen wird wiederholt.

Die Drohkulisse mit Bundeswehrsoldaten wird wohl deshalb aufgebaut, damit sich die Heimbewohner widerstandslos fügen – und das tun sie auch. Sie erstarren vor Angst, weil sie lange Zeit keinen familiären Besuch empfangen durften und viele noch den Zweiten Weltkrieg erlebten. Der Pfleger sagte, dass er und seine Kolleginnen und Kollegen ihre vertrauten Schützlinge in diesen Situationen nicht wiedererkennen würden. Der gesundheitliche Zustand der Bewohner wird vor der teilweise gewaltsamen Impfung nicht abgefragt.

Nach der Impfung verschlechtert sich die Gesundheit auch ehemals quicklebendiger älterer Menschen rapide. Es kommt zu Schnappatmung, Fieber, Ödemen, Hautausschlag, einer gelblich-grauen Verfärbung der Haut und zu Muskelzittern an Oberkörper und Armen. Bewohner, die vor der Impfung noch negativ auf SARS-CoV-2 getestet wurden, haben danach plötzlich positive Testergebnisse. Und schon bald sterben die ersten Geimpften. Trotz Aufforderung der Rechtsanwälte werden Polizei und Staatsanwaltschaft in Berlin nicht aktiv.

Eingesetzt werden mRNA-Impfstoffe, zu denen auch der von BioNTech/Pfizer gehört. BioNTech produziert seit neustem auch in Deutschland. Diese Impfstoffe stehen wegen ihrer mangelnden Erprobung weltweit massiv in der Kritik.

Ist der Tod wieder ein Meister aus Deutschland? (3)

Die glaubhaften Schilderungen des gefühlvollen Pflegers erschüttern. Jeder Interessierte kann sie selbst nachhören und sich sein eigenes Urteil bilden. Der Verfasser dieses Kommentars teilt die Meinung des Rechtsanwalts Dr. Fuellmich und seines Teams, dass dieser tödliche Menschenversuch mit der Impfung, der ganz sicher kein Einzelfall in Berlin und Deutschland ist und von den Massenmedien verschwiegen wird, schnellstmöglich beendet werden muss. Unsere Väter, Mütter und Großeltern sind doch keine menschlichen Versuchskaninchen abartiger Psychopathen in Verbund mit Big Pharma.

Lassen wir uns nicht mehr einschüchtern von diesem Jahrhunderte alten teuflischen „Spiel“ mit der Angst der Herrschenden und legen wir unseren religiös bedingten Autoritätsglauben und Gehorsamsreflex noch heute ab! Haben wir den Mut, uns unseres eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen und gegen das schreiende Unrecht aufzustehen!

Wenn wir dieses Verbrechen an unseren älteren Verwandten und Mitbürgern sowie an der ganzen Menschheit nicht sofort stoppen, sind wir Jüngeren natürlich die nächsten Opfer. Wir haben keine Zeit mehr zu verlieren!

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Fussnoten:

1. Hänsel, R. (2020). Keinem die Macht übergeben! Ein psychologisches Manifest des gesunden Menschenverstands. Gornji Milanovac. ISBN 978-86-7432-119-5. Die „Neue Rheinische Zeitung NRhZ“ veröffentlichte den gesamten Text in drei Folgen. Eine Kurzfassung wurde ebenfalls in der NRhZ publiziert und zusätzlich in „Rubikon“ sowie in englischer Sprache in „Global Research“ (www.globalresearch.ca)

2. https://www.wochenblick.at/schockierender-whistleblower-bericht-tote-nach-impfung-in-berliner-heim/; https://t.me/tagesereignisse/1142

3. Zitiert aus „Todesfuge“, einem Gedicht des Lyrikers Paul Celan

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“You lose your job. Small and medium sized enterprises go bankrupt. Even the whole tourist industry is paralyzed. There’s no air transport. There’s no public transport, in some cases. And then they make us believe that this is required to solve a public health crisis!”

– Professor Michel Chossudovsky, from this week’s interview.

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Sunday January 30th 2021 marked the first anniversary of the announcement of the World Health Organization (WHO) of a global health emergency stemming from 83 cases of a specific disease outside of Canada. [1]

Three weeks later, on February 20, 2o20 the WHO Director General, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, announced he was “concerned that the chance to contain the coronavirus outbreak was “closing.” He also mentioned his belief that “the window of opportunity is still there, but that the window is narrowing.” A statement based on 1073 carrying the virus, far too low to justify an emergency. Yet, the stock markets plummeted, apparently linked to the horror of the Director General’s statement. [2]

And three weeks after that, the dreaded ‘pandemic’ was formally announced and instructions to implement the lockdown of all 193 member states were initiated.[3]

Now, following the debut of a second wave in the fall, more citizens willingly tolerate continued shut-downs leading to businesses, schools, universities and other institutions shutting down, people distanced from one another, and facial masks as mandatory in all interior spaces outside the home.[4]

The stage for the ongoing corona virus is a campaign of FEAR gripping the population, in spite of the fact, according to a paper by John Q A Ionnidis, the rate of death of infected individuals is between 0.15-0.20% (0.03‐0.04% in those <70 years). This is about even with the Asian Flu pandemic of 1957-58, yet that pandemic did not compel the population into drastic lock-down measures that have crippled us all around the world. [5]

And what about the repercussions?

According to the International Labour Organization, 8.8 per cent of global working hours, the equivalent of 255 million full time jobs were lost during the last quarter of 2020. This is four times the equivalent of working hour losses during the global financial crisis of 2009. [6]

As for famines, The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) identifies 27 countries that are seeing deepening food insecurity from COVID-19-driven food crises, with 20 countries facing spikes in high acute food insecurity. [7]

Who is instigating this panic?

Well, one man who says he has studied the crisis every day over the past year, claims that it is the financial elites, and not the bloody virus, that is responsible for the ravaging of the world’s economies. Regarding the stock market collapse and the majority of nations closing down their economies, these wealthy, wealthy people were the big winners having secured trillions of dollars over the course of the play-out. That man’s name is Michel Chossudovsky, and he will be our special guest on the Global Research News Hour.

Over the course of a conversation spanning most of the hour, Chossudovsky discusses the unusual moves by the WHO Director General, he talks about the lockdowns doing more harm than good, he breaks down the Reverse Transcription Polmerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) as a  flawed measure of the disease, talks about the hospital cases also being misleading, and much more.

Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal, Editor of Global Research. He has undertaken field research in Latin America, China, India, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, the Pacific and has written extensively on the economies of developing countries with a focus on poverty and social inequality.  His recent research focusses on economic and social policy, health economics, geopolitics, globalization. He recently authored the ebook: The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

(Global Research News Hour Episode 305)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

 

Professor Michel Chossudovsky has been investigating the Corona virus pandemic virtually on a daily basis since January of 2020. As founder and director of the Centre for research on Globalization, and a professor emeritus of economics with a particular focus on economic and social policy, health economics, geopolitics, and globalization, he has unique insights into the financial forces surrounding the crisis.

He recently wrote an ebook entitled:

The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset.”

He elaborates on his findings over the course of a full length feature interview transcribed below.

Transcript: Interview with Professor Michel Chossudovsky, Feb. 3, 2021.

For Part I see

Did The Virus Trigger the 2020 Worldwide Economic Crisis?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Michael Welch, February 08, 2021

Part Two

GR: Certain pharmaceutical corporations and certain technological companies stand to make major profits thanks to the opportunities presented to them by this crisis. I asked Professor Chossudovsky to examine the different influences enjoyed by these different corporate sectors, in terms of who motivated this financial shift.

MC: Well, there are several sources of enrichment.

First of all, the vaccine is a multi-billion dollar operation, because it was planned at a world level. In other words, it has a certain structure with “candidates” [corporations involved in subcontracting]. It’s controlled by Big Pharma. And I should mention that GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer integrated several of their activities barely a few months before this happened. Now – so that’s one area. It’s billions and billions of dollars for Big Pharma.

Then, it is the appropriation of money wealth in the course of the financial crisis through speculative operations in the stock markets, and that started on the 20th of February, but it also extended beyond March 11. There was another crash after the official announcement of the pandemic. And it’s ongoing.

And the third phase of enrichment is picking up the pieces. In other words, you have bankrupt airlines. What do you do? You don’t buy them! No! You acquire them at a negative price. How does that happen?

Well, it hasn’t happened yet but I suspect this is the scenario.

The airlines represent assets. Tremendous assets. And they are bankrupt. Now, in the wake of the crisis, i.e. so-called normalization, the public debt of governments throughout the world has simply gone fly-high. And who is building up that debt? It’s the financial elites. At the same time, they’re the creditors.

Now, this financial elites, ultimately what they want is to acquire real assets at rock-bottom prices. But what they will say is well  “we’re willing to go in to buy up, let’s say, to buy up airlines.”

But I mean, we look at Aeroméxico, it’s completely bankrupt. The entire airline industry in South America is bankrupt. The same in southeast Asia. So, the creditors will say,

“well we’re prepared to help. We’ll buy them up. We’ll acquire these airlines, they’re bankrupt. But we will ask the government to subsidize this operation.”

This is something which has been practiced in last twenty, thirty years. Big corporate interests come in and say, “we’ll buy up the airlines. But you know, we have to get some help from the governments.”

And essentially they will be buying up   these real economy assets either at rock-bottom price or even at a negative price.

They’ll buy it at one price and then they will get subsidies from the government to cover their so-called losses. And they are the creditors of the state, and they are also purchasing the bankrupt corporations and then they’re asking the government to fund the acquisition of these corporate entities.

Now, this will happen for the tourist industry, the hotel chains, for the airlines. Well it will happen also for major industrial, technological firms which have gone bankrupt. The small and medium sizes enterprises, I suspect, are going to be wiped off the urban landscape. The large majority.

Part III  forthcoming

 

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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 .

Notes:

1. www.globalresearch.ca/the-corona-pandemic-timeline-what-happened-in-january-march-2020/5736250
2. ibid
3. ibid
4. www.globalresearch.ca/the-2020-worldwide-corona-crisis-destroying-civil-society-engineered-economic-depression-global-coup-detat-and-the-great-reset/5730652
5. “Pandemic Influenza Risk Management: WHO Interim Guidance” (PDF). World Health Organization. 2013. p. 19. ; www.who.int/influenza/preparedness/pandemic/GIP_PandemicInfluenzaRiskManagementInterimGuidance_Jun2013.pdf?ua=1
6. www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/—dgreports/—dcomm/documents/briefingnote/wcms_767028.pdf
7. FAO-WFP early warning analysis of acute food insecurity hotspots October 2020;  www.fao.org/3/cb1907en/cb1907en.pdf

This article by F. William Engdahl first published on April 29, 2020 focusses on the dubious Covid models used to justify the lockdowns and closure of economic activity Worldwide.

The architects of these models were generously funded by the Gates Foundation.

In early 2021, we are now in a position to assess the devastating social and economic impacts of these “models” which served as a guideline to engineering the closure of  economic activity at the level of the entire planet. It is worth noting that these “models” are still been applied under the so-called “Second Wave”. What is at stake is a process of mass impoverishment of the World’s population.

M.C. GR. Editor

***

Since late in January the world has undergone staggering changes which in many cases may be irreparable. We have given decisions over every aspect of our lives to the judgment of tests and to the projections of computer models for the coronavirus first claimed to have erupted in Wuhan China, now dubbed SARS-CoV-2. With astonishing lack of transparency or checking, one government after the other has imposed China-model lockdowns on their entire populations. It begins to look as if we are being led like sheep to slaughter for corrupted science.

The Dubious COVID Models

Two major models are being used in the West since the alleged spread of coronavirus to Europe and USA to “predict” and respond to the spread of COVID-19 illness. One was developed at Imperial College of London. The second was developed, with emphasis on USA effects, by the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle, near the home of Microsoft founder Bill Gates. What few know is that both groups owe their existence to generous funding by a tax exempt foundation that stands to make literally billions on purported vaccines and other drugs to treat coronavirus—The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In early March, Prof. Neil Ferguson, head of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London issued a widely-discussed model that forecast possible COVID-19 deaths in the UK as high as 500,000. Ferguson works closely with the WHO. That report was held responsible for a dramatic u-turn by the UK government from a traditional public health policy of isolating at risk patients while allowing society and the economy to function normally. Days after the UK went on lockdown, Ferguson’s institute sheepishly revised downwards his death estimates, several times and dramatically. His dire warnings have not come to pass and the UK economy, like most others around the world, has gone into deep crisis based on inflated estimates.

Ferguson and his Imperial College modelers have a notorious track record for predicting dire consequences of diseases. In 2002 Ferguson predicted that up to 50,000 people in UK would die from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, “mad cow disease”, possibly to 150,000 if the epidemic expanded to include sheep. A total of 178 people were officially registered dead from vCJD. In 2005, Ferguson claimed that up to 200 million (!) people worldwide would be killed by bird-flu or H5N1. By early 2006, the WHO had only linked 78 deaths to the virus. Then in 2009 Ferguson’s group at Imperial College advised the government that swine flu or H1N1 would probably kill 65,000 people in the UK. In the end, swine flu claimed the lives of 457 people. Ferguson and his Imperial College group have a notoriously bad track record for predicting disease consequences.

Yet the same Ferguson group at Imperial College, with WHO endorsement, was behind the panic numbers that triggered a UK government lockdown. Ferguson was also the source of the wild “prediction” that 2.2 million Americans would likely die if immediate lockdown of the US economy did not occur. Based on the Ferguson model, Dr Anthony Fauci of NIAID reportedly confronted President Trump and pressured him to declare a national health emergency. Much as in the UK, once the damage to the economy was begun, Ferguson’s model later drastically lowered the US fatality estimates to between 100,000 to 200,000 deaths. In both US and UK cases Neil Ferguson relied on data from the Chinese government, data which has been shown as unreliable.

Neil Ferguson and his modelling group at Imperial College, in addition to being backed by WHO, receive millions from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Ferguson heads the Vaccine Impact Modelling Consortium at Imperial College which lists as its funders the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the Gates-backed GAVI-the vaccine alliance. From 2006 through 2018 the Gates Foundation has invested an impressive $184,872,226.99 into Ferguson’s Imperial College modeling operations.

Notably, the Gates foundation began pouring millions into Ferguson’s modelling operation well after his catastrophic lack of accuracy was known, leading some to suggest Ferguson is another “science for hire” operation.

University of Washington—Gates too…

More recently, the forecast models being used to justify the unprecedented lockdown measures across the United States have been developed at the University of Washington Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) in Seattle.

Its COVID-19 model forecasts deaths and the use of hospital resources such as hospital beds, ICU beds and ventilators. At the end of March the model from IHME also “predicted” up to 2.2 million American coronavirus deaths unless drastic lockdown measures were followed. By April 7 IHME models revised that down to up to 200,000 deaths. Their last down revision puts deaths at just over 60,000. The claim is that the down revisions are informed by actual data. Yet the wildly inaccurate projections were the ones used to impose catastrophic social and economic restrictions across the USA.

Alex Berenson, a former New York Times reporter questioned the IMHE model:

“Aside from New York, nationally there’s been no health system crisis. In fact, to be truly correct, there has been a health system crisis, but the crisis is that the hospitals are empty,” he said. “This is true in Florida where the lockdown was late, this is true in southern California where the lockdown was early, it’s true in Oklahoma where there is no statewide lockdown. There doesn’t seem to be any correlation between the lockdown and whether or not the epidemic has spread wide and fast.”

IHME claims its revisions are result of the lockdown taking effect even though that would take weeks to show up.

Like Neil Ferguson at the Imperial College London, the University of Washington’s IHME is another project of the Gates Foundation. It was created in 2007 with a major grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. In May 2015 IHME and the World Health Organization signed a major agreement to collaborate on data used to estimate world health trends. Then in 2017 IHME got an additional $279 million from the Gates Foundation to expand its work over the next decade. That, in addition to another a $210 million gift in 2016 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to fund construction of a new building to house several UW units working in population health, including IHME. In other words, IHME has been a crucial piece of the Gates global health strategy for more than 13 years.

They have been turning out highly inflated models for state-by-state emergency room demands. Those inflated projections, from New York to California and beyond have wreaked havoc on the entire health care system. When one IHME model predicted need for 430,000 intensive care beds across the US in March, states went into panic mode from New York to California to Pennsylvania and beyond. By the third week of April the reality was that hospital beds were empty and untold numbers of other operations had been canceled to make room for covid19 patients who never materialized.

Faulty Tests

The wide variety of different tests that are supposed to tell whether one is infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus have added a crucial element to the perfect dystopian storm that is raging globally. Simply put, the tests are not that reliable.

A leading German laboratory reported in early April that, according to WHO recommendations, Covid19 virus tests are now considered positive, even if the specific target sequence of the Covid19 virus is negative and only the more general corona virus target sequence is positive. This can lead to other corona viruses such as cold viruses also triggering a false positive test result. That means you can have a simple cold and you are deemed coronavirus positive. Little wonder that the tally of coronavirus “infected” is exploding over the past weeks. But what does that number really mean? We simply don’t know. Yet our politicians are glibly shutting down entire economies and causing inconceivable social damage based on false model projections and WHO’s dodgy testing guidelines.

In Germany the Robert Koch Institute (RKI), the government agency leading the COVID19 response, has deliberately refused to list the actual daily number of persons tested despite requests. Prof. Christopher Kuhbander, author of a detailed study states,

“The reported figures on new infections very dramatically overestimate the true spread of the corona virus. The observed rapid increase in new infections is almost exclusively due to the fact that the number of tests has increased rapidly over time. So, at least according to the reported figures, there was in reality never an exponential spread of the coronavirus. The reported figures on new infections hide the fact that the number of new infections has been decreasing since about early or mid-March.” 

Yet the uncritical media presentation of endless statistics from the head of the RKI have fostered unprecedented anxiety and fear in the population of Germany.

Californian physician Dr. Dan Erickson described his observations regarding Covid19 in a press briefing. He stated that hospitals and intensive care units in California and other states have remained largely empty so far. Dr. Erickson reports that doctors from several US states have been “pressured“ to issue death certificates mentioning Covid19, even though they themselves did not agree. In Pennsylvania the state was forced to remove some 200 “coronavirus” deaths after doctor autopsy revealed death from pre-existing causes such as heart or lung diseases.

The more that actual facts are emerging around this pandemic and its consequences, it is becoming clear were are being told to commit economic and social suicide based on wrong methods and wrong information.

*

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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 NEO

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Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

 

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

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

***

The further the world comes into 2021, the more it begins to resemble 2014, at least in Syria, mixed in with a bit of 2015. ISIS is returning, the US is bracing to “fight it”. The “moderate opposition” is living its renaissance fighting against the Syrian Government and its Russian support.

The 2015 bit is the fact that Russia is present, and its activity has greatly increased in the first weeks of February.

In the ten days leading up to February 14th, Russia reportedly carried out more than 700 airstrikes on ISIS cells in Central Syria. This is an impressive number, but the Syrian Observatory of Human Rights claimed that as a result only 33 ISIS terrorists had been killed. According to the same report, the Syrian Arab Army had more significant losses – 56, but it is being targeted by almost every “moderate” and “radical” party on the battlefield.

The attempts to rebrand Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham as a “reformed group” that’s no longer affiliated with al-Qaeda also continues. The US has chosen its future ally.

In a clear disagreement, on February 13th, Russia targeted a secret HTS headquarters in Idlib and completely devastated it. It also continues to attempt and enforce the ceasefire agreement in Idlib, tracking every violation and punishing it. The agreement is largely ineffective due to Turkey’s non-implementation.

Moscow is not only on the giving end, but also on the receiving one.

On February 14th, an Orlan-10 drone was reportedly downed by militants over Greater Idlib. In Manbij, near the Turkish-occupied region of Afrin, the Turkish-backed “moderate opposition” opened fire on Russia’s military police. Russia was forced to deploy more troops and equipment to the region.

On February 13th, the Russian military sent a new batch of equipment and vehicles to its base at the Qamishli Airport.

In the area of speculation, Russian opposition media reported that Russia was extending the runway at the Hmeimim Air Base, to be able to host strategic long-range aircraft. It is a potential preparation for future chaos. Or an attempt to show parity with the United States’ continued flights of B-52 bombers over the Middle East in recent months.

The United States is not keeping still, while Russia is operating. In a rare event, it eliminated an ISIS commander in a drone strike. It also vacated one of its many positions in northeastern Syria.

This is only significant in the view that it likely will reposition, and support some of its new allies. The biggest players have began their movements in expectation of the coming storm.

*

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***

While breaking up is hard to do and not Russia’s choice, that’s perhaps where things are heading if hostile Western policies toward Moscow continue to escalate.

Last week, Sergey Lavrov said Russia is prepared to cut ties with EU countries if the bloc imposes sanctions that harm its economy and people.

“(A)nyone who is even slightly interested in the situation in Europe has long known that a break-off has been underway for many years now.”

“The EU has been consistently tearing down our relations.”

In response, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Moscow prefers solidifying ties with the West.

But if the EU escalates unjustifiable sanctions war on Russia, “that causes damage to our infrastructure and our interests, then Russia should be ready in advance (to respond to) these hostile steps.”

On Monday, Lavrov elaborated on his days earlier remarks, saying the following:

“(A)nyone who is even slightly interested in the situation in Europe has long known that a break-off has been underway for many years now.”

The US and EU have been unravelling relations with Russia.

EU support for Obama/Biden’s 2014 coup in Ukraine was a key tipping point.

Fascist tyranny replaced democracy in Europe’s heartland.

Hostile relations took over from cooperative ties between Russia and the West, with Ukraine as well.

The latter nation shares a near-1,500 mile land and sea with Russia — the longest pro-Western frontier with the country.

The illegitimate regime running things in Kiev is at war on its own people.

It’s waging US-directed cold war on Russia, along with committing appalling human rights abuses – with full support and encouragement from Washington and key NATO countries.

Rick Rozoff earlier explained that Ukraine is “the decisive linchpin in plans by the US and its NATO allies to effect a military cordon sanitaire, severing Russia from Europe.”

It’s part of a sinister plot that risks eventual East/West confrontation.

Vladimir Putin earlier said “(t)he appearance on our borders of a powerful military bloc…will be considered by Russia as a direct threat to our country’s security,” adding:

Russian missiles will target Ukraine if it joins NATO or allows Washington’s (solely for offense) missile defense shield to be installed in the country.

On Monday, Lavrov explained that EU support for the Obama/Biden coup in Ukraine showed bloc complicity with their diabolical, anti-Russia agenda.

While events were unfolding in Ukraine at the time, then-President Victor Yanukovych agreed to an EU mediated resolution.

It stipulated return to Ukraine’s 2004 Constitution, along with holding elections before end of 2014, and formation of a “government of national trust.”

What Yanukovych agreed to in hopes of resolving differences with opposition elements and the West was breached straightaway by the EU and US, ousting him from office.

Lavrov accused the EU bloc of a humiliating betrayal.

It’s been “indifferent” toward lawless “attacks (on) Crimea(ns)” and Donbass residents since early 2014.

In cahoots with US dark forces, the EU supports “ultra-radicals and neo-Nazi” putchists in Kiev.

After they usurped power, they and the West “put all the blame on the Russian Federation,” said Lavrov.

By so doing, they “destroyed all mechanisms without exception that existed on the basis of an agreement on partnership and cooperation.”

From then to now, Russian relations with the US and EU have existed largely in name only.

Bending to Washington’s will, bloc countries partnered with its war on Russia by other means.

Relations between Moscow and the West are tenuous at best.

Lavrov called them “sporadic” on some issues of mutual concern — a frenemy relationship far removed from a normal one.

He stressed that Moscow is “ready to consider any issue, but occasional meetings do not necessarily mean we have relations.”

“We are willing to discuss these matters in cases where they are in Russia’s interests, as well.”

But it’s “impossible not to take into account the EU’s connivance in relation to gross violations of the rights of Russian-speakers, ethnic Russians, the Russian language and culture and the attacks on the Russian language and Russian culture, which we see in the Baltic states, Ukraine and a number of other countries.”

“(C)riminal cases are opened against Russian-speaking journalists just because they do their job.”

“I don’t think Russia is distancing from the EU, but rather, the EU is distancing itself from everything that is Russian, including the language, culture and, hence, Russia itself.

“We must be prepared for any turn of events. It’s up to the EU what to do next.”

“If it decides that, after all, relations must be restored and it reverses its actions designed to break them off, we will be ready for this, too.”

“The EU should not be confused with Europe. We are not leaving Europe.”

“We have many friends and like-minded people in Europe, and we will continue to expand mutually beneficial relations with them.”

Because of US intolerance toward nations free from its control and EU subservience to Washington’s interests — even when harming its own — there’s virtually no chance of improved bilateral ties.

Believing otherwise is foolhardy thinking.

Russian relations with the West are deteriorating, not improving.

Almost straightaway in office, rhetoric by Biden and hardliners surrounding him have been hostile toward Russia and other independent countries unwilling to bow to their will.

They have no allies in Washington and the West, enemies alone.

Breaking up may be hard to do, but hostile US-led actions toward Moscow with no end of them in prospect may make it inevitable.

*

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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 OneWorld

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

***

US media provides little news of Europe.  What is provided is strictly “narrated.”  Consequently, Americans are unaware of what seems to be a spontaneous, leaderless, popular uprising against mandated lockdowns and masks.

There are large demonstrations in Germany, and they have spread to Vienna and to Copenhagen.  The people have more sense than the public authorities and reject the Covid mandates. 

In The Netherlands, the Hague Court has ruled that the Covid curfew has no legal basis and “is a far-reaching violation of the right to freedom of movement and privacy and limits, among other things, the right to freedom of assembly and demonstration.” See this.  

Klaus Madersbacher, proprietor of the antikrieg.com website, thinks that Germans are associating the fear-based campaign that is asserting new government controls over people’s lives and activities with an American hegemonic agenda. He believes that it is a revolutionary mass movement that should now become organized under leadership in order to achieve the independence of countries and their peoples.  

One wonders if insouciant Americans are capable of a revolutionary temperament or whether the only protests Americans will witness are the Establishment-funded Antifa and BLM riots that loot and burn private businesses.

Here is Madersbacher’s analysis of what he is witnessing.

*

A New Revolutionary mass movement 

by Klaus Madersbacher

QUERDENKEN is a revolutionary mass movement directed against the US-controlled German regime, similar in essence to the revolution of the Iranian people in 1978 against the US-run dictatorship of the Shah in Iran. It should be emphasized that the Iranian revolution was a peaceful revolution in the course of which the Iranian security forces refused to fight against their own people. The same type of revolutionary movement seems to be emerging in countries under the dominance of the United States of America.

Instead of serving their own people, European regimes serve the interests of Washington, which seems driven to obtain supremacy over the world for material reasons and also as a way out of the economic crisis in which it finds itself.

The theater with and around the coronavirus is staged with the explicit intention of distraction and of creating fear and a climate of general insecurity that leads to control measures that enable hegemonic power, perhaps resulting in a “global reset” that serves the interest of the few at the expense of the many. 

It is against these measures that the Germans and neighboring nations are rising up in an unprecedented and unforeseen readiness to defend themselves as a people and a society.

I read the protests of the last several months as clear expressions that the German people are no longer willing to submit to puppet governments that fail to represent the interests of the people.

Germans and Europeans are used as support for Washington/NATO’s push against Russia and Asia, which is clearly against European interests. If spontaneous cooperation is achieved among European peoples, Washington’s aspirations are defeated, and representative governments will form in place of Washington’s puppet states.  

Since the ruling European governments are neither willing nor able to represent the interests of their peoples, they have lost the confidence of the people and forfeited the right to remain in power. Constitutionally prescribed steps can be followed as far as possible to remove them from office.

First steps /measures

As a first step, a revolutionary council should be elected consisting of two or three members per federal state. 

The revolutionary council will accept no guidance from the EU, Washington, or any agreements that limit the exercise of national sovereignty. 

Existing governmental and financial institutions will continue in operation, but the revolutionary council will reestablish all civil liberties, such as freedom of movement, freedom of income, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and freedom of travel. The institutional structure of government will then be thoughtfully reconstructed to be consistent with human rights and national wellbeing. 

The Covid control measures will be revoked.

The campaign of fear will be halted, and open public discussion by independent medical and scientific experts will be used to determine reasonable measures to protect the population from Covid.

Layoffs, terminations & repossessions resulting from Covid ordinances will be reversed.

Fines and penalties collected under Covid ordinances will be repaid, and court judgments against citizens under Covid ordinances will be reversed.

The Iranian Revolution against the Shah shows that revolutionary mass movements can be peaceful. To reconstruct the state to serve the people, a constitutional requirement is required that permits the passage of no law that cannot be proved in open discussion to serve the people over organized interests.  To protect the people’s interest, schooling will be used to support the ethos that honor, not material interests or service to ambition, is the basis for government service.

These idealistic aims will never be fully achieved, but their conscious cultivation can preserve the freedom of European peoples.

*

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from howstuffworks

Com a cerimónia tradicional do sino, teve lugar no Palazzo Chigi a transferência de poderes entre Giuseppe Conte e Mario Draghi. Ao esperamos para ver qual será o programa político do novo governo multipartidário, apoiado por quase todo o arco parlamentar, podemos prever as directrizes através dos currículos de alguns Ministros e do Presidente do Conselho. O facto de terem sido reconfirmados como Ministros da Defesa e dos Negócios Estrangeiros, Roberto Guerini (PD) e Luigi Di Maio (5 Stelle), indica que o governo Draghi irá reforçar ainda mais o “Atlanticismo”, ou seja, a adesão da Itália à NATO sob comando USA. São emblemáticos os últimos actos dos dois Ministros do governo anterior.

Guerini entrou a bordo do porta-aviões Cavour, navio almirante da Marinha militar que, de Taranto navegava para os Estados Unidos, onde irá adquirir a certificação para operar com a quinta geração de aviões de combate F-35B, da Lockheed Martin. Depois de reiterar que “a relação transatlântica com os Estados Unidos – uma grande nação com a qual o nosso país tem laços profundos – desempenha um papel essencial para a Itália”, o Ministro salientou que “a Itália tornar-se-á um dos poucos países do mundo, juntamente com os Estados Unidos, a Grã-Bretanha e o Japão, a exprimir uma capacidade de porta-aviões com aviões de caça de 5ª geração. Isto é principalmente graças ao grupo Leonardo, o maior fabricante italiano de armamento de guerra, que participa na construção do F-35. Di Maio, no seguimento da estratégia USA/NATO, foi para Riade onde assinou um memorando de entendimento de “diálogo estratégico” com a Arábia Saudita, a monarquia absoluta que o grupo Leonardo assiste na utilização dos caças Eurofighter Typhoon que bombardeiam o Iémen, fornecendo também drones para identificar alvos a atacar, e para os quais constrói navios de guerra, nos Estados Unidos, do tipo mais avançado.

O mesmo grupo Leonardo reaparece no currículo do físico Roberto Cingolani, colocado à frente do novo “super-Ministério” (solicitado por Grillo) da Transição Ecológica: Cingolani, especializado em nanotecnologia e robótica, a partir de 2019, é responsável pelo departamento de tecnologia e inovação do grupo Leonardo, “um actor global nas áreas do Aeroespacial, da Defesa e da Segurança”, cada vez mais integrado no gigantesco complexo militar-industrial dos EUA. Os 30% da participação do grupo são propriedade do Ministério do Desenvolvimento Económico, em cuja direcção foi colocado Giancarlo Giorgetti, número dois da Liga e braço direito de Matteo Salvini. Descrito como um “perito em contas”, ele irá gerir os 30 biliões de euros já atribuídos pelo seu Ministério para fins militares e os outros 25 exigidos pelo Fundo de Recuperação, para fazer passar as despesas militares italianas de 26 para 36 biliões anuais, tal como exigido pelos USA e pela NATO. Esta tarefa será também confiada ao recém-nomeado Ministro da Economia e Finanças, Daniele Franco, antigo Director-Geral do Banco de Itália, oficialmente uma instituição de direito público, em cujo capital participam 160 bancos e fundos de pensões.

No novo governo, os “técnicos” têm mais poder do que os “políticos”. Demonstra-o, antes de mais, o currículo de Mario Draghi: Director Executivo do Banco Mundial em Washington a Director do Tesouro em Roma, onde é o autor da privatização das principais empresas públicas italianas, de Vice Presidente do Banco Goldman Sachs americano (um dos maiores bancos de investimento do mundo) a governador do Banco de Itália e Presidente do Banco Central Europeu. Draghi é, ao mesmo tempo, um dos protagonistas do Grupo dos Trinta, uma poderosa organização internacional de financiadores, com sede em Washington, criada em 1978 pela Fundação Rockefeller.

Assim, com o Governo Draghi, o poder do complexo industrial militar e da alta finança é reforçado, com uma nova perda dos princípios de soberania e repúdio da guerra, consagrados pela Constituição. Se não for este caso, o Ministério da Transição Ecológica deve iniciar a sua actividade eliminando a maior ameaça que paira sobre o nosso ambiente de vida: as armas nucleares americanas instaladas em Itália.

Manlio Dinucci

 

Artigo original em italiano :

Governo Draghi, per chi suona la campanella

il manifesto, 16 de Fevereiro de 2021

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

Con la tradizionale cerimonia della campanella, è avvenuto a Palazzo Chigi il passaggio di consegne tra Giuseppe Conte e Mario Draghi. In attesa di verificare quale sarà il programma politico del nuovo governo multipartisan, sostenuto da quasi l’intero arco parlamentare, se ne possono prevedere le linee guida attraverso i curricula di alcuni ministri e del presidente del consiglio.

Il fatto che alla Difesa e agli Esteri siano stati riconfermati Roberto Guerini (Pd) e Luigi Di Maio (5 Stelle) indica che il governo Draghi rafforzerà ulteriormente l’«atlantismo», ossia l’appartenenza dell’Italia alla Nato sotto comando Usa. Emblematici gli ultimi atti dei due ministri nel precedente governo.

Guerini si è recato sulla portaerei Cavour, nave ammiraglia della Marina militare, che da Taranto salpava per gli Stati uniti dove acquisirà la certificazione per operare con i caccia di 5a generazione F-35B della Lockheed Martin. Dopo aver ribadito che «il rapporto transatlantico con gli Stati uniti – una grande nazione con cui il nostro paese ha un legame profondo – riveste un ruolo essenziale per l’Italia», il ministro ha sottolineato che «l’Italia diventerà uno dei pochi paesi al mondo, insieme a Usa, Gran Bretagna e Giappone, a esprimere una capacità portaerei con velivoli da combattimento di 5ª generazione». Merito soprattutto del gruppo Leonardo, il maggiore produttore bellico italiano, che partecipa alla costruzione degli F-35.

Di Maio, sulla scia della strategia Usa/Nato, si è recato a Riad dove ha firmato un memorandum d’intesa di «dialogo strategico» con l’Arabia Saudita, la monarchia assoluta che il gruppo Leonardo assiste nell’uso dei caccia Eurofighter Typhoon che bombardano lo Yemen, fornendole anche droni per individuare gli obiettivi da attaccare, e per la quale costruisce negli Stati uniti navi da guerra del tipo più avanzato.

Lo stesso gruppo Leonardo ricompare nel curriculum del fisico Roberto Cingolani, messo alla guida del nuovo «superministero» (richiesto da Grillo) della Transizione ecologica: Cingolani, specializzato in nanotecnologia e robotica, dal 2019 è responsabile del dipartimento tecnologia e innovazione del gruppo Leonardo, «protagonista globale nell’Aerospazio, Difesa e Sicurezza», sempre più integrato nel gigantesco complesso militare-industriale Usa.

Il 30% dell’azionariato del gruppo è posseduto dal Ministero dello Sviluppo economico, alla cui direzione è stato posto Giancarlo Giorgetti, numero due della Lega e braccio destro di Matteo Salvini. Definito «esperto di conti», penserà lui a gestire i 30 miliardi di euro già stanziati dal suo Ministero a fini militari e gli altri 25 richiesti dal Recovery Fund, per portare la spesa militare italiana da 26 a 36 miliardi annui come richiesto da Usa e Nato.

Compito che sarà affidato anche al neoministro dell’Economia, Daniele Franco, già direttore generale della Banca d’Italia, ufficialmente istituto di diritto pubblico, al cui capitale partecipano 160 banche e fondi pensione.

Nel nuovo governo, i «tecnici» hanno più potere dei «politici». Lo dimostra anzitutto il curriculum di Mario Draghi: da direttore esecutivo della Banca Mondiale a Washington a direttore del Ministero del Tesoro a Roma dove è artefice delle privatizzazioni delle maggiori aziende pubbliche italiane, da vicepresidente della statunitense Goldman Sachs (una delle più grandi banche d’affari del mondo) a governatore della Banca d’Italia e a presidente della Banca Centrale Europea.

Draghi è anche uno dei protagonisti del Gruppo dei Trenta, potente organizzazione internazionale di finanzieri, con sede a Washington, creata nel 1978 dalla Fondazione Rockefeller.

Si rafforza quindi, col governo Draghi, il potere del complesso militare-industriale e dell’alta finanza, con una ulteriore perdita dei principi di sovranità e ripudio della guerra sanciti dalla Costituzione.

Se non è così, il Ministero della Transizione ecologica inizi la sua attività eliminando la maggiore minaccia che grava sul nostro ambiente di vita: le armi nucleari Usa installate in Italia.

Manlio Dinucci

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In September 2021 the UN will hold a Food Systems Summit. The aim will be to reshape world agriculture and food production in the context of the Malthusian UN Agenda 2030 “sustainable agriculture” goals. The recent radical farm laws from the government of Narenda Modi in India are part of the same global agenda, and it’s all not good.

In Modi’s India, farmers have been in massive protest since three new farm laws were rushed through Parliament last September. The Modi reforms were motivated by a well-organized effort of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its New Vision for Agriculture, part of Klaus Schwab’s Great Reset, the corporate side of the UN Agenda 2030.

Modi Shock Therapy

In September, 2020 in a rushed Parliamentary voice vote, rather than a duly-registered formal vote, and reportedly with no prior consultation with Indian farmer unions or organizations, the government of Prime Minister Narenda Modi passed three new laws radically deregulating India’s agriculture. That has sparked months of national farmer protest and nationwide strikes.The protests which are spreading across all India, demands repeal of the three laws.

In effect the laws end restrictions on large corporations’ buying land and stockpiling commodities to control farmer prices. They also allow large multinational businesses to bypass local or regional state markets where farmers’ produce is normally sold at guaranteed prices, and allows business to strike direct deals with farmers. This all will result in the ruin of an estimated tens millions of marginal or smallholder farmers and small middlemen in India’s fragile food chain.

The new Modi laws are measures the IMF and World Bank have been demanding since the early 1990s to bring Indian agriculture and farming into the corporate agribusiness model pioneered in the USA by the Rockefeller Foundation decades ago.Until now no Indian government has been willing to attack the farmers, the country’s largest population group, many of whom are on tiny plots or bare subsistence. Modi’s argument is that by changing the present system, Indian farmers could “double” income by 2022, an unproven,dubious claim. It allows corporations to buy farm land for the first time nationally so large companies, food processing firms, and exporters can invest in the farm sector.Against them a small farmer has no chance. Who’s behind the radical push? Here we find the WEF and the Gates Foundation’s radical globalized agriculture agenda.

WEF and the Corporativists

The laws are a direct result of several years’ effort of the World Economic Forum and its New Vision for Agriculture (NVA) initiative. For more than 12 years the WEF and its NVA has pushed a corporate model in Africa, Latin America and Asia. The “big target” has been India, where resistance to corporate takeover of agriculture has been fierce ever since the failed 1960’s Green Revolution of the Rockefeller Foundation. For the WEF Great Reset, better known as the UN Agenda 2030 for “sustainable agriculture,” India’s traditional farm and food system must be broken. Its smallholder family farmers must be forced to sell to large agribusiness conglomerates and regional or state-level protections for those farmers eliminated. It will be “sustainable,” not for the small farmers, but rather the giant agribusiness groups.

To advance that agenda the WEF created a powerful group of corporate and government interests called the NVA India Business Council. Its website at the homepage of the WEF states, “The NVA India Business Council serves as an informal, high-level leadership group to champion private sector collaboration and investment to drive sustainable agricultural growth in India.” An idea what they mean by “sustainable”is found in their membership.

The WEF’s NVA India Business Council in 2017 included Bayer CropScience, one of the world’s largest purveyors of agriculture pesticides and now, of Monsanto GMO seeds; Cargill India Pvt. of the giant US grain company; Dow AgroSciences, GMO seed and pesticide producer; GMO and agrichemical firm DuPont; grain cartel giant Louis Dreyfus Company; Wal-Mart India; India Mahindra & Mahindra (world’s largest tractor maker); Nestle India Ltd; PepsiCo India; Rabobank International; State Bank of India; Swiss Re Services, the world’s largest re-insurer; India Private Limited, a chemicals maker; and the Adani Group of Gautam Adani, the second richest man in India and major financier of Modi’s BJP party. Notice the absence of any Indian farmer organizations.

In addition to top Modi backer Guatam Adani on the WEF NVA India Business Council, MukeshAmbani, sits on the Board of Directors of Klaus Schwab’s World Economic Forum. Ambani, another top Modi backer, is Chairman and Managing Director of India’s largest conglomerate, Reliance Industries, and Asia’s second wealthiest person worth some $74 billion. Ambani is a strong advocate of the radical farm reform as Reliance stands to reap huge gains.

In December farmers in Punjab burned effigies of Prime Minister Modi, along with Reliance Industries chairman Mukesh Ambani, and Adani Group chairman Gautam Adani, accusing them of being behind the new laws of Modi.

For anyone with even a slight idea of these corporate behemoths, it is clear that the interests and welfare of India’s estimated 650 million farmers are not the priority. Notably, IMF’s Chief Economist Gita Gopinath, an Indian now in USA, has endorsed the laws, and has said that India’s recently-enacted agriculture laws have the “potential” to increase farmers’ income.

On 26 November a nationwide general strike began that involved approximately 250 million people in support of the farmers. Transport unions representing over 14 million truck drivers have come out in support of the farmer unions. This is the biggest challenge to the BJP Modi regime to date. The fact the government refuses to back down suggests it will be a bitter battle.

For the Agenda 2030, or Great Reset to transform the global food and agricultural industries as Klaus Schwab prefers to call it, to succeed, it is highest priority that India, with the world’s largest population, be brought into the globalist web of corporate agribusiness control. Clearly the timing of the Modi deregulation has in mind the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit.

AGRA and the UN Food Systems Summit

Indication of the agenda in store for India’s farmers is the upcoming September UN Food Systems Summit. UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres in 2019 announced the UN will host Food Systems Summit in 2021 with the aim of maximizing the benefits of a “food systems approach” consistent with UN 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. He named Agnes Kalibata of Rwanda as his Special Envoy for the 2021 Food Systems Summit. The summit’s founding statement pushes “precision farming” such as GPS, Big Data and robotics, and GMO, as solutions.

Kalibata, former Minister of Agriculture in war-torn Rwanda, is also the President of AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. AGRA was created by the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations to introduce GMO patented seeds and related chemical pesticides into African agriculture. A key person Gates put in charge of the AGRA, Robert Horsch, spent 25 years as a senior Monsanto executive.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is also a “Contributing Partner” of the WEF.

After nearly 15 years and some $1 billion in funds from Gates, Rockefeller and other large donors, AGRA has failed to lift farmers into a better wellbeing. Farmers are forced by their governments to buy seeds from commercial suppliers, often tied to Monsanto and other GMO companies, as well as commercial fertilizer.

The result is debt and often bankruptcy. The farmers are forbidden to reuse the commercial seeds and are forced to abandon traditional seeds which they could reuse. AGRA’s focus on “market-oriented” means the global export market controlled by Cargill and other major grain cartel giants. In the 1990s, under pressure from Washington and agribusiness, the World Bank demanded African and other governments in developing countries end their agriculture subsidies. That, while the USA and EU agriculture remains heavily subsidized. The cheap subsidized EU and OECD imports drive local farmers bankrupt. That’s intended.

A 2020 report on AGRA, False Promises, concluded, “yield increases for key staple crops in the years before AGRA were just as low as during AGRA. Instead of halving hunger, the situation in the 13 focus countries has worsened since AGRA was launched. The number of people going hungry has increased by 30 percent during the AGRA years… affecting 130 million people in the 13 AGRA focus countries.”  Gates’ AGRA has made African food production more globalized and dependent than ever on the will of global multinationals whose aim is cheap inputs. It forces farmers into debt and demands specific “cash crops” like GMO corn or soya, be grown for export.

Gates Foundation’s confidential Agricultural Development Strategy 2008-2011 outlined its strategy:

“Smallholders with the potential to produce a surplus can create a market-oriented agricultural system… to exit poverty…The vision of success involves market-oriented farmers operating profitable farms…this will require some degree of land mobility and a lower percentage of total employment involved in direct agricultural production.” (emphasis added)

In 2008 Rajiv Shah was the Gates Foundation’s Director of Agricultural Development, and led the Foundation’s creation of the AGRA together with the Rockefeller Foundation. Today Shah is President of Rockefeller Foundation, Gates’ partner in AGRA, which foundation also financed the creation of GMO patented seeds back in the 1970s, the creation of CGIAR seed banks with the World Bank and India’s 1960’s failed Green Revolution.Rajiv Shah is also an Agenda Contributor at the World Economic Forum. Small world.

The fact that the President of AGRA is heading the September 2021 UN Food Systems Summit (note the use of “food systems”) exposes the seamless links between the UN, the Gates and Rockefeller Foundations, the World Economic Forum and their web of global corporate mega companies.

India, with 1.4 billion people, perhaps half in agriculture, is the last bastion where global agribusiness has been unable to dominate the production of food.

The OECD has been globalized by industrial agribusiness since decades and the deterioration in food quality and nutrition confirms it. China has opened up and is a major player in the GMO world with Syngenta, as well as the world largest producer of glyphosate.

China industrial pork factory farms such as Smithfield Farms, where the recent African Swine Fever is believed to have originated, are on the way to wipe out small-scale farmers there.

The central role of the Gates-Rockefeller AGRA in the UN 2021 Food Systems Summit, the major role of the WEF in the world “food systems” reset, and the pressures in recent months on the Modi government to implement the same corporate agenda in India as in Africa, are all no accident. It sets the world up for catastrophic harvest failures and worse.

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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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Well, as usual, there is good news and bad news. The good news is that the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has finally received authorization to proceed with the investigation of possible war crimes and crimes against humanity in Israel-Palestine, to include both the Israel Defense Force (IDF) and also Hamas in Gaza.

On February 5^th ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced that her office is now studying the decision made to confirm ICC’s jurisdiction and would be “guided strictly by its independent and impartial mandate” to investigate and prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. The ICC has already ruled in December 2019 that “war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip” but was waiting for confirmation that it had jurisdiction to proceed. Both the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) and armed groups including Hamas were named as possible perpetrators.

The bad news is that Bensouda has been replaced as the United States is already intervening in support of its best friend and closest ally in the whole world and will inevitably do all sorts of stupid things that do not serve its own interests when the Israeli tail starts wagging the American dog. Count on it. That has apparently already included pressure exerted both by Washington and Jerusalem behind closed doors to make Bensouda go. She was replaced last Friday by British human rights lawyer Karim Asad Ahmad Khan, who is expected to be more accommodating to Israel and might even decide not to proceed with the investigation.

There has also been some speculation that the ICC was waiting for Donald Trump to be gone as Trump and his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had already more-or-less declared war on the ICC back in June 2020. The Trump White House had sanctioned key members of the court and had also blocked the travel to the U.S. by investigators associated with it. It threatened to arrest anyone who cooperated with the investigation. Washington also warned in the strongest terms that there would be “consequences” for any attempt by the court to investigate or punish Israel.

The Joe Biden White House clearly is on the same page on the issue, releasing the following State Department press statement on February 5^th, immediately after the ICC decision became public:

“Today, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a decision claiming jurisdiction in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza, while expressly recognizing the serious legal and factual questions that surround its ability to do so. As we made clear when the Palestinians purported to join the Rome Statute in 2015, we do not believe the Palestinians qualify as a sovereign state, and therefore are not qualified to obtain membership as a state, or participate as a state in international organizations, entities, or conferences, including the ICC. We have serious concerns about the ICC’s attempts to exercise its jurisdiction over Israeli personnel. The United States has always taken the position that the court’s jurisdiction should be reserved for countries that consent to it, or that are referred by the UN Security Council.”

State Department Spokesman Ned Price provided additional commentary on the press release, saying “We will continue to uphold President Biden’s strong commitment to Israel and its security, including opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.” Neither the U.S. nor Israel is a signatory to the Rome Statute that created the ICC. The argument Washington is using is essentially a legal one, at least at this point, that Palestine is not a “sovereign state” and that the ICC does not have jurisdiction over any county that is not a signatory. Both are, of course, debatable. Israel has also taken steps to prevent any investigation by the court on its soil, to include the occupied territories and it is not clear if Egypt will allow ICC investigators to enter Gaza from Sinai.

The initial issue that turned Washington against the court in 2018 was the concern that it would begin inquiries into possible U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan since 2003, where both avoidable deaths and torture have been well documented. The U.S. used at the time the argument that it was not a signatory to the ICC but, as Prosecutor Bensouda observed, one does not have to be a signatory to be investigated as the court was specifically set up by the Rome Statute in 2002 to inquire into atrocities where there had been no accountability, either because the local government had no ability to do so or chose not to investigate itself.

So, it is all a bit of a non-starter since Israel and friends are non-signatories and will not cooperate while the United States will be using all its resources to stop the process stillborn. But that is not exactly the way it might play out. If the court holds the Israeli government accountable for war and human rights crimes those countries in Europe and elsewhere that are signatories to the ICC might consider themselves obliged to honor arrest warrants naming senior Israeli government officials whenever they are traveling. Israel is predictably reported to be already seeking to make arrangements whereby it will be warned by “friends” in foreign chanceries whenever such warrants are issued.

And then there is the matter of Israel’s approval rating vis-à-vis the rest of the world, which is already low, hovering down at the bottom of the list together with the United States. To be sure, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands all that and has reacted sharply to the ICC decision to proceed. He said:

“When the ICC investigates Israel for fake war crimes, this is pure anti-Semitism. The court established to prevent atrocities like the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people is now targeting the one state of the Jewish people. First, it outrageously claims that when Jews live in our homeland, this is a war crime. Second, it claims that when democratic Israel defend itself against terrorists who murder our children, rocket our cities, we’re committing another war crime. Yet the ICC refuses to investigate brutal dictatorships like Iran and Syria who commit horrific atrocities almost daily. As Prime Minister of Israel, I assure you, we will fight this perversion of justice with all our might.”

Israel’s security cabinet subsequently endorsed Netanyahu’s criticisms, describing the “outrageous” decision as one that “exposes the court as a political body, standing in one line with international organizations driven by antisemitic principles.” The Netanyahu government’s response is, of course, typical boilerplate that seeks to cast the Jewish state as a perpetual victim surrounded by a sea of anti-Semites. The only thing Netanyahu’s statement left out is the claim that Iran will have a nuclear weapon in weeks, but the Biden Administration’s Secretary of State Tony Blinken has already said that for him. The drum roll includes “fake war crimes,” “Nazi Holocaust,” “pure anti-Semitism,” “defend itself against terrorists who murder our children,” and “brutal dictatorships like Iran and Syria who commit horrific atrocities almost daily.” The reality is quite the reverse with the Israelis committing real war crimes by attacking its neighbors almost daily to include frequently killing Palestinian children. The horrific atrocities are being committed by the Israeli Army and the armed monstrous settlers against helpless Palestinians on both the West Bank and in Gaza. One might add the theft of Arab land, the destruction of their houses and livelihoods, and the lack of any due process for those who live and die under the brutal occupation. The numbers tell the tale. According to United Nations records, 3,601 Palestinians have been killed and over 100,000 injured by Israel between 2010 and 2019, versus 203 Israelis killed and 4,700 injured in the same time period.

And now, when there at last might be some real accountability for Israel’s crimes, the United States, under Netanyahu’s thumb, is yet again on the wrong side of the argument.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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One of the top national security think tanks backing the Biden administration, the Center for a New American Security, has been taking money from every major defense contractor while pumping out a steady stream of research supporting those companies’ interests. It’s yet another sign that Biden’s promised “return to normal” has, unfortunately, arrived.

The promise of a “return to normal” under Joe Biden always meant two possibilities. It could mean a hard break from the obscene, in-your-face corruption and self-dealing that defined Donald Trump’s presidency. Or it could mean going back to the kind of run-of-the-mill, revolving-door Washington corruption that Trump had pledged to clean up, but ended up wallowing in.

According to a new report by the Revolving Door Project, titled “The Military-Industrial-Think Tank Complex: Conflict of Interest at the Center for a New American Security,” it looks to be the latter option that is so far prevailing in the Biden years. Released yesterday, the report charges top Democratic foreign policy think tank the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) of “at best, a serious deficiency of accountability,” and at worst, “a systematically corrupt arrangement” that sees it promote its corporate sponsors’ interests while passing it off as a public good.

The report recounts several examples of this arrangement. In 2009, for instance, CNAS published a report maintaining that the controversial use of private military contractors was essential and “here to stay” in wars like Afghanistan, all while taking money from several different firms providing those very services. One of these firms, DynCorp, was on the receiving end of $2.8 billion of the state department’s Afghanistan operations funding from 2002 to 2013, or 69 percent of the total sum.

In another case, a 2018 CNAS report charged that the Air Force’s plans to buy a hundred B-21 bombers did “not go far enough,” pushing the military to add fifty to seventy-five more jets at an extra cost of $32.8-49.2 billion. Those profits would have gone to the bomber’s maker, Northrop Grumman, an arms manufacturer that also happened to direct more than half of its total think tank donations during the 2014–19 period to CNAS.

A year before that, CNAS had charged the UAE embassy in the United States $250,000 for a report advocating looser rules for exporting US drones (“I think it will help push the debate in the right direction,” the ambassador wrote in a thank you e-mail), before publishing a separate paper calling on Trump to loosen those restrictions. The UAE ended up signing a nearly $200 million deal for the drones with General Atomics, whose billionaire chairman and CEO, Neal Blue, is both a generous donor to CNAS and sits on its board of advisors.

In these and other examples, the report states, the center failed to disclose the conflicts of interest in their reports, despite noting the existence of a policy on such conflicts in their tax filings. It also repeatedly violated the “very clear line” CNAS cofounder Kurt Campbell — then about to serve in Barack Obama’s state department, and now serving on Biden’s national security council — testified about in his 2009 confirmation hearing: that the CNAS doesn’t write about specific products its donors make, but rather stays limited to big picture foreign policy ideas.

The center’s reliance on the corporate sector, particularly military contractors, is extensive, having taken donations from all “big five” such firms in the last decade, along with twenty-four others. According to a Center for International Policy report released last year, CNAS got more defense contractor money than any of the top fifty US think tanks it analyzed. That’s in addition to contributions from NATO, the governments of the United States and eleven other allied countries, and corporate titans spanning fossil fuel, financial, tech, and other sectors, all of whom have given generously to CNAS over the years.

As the report points out, CNAS’s own cofounder — Michèle Flournoy, tipped to be Biden’s defense secretary before her own extensive conflicts of interest derailed her — pointed out the issues with a corporate funding model in a 2014 speech.

“Every funder has intent. They’re giving you money for a reason,” she said. “There are some organizations that call themselves ‘think tanks’ that actually accept money from corporations to do very specific work that tends to advocate the programs those companies produce, and I think that sort of … makes the waters more murky.”

“The scale and scope of conflicts of interest that appear in CNAS’s work and the influence that its donors may be exerting on policy further highlights serious concerns about political corruption,” wrote Brett Heinz, coauthor of the report.

Of course, CNAS is far from unique. A whole host of think tanks, including those in the foreign policy sphere like the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Atlantic Council, regularly overlap their advocacy work with the interests of their well-heeled benefactors. But few have as much influence on the workings of the US government, with at least thirteen of the center’s alumni ending up in the Biden administration to date. As the foreign policy equivalent of the Center for American Progress, this is, after all, why CNAS exists: to serve as the future Democratic administration’s foreign policy team in waiting.

Washington, it seems, is finally back in the guiding hands of the experts who were always meant to be running the show. This also means that, true to Biden’s promise, the city has reverted back to the same, unremarkably money-driven state that Trump first used to take power four years ago.

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Branko Marcetic is a Jacobin staff writer and the author of Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden. He lives in Toronto, Canada.

Featured image: A U.S. Air Force loadmaster assigned to the 746th Expeditionary Airlift Squadron performs a preflight inspection on a C-130 Hercules at Baghdad International Airport, Iraq, Dec. 9, 2019. The 746th EAS maintains a constant presence in the U.S. Central Command area of responsibility, supporting U.S. and Coalition aircraft in various operations in countries such as Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. (U.S. Air Force photo by Staff Sgt. Bethany E. La Ville)

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***

Scientists on a World Health Organisation (WHO) mission to Wuhan to look at the origins of the coronavirus outbreak have accused Western media of “twisting” quotes to fit an anti-China narrative.

The US government and many media outlets have queried WHO findings that do not corroborate theories promoted by Washington, such as the virus escaping from a Chinese laboratory.

In a statement on Friday US national security adviser Jake Sullivan said that Washington had “deep concerns about the way in which the early findings of the Covid-19 investigation were communicated and questions about the process used to reach them.”

But British zoologist Peter Daszak, who was part of the WHO mission in China said that claims China had refused to hand over data were untrue.

“This was not my experience on the WHO mission. As lead of the animal/environment working group I found trust and openness with my China counterparts. We did get access to critical new data throughout. We did increase our understanding of likely spillover pathways,” he said.

“New data included environment and animal carcass testing, names of suppliers to Huanan market, analyses of excess mortality in Hubei, range of Covid-like symptoms for months prior, sequence data linked to early cases and site visits with unvetted live Q&A etc. All in report coming soon,” the expert explained.

In a swipe at reporting of the mission’s work, he tweeted:

“It’s disappointing to spend time w/ journalists explaining key findings of our exhausting month-long work in China, to see our colleagues selectively misquoted to fit a narrative that was prescribed before the work began. Shame on you @nytimes.”

Danish mission member Thea Koelsen Fischer said that scientists’ quotes were being “intendedly twisted, casting shadows over important scientific work.”

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman reminded the US that the WHO “is an authoritative multilateral international organisation in the field of health, not a funfair where one can come and go at will.”

China called for the US to “hold itself to the highest standards” of openness and transparency saying “the whole world will be looking.”

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***

Last week’s second impeachment trial of former President Trump should serve as a warning that something is very wrong in US politics. Far from a measured, well-investigated, rock-solid case against the former president, America was again abused with day after day of character assassination, innuendo, false claims, and even falsified “evidence.”

The trial wasn’t intended to win a conviction of Trump for “incitement” because the Democrats already knew that the votes were not there. So, just as with the last impeachment trial, the goal was to fling as much dirt at Donald Trump as they could while the cameras were rolling. Their hatred of Donald Trump is so deep and visceral that probably a psychologist would have been more beneficial to them than yet another impeachment trial.

It would be incorrect to say that the House managers’ case fell apart, because they had no case to begin with. They never had a case because they made no effort to develop a case. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court saw from the beginning that this was no legitimate impeachment trial and informed Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that he would not preside. Without the Chief Justice, there was no Constitutional impeachment trial. So they put on a show trial instead.

As Constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley kept asking, why didn’t the House schedule a single hearing to investigate what really happened up to and on the day of the Capitol melee on January 6th? They had weeks to do so. Professor Turley believes they might even have been able to make a decent case if they had tried.

Why did they not call witnesses? Were there no rioters who could be called to explain under oath how Trump’s speech had inspired them to enter the Capitol building to overturn the election?

Were they afraid that under cross-examination we might have found out more about Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows’ claim that Trump offered to deploy 10,000 National Guard troops in Washington before January 6th but that his offer was rebuked? What about reports that Capitol Hill Police were left without back-up and unprepared for what happened? House and Senate leadership is responsible for security at the Capitol and they obviously failed. Why?

The House and Senate Democrats (and a few Republicans) did not succeed in their ultimate goal: preventing Trump from ever running again for political office. But that doesn’t mean they are giving up. They are not about to give citizen Trump a moment of peace. They are intent on continuing their witch hunt but it looks less and less like any desire for justice. It looks like fear. They are afraid if he is allowed to run again he may be elected. So they cannot allow that vote to happen.

And they accuse Trump of undermining democracy.

There were a number of reasons to impeach and convict President Trump while he was in office. Bombing Syria on bogus grounds without authorization was one of them. But Democrats love war as much as Republicans so they weren’t about to uphold their Constitutional obligations.

Impeachment 2.0 may be over, but those blinded by hatred for Trump are not about to give up. They are irrational and obsessed. They are also dangerous.

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***

More than 500 scientists and economists implored world leaders last week to stop treating as emissions-free the burning of wood from forests to make energy and heat, and to end subsidies now driving the explosive demand for wood pellets. Both actions, they write, are causing escalating deforestation in the Southeast US, Western Canada and Eastern Europe.

The letter was received Feb. 11 by US President Joseph Biden and European Union President Ursula Von der Leyen, as well as Charles Michel, president of the European Council, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. The document is expected to soon be sent to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

“We the undersigned scientists and economists commend each of you for the ambitious goals you have announced… to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050,” the two-page letter begins. “Forest preservation and restoration should be key tools for achieving this goal and simultaneously helping to address our global biodiversity crisis.

However, “We urge you not to undermine both climate goals and the world’s biodiversity by shifting from burning fossil fuels to burning trees to generate energy.”

In the EU alone, nearly 60% of renewable energy already comes from forest biomass, amounting to millions of metric tons of wood pellets burned annually. The United Kingdom, The Netherlands and Denmark are among the leading consumers of biomass for energy and heat, while Japan and South Korea are now converting coal-fired power plants to burn wood pellets.

Under the EU’s second Renewable Energy Directive (REDII) — tolerated by the United Nations under the Paris Climate Agreement — emissions from burning forest biomass are not counted at all. This significant carbon accounting loophole underreports emissions data at a time when global temperatures are rising fast, causing accelerating drought, devastating storms, destructive wildfires and sea-level rise nearly everywhere on earth.

Rather than being a carbon neutral climate solution, the scientists write, cutting forests and burning wood pellets is more polluting than coal, and “emits more carbon up smokestacks than using fossil fuels,” while sacrificing the carbon-sequestration capacity of growing trees which is lost to produce wood pellets.

“Overall, for each kilowatt hour of heat or electricity produced, [burning] wood initially is likely to add two to three times as much carbon to the air as using fossil fuels,” says the letter, refuting the policy and industry claims of biomass zero emissions.

For its part, the biomass industry claims it uses forest management to selectively log trees from forests and tree plantations, avoiding clearcutting and preserving carbon stocks. It also claims that replanted trees quickly reabsorb the carbon released from burned wood pellets. Both assertions are undermined by NGO-observed clearcutting and accumulating science showing mature forests absorb and hold far more carbon than seedlings and young trees.

In 2017 demand for industrial wood pellets exceeded 14 million tons. By 2027, demand is expected to more than double to over 36 million tons. The biggest increases in biomass burning by 2027 are expected in Europe, Japan and South Korea, with newly targeted source forests in Brazil, Mozambique and Australia. Image courtesy of Environmental Paper Network.

The scientists offered four mandates: end subsidies and other incentives that promote biomass for energy and heat; in the EU, stop treating biomass as carbon neutral under REDII, which falsely overstates emission reductions; in Japan, stop subsidizing power plants to burn wood; and in the US, stop treating biomass as carbon neutral as the Biden administration establishes new climate rules and incentives to curb global warming.

“Government subsidies for burning wood create a double climate problem because this false solution is replacing real carbon reductions,” says the letter. “Companies are shifting fossil energy use to wood, which increases warming, as a substitute for shifting to solar and wind, which would truly decrease warming.”

Last week’s lobbying effort is the latest on behalf of US, European and Canadian scientists and economists to highlight robust science demonstrating the negative environmental impacts of biomass-for-energy to world leaders, whose national bioenergy policies have helped create a multibillion industry in wood-pellet production.

A similar letter signed by nearly 800 scientists in 2018 lobbied the EU to alter its biomass policies, to no avail.

The Drax power station in the UK, one of the world’s largest users of woody biomass to make energy. The uncounted carbon from wood pellets burned at Drax flows into the atmosphere, adding to climate change. Photo credit: DECCgovuk on VisualHunt / CC BY-ND.

“Better audience this time”

Tim Searchinger, a senior research scholar at Princeton University and forest biomass expert, helped draft the new letter. He told Mongabay he‘s more hopeful this document will produce positive results.

“We sense there is a growing recognition in Europe of the [biomass emissions] problem, [even as] there is increasing evidence of large, additional wood harvests since 2015 due to bioenergy,” Searchinger said. “So we think the letter may have a better audience this time. In the US, our hope and expectation is that leaders like [incoming Environmental Protection Agency Administrator] Michael Regan and [National Climate Adviser] Gina McCarthy will make sure that we get this issue right.

“But we know that not every newcomer to the [Biden] administration feels this way, so it’s useful that they be aware of the weight of the scientific evidence.”

The letter warns of the adverse climate and biodiversity impacts of biomass burning: “Your decisions going forward are of great consequence for the world’s forests because if the world supplied just an additional 2% of its energy from wood, it would need to double its commercial wood harvests.”

In North Carolina, for example, Enviva, one of the leading US biomass producers is already harvesting some 60,000 acres of woodland annually to produce 2.5 million tons of wood pellets for export, according to calculations by the Dogwood Alliance, a forest preservation NGO based in the state.

“The burning of wood will increase warming for decades to centuries. That is true even when the wood replaces coal, oil or natural gas,” noted two of the letter signees, Jean-Pascal van Ypersele, former chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; and Peter Raven, US National Medal of Science winner.

EU to reassess biomass carbon neutrality designation?

Even as the scientific consensus against forest biomass hardens, EU public opinion is beginning to turn against this form of bioenergy, with more than 40,000 Europeans signing onto a petition against burning forests to produce electricity. Importantly, Franz Timmermans, vice president of the EU Commission, told the Dutch press recently that the European Union will re-evaluate its policies on biomass under REDII as early as June.

In a response to questions from Mongabay, a spokesperson for the European Commission elaborated, without specifically addressing the policy shifts requested in last week’s letter:

“More sustainable bioenergy is needed to achieve the 2030 climate and energy targets and long-term climate neutrality,” said the spokesperson. “It is important to ensure, however, that the supply and demand will not be bigger than needed for this objective and that bioenergy is produced and used in a sustainable manner, while negative environmental impacts are effectively avoided and minimized. Also… in the EU 2030 Biodiversity Strategy, the use of whole trees and food and feed crops for energy production — whether produced in the EU or imported — should be minimized.”

Speaking to Mongabay, Phil Duffy, a letter signee and president of the Woodwell Climate Research Center, was critical of the current EU position:

“There is absolutely no reason why wood in any form needs to be burned to produce electricity. Wind, solar and nuclear are very low-carbon energy sources and are enormously abundant. Producing energy from these sources, while simultaneously expanding forests and other natural reservoirs to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere, is not just carbon neutral but carbon negative. This is the only approach which has a remote chance of avoiding unacceptable climate outcomes.”

Bill Moomaw, professor emeritus at Tufts University and a leading biomass expert, helped draft the biomass letter from scientists. He too is critical of the EU response, and found it too vague to be hopeful, so far. “What do they mean by sustainable?” he asked. “How much will they minimize taking whole trees?”

Moomaw concluded:

“We have to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions as rapidly as possible in the entire energy sector, including bioenergy. And we have to increase the uptake of carbon dioxide by our existing forests. The only way to do this is to let them grow. Planting new trees will contribute very little carbon sequestration in the narrow timeframe we have to slow the rate of global warming.”

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Justin Catanoso is a regular contributor to Mongabay and a professor journalism at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. Follow him on Twitter @jcatanoso

Featured image: A loaded logging truck pulls into the Enviva biomass wood pellet plant in Northampton, North Carolina. Image courtesy of the Dogwood Alliance / NRDC.

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***

Robert Mugabe: Why are your men trying to kill me?

Lt. General Peter Walls: If they were my men you would be dead.

-Exchange between Mugabe, leader of the ZANU-PF political party and Walls, the head of the Rhodesian Armed Forces on March 17th, 1980.

The build up to the first universal elections in the history of Rhodesia, the country which after the elections would be reconstituted as Zimbabwe, was a tumultuous period. After the failure of internal settlement, the negotiations and hard bartering at the Lancaster House Conference, had, it was hoped, finally set the country onto the path of peace and national reconciliation. But tensions remained high during the campaign period.

There were rumours of a coup by the Rhodesian Army should Robert Mugabe win and a pledge by some White soldiers to continue the fight along the lines that the French O.A.S. had embarked once Algeria was lost. The Black political parties of ZANU and ZIPRA were accused of intimidating Black voters, and Mugabe threatened a civil war if he was disqualified by Lord Soames, the British Governor-General. Mugabe himself had survived two assassination attempts in Fort Victoria and Salisbury. The campaign was punctuated by episodes of violence, one of which involved the commission of a ‘False Flag’ operation by the Selous Scouts Special Forces unit.

On the night of Thursday, February 14th, 1980, the Black township of Harare was rocked by an explosion in a Renault 12TL Sedan parked near St. Mary’s Anglican Church. The occupants, two young Black men were fatally injured. Then a few hours later, two bombs exploded. One was at a Presbyterian church and the other at a non-denominational church. Another bomb would be found the following morning near the entrance of the city’s Catholic cathedral. The bomb had been placed in a briefcase containing papers referring to ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front), the political party led by Robert Mugabe.

Residents of Salisbury, the capital city soon to be renamed after the township, woke up to read an advertisement in the local paper which warned that Mugabe would close all churches if he was elected.

There was a link between the explosions and the advert. The bombs which damaged the Presbyterian church and the non-denominational one had been set by a timer, as police would discover, by the now deceased occupants of the bomb-wrecked Renault. The advert also appeared to have been timed to coincide with the previous night’s explosions, just as the undetonated bomb-in-a-brief case near the Catholic church was designed not to explode to implicate a political party because of the literature contained inside of it.

Police and agents of ZANU-PF were quick to put together the pieces of the jigsaw once the identities of the men who were blown up in the car were discovered. They were Lieutenant Edward Piringondo and Corporal Morgan Moyo, both members of the Selous Scouts, a Special Forces unit of the Rhodesian Security Forces, which had gained a reputation as the most effective fighting outfit against the Black African guerrillas during the 2nd Chimurenga or ‘Bush War’.

Formed in 1973 as a tracking unit, the Scouts quickly germinated into a multi-racial outfit tasked with waging unconventional warfare. Its members employed infiltration, abduction, torture, sabotage and blackmail. Many of the missions they undertook relied on deception, and such deception was used to either kill a large number of the insurgent enemy or to kill specific civilian targets in order to blame the Black African insurgents. They were also a key component in the waging by the White minority government of chemical warfare against their Black opponents.

Lt. Piringondo, an early African recruit, was a 27-year-old veteran of ‘pseudo-operations’, many of which involved infiltrating guerrilla bases. One such mission was carried out in November 1979 prior to ‘Operation Murex’, an attack on a ZIPRA brigade in the Kabanga Mission area of southern Zambia.

For this and other audacious assignments, Piringondo had won the Rhodesian Silver Cross (SRC), the country’s second-highest military decoration for conspicuous gallantry. He had also been nominated for the Grand Cross of Valour which, had the Scouts not been disbanded, would have made him Rhodesia’s most decorated soldier.

Piringondo was thus the sort of man on which the Scouts could call upon to perform a mission which was designed to implicate the military wing of Mugabe’s Marxist-orientated party and paint Mugabe as anti-religion and anti-religious freedom.

But it was a mission too far for Piringondo and his accomplice in arms, Moyo, both of whom Mugabe would state with some relish had been “caught and destroyed in their devilish trap”.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Adeyinka Makinde.

Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London. He has a keen interest in history and geopolitics. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Lt. Edward Piringondo, a decorated member of the Selous Scouts (left), and clipping of the Monday, February 18th edition of the Hartford Courant (Source: Adeyinka Makinde)

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***

The U.S. National Security Council Director for Western Hemisphere Affairs Juan Gonzalez stated that President Joe Biden pledges to lift the limit on remittances to Cuba and resume direct flights between the two countries.

One of Biden’s campaign promises was to transform Donald Trump’s foreign policy towards Cuba, which only made families’ lives more difficult amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

He stated his intention to resume diplomatic dialogue with Havana and restaff the U.S. Embassy in Cuba, which was virtually dismantled by the Trump administration to please Florida’s anti-Cuban lobby in the U.S. Congress.

Although Biden’s speech has been positive, no actions have been taken so far, and most of the issues only remain “under review” status.

Top story: @EmbaCubaUS: 'More than 200 people go in cars and bicycles through the main streets and avenues of #Miami as part of the caravan against #Bloqueo a #Cuba. #NoMasBloqueo #UnBlockCuba #PuentesDeAmor ' pic.twitter.com/OOgouuW3HZ, see more https://t.co/wsEDM6k6p5

— editor13x (@editor13x) January 31, 2021

Biden’s policies must face obstacles like Senator Marco Rubio and Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who is ascending to the powerful chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. However, Obama pushed forward his Cuba policy despite not having control in either house of Congress, something that Biden already has.

Over the last month, progressive leaders and organizations have called for the lifting of the economic blockade and removing Cuba from the list of “States Sponsors of Terrorism.”

“Our nation’s embargo on Cuba is an artifact from the 1960s. To continue this outdated, harmful policy of isolation would be a failure of American leadership,” said Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee and introduced a bill to repeal the sanctions early this month.

Cuban President Miguel Diaz-Canel has said he welcomes dialogue with Washington, but without preconditions.

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Featured image: Cuban Art Factory in Havana, Cuba, Feb. 15, 2021. | Photo: Twitter/ @cubaniatravel

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***

Western countries, including Canada, are using experimental mRNA injections in nursing homes, on the most vulnerable of people.

Nobody can give informed consent because the injections are experimental. How do we know that the injections are experimental? There are at least two on-going clinical trials:

One is,

“A Study to Evaluate Efficacy, Safety, and Immunogenicity of mRNA-1273 Vaccine in Adults Aged 18 years and Older to Prevent COVID-19” (1).

The estimated study completion date is October 27, 2022.

Another study is titled,

“Study to describe the Safety, tolerability, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of RNA Vaccine Candidates Against COVID-19 in Healthy Individuals” (2).

The estimated study completion date is January 31, 2023.

We do have a narrow window to observe the immediate adverse impacts of the vaccines. So far, CDC data alone indicates that there have been 653 deaths and 12,044 other injuries following COVID vaccine injections (3). (Many countries are not included in this data.)

Nobody knows the medium and long term adverse vaccine-related events, so this precludes informed consent.

Since informed consent is impossible, and experimental vaccines are being administered to humans, Western governments are in violation of the Nuremberg Codes, established after the Second World War to prevent human experimentation and subsequent evils.

Everyone who has studied what is really happening in the Middle East (and beyond) knows that the “Nazis” never left. Now the “Nazis” (Western governments) are showing their true colors and killing their own people again.

It isn’t just vulnerable people in Long term Care Homes either. Provincial (health) (sic) measures, reports Dr. Stephen Malthouse, “have been shown to create 12:1 more deaths than the virus. (4)”

Western governments are deliberately causing human suffering and death on a global scale beneath “humanitarian” and now “public health” pretenses. These are Crimes Against Humanity.

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

Notes

(1) ClinicalTrials.gov, “A Study to Evaluate Efficacy, Safety, and Immunogenicity of mRNA-1273 Vaccine in Adults Aged 18 Years and Older to Prevent COVID-19.” NIH U.S. National Library of Medicine, 14 July, 2020. (A Study to Evaluate Efficacy, Safety, and Immunogenicity of mRNA-1273 Vaccine in Adults Aged 18 Years and Older to Prevent COVID-19 – Full Text View – ClinicalTrials.gov) Accessed 15 February, 2021.

(2) (Study to Describe the Safety, Tolerability, Immunogenicity, and Efficacy of RNA Vaccine Candidates Against COVID-19 in Healthy Individuals – Full Text View – ClinicalTrials.gov) Accessed 15 February, 2021.

(3) Children’s Health Defense Team, “653 Deaths + 12,044 Other Injuries Reported Following COVID Vaccine, Latest CDC Data Show.” the Defender, 12 February, 2021. (653 Deaths + 12,044 Other Injuries Reported Following COVID Vaccine, Latest CDC Data Show • Children’s Health Defense) Accessed 15 February, 2021.

(4) Stephen Malthouse, MD, “Letter by Dr. Stephen Malthouse, MD to Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C Provincial Health Officer.” www.marktaliano.net, 15 October, 2020. ( Letter by Dr. Stephen Malthouse, MD to Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C Provincial Health Officer – Mark Taliano) Accessed, 15 February, 2021.

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

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***

General Atomics is to bring a company-owned SkyGuardian drone to the UK in the summer to undertake “a series of operational capability demonstrations” for the UK and other NATO members. The RAF’s soon to be acquired Protector drone is a version of the SkyGuardian with a range of UK modifications. The aircraft is being shipped into the UK rather than flying in (possibly due to the controversy around a previous flight to the UK) and will be based at RAF Waddington.

Similar demonstration flights, planned by the company to fly over San Diego last year, did not go ahead apparently after objections on safety grounds from airspace regulators.  The flights took place instead well away from populated areas in the desert between Palmdale, California, and Yuma, Arizona.

RAF Waddington, on the edge of Lincoln, is surrounded by houses, a school and local businesses.  Recent public polling carried out for UK Drone Watch found that 67% of the public were worried about the safety implication of large drones flying in the UK, with 70% agreeing that such flights should be kept to segregated airspace.

The company says flights of the aircraft are planned to showcase its maritime capability and the drone will also participate in the UK’s Joint Warrior Exercise planned for May and late September over Scotland and the North Sea.  A press release also reported that:

SkyGuardian flights will further develop GA-ASI’s revolutionary Detect and Avoid capability, which will enable Protector to fly in unsegregated UK airspace. It will also assist RAF Waddington, the future home of the RAF Protector fleet, to best prepare to integrate the new aircraft into its daily operations.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is pushing hard for the UK’s Protector drone to be able to fly unsegregated (that is without restriction) in UK airspace.  However, airspace regulator, the Civil Airspace Authority (CAA) have previously been unconvinced about the safety of electronic ‘detect and avoid’ technology which is meant to replicate the safety role played by an on-board pilot.

The CAA has, however, come under pressure to accept the technology in order to allow drones to be able to fly ‘beyond visual line of sight’.  The former head of the Royal Air Force, Sir Stephen Hillier, was appointed Chair of the CAA in August 2020.  General Atomics are liable to make billions of dollars from sales of their new drones if they can get approval for them to fly in unsegregated civilian airspace.

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Few could have been slack-jawed at the first significant foreign policy speech of US President Joe Biden.  It can easily be filed under the “America is back” label.  Back as well, as if the previous administration had been incapable of it, was a promise for that practice unflatteringly called jaw-jaw.  “Diplomacy,” the President states from the outset, “is back at the centre of our foreign policy.”

Doing so naturally meant much cap doffing to the US State Department, that long time enunciator of Washington’s imperial policies.  President Donald Trump had held a rather different view of the department he generally saw as fustian and obstructive.  Biden tried reassuring department staff that he valued their expertise, respected them and would have their back.  “This administration is going to empower you to do your jobs, not target or politicize you.”

The effort of the new administration, outlined Biden, will focus on repairing and restoring.  Paint and scaffolding will be provided.  Alliances will be revisited, the world engaged with.  He strikes a collaborative note: cooperation with other states will be needed to fight the pandemic, climate change and nuclear proliferation.

The speech has the usual sprinklings of concern and fear that other powers are posing challenges to US power, but is odd in not mentioning such states as Iran, at least explicitly, or North Korea.  “American leadership,” he urges, “must meet this new moment of advancing authoritarianism, including the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States and the determination of Russia to damage and disrupt our democracy.”  Beijing remained “our most serious competitor” and needed to be pushed back “on human rights, intellectual property, and global governance.”  He asserts that the US will not roll over “in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions” and will be more “effective in dealing” with Moscow “in coalition and coordination with other like-minded partners.” 

This leaves the impression that the Trump administration was in the business of playing amiable golf with the Putin regime, a point that Democrats in Congress were always keen to push.  But whatever Trump’s strong man admiration might have been for President Vladimir Putin, the US record during his time in office was far from accommodating.  An overview of the various retaliatory sanctions is provided by the Brookings Institute.  They are many and include, among others, the imposition of sanctions in response to Russia’s alleged use of a nerve agent in the British town of Salisbury in 2018; the sanctioning of Russian and a Chechen group for human rights abuses, including extrajudicial killings and torture; and sanctions for alleged Russian electoral interference in 2018.

The speech also pays a mandatory pound of cant masquerading as homage to the misunderstood idea of democracy.  He spoke of defending “America’s most cherished democratic values: defending freedom, championing opportunity, upholding universal human rights, respecting the rule of law, and treating every person with dignity.”

Democracy is always a conceptual problem for presidents, largely because the US executive and the country’s political system is a creation of a distinctly non-democratic mindset.  The framers of the US Constitution pooh-poohed democracy and purposely crafted a document and political system that would protect property, stifle the emancipation of slaves, and neutralise factionalism. 

Historians such as Charles Beard developed these ideas in An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution (1913), noting how that celebrated document was ratified by fewer than one-sixth of adult males and excluding the un-propertied franchise.  “The Constitution was not created by the ‘whole people’, as the jurists said … but was the work of a consolidated group whose interests knew no state boundaries and were truly national in scope.”  Drafters of the Constitution “with a few exceptions, immediately, directly and personally interested in, and derived economic advantages from, the establishment of a new system.”  Things were off to a cracking start.

A recent smattering of critique of that problematic notion that is American democracy can also be found, if one cares to look.  Political scientist Yascha Mounk, looking at the foiled efforts of residents in Oxford, Massachusetts to secure the local water supply by buying out the company in question, Aquarion, furnishes us a gloomy example.  Despite securing enough funding to achieve their goal, the lobbyists and a generous effort at sabotage ensured that the water company would remain the supplier.  “The preferences of the average American appear,” rues Mounk, “to have only a miniscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”

The Trump era, while channelling the concerns of the powerless, left it at that.  Elites were still in rampant play, if only those elites preferred by the president.  The US republic moved ever more deeply into a terrain crawling with billionaires and lobbyists.  It was left for those against Trump and the Democrats to simply identify how best to retake old, unequitable terrain with their substitutes.  The participating voter could well sod off.

Problematically, we return to democracy as an exportable commodity, an effort that has been, for the most part, a disastrous platform of US foreign policy.  Previous sages warned that democracy grown in indigenous climes, like certain wines, travel poorly.  Not acknowledging this fact has led to quagmires, the destruction of states and the crippling of regional and in some cases global security. 

Despite the US being sketchy about democratic ideals (he does allude to the Capitol riots), Biden is optimistic that “the American people are going to emerge from this moment stronger, more determined, and better equipped to unite the world in fighting to defend democracy, because we have fought for it ourselves.”  He also announced “additional steps to course-correct our foreign policy and better unite democratic values with our diplomatic leadership.”  A Global Posture Review of US forces would be conducted, which could only mean one thing: butting the brake on withdrawing US troops and reversing Trump’s policy in various theatres. 

He suggests an example of democracy promotion in action: marshalling cooperative support to address the military coup in Burma; reaching out to the Republicans to test the waters (Senator Mitch McConnell also “shared concerns about the situation in Burma”).  Force, he proclaimed “should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election.”  The ghosts of Chile’s Salvador Allende and Iran’s Mohammad Mosaddegh, along with many other casualties of US efforts to overrule the will of the people, would beg to differ.

A more positive note is made on the issue of US support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen, where an effort will be made to support UN-led initiatives “to impose a ceasefire, open humanitarian channels, and restore long-dormant peace talks.”  US support for offensive operations in the war, including arms sales, will also cease.

What we can expect for a good deal of the Biden administration will be the resuscitation of the hackneyed and weary.  Even such an ordinary speech had Fred Kaplan claiming that Biden’s cliché’s, after Trump, sounded “revolutionary”.  Trump’s four years had been characterised by “diplomatic decline and atrophy”; Biden’s views, in light of that, “seemed fresh, even bracing.”  But Kaplan is not immune to the substance here.  Talk about stiffening democracy’s sinews, shoring up alliances when allies are doing their own deals with opponents, can come across as rather weak.  The pudding, and the proof that will come with it, is still being made.

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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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Today Black Lives Matter Inland Empire announced its departure from the Black Lives Matter Global Network, highlighting several grievances, and perhaps, calling attention to the need for movement leaders and members of movement organizations to have broader conversations of transparency, Collective organizing and accountability. The following is a statement from Black Lives Matter Inland Empire.

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To our community,

Recently, a group of BLM chapters known as the BLM 10 has come forward to voice their concerns and opposition to the Global Network. Those concerns, along with the egregious conduct the Global network demonstrated on Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday, have brought us to the conclusion that continuing to remain silent would be an act of betrayal. While the issues and problems that have been raised have been well known within our circle for years, it prompted many questions & concerns for us locally. We’d like to let the community know everything outlined in the statement put out by the BLM 10 is valid. We’ve also reached out to the BLM 10 and offered to sign on in support. Hopefully, we can provide insight and clarification into our chapter’s history, our relationship with the global network, and our commitments going forward.

When BLM IE first started, we were originally known as the Black and Brown Underground (BBU). In 2015 we were approached by an individual named Patrisse Cullors, who offered us an opportunity to join the Global Network and organize as a Black Lives Matter chapter.  After hearing her proposal, we believed that our work, direction, and principles aligned and agreed to join the network; renaming ourselves Black Lives Matter Inland Empire in the process. We were told that the organization we were joining was decentralized and leaderless, but we quickly discovered that was not the case. The Global Network is a top-down dogmatic organization that promotes certain chapters that choose to align with their direction and sequester the ones that don’t. For us locally, that chapter has been Los Angeles.

For years, the leadership of the Los Angeles chapter has aligned with the Global network and One United Bank to impose on various chapters, particularly ours. We believe that while doing this they received substantial donations and funding, despite them continually soliciting the community for donations. Together, the Los Angeles Chapter along with the Global Network have consistently tried to strong-arm other groups and  have worked to undermine a grassroots movement by capitalizing on unpaid labor, suppressing any internal attempt at democracy, commodifying Black death, and profiting from the same pain and suffering inflicted on Black communities that we’re fighting to end. In spite of  being ostracised, receiving no financial support, and the maltreatment from both the Global Network and Los Angeles Chapter we’ve maintained our composure while working to the benefit of our community and victims of state sanctioned violence.

Clearly, we do not have the same beliefs or sense of ethics. We no longer feel, as we initially did, that our politics align. As a result, we are announcing that we are no longer associated or connected to the BLM Global Network. As an attempt to distance ourselves, we have decided to rename part of our organization The Black Power Collective while we restructure.

The use of the BLM name, which we believed was intended to unify our struggle, has been commodified and debased. It is now being used to sell products, acquire book deals, T.V. deals, and speaking engagements. We have no interest in these pursuits, and we are opposed to the movement to substitute Black capitalism for white capitalism. It has become clear that the Global network and certain figures have platformed our struggles with the sole purpose of exploiting our labor.

Furthermore, the issue of greatest concern for us is the relationship between the Global Network and the Democratic Party. This is hypocritical at best, as the Democratic Party has historically rejected and ignored BLM’s demands and has made it clear that they are pro-police, pro-prison, and committed to capitalism. From Obama’s support of police and his double-cross of Erica Garner, to “Top Cop” Kamala Harris’ denial of justice for Matrice Richardson, even going back to the 1994 Crime Bill authored by Joe Biden along with the Prisoner Litigation Reform Act that stripped basic human rights from countless Black people—the Democratic Party has literally created the conditions that led to the formation of this movement. Even now, the Demoractic party continues to support imperialism, killing African heads of state, bombing Somalia, abusing immigrants (including those of the Black diaspora), and spreading the U.S. military throughout Black and Brown countries around the world. This is a party that is a threat both here and internationally. To ally with them is to ally against ourselves.

The BLM10 statement calls out the lack of financial transparency and power moves by Patrisse Cullors and others. The actions demonstrated by the Global network have provided proof that the Global Network is essentially a steering committee acting in the best interest of various fractions within the Democratic Party. Additionally, the creation of the Black Lives Matter Political Action Committee is a violation of our collective agreement. This agreement was composed of two rules: 1. We do not work with police, 2. We do not endorse politicians. We had hoped that those rules would protect our struggle from being corrupted by the nonprofit sector or absorbed into the Democratic party. However, it now appears that the same fate that many activist groups before us fell victim to is the same fate that the BLM Global Network are destined to face. They have not only aligned with a political party, they’ve used the finances they acquired from a massive uprising during a global pandemic to create the aforementioned BLM PAC.

We believe that all finances should be clear and transparent to the Black community. We also believe they should be controlled by chapters that adhere to a democratic structure along with community checks and balances. Leaders that appoint themselves can no longer serve or be seen as leaders.  We can not accept charismatic figures imposing themselves as dictators, nor can we support personality cults.  In the spirit of Audre Lordre  and Ella Baker we believe that, ‘’…the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house” and that “…strong people don’t need strong leaders”.  To that end, it is imperative that we engage in the struggle with our own tools and work to build a stronger people.

We would also like to address the violent rumor-mongering directed towards a member of our group who was maliciously accused of being a member of law enforcement. These slanderous accusations came from a leader of BLM LA and a  figurehead of the Global Network. These accusations were nothing but an attempt to duck accountability for the way members of national leadership have treated victims of police brutality and a violation of their own policies. The bullying and attempts to silence smaller chapters and individuals who speak up must end.

Let us be clear, we are not the authors of the discord within our movement.  Malcolm X encouraged us to handle our differences behind closed doors, but all attempts at that have failed. This corruption has thrived in part due to our silence and for that we must apologize.

“Hide nothing from the masses of our people. Tell no lies. Expose lies whenever they are told. Mask no difficulties, mistakes, failures. Claim no easy victories…” – Amilcar Cabral

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Plans to connect Scotland and Northern Ireland with a 25-mile undersea tunnel have been ruthlessly mocked by the chair of the Commons Northern Ireland affairs select committee, who called on his colleagues to “put the hallucinogenics down”.

Reports in the Sunday Telegraph suggest the PM’s plans for a bridge between the two countries could be written off in favour of a tunnel, dubbed the ‘Boris Burrow’, which has been mooted as the most viable way forward by Scotland Secretary Alister Jack.

“You say bridge. I say tunnel”

He told the Daily Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast: “You say bridge. I say tunnel. I think a bridge would be closed for probably 100 days a year with the weather in the Irish Sea.”

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In his first presidential visit to the Pentagon yesterday, Joe Biden announced the creation of an anti-China task force. This team will review the Pentagon’s policy towards the country in areas such as strategy, technology, military and diplomacy with neighboring countries. During the visit Biden pledged to “meet the China challenge … and win the competition of the future.”

Career politician and long-time Biden aide Ely Ratner has been tapped to lead the task force targeting China. Ratner has continually advocated for bipartisan aggression against China in his roles at the pro-war Center for New American Security, the State Department, and elsewhere.

In 2017 Ratner described China’s calls for non-conflict, mutual respect and win-win cooperation with the United States as a “festering concept.” Ratner wrote in the influential journal Foreign Policy: “Enough is enough. Senior Trump administration officials should make it a top priority to dispense with this concept as soon as possible, first by politely and privately asking Beijing to refrain from using it, and then, if necessary, by publicly denouncing it. The longer they wait to do this, the harder and more awkward it will get.”

China is not the threat

The United States has targeted China as its principal priority since the Obama administration’s “Pivot to Asia” doctrine, marking a major aggressive shift with the largest country in the world by population and second-largest by economy.

Every year the U.S. military publishes two versions of a report assessing China’s armed forces: one classified and one public. The 2020 public report lists a number of “threats”, including China’s single foreign military base and China’s nuclear warhead stockpile “estimated to be in the low 200s.”

But China is not the aggressor. Its lone military base in Djibouti is just a few miles from Camp Lemonnier, among the largest of the Pentagon’s 800+ overseas military bases. And its nuclear stockpile, none of which have been deployed, pales in comparison to the thousands of nuclear weapons in storage and deployed by the United States around the world.

A 1996 report by the Natural Resources Defense Council estimated that the U.S. built more than 70,000 nuclear warheads from 1945 to 1995, more than every other nuclear-armed country combined. During the second term of the Obama administration the U.S. embarked on a $1 trillion effort to “modernize” the nuclear weapons stockpile and build “usable” nuclear weapons.

Biden’s agenda: aggression, aggression, aggression

Biden spoke to Chinese president Xi Jinping hours after revealing the new anti-China task force. With standard imperial hypocrisy Biden criticized China over its internal affairs including its handling of the pro-Western protests in Hong Kong and anti-terrorism policies in the Xinjiang autonomous region. His Chinese counterpart did not bring up the fascist-led insurrection on Jan. 6 that nearly saw the kidnapping or even assassination of many U.S. politicians.

On top of that, In the last week the U.S. Navy sent a warship through the highly politically sensitive Taiwan strait in an attempt to provoke China and inflame tensions. Days later, the U.S. sent two carrier strikes groups –– a collection of warships and aircraft carriers –– to conduct war simulations in the South China Sea. Just one strike group hosts thousands of soldiers, and costs $6.5 million each day to operate.

War criminal and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger euphemistically described these warships as “100,000 tons of diplomacy”. Of the 41 active aircraft carriers in the world, the United States controls 20 outright. Another 13 are operated by U.S. junior partners and client states.

The U.S. government, not China, is the aggressor and the real threat to peace.

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Featured image: This file photo shows US guided missile destroyer USS Mustin, which intruded into Chinese territorial waters in South China Sea.

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After months of denying there are any plans to introduce so called vaccine passports, the British government has now admitted that not only is it considering introducing them for travel, but also merely to gain access to events spaces, and even shops and pubs.

Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab told LBC radio that the government is considering a domestic scheme to allow greater freedoms to those who can prove they have been vaccinated.

“It’s under consideration, but of course you’ve got to make it workable,” Raab stated:

“I’m not sure there’s a foolproof answer in the way that sometimes it’s presented, but of course we’ll look at all the options,” Raab added.

Raab’s comments come after vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi declared last month that any form of vaccine passport would be ‘discriminatory’.

A senior government source also told the Telegraph that the Government has been “very cautious about this idea that if you don’t have a passport therefore somehow your liberties are curtailed”.

“As Conservatives we should be instinctively concerned about that,” the source further noted.

Despite the repeated details, the government has continued to develop the vaccine passport system.

There are also reports that the government plans to issue exemptions for ethnic minorities, in order to avoid charges of xenophobia and racism.

Former Prime Minister, and arch globalist, Tony Blair has renewed his push for Britain to implement a standardised global vaccine passport while the country has the G7 Presidency.

Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Blair urged “We should plan for an agreed ‘passport’ now. The arguments against it really don’t add up.”

“The world is moving in this direction,” Blair added, saying that he “can’t see another way of this.”

“With my team at the Institute for Global Change, I have looked at this from every angle and come to this conclusion: there is no prospect of a return to anything like normal without enabling people to show their Covid status, whether that means they have been vaccinated or recently tested,” Blair proclaimed.

Blair also revealed that he is working with the World Economic Forum on its CommonPass initiative, a COVID passport scheme being pushed by a coalition of Big Tech companies, and that has received funding from the Rockefeller Foundation. The CommonPass is already being implemented by all three major airline alliances.

Blair previously declared that vaccine passports are inevitable and that “It’s going to be a new world altogether.”

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The EU and U.S. seem oblivious to threats made last week by Kosovan political opposition leader Ramush Haradinaj to unite Kosovo with Albania if Serbia does not recognize Pristina’s self-proclaimed independence. This is mostly because the West are not united on the Kosovo issue. 

The EU attributes the threat to unify the breakaway Serbian province with Albania to the election campaign that was underway in Kosovo, but that is not a reason for Brussels to stay silent. The EU did not react strongly against these statements by Kosovo’s political leaders because it is convinced that it is only pre-election populist rhetoric that will quickly dissipate. An EU spokesman did comment on the statements, but it was more tokenistic and appeared to be a forced effort.

The European Commission and most of the EU believe that such statements must be seen as part of the election campaign in Kosovo because Haradinaj and so-called former Prime Minister Albin Kurti were fighting for power. It appears that Haradinaj’s populist rhetoric and ideas for a Greater Albania were popular, but not enough to project him into power as Kurti’s Vetëvendosje Party won Sunday’s parliamentary election.

However, even if we accept that such provocative statements should be tolerated because it was pre-election rhetoric, words are not chosen in such a way that the revival of ideas about a Greater Albania are only for the purpose of gaining votes. Such an idea does exist and has popular support as many Albanians would be very happy to see a Greater Albania emerge that would incorporate Kosovo, Albania, and other areas of Greece, Serbia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. Such a grand idea of incorporating the territory of so many countries is unattainable, but a merging of Albania and Kosovo could become a real prospect.

According to a 2010 Gallup Balkan Monitor report, 81% of Albanians in Kosovo supported a Greater Albania, up from 54% in 2008. 11 years on from the report, and although there is no official data, it can be expected this number is even higher. Although Haradinaj did not win the election, the idea of merging Kosovo and Albania enjoys widespread support among all political factions, including the Vetëvendosje Party that won Sunday’s elections. Kurti is a huge advocate for a referendum on unification and frequently criticizes the part of the constitution that forbids such a referendum.

It is unlikely that Western Powers would allow Kosovo and Albania to unite as it would unravel a quagmire in the Balkans – Croats and Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina would demand unification with Croatia and Serbia respectively, Greeks in Northern Epirus in southern Albania would demand unification with Greece, Bulgarians in North Macedonia would demand unification with Bulgaria, and these are just some of the many map redrawings of the Balkans that would be demanded by various ethnic groups.

It would not be surprising if the EU reacted to Pristina privately as they are proposing a dangerous idea at a time when Brussels is attempting to, albeit slowly, expand into the Western Balkans. However, if Brussels cares about peace and stability, as it supposedly champions, reactions should have been clearer and more explicit.

At the same time, if the West accepts Kosovo as an independent state, then they should have no authority from preventing two sovereign states, as they see them, from merging and becoming a single entity through a referendum and a constitutional amendment. This demonstrates weakness in EU foreign policy as they will not be able to prevent an occurrence that they want to avoid, or it demonstrates Kosovo’s servitude to the West as it does not merge with Albania despite widespread support, or perhaps it demonstrates both prospects.

The problem is in the fact that the EU does not have a coherent position when it comes to the breakaway Serbian province because five of its members (Greece, Cyprus, Spain, Slovakia and Romania) have not recognized Kosovo’s independence.

There are several factors why the EU does not see the reality in the West Balkans. Europe is dealing with internal interests of its member states out of fear of an economic crisis, explaining why for example, Turkey has not been sanctioned despite daily territorial violations against member states Greece and Cyprus. The EU does not have a common geopolitical position and because of this they miss opportunities to advance their own geostrategic interests, like those in the Balkans or even during last year’s war in Nagorno-Karabakh.

A geopolitically weak Europe means that the U.S., under new President Joe Biden, will take advantage of the gap in influence to promote its own interests in the Balkans. If the U.S. and EU do not agree with each other and position themselves on opposite ends, then they could use the space for advancing their own ideas and influence. However, the EU has not made a clear position because of its own division over the Kosovo issue. If a merging of Albania and Kosovo is to the advantage of the U.S. as it weakens Serbia and thus Russian interests in the Balkans, then Biden will undoubtedly pursue it, even if Brussels is in opposition to this. This is because the EU is unable to prevent it due to its own geopolitical weakness and withdrawal from the region over a prolonged period of time.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Black History Month challenges all of us to learn, reflect and understand many things about the Black American experience, among them the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. This outrage, perpetrated by the US Public Health Service, was not conducted for a year or even a decade – it went on for forty years.

Originally intended to be a six-month study, the Tuskegee experiment conducted in Macon County, Alabama, lasted from 1932 to 1972, and initially involved 600 Black American men – 399 with syphilis, 201 who did not have the disease but were part of the control group. While the men agreed to be examined and treated for “bad blood” (a local term which included anemia, fatigue and syphilis), researchers never informed them of the study or its actual purpose. It was conducted, from beginning to end, without the patients’ informed consent.

Those who were infected were never told they carried latent syphilis, and they were never treated for the disease, even after penicillin was conclusively shown by the mid-1940s to effectively treat syphilis. Not only did the scientists conducting the study withhold the antibiotic and information about it from the patients, they deliberately prevented participants from making use of syphilis treatment programs which were available in the area. As one commentator stated: “deceit was integral to the study.”

Peter Buxtun, an epidemiologist at the USPHS, filed an official protest on ethical grounds in 1966 and again in 1968 but was twice rejected. In 1972, he finally leaked information on the study to the Associated Press and only after a significant public outcry did the USPHS end the program. Studies now require informed consent, communication of diagnosis and the reporting of test results – but Tuskegee reverberates to this day, having understandably damaged the trust of many Black Americans in their medical providers and in the US government on issues relating to their healthcare.

This study was no well-kept secret. At least thirteen reports on the experiment appeared in scientific journals; and in most of these articles, researchers would refer to their program as precisely what it was: the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Male Negro.” The first report of the study appeared in 1936, and subsequent papers followed every four to six years, including through the 1960s. For four decades, no one sounded the moral alarm. No one publicly questioned how the program was being permitted to continue with the blessing of both the USPHS and the Center for Disease Control, which even in in 1969 determined that the research should continue. Indeed, the Tuskegee experiment was a secret only to the subjects of the study—poor, sick, and largely illiterate Black Americans.

Subjects talking with study coordinator, Nurse Eunice Rivers, c.1970 (Public Domain)

The program’s purpose was to track the natural history of untreated syphilis in Black males. When the study began in 1932, syphilis had no effective treatment; but by 1943, penicillin had been used in the US to effectively cure the disease, and yet at no point were subjects ever given the choice of quitting the study in favor of this new and promising treatment. What the patients were instead prescribed was “fairly horrific” – namely, excruciatingly painful and dangerous spinal taps, which the Tuskegee researchers referred to as “special treatment,” that in some cases led to paralysis.

During World War II, researchers actively began preventing their subjects from accessing treatment ordered under the military draft effort. Instead, patients were tempted to remain within the program with the promise of free examinations and therapy, hot meals, and an offer of burial insurance – amounting to fifty dollars to pay for a casket and grave.

As a result, these men were completely unaware that they had put their lives in the hands of doctors who not only had no intention of healing them but were committed to observing them until the final autopsy – since it was believed that an autopsy alone could scientifically confirm the study’s findings. As one researcher wrote in a 1933 letter to a colleague, “As I see, we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”

The unquestionable ethical failure of Tuskegee is one with which we must grapple, and of which we must never lose sight, lest we allow such moral disasters to repeat themselves. One way we can begin to understand the moral harm that occurred is through the Kantian principle of dignity, which our government grossly and systematically violated at Tuskegee. The principle states that a person must never be treated simply as a means, but always also as an end in and of themselves. This principle is precisely what the US government failed to uphold by adopting a purely instrumental relationship to the patients – in a word, they were not treated as people, possessed with intrinsic self-worth, and capable of self-determination.

Tuskegee had predictably tragic consequences for the men who were part of the study, a number of whom died from advanced syphilitic lesions, while others went blind and insane. Worse still, because the subjects were never told that they actually carried the sexually transmitted disease or that they were contagious, their wives also became infected. Perhaps most disturbing of all is that many of the patients’ children were consequently born with congenital syphilis. The experiment’s consequences were so far-reaching in part because the Tuskegee study was undoubtedly the single longest experiment on human beings in the history of medicine.

What makes Tuskegee so morally abhorrent is that it was, from beginning to end, a racially driven experiment that targeted a vulnerable group. If the subjects had been white, how long would the study have continued? If the subjects had been white, would the doctors have systematically deceived them and allowed them to go on year after year receiving no treatment, so that they could observe the disease take its natural and devastating course? It is an utterly implausible suggestion, because the entire study was premised on the myth of “Negro inferiority,” and that Black men possess an excessive sexual desire. As Allan M. Brandt concluded in 1978, “the Tuskegee researchers regarded their subjects as less than human.”

Yet, to this day, the Tuskegee Syphilis Study has its defenders. In 2004, Richard Shweder, a cultural anthropologist at the University of Chicago, offered a revisionist account of Tuskegee – arguing, among other things, that standards of consent were not violated because “in 1932 the concept of informed consent had not even been imagined by medical professionals.”

In point of fact, his statement is simply untrue, as Charlotte Paul and Barbara Brookes have pointed out in “The Rationalization of Unethical Research.” Richard C. Cabot, a Harvard professor of medicine, observed already in 1928, that “experimentation upon a human being without his consent and without the expectation of benefit to him is without any ethical justification.” And Cabot was certainly not the first to insist upon the necessity of informed consent in the clinical research setting, or where human experimentation is involved.

The crucial point, however, is that we cannot afford to assume that the lessons of Tuskegee will be evident to all or for all time. What occurred was a moral catastrophe that did untold harm to people who were already especially vulnerable. Recent attempts to rationalize or defend what occurred only serve to underscore how imperative it is that we continue to revisit the Tuskegee program and examine the moral implications of what took place.

Ethical codes and requirements that emerged in the wake of Tuskegee are of great importance of course – but they do not function as guarantees that grave moral lapses on the scale and scope of Tuskegee will not reoccur. Indeed, we risk repetition of such moral travesties precisely when we conclude that we have safely inoculated ourselves against them. We must remember Tuskegee, continue to reawaken and deepen our understanding of it, and honor its victims by remaining vigilant against such injustices in the future.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Doctor drawing blood from a patient as part of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study (Public Domain)

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As the Senate prepares to confirm Nuland for Under Secretary for Political Affairs, a reflection of her last 30 years in government shows how she was connected to nearly every foreign policy disaster undertaken by the United States.

President Joe Biden’s nomination of Victoria Nuland for Under Secretary for Political Affairs, the third-highest position at the State Department, is a dangerous sign. Nuland exemplifies the neoconservatives who have led American foreign policy from one disaster to another for the past 30 years, all while evading any shred of accountability.

As a top-level appointee, Nuland must still be confirmed by the Senate. And while pro-peace groups have waged a campaign to stop her confirmation, reflecting on her career in public service makes clear why she is incompetent, highly dangerous, and should not be confirmed.

Afghanistan and Iraq

From 2000 to 2003, when the Bush administration attacked and then invaded Afghanistan, Nuland was serving as Bush’s permanent representative to NATO. The Afghan government offered to work with the Americans to remove al-Qaeda, but the offer was rejected. After al-Qaeda was defeated, the U.S. could have left Afghanistan but instead stayed, established semi-permanent bases, splintered the country, and is still fighting there two decades later.

From 2003 to 2005, Nuland was principal foreign policy advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney who “helped plan and manage the war that toppled [Iraqi leader] Saddam Hussein, including making [the] Bush administration’s case for preemptive military action based on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction.” The foreign policy establishment, including Nuland, insisted that removing Saddam Hussein and installing a U.S. “ally” would be simple.

The invasion and continuing occupation have resulted in over a million dead Iraqis, many thousands of dead Americans, hundreds of thousands with PTSD, and a bill for American taxpayers of 2 to 6 trillion dollars.

From 2005 to 2008, Nuland served as U.S. Ambassador to NATO where her role was to “strengthen Allied support” for the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Victoria Nuland is sworn in as NATO ambassador by Dick Cheney in 2005. Photo | White House

When Nuland was asked about the lessons learned on the tenth anniversary of the invasion, she responded:

Compared to where we were in the Saddam era, we now have a bilateral security agreement … We have deep economic interests and ties. We have a security relationship. We have a political relationship.”

Nuland’s response makes clear that she is oblivious to the costs, and that her loyalties are to the elite who are still benefiting from the tragedy. Indeed, “one of the top profiteers from the Iraq War was oil field services corporation, Halliburton.” Halliburton gained $39.5 billion in ‘federal contracts related to the Iraq war.’ Nuland’s boss, Vice President Dick Cheney, was its former CEO.

In January 2020, seventeen years after the U.S. invasion, the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution demanding U.S. troops and contractors withdraw from their country. Now, over one year later, they still have not left.

Libya

In the spring of 2011, Nuland became State Department spokesperson under then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as she ramped up the “regime change” assault on longtime U.S.-ally, Moammar Ghaddafi of Libya. UN Security Council resolution 1973 authorized a “No Fly Zone” for the protection of civilians but not an air assault on Libyan government forces. Yet that summer, as the U.S. and her NATO allies bombed and attacked Libyan forces, Nuland dismissed the option of a peaceful transition in Libya and suggested falsely that the UN Security Council required the removal of Ghaddafi.

The bombing campaign led to the toppling of the Libyan government and the brutal public murder of Ghaddafi at the hands of anti-government rebels. Commenting on the murder (and bayonet sodomizing of Ghaddafi) Nuland’s boss Hillary Clinton now famously chortled:

We came, we saw, he died.”

Before Ghaddafi’s overthrow, Libya had the highest standard of living in all of Africa. Since the U.S.-led assault though it has become a failed state with competing warlords, huge inflation, huge unemployment, and exploding extremism and violence that has spread to neighboring countries. Most of the migrants who have crossed the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe, or drowned trying to, are coming from Libya. By any measure, the goal of “protecting” Libyan civilians has failed spectacularly.

Syria

One reason that Clinton and hawks like Nuland wanted to overthrow Ghaddafi was ostensibly to gain access to Libya’s military arsenal. Doing so would allow them to funnel arms to insurgents seeking to overthrow the Syrian government and any other enemy of the United States or her allies in the region.

This was confirmed in secret DOD documents which stated:

During the immediate aftermath of, and following the uncertainty caused by, the downfall of the ((Qaddafi)) regime in October 2011 and up until early September of 2012, weapons from the former Libya military stockpiles located in Benghazi, Libya were shipped from the port of Benghazi, Libya to the ports of Banias and the Port of Borj Islam, Syria.

In January of 2012, Nuland claimed that the United States was “on the side of those wanting peaceful change in Syria.” At the same time, the U.S. was supplying sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, and 125 mm and 155 mm howitzer missiles to the purportedly “peaceful” anti-government protestors in the country,

The U.S. “regime change” strategy for Syria followed the pattern of Libya. First, claim that the protestors are peaceful. Then claim the government’s response is disproportionate. Put pressure on the target government to paralyze it, while increasing proxy support for protesters and subversive anti-government groups. As documented, there were violent protesters in Syria from the start. During the first days of protest in Deraa in mid-March of 2011, seven police officers were killed. As a spokesperson for the State Department, Nuland was a major figure promoting that narrative in order to justify the “regime change” campaign.

Ukraine

In September of 2013, Nuland was appointed to the post of Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs. The uprising in Ukraine’s Maidan central plaza began soon after her arrival. To underscore American support for the protests, Nuland and Senator John McCain passed out bread and cookies to a crowd of anti-government protesters.

The protests continued into January of 2014. The issue at hand was a loan from the International Monetary Fund which would require a 40% increase in natural gas bills, or to accept a loan from Russia with the inclusion of cheap oil and gas. The opposition, wary of Russia and in favor of Ukraine’s alignment with “western” powers, wanted the Yanukovych government to accept the IMF loan. That opposition was comprised of different factions, including the neo-Nazi Svoboda Party and Right Sector.

In early February of 2014, an audio recording of Nuland talking to U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, was leaked to the public. The four-minute-long conversation was a media sensation as it included Nuland saying, “F**k the EU,” in reference to the European Union’s interests in Ukraine.

But Nuland’s cursing was a distraction from what was truly significant of the recording. It showed the extent to which Nuland was meddling in domestic Ukrainian affairs, had direct contacts with key opposition leaders and was managing the protests to the extent she was deciding who would – and would not – have a seat at the table in the post-coup government. In the recording, Nuland says:

I don’t think Klitsch [Vitaly Klitschko] should go into government…… I think Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk] is the guy… “

The reason she wanted to “F**k the EU” was that she did not approve of the EU’s preferred method of negotiation and compromise. Nuland and Pyatt wanted to “midwife” and “glue” the toppling of the Yanukovych government despite it being in power after an election that was observed and substantially approved by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe).

Over the next few weeks, the protests escalated. The president of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kyiv, Bernard Casey, described what happened next.

On February 18-20, snipers massacred about 100 people [both protestors and police] on the Maidan …. Although the US Ambassador and the opposition blamed the Yanukovych Administration, the evidence points to the shots coming from a hotel controlled by the ultranationalists, and the ballistics revealed that the protestors and the police were all shot with the same weapons.”

The Estonian foreign minister would later echo those claims: “behind the  snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new (opposition) coalition.”

Casey continues:

On February 20, 2014 an EU delegation moderated negotiations between President Yanukovych and the protestors, agreeing to early elections – in May 2014 instead of February 2015…. Despite the signing of an agreement … the ultranationalist protestors, and their American sponsors, rejected it, and stepped up their campaign of violence.”

The coup was finalized in the following days. Yanukovych fled for his life and, as planned, Yatsenyuk became president.

One of the first acts of the coup leadership was to remove Russian, the first language of millions of Ukrainians, as an official state language. Over the coming period, the “birth” of the coup government, violence by ultranationalists and neo-Nazis were prevalent.

In Odessa, those peacefully protesting the coup were violently attacked. One video published online shows an especially vicious attack on peaceful protesters followed by the fire-bombing of the building where protestors had retreated. Fire trucks were prevented from reaching the building to put out the fire and rescue the citizens inside. Forty-two people died and 100 were injured. In another incident, a convoy of buses heading to Crimea was attacked and the anti-coup passengers beaten and some killed, and in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, protests against the coup were met with deadly force.

Nuland claims to be a “victim” because her conversation was leaked publicly. The real victims are the many thousands of Ukrainians who died and the hundreds of thousands who were made refugees because of Nuland’s crusade to bring Ukraine into the NATO fold.

The audio recording confirms that Nuland was managing the protests at a top-level and that the result (Yats is the guy) was as planned. If Nuland was willing to go to such lengths, it’s possible that she also approved the decision to both deploy snipers in order to escalate the crisis and to overturn the mediated agreement by the EU which would have forced elections in three months time and effectively undermined the protest movement.

Why were snipers deployed on February 18? No one can say for sure, but time was running out, the Russian leadership was distracted by the Sochi Olympics and perhaps the coup managers were in a hurry to “glue” it in advance.

Russia

During the 1990s, Nuland worked for the State Department on Russia related issues, including a stint as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs. During that time, the U.S. interfered in Russian internal affairs in myriad ways. Time magazine proudly proclaimed, “Yanks to the rescue: the secret story of how American advisors helped Yeltsin win.”

Yet Yeltsin’s leadership and the policies pushed by the United States had disastrous consequences. Between 1991 and 1999, Russia’s gross domestic product decreased by nearly 50% as social safety nets were removed. The Russian economy collapsed, oligarchs, and lawlessness arose. Nuland was part of the U.S. team leading the efforts in Russia, deploying economic “shock therapy” and causing widespread social despair.

Meanwhile, the United States reneged on promises to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch” eastward. Instead, NATO became an offensive pact, bombing Yugoslavia in violation of international law and then absorbing Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, Albania, Croatia, and more.

Coming into power in 2000, Putin clamped down on the oligarchs, restored order, and began rebuilding the economy. Oligarchs were forced to pay taxes and start investing in productive enterprises. The economy and confidence were restored. Over seven years, GDP went from 1.3 billion (U.S. dollars) to 2.3 billion. That is why Putin’s public approval rating has been consistently high, ranging between 85% and a “low” approval rating of 60%.

Most Americans are unaware of these facts. Instead, Putin and Russia are persistently demonized. This has been convenient for the Democratic Party establishment as it served as a distraction for their efforts against Bernie Sanders, efforts which ultimately led to their loss to Donald Trump. The demonization of Russia is also especially useful and profitable for the military-industrial complex.

Nuland boosted the “Steele Dossier” which alleged collaboration between Russia and Trump among other salacious claims. The allegations filled the media and poisoned American attitudes towards Russia. Belatedly, the truth about the “Steele Dossier” is coming out. Last summer the Wall Street Journal reported “the bureau (FBI) knew the Russia info was phony in 2017” and that “there was no factual basis to the dossier’s claims.”

While promoting disinformation, Nuland is pushing for a more aggressive U.S. foreign policy. In an article titled “Pinning Down Putin.” she insists that “Russia’s threat to the liberal world has grown,” that Washington should “deter and roll back dangerous behavior by the Kremlin,” and “rebuff Russian encroachments in hot spots around the world.”

The major “hot spots” are some of the same conflicts that Nuland herself promoted, especially Syria and Ukraine. In Syria, the U.S. and its allies have spent billions promoting the overthrow of the Assad government. So far, they have failed, but have not given up. The facts are clear: American troops and military bases in Syria do not have the authorization of the Syrian government. They are actively stealing the precious oil resources of the Syrian state. It is the United States, not Russia, that is “encroaching.”

The queen of chicken hawks

Victoria Nuland has promoted a foreign policy of intervention, coups, proxy wars, aggression, and occupation and that policy has been implemented with bloody and disastrous results in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine.

With consummate hypocrisy, she accuses Russia of spreading disinformation in the United States, while she openly seeks to put “stress on Putin where he is vulnerable, including among his own citizens.” She wants to “establish permanent bases along NATO’s eastern border and increase the pace and visibility of joint training exercises.”

Nuland is the queen of chicken hawks, the Lady Macbeth of perpetual war. There are hundreds of thousands of victims from the policies she has promoted.  Yet she has not received a scratch. On the contrary, she has profited from a stock portfolio likely filled with military contractors.

Now Nuland wants to provoke, threaten, and “rollback” Russia. Yet a quick look at any map of U.S. military bases shows who is threatening whom.

Victoria Nuland is highly dangerous and should not be confirmed.

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Rick Sterling is a journalist and member of the Syria Solidarity Movement based in the San Fransico Bay area. He can be reached at [email protected]

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As the US led aggression against Iran escalates, Russia and China stand closer with Iran.    Recent reports of joint naval drills planned with Iran, Russia and China in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Oman will send a clear message to the new US leadership.  Whatever President Joe Biden and his administration are preparing for Iran, they will need to factor in Russia and China.

Biden is demanding Iran scale back its nuclear programme before the US considers re-joining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), commonly known as the ‘Iran Nuclear Deal’ – and before the vindictive and ruthless US led sanctions against Iran are lifted.

In January 2021, ‘Al Jazeera’ reported that the US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, had emphasised Iran is a key priority for the new administration.   “From our perspective, a critical early priority has to be to deal with what is an escalating nuclear crisis as they (Iran) move closer and closer to having enough fissile material for a weapon.”  Earlier, Biden’s new secretary of state, Tony Blinken, insisted Tehran must resume complying with the Iran nuclear deal before Washington would do so.  Blinken said, “that if Iran comes back into full compliance with its obligations under the JCPOA, the United States would do the same thing”.   At a press conference in Istanbul, Iran’s, Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, responded that Tehran would not accept the unreasonable US demands.

In 2018, President Donald Trump had pulled the US out of the ‘Iran Nuclear Deal’ and imposed stricter sanctions on Iran.  The sanctions aim to crush Iran’s economy – and the US threatens secondary sanctions against any other country doing business with Iran.   Russia and China have repeatedly spoken out against Trump’s withdrawal from the deal and have urged Biden to recommit to it with no conditions – and continue to bypass the sanctions.

The ‘Iran Nuclear Deal’ was adopted under the Obama administration in 2015 – and agreed between Iran and the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council —the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China—plus Germany and the European Union.  The deal was codified into a UN resolution.  It requires Iran to dismantle nearly all of its nuclear infrastructure – and in exchange economic sanctions against Iran would be lifted.

Apart from the US, other signatory nations have remained fully committed to the ‘Iran Nuclear Deal’, even though the Iranian leadership has repeatedly criticised the Europeans for failing to live up to their commitments for fear of American sanctions.

As well as imposing sanctions, the US and its allies have orchestrated further acts of provocation with the murder of Iranian military and civilian personnel.  In January 2020, President Donald Trump ordered the killing of Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani by a US airstrike at Baghdad International Airport.

In November 2020, Iran’s top nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, was assassinated.  The United Nation Special Rapporteur, Agnes Callamard, called the assassination an act in violation of international human rights law and the UN charter which prohibits use of force extraterritorially.  According to reports at the time, the former head of the US CIA, John Brennan, argued the killing of the scientist was a “criminal” and “highly reckless” act that risks inflaming conflict in the region.   On 11 February 2021, ‘The Times’ reported Israel was involved with his murder.

Although Russia and China may have responded to the murders in a muted tone, demanding “restraint” from all sides to avoid escalating tensions, both nations continue to support Iran in other ways.

In December 2020, the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, remained defiant, asserting, “We do not just refuse to recognise unilateral sanctions, but support Iran with specific measures”, adding, “we will be looking for new methods of ignoring the sanctions’ negative economic effect.”

The Chinese initiated ‘Iran-China Comprehensive Strategic Partnership’, which includes a potential investment of $400billion over a 25-year period, ensures China’s commitment to Iran in both military and economic terms.

Russia and China view the decline of Western economic hegemony as an opportunity to expand their own ambitions – and involving Iran in their immediate and long-term plans is essential to their growth and rise.   As well as securing access to Iran’s resources, oil and natural gas, Iran acts as a gatekeeper to the Middle East – and closer ties with Iran would give Russia and China a strategic geopolitical advantage over the US and its allies in the region – and the sanctions will have forced Iran to deepen ties with those two powers.

In December 2019, Russia, China and Iran held their first trilateral naval exercise, ‘Marine Security Belt’, in the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Oman.  The latest proposed joint naval exercise will reinforce the intended message – Russia and China are in solidarity with Iran.

The growing partnership between the three nations will not only force the new US administration and its allies to rethink their predatory policies towards Iran, but it will also shape and affect their future in the Middle East and the wider global stage.

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Shahbazz Afzal is an independent writer and political activist.

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The Globalization of War: America’s “Long War” against Humanity

Michel Chossudovsky

The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

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***

Nearly 10 years after Obama/Biden launched aggression against nonbelligerent Syria threatening no one, Biden/Harris appear hellbent on escalating more of the same.

Last week during a Security Council session, Russian UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia highlighted the problem posed by what he called “pseudo-humanitarian organizations created by Western special services,” adding:

“Instead of pursuing their proclaimed noble goals, they are used for provocations and inciting conflicts.”

“The ‘White Helmets’ are a sad example of this.”

“They are closely linked to (US/NATO/Israeli supported) terrorists,” including ISIS, al-Qaeda and its al-Nusra and other regional offshoots.

“The(ir) financing…does not stop. Remarkably, after the defeat of ISIS in Syria, representatives of the ‘White Helmets’ were transferred to neighboring countries, with Western sponsors promising to take them along.”

“But apparently things got slow. There are concerns that those ‘humanitarians’ may now inspire terrorist activity on their new spots.”

Separately, Nebenzia commented on Security Council Res. 2118 (2013).

It mandated elimination of Syrian chemical weapons long ago achieved by Damascus and earlier affirmed by the OPCW.

Despite fully complying with its obligations, phony claims of noncompliance persist, said Nebenzia, adding:

“Squeezing Syria can take away all its motivation to cooperate with the OPCW.”

“This country is living under Damocles’s sword of accusations of CWC (non)compliance.”

Unacceptable Western demands for Damascus to “declare chemical weapons that it does not have” persist.

US-dominated Western countries falsely and “deliberately (accuse Syria) of violating its obligations under the CWC (Chemical Weapons Convention)” and provisions of Res. 2118.

No evidence is ever presented to prove accusations made because none exists.

“Syria does not evade cooperating with the OPCW.”

“It faithfully accommodates all inspections, provides materials, and demonstrates readiness for dialogue in every possible way.”

The current OPCW technical secretariat in cahoots with the West pretend otherwise.

Despite full compliance by Damascus with its obligations, “its chemical file clearly shows that as long as (Western) countries maintain political pressure…there will always be ‘unresolved issues,’ ” Nebenzia stressed.

What’s going on in Syria is reminiscent of phony claims of Iraqi WMDs under Saddam Hussein ahead of Bush/Cheney’s 2003 aggression.

Will phony claims about undeclared Syrian CWs that don’t exist be used as a pretext for escalated US-led NATO/Israeli aggression in Syria by Biden?

According to Russia’s Defense Ministry, US-supported White Helmets and terrorist groups in Syria’s Idlib province are preparing another CW false flag for which Damascus will wrongfully be blamed.

On Sunday, deputy head of Russia’s Reconciliation Center at its Hmeimim military base Admiral Vyacheslav Sytnik said the following:

“We have information that members of illegal armed groups are preparing to stage a (CW) provocation in order to accuse Syrian government forces of attacking settlements in the Idlib de-escalation zone.”

Al-Qaeda affiliated Tahrir al-Sham jihadists and White Helmets equipped with video equipment were seen preparing to launch the false flag near al-Fuah village northeast of Idlib.

Last year, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service director Sergey Naryshkin said Western intelligence services directly aid jihadists and White Helmets in Syria prepare false flag chemical attacks, adding:

These elements are “fulfilling their objective within the framework of a propaganda campaign against the Syrian people and the Syrian Arab Republic.”

Israel is heavily involved in waging undeclared war on Syria.

Over the weekend and pre-dawn Monday, it warplanes terror-bombed the Damascus countryside from Occupied Golan and northern Galilee, according to the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA).

Most missiles were intercepted and destroyed. Others hit targeted areas.

These cross-border attacks occur with disturbing regularity, the world community and Western media turning a blind eye to what’s been ongoing throughout most of the war.

Senior aide to Iranian Foreign Minister Zari, Ali Asghar Khaji, slammed Israeli support for jihadists in Syria, warning the Netanyahu regime at the same time, saying the following:

“While the Syrian government is fighting terrorists, Israel supports them,” adding:

Iran’s “presence in Syria is aimed at combating ISIS and other terrorist groups, but if Israel wants to cross the ‘red lines,’ it will face the toughest response, which will make them regret their actions.”

Last week, an unnamed Biden intelligence official said the US and Israel coordinate terror-bombing of targeted areas in Syria, including the latest ones.

The Pentagon reportedly is establishing a new base in Kurdish controlled Syria.

Increased numbers of US troops, equipment and weapons entered the country from Iraq.

According to the Middle East Eye, Israel since December “staged some of its biggest strikes yet inside Syria…”

They “concentrated on Al Bukamal, the Syrian city that controls the border checkpoint on the main Baghdad-Damascus highway.”

“The widening military campaign was part of a so-called ‘campaign within wars, which, according to Israeli generals and regional intelligence sources, have been tacitly approved by the United States.”

Is what’s happening prelude to escalate war in Syria by Washington?

Endless war continues with no signs of possible resolution under Biden.

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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].

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In his first speech on foreign policy President Joe Biden announced that the United States would would end its support for Saudi Arabia’s genocidal war in Yemen. This would include a ban on selling weapons that facilitated ‘offensive operations’ by Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen.

However, Biden went on to qualify his comments by stating that the United States would continue to defend the Saudi dictatorship which means that weapons of a ‘defensive’ nature such as Patriot missile systems would continue to be supplied to Riyadh.

If US ‘diplomatic’ efforts fail then this comment leaves the door open for the United States to continue supporting the Saudi war effort under the pretext of defending Saudi sovereignty.

Biden has not specified whether US support for Saudi ‘offensive operations’ includes the continued supply of American surveillance such as satellite imagery and other intelligence.

He said nothing about the US taking action to end the air, land and sea blockade of Yemen by Saudi Arabia and its allies that is responsible for mass hunger and malnutrition. 80% of the 30 million people in Yemen are on the verge of famine.

According to the World Food Programme over 400,000 children under the age of five are in danger of dying from acute malnutrition this year.

Meanwhile, Blinken, the new Secretary of State, has talked about sanctioning the Houthis which will hamper even further the delivery of emergency food aid to Yemen.

In his first speech on foreign policy Biden went further by declaring that he would step up US diplomacy to bring an end to the conflict and that he had appointed a special envoy to Yemen. Apparently, the pretext for this was the president’s desire to bring an end to the humanitarian catastrophe that is enveloping the people of Yemen.

This is quite ironic considering that Biden and Obama helped bring about the war in the first place when they gave Saudi Arabia the green light to invade Yemen back in 2015. They supplied it with billions of dollars worth of offensive weaponry.

Finally, Biden completely failed to omit from his speech the fact that the United States will continue drone operations in Yemen. Allegedly, these drone operations are part of an ongoing military operation against the threat of Al Qaeda. However, the majority of casualties from American drone strikes as civilians.

Reasons for change in American stance

If you delve beneath the surface of the diplomatic fan fair accompanying Biden’s announcement then it is clear that this change in American policy is motivated primarily by events on the ground in Yemen. Over the last five years the Saudi led coalition of the killing has spent billions of dollars trying to crush the Ansar Allah movement otherwise known as the Houthis and ignominiously failed in its efforts.

The Houthis have not only held onto the capital capital Sanaa and their northern heartlands but taken the fight into the southern regions of Saudi Arabia such as Jizan inflicting severe losses in terms of casualties. Large quantities of Saudi weapons and military equipment have also been captured by the Houthis.

In a recent statement Brigadier General Yahya Sari, a spokesman for the Houthis said that in January alone the Saudi led coalition had suffered 1283 casualties along with the destruction/damage of 92 armoured and military vehicles. Many will dismiss this as Houthi propaganda.

Yet the Houthis regularly put out videos showing footage of battles on different fronts of the war showing the capture of large amounts of Saudi coalition weaponry and the destruction of large numbers of armoured personnel carriers and other military vehicles. Besides this, the videos reveal how the Houthis have captured large numbers of soldiers from the Saudi led coalition, many of whom mercenaries.

We should also recognise that there are other factors that have influenced Biden’s decision to change American policy towards the war in Yemen. Undoubtedly, the sustained efforts of anti-war activists in the United States and around the world have had some impact on both public opinion and the Democratic Party.

Only a week before Biden’s first speech on foreign policy anti-war activists and union workers in Ontario blocked trucks shipping armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. Countless other protests of a similar nature to this have helped build up a groundswell of opposition to the Yemen war.

The change in American policy towards the Yemeni conflict is also influenced by geopolitical concerns. The American Empire recognises the negative impact of the Yemeni war upon its allies in the Gulf region. In 2017 Qatar withdrew its support for the Saudi led war which led to Saudi Arabia imposing a blockade upon Doha. Qatar then was free to more fully pursue its own dependent foreign policy which included restoring some trade relations with Iran and moving firmly into the orbit of Turkey.

Of course, the United States also saw the danger to its own position in the Middle East when its bloc of allies amongst the Gulf dictatorships were now squabbling and threatening each other.

It is clear that the Biden administration wishes to force Iran to the negotiating table and force it to cease its nuclear programme under even more restrictions than the Obama nuclear deal of 2015. To achieve this, Biden needs all of his allies in the Middle East to be unified under American direction.

It is also clear that the Biden regime seeks to impose an end to the Yemeni war on its terms, to meet the geopolitical and economic interests of itself and its Gulf allies.

According to the US Energy Information Adminstration (EIA) the oil reserves of Yemen amount to 3 billion barrels and its gas reserves amount to 6.9 trillion cubic feet.

The United States and Saudi Arabia also see Yemen’s strategic location as a means of bypassing the choke point that is the strait of Hormuz. Saudi Arabia has built several pipelines that bypass the straight of Hormuz which take oil to the Red Sea which canthen be shipped to China and other important Asian markets.

However, the Bab El-Mandeb Strait is a narrow choke point. It is located between Yemen, Djibouti, and Eritrea, and it connects the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea.

We shouldn’t forget that the Trump regime’s recent classification of the Houthis as a terrorist organisation came after Ansar Allah forces attacked Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea.

Besides the oil and gas angle the United States and the Gulf dictatorships are also fully aware of the vast mineral resources of Yemen which include gold, silver, copper, zinc, cobalt and nickel.

According to the World Atlas Yemen has large industrial mineral deposits of limestone, magnesite, scoria, sandstone, gypsum, marble, perlite, dolomite, feldspar, and Celestine. Yemen also contains the most fertile land in the Arabian peninsula which contrasts sharply with Saudi Arabia which is heavily dependent on food imports for its growing population.

Over the next period the United States and it’s allies both in Europe and Middle East will seek to exert huge pressure upon the Houthis to come to the negotiating table to bring the conflict to an end. Let us be very clear that this so-called peace initiative will be on American terms. The American Empire will not countenance any peace deal that is favourable to the Houthi resistance.

Ansar Allah has responded with defiance to Biden’s so-called peace overture. Mohammed Al al-Houthi on behalf of the Yemen Supreme Political Council said:

“We consider any move that does not end the siege and aggression against Yemen is just a formality and do not pay any attention to it.…”

He further added that if the US was serious about bringing an end to the conflict it must take concrete action to bring justice for the people of Yemen:

“Washington’s allies must also commit themselves to compensate victims, enact a package of measures to guarantee the sovereignty of Yemen, recognise its independence and legitimate rights of defence, and consider any military action either by Arab or foreign states is a criminal act.”

Since Biden’s first foreign policy speech called for an end to the war Saudi Arabia and its allies have continued the aerial bombardment of Yemeni civilians and maintained their starvation blockade around the country.

Not surprisingly, faced with this war of annihilation against the Yemeni people the Houthi resistance has continued to take the fight to the Saudi led coalition.

It seems unlikely that the Houthis will buckle under international pressure over the next period and capitulate to the demands of American imperialism and stand their forces down.

If the Ansar Allah forces continue striking Saudi oil and military infrastructure then it cannot be ruled out that Biden may discard his diplomatic efforts and formally resume American support for the Saudis genocidal war. After all, the American Empire is a rather vengeful beast and does not take kindly to those who continue to show resistance to its will.

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***

As Congress still struggles to pass a COVID relief bill, the rest of the world is nervously reserving judgment on America’s new president and his foreign policy, after successive U.S. administrations have delivered unexpected and damaging shocks to the world and the international system. 

Cautious international optimism toward Biden is very much based on his commitment to Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement, the JCPOA or nuclear agreement with Iran. Biden and the Democrats excoriated Trump for withdrawing from it and promised to promptly rejoin the deal if elected. But Biden now appears to be hedging his position in a way that risks turning what should be an easy win for the new administration into an avoidable and tragic diplomatic failure.

While it was the United States under Trump that withdrew from the nuclear agreement, Biden is taking the position that the U.S. will not rejoin the agreement or drop its unilateral sanctions until Iran first comes back into compliance. After withdrawing from the agreement, the United States is in no position to make such demands, and Foreign Minister Zarif has clearly and eloquently rejected them, reiterating Iran’s firm commitment that it will return to full compliance as soon as the United States does so.

Biden should have announced U.S. re-entry as one of his first executive orders. It did not require renegotiation or debate. On the campaign trail, Bernie Sanders, Biden’s main competitor for the Democratic nomination, simply promised, “I would re-enter the agreement on the first day of my presidency.”

Then-candidate Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said during the Democratic primary, “We need to rejoin our allies in returning to the agreement, provided Iran agrees to comply with the agreement and take steps to reverse its breaches …” Gillibrand said that Iran must “agree” to take those steps, not that it must take them first, presciently anticipating and implicitly rejecting Biden’s self-defeating position that Iran must fully return to compliance with the JCPOA before the United States will rejoin.

If Biden just rejoins the JCPOA, all of the provisions of the agreement will be back in force and work exactly as they did before Trump opted out. Iran will be subject to the same IAEA inspections and reports as before. Whether Iran is in compliance or not will be determined by the IAEA, not unilaterally by the United States. That is how the agreement works, as all the signatories agreed: China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia, the United Kingdom, the European Union – and the United States.

So why is Biden not eagerly pocketing this easy first win for his stated commitment to diplomacy? A December 2020 letter supporting the JCPOA, signed by 150 House Democrats, should have reassured Biden that he has overwhelming support to stand up to hawks in both parties.

But instead Biden seems to be listening to opponents of the JCPOA telling him that Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement has given him “leverage” to negotiate new concessions from Iran before rejoining. Rather than giving Biden leverage over Iran, which has no reason to make further concessions, this has given opponents of the JCPOA leverage over Biden, turning him into the football, instead of the quarterback, in this diplomatic Super Bowl.

American neocons and hawks, including those inside his own administration, appear to be flexing their muscles to kill Biden’s commitment to diplomacy at birth, and his own hawkish foreign policy views make him dangerously susceptible to their arguments. This is also a test of his previously subservient relationship with Israel, whose government vehemently opposes the JCPOA and whose officials have even threatened to launch a military attack on Iran if the U.S. rejoins it, a flagrantly illegal threat that Biden has yet to publicly condemn.

In a more rational world, the call for nuclear disarmament in the Middle East would focus on Israel, not Iran. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu wrote in the Guardian on December 31, 2020, Israel’s own possession of dozens – or maybe hundreds – of nuclear weapons is the worst kept secret in the world. Tutu’s article was an open letter to Biden, asking him to publicly acknowledge what the whole world already knows and to respond as required under U.S. law to the actual proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Instead of tackling the danger of Israel’s real nuclear weapons, successive U.S. administrations have chosen to cry “Wolf!” over non-existent nuclear weapons in Iraq and Iran to justify besieging their governments, imposing deadly sanctions on their people, invading Iraq and threatening Iran. A skeptical world is watching to see whether President Biden has the integrity and political will to break this insidious pattern.

The CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC), which stokes Americans’ fears of imaginary Iranian nuclear weapons and feeds endless allegations about them to the IAEA, is the same entity that produced the lies that drove America to war on Iraq in 2003. On that occasion, WINPAC’s director, Alan Foley, told his staff, “If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so” – even as he privately admitted to his retired CIA colleague Melvin Goodman that U.S. forces searching for WMDs in Iraq would find, “not much, if anything.”

What makes Biden’s stalling to appease Netanyahu and the neocons diplomatically suicidal at this moment in time is that in November the Iranian parliament passed a law that forces its government to halt nuclear inspections and boost uranium enrichment if U.S. sanctions are not eased by February 21.

To complicate matters further, Iran is holding its own presidential election on June 18, 2021, and election season–when this issue will be hotly debated–begins after the Iranian New Year on March 21. The winner is expected to be a hawkish hardliner. Trump’s failed policy, which Biden is now continuing by default, has discredited the diplomatic efforts of President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif, confirming for many Iranians that negotiating with America is a fool’s errand.

If Biden does not rejoin the JCPOA soon, time will be too short to restore full compliance by both Iran and the U.S.—including lifting relevant sanctions—before Iran’s election. Each day that goes by reduces the time available for Iranians to see benefits from the removal of sanctions, leaving little chance that they will vote for a new government that supports diplomacy with the United States.

The timetable around the JCPOA was known and predictable, so this avoidable crisis seems to be the result of a deliberate decision by Biden to try to appease neocons and warmongers, domestic and foreign, by bullying Iran, a partner in an international agreement he claims to support, to make additional concessions that are not part of the agreement.

During his election campaign, President Biden promised to “elevate diplomacy as the premier tool of our global engagement.” If Biden fails this first test of his promised diplomacy, people around the world will conclude that, despite his trademark smile and affable personality, Biden represents no more of a genuine recommitment to American partnership in a cooperative “rules-based world” than Trump or Obama did.

That will confirm the steadily growing international perception that, behind the Republicans’ and Democrats’ good cop-bad cop routine, the overall direction of U.S. foreign policy remains fundamentally aggressive, coercive and destructive. People and governments around the world will continue to downgrade relations with the United States, as they did under Trump, and even traditional U.S. allies will chart an increasingly independent course in a multipolar world where the U.S. is no longer a reliable partner and certainly not a leader.

So much is hanging in the balance, for the people of Iran suffering and dying under the impact of U.S. sanctions, for Americans yearning for more peaceful relations with our neighbors around the world, and for people everywhere who long for a more humane and equitable international order to confront the massive problems facing us all in this century. Can Biden’s America be part of the solution? After only three weeks in office, surely it can’t be too late. But the ball is in his court, and the whole world is watching.

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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. She is a member of the writers’ group Collective20.

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 CODEPINK

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Lawyer Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, Corona Committee Foundation, demands after the public hearing of an eyewitness on the consequences of mass vaccinations: “This deadly human experiment must be stopped as soon as possible!”

“When fellow citizens first learn of the diabolical plans of the enablers and ‘enforcers’ of the ‘New Normal’, many of them will suffer a mental shock. Tried and tested defence mechanisms will then only function to a limited extent and for a short time. Free, courageous and honest intellectuals should therefore do everything in their power to gently take their interested fellow citizens with them step by step on this journey ‘from darkness into light’. For it needs the cooperation of all people of good will to be able to ward off the long-planned ‘attack’ on humanity. And the path to this cooperation must begin in the hearts of people” (1).

The author of these lines begs your indulgence for quoting from his own “psychological manifesto of common sense”, which he published in the course of the second half of 2020 under the title “Hand over power to no one!”. At that time, he had no idea that he, as an experienced psychologist and former psychotherapist, would also suffer a mental shock about half a year later due to certain news.

“The terrible dying after vaccination”

Lawyer Dr. Fuellmich, together with his lawyer colleague and economist Viviane Fischer – two of four directors of the Corona Committee Foundation – interviewed a whistleblower, i.e. a courageous nurse from a Berlin nursing home. As an eyewitness, he gave shocking insights into the apparently common vaccination practice in homes for elderly and partly demented German citizens (2).

According to the carer, these homes for elderly people in need of care are literally raided by doctors accompanied by Bundeswehr soldiers in uniform. Afterwards, wherever they are found in the corridors or rooms, they are vaccinated, sometimes with the use of physical force. The consent of the relatives of nursing home inmates with dementia is obtained beforehand. This deeply inhumane vaccination procedure is repeated.

The threat of Bundeswehr soldiers is probably set up so that the home residents will submit without resistance – and they do. They freeze with fear because they were not allowed to receive family visitors for a long time and many of the residents experienced the Second World War.  The health condition of the residents is not queried before the sometimes violent vaccination.

After vaccination, the health of even formerly lively elderly people deteriorates rapidly. There is gasping for breath, fever, oedema, skin rash, a yellowish-grey discolouration of the skin and muscle tremors in the upper body and arms. Residents who tested negative for SARS-CoV-2 before the vaccination suddenly test positive afterwards. And soon the first vaccinated people die. Despite requests from the lawyers, the police and the public prosecutor’s office in Berlin do not take action.

The vaccines used are mRNA vaccines, including the one from BioNTech/Pfizer. BioNTech has recently started production in Germany. These vaccines have come under massive criticism worldwide because of their lack of testing.

Is death once again a master from Germany? (3)

The believable descriptions of the sensitive nurse are shocking. Anyone interested can listen to them for themselves and form their own judgement. The author of this commentary shares the opinion of the lawyer Dr. Fuellmich and his team that this deadly human experiment with vaccination, which is certainly not an isolated case in Berlin and Germany and is being concealed by the mass media, must be stopped as soon as possible. Our fathers, mothers and grandparents are not human guinea pigs of deviant psychopaths in collaboration with Big Pharma.

Let us no longer be intimidated by this centuries-old diabolical “game” with the fear of the rulers and let us discard our religiously conditioned belief in authority and obedience reflex today! Let us have the courage to use our own intellect and stand up against the screaming injustice!

If we do not stop this crime against our older relatives and fellow citizens as well as against the whole of humanity immediately, we younger ones will naturally be the next victims.

We have no more time to lose!

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Notes:

(1) Hänsel, R. (2020). Handing over power to no one! A psychological manifesto of common sense. Gornji Milanovac. ISBN 978-86-7432-119-5. The “Neue Rheinische Zeitung NRhZ” published the entire text in three installments. An abridged version was also published in the NRhZ and additionally in “Rubikon” as well as in English in “Global Research” (www.globalresearch.ca).

(2) https://www.wochenblick.at/schockierender-whistleblower-bericht-tote-nach-impfung-in-berliner-heim/; https://t.me/tagesereignisse/1142

(3) Quoted from “Todesfuge”, a poem by the lyricist Paul Celan. 

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One of Washington’s main strategic objectives is to consolidate and organize Eastern European states to oppose and contain Russia. Supporting Black Sea countries against Russia has become a major American priority as Turkey is now an unreliable partner, and therefore Washington is attempting to create a new alliance officially outside of the NATO structure but attached to it indirectly. The creation of a military bloc between Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova is a Washington-led initiative, but is unlikely to have any major impact in limiting Russian influence.

Last week, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba revealed details of his conversation with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Kuleba said that Kiev, with the support of Washington, will start forming a trilateral military alliance comprising of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Although Moldova is not directly on the Black Sea like Ukraine and Georgia, it does have relatively easy access via the Port of Giurgiulești on the Danube River. The bold statements by Kiev’s leaders do not usually provoke significant global interest, but this is special as the order came directly from the White House. Therefore, it unsurprisingly proves a continuation of Washington’s hostile policies towards Russia under new U.S. President Joe Biden.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, almost immediately after Blinken’s endorsement, began to check the combat readiness of his troops in Donbass and stopped the transmission of “pro-Russian” television stations on February 3. Then a week later on February 10, Ukraine made a provocative proposal to NATO by urging the Alliance to use the airspace in the Simferopol Flight Information Region (FIR) over Russia’s Crimean Peninsula for its operations.

The Simferopol FIR includes Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast, the Crimean Peninsula and the central part of the Black Sea. International air routes over Crimea have been banned by Eurocontrol (European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation) as the Simferopol dispatch center is Russian operated and the only flights to Crimea come from Russia. The sky above the peninsula and the adjacent waters of the Black and Azov Seas are effectively protected by the Russian Aerospace Forces and the Russian Navy. Therefore, Ukraine’s invitation for NATO to fly over Crimea with military aircraft is an insidious military ingenuity and an attempt by Zelensky to force the Alliance into a conflict with Russia.

The intensification of Ukrainian military operations in Donbass, even with the promised support of the U.S., will only lead to a new humanitarian catastrophe, but more importantly a changing of the frontlines that will not be in Kiev’s favor. We cannot overlook that the Donbass People’s Militia defeated the Ukrainian Armed Forces and their advance was only halted because of orders from Moscow. President Vladimir Putin has already announced that he will never allow the repression of Russian-speakers in eastern Ukraine to occur, but authorities in Kiev have not shown any sign in ending their hostilities.

Kiev, as well as decisionmakers in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, dream of complete NATO support in any future war against Russia. Georgia’s invasion of South Ossetia in 2008 and Ukraine’s military actions against Donbass in 2014 should serve as stark reminders that NATO is not willing to go to war with Russia for their sake. This is even despite Washington’s encouragement for these countries to be openly hostile against Russia.

In the Global Firepower military ranking, Poland ranks 23. The Pentagon has promised to assist Warsaw within five days of any conflict breaking out. However, recent computer simulations of a possible conflict between Poland and an adversary from its east (i.e. Russia) suggest that assistance will be shortcoming. Given the logistical problems, a five-day transfer of U.S. troops to Poland is an overly optimistic forecast. Using the realistic background of Poland which directly borders several friendly states, such as Germany which has a huge contingent of American soldiers, the geographical separation between Ukraine and Georgia is discouraging if they are supposed to be in an alliance to counter and/or contain Russia.

A hypothetical military bloc between Ukraine (ranked 25 by Global Firepower), Georgia (ranked 92) and Moldova (ranked 107) seems extremely unconvincing in being able to contain Russia. Although Moldova has a “non-aligned” Constitution, new Russophobic President Maia Sandu is more than willing to carry out demands made by Washington.

The U.S. and NATO are attempting to turn the post-Soviet space into a state of permanent military hostility and conflict as they believe it is the best guarantee for Western countries to keep Russia distracted and weak. However, close coordination between Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova is unlikely to be a major concern for Russia in security terms as they don’t have navies.

As Turkey has become an unreliable NATO member, the U.S. is hedging their bets on NATO members Bulgaria and Romania, and NATO-friendly states like Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, to serve Turkey’s role in pressuring Russia in the Black Sea. Although the U.S. and Turkey conducted military exercises in the Black Sea to the condemnation of Moscow only days ago, there is little suggestion that if a conflict broke out in the Black Sea involving NATO and Russia, Turkey will commit to its Alliance obligations. It is for this reason that Washington is pushing Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova to more closely cooperate with NATO against Russia despite not being Alliance members.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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***

The numbers reflect the latest data available as of Feb. 4  from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System website. Of the 653 reported deaths, 602 were from the U.S. The average age of those who died was 77, the youngest was 23.

As of Jan. Feb. 4, 653 deaths — a subset of 12,697 total adverse events — had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID-19 vaccinations. The numbers reflect reports filed between Dec. 14, 2020 and Feb. 4, 2021.

VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before confirmation can be made that the reported adverse event was caused by the vaccine.

As of Feb. 10, about 44.77 million people in the U.S. had received one or both doses of a COVID vaccine. So far, only the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been granted Emergency Use Authorization in the U.S. by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). By the FDA’s own definition, the vaccines are still considered experimental until fully licensed.

According to the latest data, 602 of the 653 reported deaths were in the U.S, and 137 of the deaths were related to cardiac disorder. Fifty-three percent of those who died were male, 44% were female, the remaining death reports did not include the gender of the deceased. The average age of those who died was 77, the youngest reported death was of a 23-year-old. The Pfizer vaccine was taken by 58% of those who died, while the Moderna vaccine was taken by 41%.

As or Feb. 4, there had been 163 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported and 775 reports of anaphylaxis.

As The Defender reported today, the CDC is investigating the Feb. 8 death of a 36-year-old doctor in Tennessee who died about a month after receiving the second dose of a COVID vaccination. According to news reports, Dr. Barton Williams died from the adult form of multisystem inflammatory syndrome (MIS-A), a condition caused when the immune system attacks the body resulting in multi-system organ failure. New reports attributed the death to a reaction to an asymptomatic case of COVID, although Williams never tested positive for the virus.

On Feb. 8, Fox5 reported the death of a man in his 70s who collapsed and died Feb. 7 as he was leaving the Javits Center in Manhattan about 25 minutes after receiving a COVID vaccination.

On Feb. 7, a local Villa Hills, Kentucky news site reported on the deaths of two nuns following a “COVID-19 outbreak” that occurred two days after the nuns were vaccinated. Prior to beginning the vaccination program, there had been no cases of COVID at the monastery, which has been shut down to visitors during the pandemic. After vaccinations began, 28 of the women had tested positive for COVID as of Feb. 7.

The clinical trials suggested that almost all the benefits of COVID vaccination and the vast majority of injuries were associated with the second dose.

The Defender also reported this week that according to the New York Times, several doctors now link the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccines to immune thrombocytopenia (ITP), a condition that develops when the immune system attacks platelets (blood component essential for clotting) or the cells that create them. The Times article featured two women who are recovering from ITP after being vaccinated. Last month, Dr. Gregory Michaels died from ITP two weeks after he got the Pfizer vaccine.

While the VAERS database numbers may seem sobering, according to a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services study, the actual number of adverse events is likely significantly higher. VAERS is a passive surveillance system that relies on the willingness of individuals to submit reports voluntarily.

According to the VAERS website, healthcare providers are required by law to report to VAERS:

• Any adverse event listed in the VAERS Table of Reportable Events Following Vaccination that occurs within the specified time period after vaccination.
• An adverse event listed by the vaccine manufacturer as a contraindication to further doses of the vaccine.

The CDC says healthcare providers are strongly encouraged to report:

• Any adverse event that occurs after the administration of a vaccine licensed in the United States, whether or not it is clear that a vaccine caused the adverse event.
• Vaccine administration errors.

However, “within the specified time” means that reactions occurring outside that timeframe may not be reported, in addition to reactions suffered hours or days later by people who don’t report those reactions to their healthcare provider.

Vaccine manufacturers are required to report to VAERS “all adverse events that come to their attention.”

Historically, fewer than fewer than 1% of adverse events have ever been reported to VAERS, a system that Children’s Health Defense has previously referred to as an “abject failure,” including in a December 2020 letter to Dr. David Kessler, former FDA director and now co-chair of the COVID-19 Advisory Board and President Biden’s version of Operation Warp Speed.

A critic familiar with VAERS’ shortcomings bluntly condemned VAERS in The BMJ as “nothing more than window dressing, and a part of U.S. authorities’ systematic effort to reassure/deceive us about vaccine safety.”

CHD is calling for complete transparency. The children’s health organization is asking Kessler and the federal government to release all of the data from the clinical trials and suspend COVID-19 vaccine use in any group not adequately represented in the clinical trials, including the elderly, frail and anyone with comorbidities.

CHD is also asking for full transparency in post-marketing data that reports all health outcomes, including new diagnoses of autoimmune disorders, adverse events and deaths from COVID vaccines.

Children’s Health Defense asks anyone who has experienced an adverse reaction, to any vaccine, to file a report following these three steps.

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***

“No one makes a billion dollars. You TAKE a billion dollars. You take it from your workers…you plunder it from the environment…you strip it using patents/protections” (Stephanie Kelton tweet(1))

Rent-seekers: Who gets the Free Lunch? 

Many writers have noted that capitalism concentrates wealth and power into a small number of hands. Up until approximately 1890, economists understood that a key part of the economic system is what are known as rents.(2) This means unearned income, or excess profits. Recent economic theory does not talk about rents very much – there is an assumption that all income is earned. The people and companies who receive excess wealth from rents are usually described by the media as wealth-creators, but this is partly propaganda. Many of them are ‘rent-seekers’ (also known as rentiers) – people who know how to take money from the system because they understand how it is rigged.

Critical economists sometimes discuss the most important ways in which big companies can extract wealth from society. This includes Crony Capitalism where big companies receive subsidies from governments; monopoly and oligopoly, where companies are so dominant in each industry that they can limit competition, charge higher prices and make excess profits; and externalities where companies do not pay the true cost of their activities, such as pollution, global warming and the destruction of the environment.

This post explains other methods that big companies use to extract wealth from society, and to maintain their dominance. This gives a brief overview of the extent to which the system is rigged in favour of the biggest and most powerful companies.

Economies of scale – Size Matters 

As a general rule, the more you produce of something, the more cheaply you can make each item.(3) This means that in many industries it is impossible for small companies to produce things as cheaply as big companies. There are a number of techniques that companies use to establish and maintain dominance.

Spend, spend, spend to become dominant 

Big companies have deep pockets to enable them to invest in new industries, and to survive short-term losses whilst they try to establish market dominance early on. This creates what is known as first-mover advantage. This is the business model of Uber, the taxi company. To start with, they pay drivers well and they charge low fares to customers. Once they become dominant, they increase fares and decrease pay to drivers. Despite this, customers and drivers remain loyal, because customers know they can get a taxi quickly, and drivers know they will get regular fares. It is difficult for competing businesses to establish a foothold because initially they don’t have enough drivers to attract customers, or enough customers to attract drivers. When Uber began in the US they paid drivers $40/hour. A few years later they were paying $9/hour.(4)

More generally, bigger companies tend to have bigger marketing budgets.(5) They spend huge amounts on advertising and on more direct forms of marketing, such as pharmaceutical companies ‘persuading’ doctors to use their medicines.(6) The role of advertising and marketing to achieve and maintain dominance and excess profits will be discussed in later posts.

One Big Business becomes Many Big Businesses 

It is easy for big companies to invest in the same industry in other countries, and sometimes in new industries. Amazon started out selling books, but soon realised that it was well positioned to dominate online selling more generally in much of the world. As with other tech companies, Amazon is also able to make money by collecting and selling immense amounts of data to advertisers, market researchers, and governments.

Many of the biggest companies control different parts of a supply chain. For example, oil companies dig oil out of the ground, refine it in their own refineries, and sell it from their own petrol stations.(7) They are therefore able to take profit at every stage. They do not have to share the profit with anyone else. (This is known as vertical integration(8)).

The Global Trade System is Rigged 

A number of international organisations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) try to force countries to adopt neoliberal economic policies.(9) This creates huge profit opportunities for global companies.

A company that might only make moderate profits if it dominates in its own country, is able to make spectacular profits if it is able to use its existing knowledge and resources to dominate in many countries. The US government is able to ‘persuade’ other countries to pursue policies that work for US companies, using a combination of threats and bribes. This has contributed significantly to US companies being able to extract wealth from many countries simultaneously. The same applies to a smaller number of big companies from other countries, including Britain and France.

Most people associate corruption with developing countries, but big companies from advanced nations are responsible for paying many of the biggest bribes in order to gain contracts overseas. We saw in an earlier post about the weapons industry that British Aerospace was able to pay a bribe of £7 billion to the government of Saudi Arabia so that they would buy military weapons.(10) 

The profit motive encourages companies to exploit everyone else 

Most of the business world follows the idea of ‘Greed is Good’ (made famous by the 1980s film ‘Wall Street’). In other words, their main goal is their own profit. However, recent evidence shows that structuring big, dominant businesses to selfishly pursue their own profits does not lead to good outcomes for society. The economist, Mariana Mazzucato, demonstrates in her book ‘The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy’ that modern capitalism encourages businesses to take from the economy.

In practice, the profit motive incentivises companies to exploit people.(11) There are four main groups of people that get exploited – customers get ripped-off; suppliers get unfair contracts; employees receive low pay and are exploited in many different ways; and governments provide huge subsidies without receiving all the taxes they are owed. Different industries exploit different groups so, for example, banks pay their staff well, but de-fraud customers.

Economists refer to textbook theories where companies have to become ‘efficient’ in order to survive. However, in the real world, ‘efficiency’ has become a code that means earning the maximum profit by almost any means, whether legal or illegal. In service industries where the main cost is staff, efficiency means paying staff less, employing fewer staff, giving them less training, making them work longer hours, and putting them on contracts where they have no certainty about how much they will earn each week. In private hospitals, efficiency means turning patients out of their hospital bed before they are ready, so another paying customer can use that bed. In insurance, efficiency means finding ways to not pay out on genuine claims.

Companies offer goods at lower prices, but they are able to do this because they offload some costs onto the customer. A good example is self-assembly flat-pack furniture. Millions of people with poor DIY skills each spend hours interpreting complex instructions and assembling things that can be put together by experts in minutes. By any normal definition, this is very inefficient. If a customer has to wait for a long time when phoning a company helpline, this is similarly inefficient, but profitable for the company.

Corporate Lawyers, Bankers and Accountants Help Companies Bend, Break and Make the Rules 

Big companies employ large numbers of lawyers who play multiple roles. They write laws and regulations that benefit their companies, and they set up offshore bank accounts to avoid paying tax. It is estimated that there are currently $20-30 trillion in tax havens.(12) Together the lawyers and accountants set up complex webs of international companies, so that they can manipulate laws and prices, and hide profits overseas. The main accountancy firms, known as the Big 4, have repeatedly engaged in corrupt accounting, to help companies manipulate their financial statements to avoid tax, and exaggerate profits to mislead investors.(13) Most tax avoidance scams are believed to be illegal but are never tested in court. The billionaire, Warren Buffett, has famously pointed out that he pays a lower rate of tax than any of the staff in his office.(14)

Privatisation 

One of the easiest ways for people with political connections to get much richer is by taking over state industries and extracting profits from them. This is known as privatisation. This includes the privatised infrastructure monopolies such as water, sewerage, healthcare, transport, electricity and energy supplies, and broadcasting and communications spectrum. The agreed sale-price is often well below the true value. Many economists, including one of the leading experts on economic rents, Michael Hudson, has explained that all of these should be public utilities, owned and controlled by the government and provided to everyone at the lowest possible price, so that they cannot be exploited to make excess profits.(15)

Exploiting natural resources provided by nature at no cost, such as oil and minerals. The cost of extracting and processing these resources varies considerably, and is often not related to the price at which they can be sold. Oil and mining companies have been some of the most profitable in the world for many years.(16)

Patents and Copyright – being able to charge extremely high prices, and make excess profits, because no other company is allowed to compete against you. This particularly applies to medicines and software.

Criminal Activity – Many of the activities mentioned above, such as price fixing or tax evasion, are illegal. Financial companies have committed multiple huge frauds.(17) Big companies are able to get away with their crimes, and effectively operate outside the law, because politicians are reluctant to take serious action against them.

Much of this is missing from economics textbooks 

The importance of friends in high places, criminal activity, bribery and corruption, exploitation, power, externalities, and the general extent to which the system is rigged in favour of the rich and the powerful does not receive much attention in economics textbooks. The financial system is also rigged, but does not appear in most economics textbooks at all. Debates about this system have become more prominent in the US in recent years, but this has not yet had any impact on policy.(18) In Britain there is still little awareness of just how rigged the system is.

The correct term for this system is rentier capitalism, but this is not helpful for non-economists. We need a better term to allow everyone to talk about this. The civil rights campaigner, Malcolm X, once said “You show me a capitalist, I’ll show you a bloodsucker.”(19) The expression ‘Bloodsucker Capitalism’ seems to accurately describe how British and US companies operate, extracting wealth from everyone else, destroying the planet and our societies along the way.

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Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda, and explaining war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media.

Source

Joseph Stiglitz, ‘America has a monopoly problem – and it’s huge’, The Nation, 23 Oct 2017, at https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/america-has-a-monopoly-problem-and-its-huge/

Notes 

1) Stephanie Kelton, 22 Jan 2019, at https://twitter.com/stephaniekelton/status/1087780034348306432?lang=en

2) Michael Hudson, J is for Junk Economics

3) Prateek Agarwal, ‘Economies of Scale’, 13 April 2020, at https://www.intelligenteconomist.com/economies-of-scale/

4) CBInsights, ‘How Uber Makes Money Now’, Dec 2020, at https://www.cbinsights.com/research/report/how-uber-makes-money/

5) Business Chief,  ‘Top 20 companies with the biggest advertising budget’,  19 May 2016, at https://www.businesschief.eu/digital-strategy/top-20-companies-biggest-advertising-budget 

6) Carl Heneghan, ‘The influence of medical marketing’, BMJ, 21 Jan 2019, at https://blogs.bmj.com/bmjebmspotlight/2019/01/21/the-growing-influence-of-medical-marketing/ 

7) Kiran Stacey and Ed Crooks, ‘Oil majors find virtue in integration’, FT, 12 June 2016, at https://www.ft.com/content/8ff8ec62-2dcc-11e6-a18d-a96ab29e3c95

8) Evan Tarver, ‘Horizontal vs Vertical Integration: What’s the difference?’, Investopedia, 18 Jan 2021, at https://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/051315/what-difference-between-horizontal-integration-and-vertical-integration.asp 

9) Richard Peet, Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO, 2009

10) Andrew Feinstein: The Shadow World of the Global Arms trade’, talk at Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, 22 Nov 2017, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCjZXCYD_8c

11) Si Kahn and Elizabeth Minnich, The Fox in the Henhouse: How Privatization Threatens Democracy, 2005

12) Nicholas Shaxson, ‘Tackling Tax Havens’, Finance and Development, Sep 2019, Vol.56, No.3, at https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/2019/09/tackling-global-tax-havens-shaxon.htm#:~:text=Individuals%20have%20stashed%20%248.7%20trillion,of%20up%20to%20%2436%20trillion. 

13) Hanna Ziady, ‘The big 4 audit firms keep failing. Now they’re being forced to change’, 6 July 2020, at https://edition.cnn.com/2020/07/06/business/uk-big-4-accountancy-firms-frc/index.html 

14) https://www-cdn.oxfam.org/s3fs-public/file_attachments/bp210-economy-one-percent-tax-havens-180116-en_0.pdf

15) Michael Hudson, ‘The rentier resurgence and takeover: Finance capitalism vs Industrial capitalism’, 27 Jan 2021, at https://michael-hudson.com/2021/01/the-rentier-resurgence-and-takeover-finance-capitalism-vs-industrial-capitalism/ 

16) Matthew Taylor and Jillian Ambrose, ‘Revealed: Big oil’s profits since 1990 total nearly $2tn’, The Guardian, 12 Feb 2020, at https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/feb/12/revealed-big-oil-profits-since-1990-total-nearly-2tn-bp-shell-chevron-exxon 

17) ‘Inside Job’, 2010, documentary by Charles Ferguson about the 2008 financial crisis, at https://watchdocumentaries.com/inside-job/ 

18) Emily Peck, ‘Should Billionaires Even Exist’, Huffington Post, 30 Jan 2019, at https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/billionaires-tax-the-rich_n_5c51ea30e4b0ca92c6dcafc6?ri18n 

Joseph Stiglitz, ‘America has a monopoly problem – and it’s huge’, The Nation, 23 Oct 2017, at https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/america-has-a-monopoly-problem-and-its-huge/ 

19) Malcolm X at the Audubon Ballroom, 20 Dec 1964, at https://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/at-the-audubon/

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***

The Biden White House has seemingly disappeared its “100 days” back to normal COVID-19 plan, substituting its highly-publicized pledge for a more permanent safety regime, at the request of power-drunk officials and “public health experts” who continue their reign over U.S. society.

Strategy document laying out President Biden’s 100 day COVID-19 response plan

Schools

Reopening schools was the staple of Joe Biden’s 100 days COVID-19 response plan.

“The United States is committed to ensuring that students and educators are able to resume safe, in-person learning as quickly as possible, with the goal of getting a majority of K-8 schools safely open in 100 days,” the plan reads.

However, the White House is now suggesting that this is no longer an obtainable goal, and they’ve lowered the benchmark significantly.

Jen Psaki: Kids Going to School ONE Day a Week is Bold and Ambitious. #COVID19https://t.co/UT2s8NmqV1

— Mr Producer (@RichSementa) February 10, 2021

With millions of children still remaining at home, and a nationwide children’s mental health crisis damaging millions of American families, Team Biden has completely backed off of the 100 day “majority of schools” opening plan.

Instead of stressing the urgency of a return to the classroom, the White House, government health agencies, and teachers unions have acted in concert to pump the brakes on a return to school anytime soon. Both institutions are peddling pure pseudoscience and evidence-free definitive statements in suggesting that it is not safe to return to schools. The teachers unions, which have enormous influence over the Democratic Party, have taken to demanding a $130 billion dollar ransom payment in exchange for their endorsement of a very gradual reopening plan.

Anthony Fauci, for his part, is now demanding that Congress passes a stimulus package before schools reopen.

Fauci: Stimulus bill needs to be passed for schools to reopen https://t.co/XQPz5UwRYO pic.twitter.com/OoBC0K5xB8

— The Hill (@thehill) February 14, 2021

Masks

As part of the 100 day plan, President Biden famously stressed the supposed importance of wearing a mask as an apparent accelerant to a full reopening society.

“President Biden has called on every American to wear a mask for 100 days when they are around people outside of their household,” the Biden plan states.

Team Biden has backtracked on that component of the plan, too. After talking with government health bureaucrats, President Biden is now demanding that Americans wear masks until at least 2022 in order to “stop the spread” of the coronavirus.

“You know that wearing this mask through the next year here can save lives — a significant number of lives,” a masked President Biden said at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) this week, after a meeting with Anthony Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins. “And so I apologize if you don’t hear me as clearly as you, maybe you should.”

“The new strains emerging create immense challenges, and masking is still the easiest thing to do to save lives. But we need everyone to mask up,” Biden added.

Biden tells Americans to wear masks for COVID-19 until at least 2022 https://t.co/SnkIWh7c4s pic.twitter.com/pXZErV38cS

— New York Post (@nypost) February 12, 2021

Vaccines

The final component of the 100 days plan was to deploy 100 million vaccines into 100 million arms in 100 days. This was not much of a lofty target, as the Trump Administration had already ramped up deployment to the per day average needed for the Biden Administration to accomplish that goal. Moreover, vaccine efficacy remains unclear, and “public health experts” now claim that “new variants” may not work on some COVID-19 vaccines. Big Pharma companies, academic epidemiologists,  and government health bureaucrats are slowly popularizing the idea that COVID vaccination may have to become an annual event, similar to the Flu shot.

If Team Biden had just followed the actual science on COVID-19 spread, their 100 day COVID plan would have been a layup for success, but we are dealing with politicians and bureaucrats, who are not the most competent of human beings. As I have explained in The Dossier, there are several metrics that guaranteed this plan would have succeeded. For a quick summary, refer to this paragraph I wrote in December:

“Given that we’ve now been monitoring COVID-19 for a full year, observers of the pandemic have been able to track how seasonal changes impacted the spread of the novel coronavirus. During the warmer months, the United States and every other nation on a similar geographic latitude experienced a dramatic dip in cases in addition to every other metric, such as hospitalizations and COVID-19 deaths. This is not some miraculous coincidence of human behavior. It’s a scientific reality.”

Cases, hospitalizations, and deaths will continue to decline, not because of any human interventions, but because this is an annual occurrence and respiratory season will fade in warmer months. The incompetence of the Biden White House has resulted in the destruction of their 100 day COVID plan, in exchange for an indefinite COVID regime that is ruled by the people who helped get us into this mess. Similar to the mistakes made by the past administration, this White House has handed off the levers of power indefinitely to power-drunk state governors, “public health expert” witch doctors, and other incompetent politicians and bureaucrats.

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Canada is purchasing a “civilian” version of the Hermes 900 drone made by Israel’s largest privately-owned arms company, Elbit Systems, Electronic Intifada reported.

The deal which was announced in December by Canada’s transport ministry is worth $28 million.

As Israeli media reported, the Hermes 900 was first “tested” by ‘Israel’ during its 2014 war on Gaza, when it killed more than 2,200 Palestinians, including 550 children, in attacks that frequently obliterated entire families.

“The air force used the Hermes 900 in Gaza in the final days of Operation Protective Edge in the summer of 2014, even though it was still in the initial stages of being adopted by the IDF,” said the Globes, Israel Business News.

Aa a major weapons supplier to the Israeli military, Elbit was deeply involved in, and reaped huge profits from, that attack on Gaza.

Canada is greenwashing the purchase from Elbit by claiming the drones will be used for surveillance of the Arctic region, including “to detect oil spills, survey ice and marine habitats.”

The Trudeau government claims that this purchase will help “to keep our waters clean and safe.”

In fact, what it will do is put money into the hands of Israel’s blood-soaked arms industry, effectively rewarding it for perpetrating war crimes whose investigation and prosecution Trudeau opposes.

Canada opposed the ICC ruling that it has jurisdiction to open a criminal investigation into ‘Israel’ for war crimes in the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem, saying it “does not recognize a Palestinian state.”

“Canada is firmly committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. We continue to support the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, including the creation of a Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel. The creation of a Palestinian state can only be achieved through direct negotiations between the parties,” Canadian Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said.

“Until such negotiations succeed, Canada’s longstanding position remains that it does not recognize a Palestinian state and therefore does not recognize its accession to international treaties, including the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Canada has communicated this position to the Court on various occasions.”

Canada is firmly committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Until such negotiations succeed, Canada’s longstanding position remains the same. We will continue to support the @IntlCrimCourt and its critical work.

My statement: pic.twitter.com/nbhB0bWUeL

— Marc Garneau (@MarcGarneau) February 7, 2021

While the Trudeau government claims to be a global champion of human rights, it has massively expanded its arms trade with Saudi Arabia, despite that country’s brutal war on Yemen.

Last month, activists protested the Trudeau policy by blocking the entrance of a Hamilton, Ontario, factory that ships weapons to the Saudis.

More photos from today's action…activists blocked trucks at @PaddockTrans, a Hamilton-area transportation company involved in shipping Canadian-made, light armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia. #CanadaStopArmingSaudi#YemenCantWait#StopArmingSaudi pic.twitter.com/ncmc47vA39

— World BEYOND War Canada (@WBWCanada) January 25, 2021

And now Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, an advocacy group, is urging Canadians to write the Trudeau government opposing the Elbit deal.

“Through this purchase, Canada directly supports the profits of a weapons company responsible for ongoing human rights violations against Palestinians,” CJPME says in an action alert.

As CJPME notes in a useful backgrounder, Elbit brags that the “civilian” drones Trudeau’s government is purchasing draw on the “legacy” of its killer drones used on Palestinians.

Israeli weapons company Elbit Systems is deeply involved in violations of human rights. Why should Canada give it $36m?

Tell @OmarAlghabra: Canada must cancel the drone contract! https://t.co/8Ug6UUL8Tr @JustinTrudeau @MarcGarneau @AnitaOakville #cdnpoli #StopElbitDrone pic.twitter.com/0XuL6KU3GP

— Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (@CJPME) February 10, 2021

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***

The United States has an extensive sanctions programme affecting two dozen countries across the globe, and three of those states singled out for coercive measures are in Latin America: Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. 

The cost to those three nations of US sanctions imposed allegedly “to counter threats to national security” are breathtakingly severe and must be stopped.

Not only do these unilateral sanctions cause immense harm to each country’s inhabitants, but they are also illegal under the charters of both the UN and the Organisation of American States.

In the last four years under the Trump administration, all three states have experienced an alarming extension in the breadth and harshness of the sanctions levied against them.

During the period from April 2019 to March 2020, for example, the US introduced 90 new economic actions and measures against Cuba, reaching unprecedented levels of hostility.

Nor are the sanctions — deadly as they are — the only form of aggression that the US has been employing against these three countries.

All have been subjected to internal destabilisation through, for example, US funding of right-wing (and often violent) opposition groups, and disinformation strategies aiming to discredit and isolate them internationally.

The US’s ultimate purpose is always the same: to bring about regime change in the country and enable the US to secure its economic and political dominance in the region.

The damage that US sanctions have imposed on Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua is huge.

In the case of Cuba, the six-decade-long blockade is estimated to have caused losses to its economy of over $144 billion (£105bn).

At its core is the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 which authorises the US president to establish and maintain a total embargo on trade with Cuba and prohibits the authorisation of any aid to the Cuban government.

Over time the embargo has become a multilayered blockade that not only restricts trade, especially through provisions for enforcing it extraterritorially on non-US companies, but has also frozen and confiscated Cuban assets, limited or prohibited tourism, cut flights to Cuba, and levied a host of other penal measures designed to strangle Cuba’s economy and make ordinary life for Cubans as uncomfortable as possible.

For Nicaragua, the US’s main vehicle for applying economic pressure to destabilise the country’s government and economy is the “Nica Act” (Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act), introduced by Trump in December 2018.

This followed the failure by US-funded opposition forces to secure regime change through an attempted violent coup in spring 2018 which led to 200 deaths and untold economic damage.

The Nica Act’s aim is to cut Nicaragua off from loans and financial or technical assistance by multilateral-lending institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF.

The Act also grants the president powers to block and prohibit financial and other asset transactions, and sanctions serving and former government officials.

Coupled with these sanctions, the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) committed in 2018 a further $1.5 million in assistance “to continue to support freedom and democracy in Nicaragua”.

USAid has an infamous reputation for funding “civil society” groups and right-wing opposition parties to undermine and oust elected governments seen as detrimental to US interests.

In anticipation that President Daniel Ortega and the FSLN party are likely to win the presidential election scheduled for November 2021, USAid has also secretly hired a contractor to work on plans, codenamed Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (Rain), to destabilise and replace Nicaragua’s elected government.

The US’s aggressive tactics against Venezuela have drawn on its in-depth experience of destabilising and sanctioning both Cuba and Nicaragua in pursuit of regime change.

And the prize for securing such change in Venezuela would arguably be incalculably greater  — the world’s largest oil reserves, as well as extensive mineral wealth, notably gold and bauxite.

The raft of sanctions applied to Venezuela since an Executive Order in 2015 declaring Venezuela a threat to US national security now amounts to a blockade virtually indistinguishable from that imposed on Cuba.

The effects have been similarly far-reaching, with the Washington-based Centre for Economic and Policy Research calculating that US sanctions led to more than 40,000 deaths in 2017-18 alone.

Since the Covid-19 pandemic struck, these sanctions have had an even greater effect by restricting all three countries’ ability to buy medicines and equipment to address the current health emergency.

Opposition to the sanctions has come from a range of voices.

In March 2020 UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres called for the waiving of sanctions, saying: “This is the time for solidarity not exclusion.”

The Pope has also appealed for an end to sanctions preventing countries from “providing adequate support to their citizens.”

And in an unexpected move that may signal a possible thawing in US policy, US Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate finance committee, has introduced a Bill to end Cuba’s blockade and establish normal trade relations with the US.

A change of president potentially offers an opportunity for constructive engagement and dialogue with Biden.

But given his track record and position to date, a dialogue that could benefit all three countries cannot be assured.

Now more than ever it is vital to step up our expressions of international solidarity with Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela in defence of their national sovereignty and to make it clear that sanctions are not only illegal but also unacceptable and unjustifiable.

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Featured image: US Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, who chairs the Senate finance committee, has introduced a Bill to end Cuba’s blockade and establish normal trade relations with the US (Source: Morning Star)

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***

Why has the flu disappeared since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic?

In 2020, after the global coronavirus pandemic began, influenza viruses mysteriously disappeared from global circulation (see WHO FluNet chart below). Some skeptics suspected that influenza was simply reclassified as covid, while many journalists and ‘fact checkers’ claimed influenza was suppressed by face masks and lockdowns.

Global circulation of influenza viruses, 2018-2021 (WHO FluNet)

But influenza has not been reclassified as covid, and influenza viruses have disappeared even in countries without face masks and lockdowns, while they had not disappeared during previous flu epidemics and pandemics, despite face masks, school closures, and other measures.

Instead, influenza viruses have simply been displaced by the more infectious novel coronavirus. This displacement effect is well known from previous influenza pandemics: the 1918 flu virus was displaced by the 1957 flu virus, which in turn was displaced by the 1968 flu virus (see chart). The 2009 swine flu virus temporarily displaced previous flu viruses, but eventually couldn’t assert itself (see chart). And even during the current coronavirus pandemic, more transmissible virus strains have repeatedly displaced previous coronavirus strains, often within weeks.

The last coronavirus pandemic is thought to have occurred in the 1890s (“Russian flu”), which is why a coronavirus displacing influenza viruses was not seen for more than a century. It is well known, however, that influenza vaccinations do not reduce the overall incidence of influenza-like illnesses, as influenza viruses simply get replaced by other respiratory viruses, including coronaviruses.

But why do countries with little or no covid – most of them are islands – also have no influenza? Because they closed their borders early. If the coronavirus doesn’t get in, influenza viruses – which normally oscillate between the northern and southern hemispheres – won’t get in, either.

An interesting and open question is whether the novel coronavirus might permanently suppress some or all of the existing influenza virus strains. This might, at last, be a positive development.

Additional figures

1) Competition between various respiratory viruses

Temporal patterns of seasonal respiratory viral infections in Glasgow (UK). Red: rhinoviruses, orange and yellow: influenza viruses; light green: coronaviruses.

Temporal patterns of viral respiratory infections (Nickbaksh et al, 2019)

2) The 2009 swine flu virus (almost) displacing other flu viruses

3) Timeline of pandemic influenza viruses

Timeline of pandemic influenza viruses (Nickol, 2019)

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A new report from the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) finds that US economic sanctions on Venezuela are harming the Venezuelan economy, especially by depressing oil production and exports, and that they are also hindering US-backed humanitarian assistance to the country. The report, which looks at the impact of US sanctions on Venezuela’s economic crisis, was requested by former chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee Eliot Engel (D-NY) and committee member Congressman Andy Levin (D-MI).

“This report from the GAO offers more evidence that these unilateral, illegal US sanctions are a form of collective punishment against the Venezuelan population and should be ended immediately,” Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said. “The sanctions have already killed tens of thousands of people in Venezuela.”

The report, which “review[s] information on the impact that U.S. sanctions have had on the Venezuelan crisis,” affirms the conclusions of a 2019 Center for Economic and Policy Research report by economists Jeffrey Sachs and Mark Weisbrot, which found that US sanctions were responsible for tens of thousands of deaths in Venezuela. The sanctions drastically reduced Venezuelan oil production, which in turn means fewer imports, including of food, medicines, medical equipment, and other health-related necessities. “U.S. sanctions have contributed to the revenue decline by making it more difficult for [Venezuelan state oil company] PdVSA to market its oil, according to a Congressional Research Service report,” the GAO notes.

“According to experts we interviewed and literature we reviewed, U.S. sanctions have had a negative impact on the already declining Venezuelan economy,” the GAO report says. It notes that electricity blackouts have increased “in frequency and duration” under the sanctions.

Citing the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Weisbrot noted that the collective punishment that is administered through sanctions is a crime under the Geneva Conventions. “As the UN has noted, civilians who are killed by sanctions ‘deserve the same protections provided by the Geneva Conventions to people in war.’ In other words, something that is a crime when it happens during a war is still a crime when it is perpetrated during peacetime. These sanctions are a very serious crime, as any number of human rights experts will affirm.”

Another 2019 report by Venezuelan economist Francisco Rodríguez, “Sanctions and the Venezuelan Economy: What the Data Say,” “estimate[s] that financial sanctions were associated with a decline in [oil] production of 797 tbd, which at today’s oil prices would represent USD 16.9 bn a year in foregone oil revenues.” By itself, this drop in foreign exchange revenue has enormous repercussions for the importation of humanitarian needs, as exemplified by the fact that from 2017 to 2018, total pharmaceutical imports collapsed by more than half.

The GAO also noted that the IMF revised its projections for how much the Venezuelan economy would contract in 2019, from 5 percent to 25 percent, due to the estimated impact of US sanctions. “An economic collapse of this magnitude, in a country that is already unable to import sufficient medicines, will result in many excess deaths,” Weisbrot noted.

“It is clear that in a country that cannot access the resources needed to purchase a sufficient quantity of medicines as well as public health infrastructure, a collapse of the economy of this magnitude is quite devastating,” Weisbrot said.

The GAO report also reveals that USAID implementing partners, tasked with providing humanitarian assistance, have been hindered by the sanctions: “All nine USAID implementing partners we spoke with reported instances of banks closing their accounts or delaying or rejecting transactions due to concerns over U.S. sanctions.” Humanitarian groups also struggle with challenges such as “gas shortages and electrical outages, supply chain and labor disruptions, security concerns, and the politicization of humanitarian aid” that the groups say may be made worse by US sanctions.

The GAO report also finds that the Office of Foreign Assets Control of the US Treasury Department has not been tracking inquiries related to the sanctions.

“The Trump administration, in its public statements, acknowledged that the purpose of sanctions in both Venezuela and Iran was to cause mass suffering that would lead people to rise up against their governments,” Weisbrot noted.

On March 11, 2019, Pompeo stated:

“The circle is tightening. The humanitarian crisis is increasing by the hour. I talked with our senior person on the ground there in Venezuela last night … You can see the increasing pain and suffering that the Venezuelan people are suffering from.”

Human Rights Watch has called attention to a similar statement on sanctions strategy, from Pompeo, with regard to Iran:

“Things are much worse for the Iranian people [with the US sanctions], and we are convinced that will lead the Iranian people to rise up and change the behavior of the regime.”

“President Biden has already ordered a review of economic sanctions to determine their humanitarian impact,” Weisbrot observed. “This is positive, but only if it leads to a lifting of the sanctions. The GAO report provides further confirmation that the sanctions on Venezuela are attacking the civilian population, and are worsening a humanitarian crisis. There is no reason to allow this crime from the Trump administration to continue.”

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Featured image: Since the cutting off of electricity, food and water inside the embassy has not been enough to force the collective to leave, late Tuesday afternoon, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan Police handed out a trespassing notice that was printed without letterhead or signature from any U.S. government official. (Photo: CodePink)

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“South Africa suspends Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine rollout after researchers report minimal protection against variant” announces the headline of a recent Washington Post report.

The article’s opening sentence reads as follows:

“South Africa will suspend use of the coronavirus vaccine being developed by Oxford University and AstraZeneca after researchers found that it provided ‘minimal protection’ against mild to moderate coronavirus infections caused by the new variant first detected in that country.”

The information conveyed by the above exposes the gargantuan fraud that has been perpetrated upon humanity in the name of COVID-19.

Even though many people will be deeply disappointed and disheartened by what happened in South Africa, the news should not have come as a surprise to anyone, since the vaccine failure was completely predictable and inevitable.

Here is the truth: It is not possible to devise an effective vaccine for the type of virus that causes COVID-19. Why? For the very reason that AstraZeneca’s vaccine has failed in South Africa and will fail elsewhere as well.

Coronavirus is a type of virus that mutates widely and because of that it is impossible to come up with a vaccination protocol that would stop its spread.

Every bona fide virologist knows this. And yet the public has not been advised of this. Quite to the contrary, this crucial information has been actively suppressed.

Rather than being told the truth, we were commanded to hunker down in lengthy lockdowns and ordered to wait until the vaccine was found. Once that happened, they told us, we would be able to prevail over the virus and get our lives back. Until quite recently, this was the official narrative propagated by the governing elites around the world.

Consequently, billions of people pinned their hopes on the vaccine and desperately waited for its deliverance. At the same time, governments channeled billions of dollars into the development of these fake concoctions and a number of pharma executives and scientists became billionaires on the news of “progress” and “successful” trials.

While some were getting fabulously wealthy, the frightened and gullible public was kept in the dark about the racket. Sadly, most people apparently lack the will and independence of mind to go beyond the propaganda and do their own research. It does not help, of course, that the establishment has done its best to censor and suppress the information that goes against its official narrative.

The first news that showed that all was not well came when the Chinese vaccine Sinovac was found to be only fifty percent effective in Brazil. Bad as it was, we can be sure that even the paltry fifty percent figure was tweaked upwards by a joint effort of the Brazilian authorities who purchased the vaccine and the vaccine’s Chinese manufacturer. They lied because it is in the interest of both parties to do so. The government authorities needed to cover for their incompetence of spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a bad product while the manufacturer wants to protect his profits. The likely truth is that the Chinese vaccine is for all practical purposes useless and possibly dangerous due to potential side effects for which it has not been adequately tested in the extremely short time frame in which it was developed.

Tellingly, the Chinese manufacturer of the shoddy Sinovac vaccine initially claimed an effectiveness of nearly one hundred percent. Their claims were in line with those of western manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines. We can be sure – given the mutating nature of the SARS-CoV-2 virus – that the vaccines developed by western pharma companies are equally as useless as that of their Chinese counterpart. We have already seen clear evidence of it from South Africa. In the aforementioned piece by the Washington Post we learn that when in South Africa the new “variant became dominant in the country in November, the vaccine [by Oxford-AstraZeneca] provided no significant protection against illness…” South African researchers estimated that the effectiveness of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is ten percent.

Think about it: The vaccine is ten percent effective! And this likely is still an exaggeration as all the parties involved try to save face.

But even at ten percent the vaccine would be worse than useless, because while it offers virtually no protection it potentially carries serious side effects for which it has not been adequately tested.

Because of the potential dangers inherent in this kind of medical product, it normally takes around six years to develop a vaccine that ban be considered reasonably safe. According to Business Insider “vaccines often take years, and sometimes even decades, to develop, test, and approve for public use.”

It was only in April of last year that CNN claimed that a year and a half timeframe of producing a vaccine would raise safety concerns:

“Eighteen months might sound like a long time, but in vaccine years, it’s a blink. That’s the long end of the Trump administration’s time window for developing a coronavirus vaccine, and some leaders in the field say this is too fast – and could come at the expense of safety.”

This was one of those rare occasions on which CNN said something that was actually true. The piece goes on to quote real experts in the field like Dr. Peter Hotez, an expert on infectious disease and vaccine development at Baylor College of Medicine who said: “Tony Fauci is saying a year to 18 months – I think that’s optimistic. Maybe if all the stars align, but probably longer.”

Dr. Paul Offit, the co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, had this to say: “When Dr. Fauci said 12 to 18 months, I thought that was ridiculously optimistic. And I’m sure he did, too.”

To rush, therefore, COVID vaccines on the market after mere nine months of development is beyond irresponsible. To do this with “vaccines” that their manufacturers know cannot be ultimately effective is outright criminal.

Being part of the establishment, the vaccines manufacturers will not get called out and punished for their misdeeds. Their face (and their business model) will be saved. The data showing the ineffectiveness of their products will be tweaked and shown in the best light possible. They will then offer to devise boosters for different variants, which will be as ineffective in stopping COVID-19 as their original vaccine was. But never mind this: it will be excellent for their business, since each new variant represents more than seven billion potential customers. Western pharma conglomerates are known to be among the greatest scam artists within the system, and they will exploit the COVID scam to line their pockets in a big way.

While the effectiveness of the vaccines to protect against COVID is questionable at best, there is no doubt that they have already produced some serious side effects. One of these side effects happens to be death. In a number of countries hundreds of elderly people died after having received their shots. This side effect became so troublesome that some governments – Norway, for instance – issued new advisories and guidelines concerning vaccinations for older individuals. They did this even though the elderly were initially the first group targeted for this treatment. But rather then benefiting from it, many seniors were killed by the very thing they were told would protect their lives.

Given that it was never possible to stop a highly mutating virus by vaccination – which was something that has been well known – the whole COVID vaccine enterprise was fraud from the beginning and a dangerous one at that. The best we can hope for is that that these fake vaccines being peddled by the unscrupulous governments and greedy pharma companies are ineffective. Being administered on the order of millions of doses a day, we can only pray that the potential side effects of these untested concoctions hastily cobbled together by ruthless profiteers will not produce the greatest man-made medical calamity in history.

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Vasko Kohlmayer [email] was born and grew up in former communist Czechoslovakia. He is the author of The West in Crisis: Civilizations and Their Death Drives.

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As much as some Canadians would like to believe their country is a force for good in the world, the truth is more sobering. Extreme inequality is rampant and the Canadian government is an important supporter of corporate power and imperialism in global affairs. The good news is that the pushers of the unfair, unjust and immoral existing world order do not always get their way.

It is uplifting to tally some of the Trudeau government’s setbacks:

• Last Friday the International Criminal Court ruled that it has jurisdiction over Israeli war crimes committed in the Palestinian territories, which should pave the way for a possible criminal investigation. A year ago the Trudeau government sent a letter to the ICC saying it didn’t believe the court had jurisdiction over Palestine. Its letter implied it could sever funding to the ICC if the court pursued an investigation of Israeli crimes. After the recent decision new Foreign Minister Marc Garneau released a statement criticizing the ICC decision.
• On January 26 former Liberal finance minister Bill Morneau withdrew his bid to lead the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries after it was determined he had no chance of winning.
• On January 22 the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) entered into force, making weapons that have always been immoral also illegal under international law. Canada voted against holding the 2017 UN Conference to Negotiate a Legally Binding Instrument to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons, Leading Towards their Total Elimination and boycotted the TPNW negotiating meeting, which two-thirds of the world’s countries attended.
• On January 20 new US President Joe Biden revoked the permit for the Keystone XL pipeline. The Trudeau government pressed the president-elect to break a direct promise and maintain a climate-destroying pipeline okayed by Donald Trump.
• Since Venezuela’s new National Assembly began sitting on January 6 numerous countries have withdrawn from the US–Canada led campaign to anoint Juan Guaidó President. The European Union dropped its de facto recognition of Guaidó. As did the Dominican Republic. Even the Ottawa-led Lima Group has softened its stance. Last week Panama withdrew the credentials of Guaidó’s ambassador.
• In October Chileans voted overwhelming to rewrite the country’s Pinochet-era constitution. The referendum was a blow to Canadian corporations operating in Chile and the Trudeau government’s alliance with right-wing governments in the hemisphere.
• A week earlier Bolivia’s Movimiento al Socialismo won a decisive election victory that was a rejection of the Canadian-backed coup against Evo Morales a year earlier. The overwhelming results were also a blow to Ottawa’s bid to wipe out the remnants of the leftist pink tide in Latin America. (On Sunday an ally of leftist former President Rafael Correa, Andrés Arauz, gained the most votes in the first round of Ecuador’s presidential election.)
• In June the international community decisively rejected Trudeau’s foreign policy. They voted against Canada’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council by a larger margin than a decade earlier under Stephen Harper.

People who support a fairer, more just and equal world should take comfort from these defeats for the Trudeau government’s pro-corporate and imperial policies. Proof that the bad guys are not invincible should offer hope for bigger victories to come.

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Last Monday, US General Frank McKenzie stated that the US shall continue to help Saudi Arabia defend itself against “the common threat of Iran”. On Tuesday, the Saudi government stressed the importance that the countries affected “by Iranian threats” should be a party to all international negotiations about the Iranian nuclear programme, while accusing Iran of “threatening the security of the region”. Tensions are on the rise, it would seem. But the situation is more complex. For the last weeks, Saudi Arabia has been alternating between sending “warnings” to Iran and making conciliatory statements. Meanwhile, Qatar aims to mediate between Saudi Arabia and Iran and to de-escalate tensions.

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan claimed on January 22 that the Kingdom’s hands “are extended” to Iran to make peace – at the same time, he also accused Tehran of not being serious enough about peace talks and of not complying with agreements. The two countries have not had diplomatic relations since the 2016 attack on the Saudi embassy in Tehran after Sunni-governed Saudi Arabia executed Shia cleric Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr – Iran is the world’s largest Shia-governed country (Shia and Sunni being the two major denominations within Islam). Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh responded by remarking to the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) that Iran, in its turn, would welcome reforms in Saudi policies to establish a “security mechanism” in the region.

The Middle East geopolitical scenario is changing. We have seen for example how different Arab countries signed normalization agreements with Israel. While Turkey is involved in a proxy war with some Arab states in North Africa, in the Gulf region things are perhaps even more complex. In a new development, Qatar is urging Gulf Arab states to enter a dialog with Iran; according to a statement by Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani on January 18, authorities in the Qatari capital of Doha could broker such negotiations. This happened some days after Joe Biden was sworn in as the new American president – during the campaign, he promised to revive the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Meanwhile, Doha is also having discussions with Iran and South Korea to ensure the release of an oil tanker seized by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Saudi Arabia’s small and yet significant gesture took place after the Qatari statements.

This is also happening at a time when a landmark “solidarity and stability” agreement was signed on January 5 between Qatar on one hand, and the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Bahrain on the other, thus re-establishing full diplomatic relations with Doha. Such agreement basically ended the blockade on Qatar and, at least for now, the Gulf crisis which lasted for three-and-a-half years. The crisis was also about Iran. In 2017, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the UAE had cut all ties with Qatar, accusing it of being “too close” to Iran (Saudi Arabia’s archenemy) and supporting “terrorism”. Could things be changing? Such rapprochement between Gulf states, according to Emadeddin Badi (an Atlantic Council senior fellow), was clearly also influenced by their desire “to preempt pressure” from the incoming Biden administration. All is not well in the Gulf, however.

Qatar basically still wishes to maintain its good relations with both Turkey and Iran. It is a complicated task: the priority today for the Arab Gulf states, after all, is no longer antagonizing Israel but countering both Turkey and Iran – two countries which also have complex and often tense relations.

In the aftermath of the Gulf countries agreement, the UAE and Oman are also making efforts to improve their relations with Turkey. Qatar has also offered to mediate between Ankara and the authorities in the Saudi capital of Riyadh. And indeed for the first time in two years – since Saudi dissident journalist of Turkish origins Jamal Khashoggi was murdered in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul (Turkey) – there seems to be a path for reconciliation between Ankara and Riyadh.

With Iran, however, things are far from that and tensions remain high. On January 22, Emirati (along with Israeli) officials expressed their approval for former US president Donald Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure” on Iran – but Omar Ghobash, UAE assistant minister for public diplomacy, also stated that the UAE does not oppose a new deal with Tehran, even though he disagrees with the way Gulf states were not included in the nuclear deal of 2015 (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – JCPO – signed by Iran, China, US, France, Russia, the UK, and Germany).

The Kingdom of Bahrain, in its turn, accuses the Islamic Republic of Iran of fomenting unrest in the country. Bahrain is now facing demonstrations from the Shia-led opposition that are demanding reforms in the Sunni-led country.

Meanwhile, Turkey and Iran have nonetheless signed agreements with Pakistan to boost railway cooperation – thus further developing the routes linking Istanbul, Tehran and Islamabad, and even further, enhancing connectivity with the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It is worth remembering that in February 2020, state-owned Russian Railways pulled out from a $1.3 billion railway electrification project which includes a line between Gamsar (Iran) and Ince Burun (Turkey). This was due to US pressure regarding sanctions imposed on Iran. This is a railway line also designed to connect Turkey (via Iran) to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan.

In the end, the interests of countries such as Turkey and Iran, and even Russia, can converge against US sanctions and such countries should work together at some levels in dialog with Gulf countries to counter international isolation. In this scenario, the role of Qatar is very relevant.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

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US President Joe Biden wants to “End the Yemen War” by cutting support to the Saudi-led coalition and focusing on diplomacy to end the six-year conflict in one of the world’s poorest countries, which has brought 30 million Yemenis close to famine.

The US has a history of looking for a quick fix, without considering the complex reality on the ground.  Yemen’s conflict is multifaceted, includes many actors, and can’t be solved in a rushed political agreement.

Biden may be considered for the Noble Peace Prize if his administration could bring peace to Yemen; however, halting arms sales to the Saudis, or making a deal between the Hadi government and the Houthis won’t end Yemen’s war, or stop the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

Biden has announced a big policy shift on Yemen by ending US support for the Arab Coalition’s operations in Yemen, calling out Saudi Arabia for human rights issues, halting arms sales to Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, and holding the Saudi-led coalition accountable for their role in mismanaging the war.

Biden has appointed Timothy Lenderking, former deputy assistant secretary for Arabian Gulf affairs, as the special envoy to Yemen, and called the Saudi foreign minister twice over the past week.

Lenderking met with the internationally recognized Yemeni President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi in Riyadh on February 11 and also met with Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan, while discussing a comprehensive solution to ending Yemen’s war.

Saudi Arabia’s military spending has been exceeding even that of global powers, although direct Saudi-led coalition attacks against the Houthis have decreased in recent years while shifting the Saudi strategy to defending the border with Yemen.

Riyadh is aiming to strengthen its influence among all Yemeni factions and is now more actively pursuing negotiations with the Houthis.

Farhan went to Moscow a few weeks ago, and the Kingdom enjoys a good relationship with China, which provides the oil-rich monarchy a contingency plan.

Saudi Arabia can’t afford to get out of Yemen entirely, as the security cost would be too high. Riyadh might invest in mercenaries while it continues to reduce its direct military interventions.

Trump

President Trump imposed upon the Houthi movement the specially designated global terrorist (SDGT) and foreign terrorist organization (FTO) designations on his last full day in office, in a final attempt to cut off funding, weapons, and other support for Iran’s proxy fight in Yemen. Trump was often criticized for his close relationship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, while he used his close ties to push through peace deals between Arab states and Israel.

Sanctions

The United Nations describes Yemen as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, with 80 percent of its people in need. The Trump-ordered terrorist designation threatened to deepen the humanitarian crisis by denying food, fuel, and other basic commodities to civilians.  Importers would have faced criminal penalties should the goods fall into Houthi hands, which could push Yemen into a major famine.

The US and EU sanctions on Syria, for example, have caused hospitals to be without chemotherapy drugs, ventilators, and other essential medicines and medical equipment. Gasoline, heating oil, and electricity supplies have all been in dire short supply because of the sanctions on Syria. It is the innocent, unarmed civilians who suffer from Western sanctions.

“This decision is a recognition of the dire humanitarian situation in Yemen,” Blinken said in a statement.

“We will continue to closely monitor the activities of Ansar Allah and its leaders and are actively identifying additional targets for designation,” Blinken said, referring to the name of the Houthi movement.

Houthi

The Houthis currently have the upper hand militarily, and a political settlement risks tipping the military balance in favor of the Houthis, who have not held to cease-fires in the past.

Biden’s speed to call out Arab Gulf monarchies, without first condemning actions taken by the Houthis was perceived by the group as a sign of American weakness, and a Houthi victory.

The move created widespread anger among Yemenis, who saw it as the Biden administration giving the Houthis a green light and a new sense of confidence.

The US administration’s decision to revoke the terrorist designation of the Houthis has emboldened the group, and they escalated their offensive to capture Marib the following day after the designation was rescinded when a Houthi drone was launched toward Khamis Mushait in the kingdom’s Asir province.

On February 12, the Houthis claimed a drone attack that targeted a civilian airplane in Saudi Arabia’s Abha airport.

How the war started

In 2011, the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Initiative resulted in a power-sharing deal between former President Saleh and his opponents and called for a political transition process.

Lost between the two sides were the long-standing grievances of ordinary Yemenis, who still feel their voices are not heard.

The deal granted former President Saleh immunity, which effectively allowed him to remain in control of most of the armed forces. He then allied with the Houthis and overthrew the government in September 2014, and from there the country was dragged into a civil war.

The war in Yemen is between the Iranian-aligned Houthi movement, and the internationally recognized government of Yemen, which has been supported since 2015 by a Saudi-led military coalition.

The Stockholm Agreement was brokered by the UN envoy in December 2018 between the Hadi government and the Houthis but failed to deliver peace or stability.

The UN

A series of UN special envoys for Yemen has tried to broker a political settlement between the two sides since 2014.

The Biden administration should work with the Office of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General to Yemen Martin Griffiths to ease access to humanitarian aid and opening airports, seaports, and key roads to cities for the sake of the suffering civilians.

Down the road

Yemen is a conflict that’s more than just politics and will require getting firm commitments from the Houthis while working with the Saudis as well.

Most Yemenis are currently not represented in the peace talks. Western policy experts, diplomats, and peace activists are not enough to end the war when most Yemenis have animosity toward both the Houthis and Hadi’s government. The voiceless civilians must be made part of the solution for the war to come to an end, and have lasting stability.

The Biden administration must look farther down the road than just a quick fix, or risk an uptake in violence and a long-lasting conflict with no end in sight.

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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.

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