«Dialogo strategico» tra Italia e Arabia Saudita

February 9th, 2021 by Manlio Dinucci

Ha suscitato critiche il fatto che Matteo Renzi, ricevuto a Riad da Sua Altezza Reale Principe Mohammed bin Salman, abbia lodato l’Arabia Saudita. Nessuna critica invece, ma sostanziale consenso, quando lo stesso Renzi, in veste di presidente del consiglio nonché segretario del Pd, andò nel novembre 2015 in visita ufficiale a Riad per consolidare i rapporti tra i due paesi. Eppure allora l’Arabia Saudita era sostanzialmente la stessa e aveva già iniziato la guerra contro lo Yemen. La visita si inseriva nella tradizionale politica italiana di amichevoli rapporti con l’Arabia Saudita e le altre monarchie del Golfo. Basti ricordare Emma Bonino che, in veste di ministro degli Esteri del Governo Letta, dichiarava nel 2013 che «Italia e Arabia Saudita hanno veramente molto in comune e vi sono profonde ragioni per il rafforzamento dei nostri legami».

Nella stessa linea si inserisce la visita che il ministro degli Esteri Luigi Di Maio ha effettuato, il 10 gennaio (oltre due settimane prima di Renzi) in Arabia Saudita. Qui non solo ha incontrato il Principe Mohammed bin Salman, esaltando «il costante rafforzamento delle relazioni di amicizia e cooperazione», ma ha compiuto un atto ufficiale molto più importante: ha firmato col ministro degli Esteri saudita, principe Faisal bin Farhan, un memorandum d’intesa sul «dialogo strategico» tra Italia e Arabia Saudita. Questo atto, ben più grave della dichiarazione di Renzi sul «nuovo Rinascimento» dell’Arabia Saudita, non ha suscitato critiche in Italia ed è praticamente passato sotto silenzio.

La visita di Di Maio in Arabia Saudita, foto Ministero degli EsteriLa visita di Di Maio in Arabia Saudita, foto Ministero degli Esteri

Il nuovo accordo lega ancor più l’Italia a una monarchia assoluta, in cui il sovrano detiene il potere politico ed economico, legislativo, esecutivo e giudiziario. Attualmente è nelle mani del principe Mohammed bin Salman, impadronitosi del potere con un atto di forza all’interno della famiglia dominante. In Arabia Saudita non esiste un parlamento, ma solo un consiglio consultivo nominato dal sovrano. Partiti politici e organizzazioni sindacali sono illegali. Il sistema giudiziario si basa sulla legge coranica, amministrata da tribunali religiosi. Frequenti sono le condanne alla decapitazione o al taglio delle mani, effettuati in pubblico. Oppositori e critici vengono incarcerati, torturati e assassinati. Il giornalista Jamal Khashoggi è stato ucciso nel consolato saudita a Istanbul e il suo corpo è stato smembrato per farlo sparire. I circa 10 milioni di immigrati, la metà della forza lavoro in Arabia Saudita, vivono in condizioni di supersfruttamento e schiavitù: per presunte violazioni delle leggi sull’immigrazione, ne sono stati arrestati in 3 anni oltre 4 milioni.

La visita di Di Maio in Arabia Saudita, foto Ministero degli EsteriLa visita di Di Maio in Arabia Saudita, foto Ministero degli Esteri

L’accordo sul «dialogo strategico» rinsalda i legami del complesso militare-industriale italiano con l’Arabia Saudita, uno dei maggiori acquirenti di armi. Mentre il governo italiano revoca la vendita di bombe all’Arabia Saudita quale misura contro la sua guerra che fa strage nello Yemen, la Leonardo, la maggiore industria bellica italiana, assiste l’Arabia Saudita a usare i caccia Eurofighter Typhoon che bombardano lo Yemen. Riad ne ha acquistati 72 dal consorzio in cui la Leonardo ha il 36% della quota industriale. L’Eurofighter Typhoon, certifica la stessa industria, è «combat proven» essendo già stato «provato in operazioni in Libia, Iraq e Siria», cui va aggiunto lo Yemen. La stessa Leonardo documenta che «per oltre 40 anni abbiamo fornito l’avionica e i sistemi di comunicazione del Typhoon e Tornado operati dall’Aviazione Reale dell’Arabia Saudita» e che «offriamo alla Reale Aeronautica dell’Arabia Saudita velivoli senza pilota e soluzioni di target acquisition» (ossia droni per individuare gli obiettivi da bombardare). La stessa Leonardo precisa, inoltre, che «abbiamo personale nelle basi militari del Regno». Contemporaneamente l’azienda pubblica italiana Fincantieri costruisce negli Stati uniti 4 navi da guerra del tipo più avanzato (Multi-Mission Surface Combatants) destinate all’Arabia Saudita in base a un «ordine plurimiliardario». Ci sono dunque solide basi per lo sviluppo del «dialogo strategico» tra Italia e Arabia Saudita.

 Manlio Dinucci

il manifesto, 09 febbraio 2021

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Selected Articles: Our Children Have a Right to a Decent Future

February 8th, 2021 by Global Research News

Our Children Have a Right to a Decent Future

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, February 08 2021

What the rebellious generation of 68 reproached their fathers for, that they had willingly submitted to a dictator and a tyranny, is happening again three generations later. And again, only a small group of courageous and awakened citizens is resisting – and the vast majority is asleep and silent.

The “Great Zero Carbon” Conspiracy

By F. William Engdahl, February 08 2021

The globalist Davos World Economic Forum is proclaiming the necessity of reaching a worldwide goal of “net zero carbon” by 2050. This for most sounds far in the future and hence largely ignored. Yet transformations underway from Germany to the USA, to countless other economies, are setting the stage for creation of what in the 1970’s was called the New International Economic Order.

The Foreign Roots of Haiti’s “Constitutional Crisis”

By Prof. Mark Schuller, February 08 2021

Haiti’s president’s term has come to an end, but he refuses to step down. Solidarity is urgent. As per usual, news on Haiti in the United States remains limited, except for during periods of “crisis.” As if on cue, U.S. media began reporting on Haiti’s “constitutional crisis” this week.

In Game Changer, International Criminal Court Will Take Up Israeli War Crimes and Apartheid in Palestine

By Prof. Juan Cole, February 08 2021

On Friday, the International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of Apartheid in the Palestinian territories.

ICC Ruling on Palestine: “A Victory for Rights, Justice, Freedom and Moral Values in the World”: Palestinian Minister

By Steven Sahiounie, February 08 2021

The mandate of the ICC is to prosecute people, not countries, including those from states that are not signatories, as long as one party has signed the international treaty, which Palestine did in 2015, while Israel has not signed. Palestine used its UN observer state status, gained in 2012, to join the ICC.

Shrinking Ireland: Global Warning in Local Communities

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, February 08 2021

A recent walk at a local beach revealed to me how fast coastal erosion is affecting local communities. This area where I live is essentially a peninsula with two large popular beaches, Donabate beach and Portrane beach which are joined by cliffs, on the coast of north County Dublin, Ireland.

Farmers’ Protest in India: Price of Failure Will be Immense. “The Plan to Radically Restructure Agrifood”

By Colin Todhunter, February 07 2021

Globally, there is an ongoing trend of a handful of big companies determining what food is grown, how it is grown, what is in it and who sells it. This model involves highly processed food adulterated with chemical inputs ending up in large near-monopoly supermarket chains or fast-food outlets that rely on industrial-scale farming.

The Impeachment Trial: In Defense of Donald Trump

By Emanuel Pastreich, February 08 2021

It is not popular in the fickle fairyland of Washington D.C. to defend Donald Trump, let alone to praise him. But at this sad hour in our nation’s history, that is precisely what must be done.

Did The Virus Trigger the 2020 Worldwide Economic Crisis?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Michael Welch, February 08 2021

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!

Towards a Police State in Switzerland? The Covid Face Mask

By Peter Koenig, February 08 2021

In the morning of 5 February 2021, a distinguished gentleman, professional, in his early 70s, impeccably dressed in suit and tie (no name shall be mentioned) – was running to catch an 8 AM train at the Geneva principal railway station, Cornavin.

The Invincible Green Stick of Happiness

By Edward Curtin, February 08 2021

After a night of haunting dreams that flowed as if they were written like running water, written on air, as the Roman poet Catullus once said, in the depth of a dark winter morning, I decided that I would take a walk in the afternoon hoping that the sun would then appear, and it did so.

Six major media firms control the lion’s share of the news people see, listen to and read every day! That’s an extra-ordinary level of influence they can exert on the popular mindset and on the political decisions made in the interests of ‘the billionaires club!’

The billionaire giants are redoubling their efforts to control the narrative.

Now thanks to social media organs like twitter, youtube, and facebook, they are slowly stomping out views that counter the interests of the wealthy men in the driver’s seat.

Major papers, television stations and radio stations are quick to uphold the realities of the world around us. And any attempts to correct the record will rather quickly be labelled ‘Conspiracy Theories.’

So now, more than ever, community radio is pivotal as a source of probing and thoughtful insights while the freedom of the internet is disintegrating.

Global Research, and our podcast the Global Research News Hour is of course defying that monolith of global propaganda!

We thank CKUW, the campus-based radio station which hosts the GRNH. CKUW broadcasts at 95.9 MHz on the FM band and is based at the University of Winnipeg in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.

Over the next two weeks, until February 19, GRNH is holding its annual fund-raising drive. GRNH does not run paid advertising, nor does it rely on donations by the University of Winnipeg or the state. It is up to listeners like you to help us meet our budgetary requirements and prosper.

Listeners are encouraged to make this drive a success!

Click on the Donate button below, and be sure to send a note with your donation mentioning GRNH or GLOBAL RESEARCH NEWS HOUR!

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Michael Welch, host and producer, Global Research News Hour

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 . Listen to the latest episode with guest Michel Chossudovsky by clicking below:

Did The Virus Trigger the 2020 Worldwide Economic Crisis?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Michael Welch, February 08 2021

“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.

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The Impeachment Trial: In Defense of Donald Trump

February 8th, 2021 by Emanuel Pastreich

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).

***

Global Research Editor’s Note

We are not supporters of Trump by a long shot and neither is Dr. Emanuel Pastreich, author of this incisive and timely article.

In the course of the Trump presidency we have published diverse opinions, most of which constitute a critique of the failures, abuses and illegal acts committed by the Trump administration.

We are based in Canada. We are not involved in bipartisan politics in the US. Neither the Republicans nor the Democrats serve the interest of the American people.

We publish various opinions on US domestic politics and US foreign policy. In some cases we may disagree with the authors we  publish. We do not, however, impose an editorial line to our authors.

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, January 9, 2021

***

The lawyers employed by Donald Trump have amassed an impressive pile of arguments to defend him against charges that he incited a mob of his supporters to stage an armed insurrection in an effort to stop the selection of his democratically elected opponent. It is not popular in the fickle fairyland of Washington D.C. to defend Donald Trump, let alone to praise him. But at this sad hour in our nation’s history, that is precisely what must be done.

Sadly, the impeachment trial scheduled for February 9th is unlikely to touch on either the true violations of the Constitution by the Trump administration, nor on Donald Trump’s significant accomplishments in office.

Like the last impeachment trial which focused on ambiguous and amorphous Russian collusion, and left untouched the criminality of the entire executive branch (over which Trump had little control).

This trial has one purpose: to serve as a warning all American politicians that the system is ready to tar and feather them, attack them for things that they did not do, and then take them down with the entire world as a captive audience.

In other words, the president of the United States in the years ahead will resemble the emperors of the late Roman empire whose reigns rarely lasted for more than a few years: men who were batted around by the generals in the manner that a cat plays with a mouse.

The sprawling executive branch has as its tentacles consulting firms, military and law enforcement contractors, and a host of lobbying syndicates that assume corruption is a day’s work well done. None of those players are going to be on trial for Valentine’s Day. To blame their sins on Donald Trump, and then present to the world “pay to play” Joe Biden as a progressive breath of fresh air, is true alchemy.

For all his sins, from poor taste in clothing, to the garish interiors at his hotels, to his associations with organized crime and his pandering to audiences who craved the sensational, Trump was a man who simply tried to outsmart the system from within for personal benefit, but also for certain honorable principles. Sadly, he became a prisoner of the system in the process. He is accused of trumped up, or exaggerated, sins, his true mistakes are overlooked and his real accomplishments are ignored.

The case against Donald Trump

Donald Trump, a man who had never served in public office before he became president, a man who knew little about fiscal and social policy, or international relations, a man who was obliged to turn to a handful of political players, and to the cunning multi-billionaires behind the curtains, for advice in his “Battle with the Deep State” –a show perfect for The Sahara—was bathetic and tragic at the same time.

I dispute, however, the assumption that Trump was inherently less qualified for office than Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, or Joe Biden, three individuals deeply linked to global finance, weapons manufacturers and to a host of other parasitic organizations hell bent on tearing the United States apart for profit. The fact that such global players interacted with these supposedly noble men through Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs did nothing to dilute their criminality. None of these politicians should have ever been considered as candidates for that office.

The recent orgy of media coverage about Trump has nothing to do with his real mistakes, but is rather a cynical ploy to make the Biden administration’s progressive-tinted “Trojan Horse” COVID-19 police state seem legitimate and also to create a new enemy for the public imagination: the MAGA-hat wearing ignorant racist Trump supporter.

That last creation is the first step towards tarring anyone who questions the criminal conspiracies that are in full swing today with the term “domestic terrorist” and locking them up if the newly appointed “Reality Czar” sees fit.

Trump’s rise to political power was a result of his success in real estate development, his management of casinos, his speculation in various murky business deals and his effective use of sensationalist television to gain a loyal audience. It is not necessary to explain that one cannot be involved in construction and casinos at that level without being linked to racketeering and money laundering, to prostitution and organized crime.

But the Democrats and Republicans who raked in money from global investment banks that make a killing in the promotion of war (in the name of peace), who push through dangerous free trade agreements, and who participated in the rape of the Federal Reserve, are even more diabolical.

The in-your- face obnoxiousness of Trump is more honest than the cultivated, culturally sensitive, ethnically diverse Ivy League graduates who used their empathic image to hide from us the brutal war these global financial institutions wage against ordinary people.

Donald Trump was guilty of violations of the Constitution and of Federal law during the course of his administration that deserve impeachment. Period.

At the same time, however, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barak Obama were all guilty of numerous acts in violation of the Constitution and Federal law worthy of impeachment. If anything, the real question is why American intellectuals have decided to let the bloated, sprawling and putrid executive branch get away with all this institutionalized criminality.

The Democratic and Republican congressmen who will gather like jackals for the impeachment trial, men and women who looked the other way as global financial powers robbed the Federal Reserve of 10 trillion or more and then had the nerve to say the economic crisis was a result of COVID19, should be on trial too.

Trump’s tragic mistakes

Trump’s decision to run for president can be traced back to the White House Correspondents Dinner on April 30, 2011. He was subject to pointed mockery by Barak Obama who intended to humiliate him in public and destroy his political career.

Trump’s anger was written all over his face because he is not a politician.

Why was Trump so mad?

Personally, I am not convinced that Trump’s “Birther Movement,” that tried to prove that Obama was not an American citizen and that he was a secret Muslim, was either appropriate or accurate. Ultimately, I do not know.

I fear, however, that many Americans do not understand the underlying motivations for that campaign. The strategy was sensationalist, like the pro wrestler at heart that Trump is, but the means of political attack that Trump employed was not entirely his choice.

Most of the corrupt deals made by the Obama administration with global finance are protected from public scrutiny because the transactions were rendered classified, or because non-disclosure agreements make it impossible to make those crimes public. In many cases, secret law passed by Congress makes the discussion of these corrupt actions illegal. The post-Bush age in America is defined by a politics of the unspeakable.

Trump went after Obama over the birther issue, and after Biden over election fraud, not because it was necessarily his strongest card, but because it was the only card he was permitted to play, the only thing that the media would report.

It was the attitude of Obama on that evening that riled Trump. Obama, a man parachuted into the 2008 presidential campaign out of nowhere to serve the interests of the super-rich, showed obvious contempt for Trump and his supporters.

Trump wanted to nail the slick Obama for his blatant corruption, but he could not.

When Trump condemned foreign wars openly, he was labeled a budding Nazi by the liberal press. Obama, by contrast, hedged his words about foreign interventions so as to avoid offending General Dynamics and had been awarded the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize for embracing American militarism and renouncing his lukewarm critique of the Iraq war.

Running for president as an outsider was the best way to get even, Trump thought to himself, that to become the president who replaced that well-groomed toy of financial elites would be tasty, as the French say “La vengeance est un plat qui se mange froid” (revenge is a dish best served cold).

Trump knew that if he wanted to win the presidency as an outsider, he would have to tap into the anger boiling up over the corruption in Washington D.C., and the elitist politics of Obama. Part of that response had racist overtones, but much of it did not.

Although Trump had some money, he was a small fish in the increasingly decadent Washington milieu. After he drove back to Trump Hotel after that brutal Obama “roast” he thought about which power players he could get on his side who would be able to match the backing of the investment banks that Democrats (and Republicans) relied on to get them over the top in the money game.

He came up with a list of hungry outsiders who were willing to take a risk on his populist rhetoric because they too did not have the political influence that they felt their money deserved. Although there were more, let us identify four important groups of supporters that pushed hard to get Trump on the map, and who did not care about his opposition to free trade or his appeals to the working man.

The four groups, however, did not care about Donald Trump personally, and when he was set up at the end of his presidency to be diagnosed with the bogus “COVID19” and then accused of starting the clown-directed false flag “Capitol Insurrection,” those forces had no interest in helping out.

I suspect that Trump thought that he, like a master surfer, could somehow ride the converging waves that would be unleashed by these powers and drive this “band of rivals” forward so as to achieve something of value while enhancing his own brand.

The following four groups latched onto Trump as a chance to shake up Washington and get their piece of the pie.

David and Charles Koch

The Koch brothers poured their coal and petroleum billions into funding “libertarian” ideology as a means of hiding the end of the regulation of business under the sheep’s skin of personal “freedom.” The result was a massive increase in pollution and the end of environmental policy in the United States.

The Koch brothers were remarkably creative. They set up a devious think tank, the Charles Koch Institute, that seduced various “anti-war” intellectuals with its big funding and media exposure, and thereby gave legitimacy to their corporate agenda.

The Koch brothers supported Trump, and introduced him to their representative Mike Pompeo (who had close ties to the Christian right) in return for a promise from Trump to get the government out of the regulation business and to pursue ludicrous policies regarding climate change. The Koch brothers wanted to get the sort of respect in Washington DC that global players like Exxon and BP were receiving and to muscle in on energy policy previously determined by mainstream corporations.

Betsy (Prince) DeVos and Erik Prince

Although the start of Trump’s relationship with the Prince family remains opaque, Betsy (Prince) DeVos, wife of the heir of the Amway fortune, and her brother Erik Prince, CEO of the private mercenary corporation Academi, lashed on to Trump early on and gave him a big push.

Betsy (Prince) DeVos demanded that she be made Secretary of Education and she used that position to destroy public education as part of a larger plan to both make all education into a for-profit industry and to render much of the population so poorly educated that they were incapable of opposing the corporate takeover of America. The problems in education, however, were a bipartisan effort of the last 30 years and not the creation of Betsy DeVos.

Trump let her do what she wanted with almost no interference.

Erik Prince demanded a chance to push for the radical privatization of the military that would allow his mercenary groups to get contracts for work previously limited to the military itself, or to the big-time military contractors. Early support for Trump gave Erik carte blanche for extending his mercenary operations around the world, getting into some serious fights with military officers along the way.

The Princes also linked Trump up with another big player, Robert Mercer, the CEO of Renaissance Technologies. The “silent billionaire” Mercer was backed Steve Bannon’s innovative strategies for stirring up political support through racist and anti-immigrant reporting at his Breitbart News (mixed with a good dose of truth) and he laid the groundwork for Trump’s sudden media takeoff.

 Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson

Donald Trump had links to Israel through his son-in-law Jared Kushner and through interactions with various Zionist businessmen from way back (including ties to Russia), but he did not take any strong stands on Israel policy. He also received support in his campaign from many Americans who were deeply hostile to Israeli influence in Washington D.C. and who demanded an investigation into the 9.11 incident and Israel’s role.   

But Trump’s old pal Sheldon Adelson was a man with the deep pockets, the strong connections in Israel, and the strategic mind necessary to put Trump over the top. Adelson is one of the top dogs in casinos globally and was probably one of the people Trump called up early on. He gave his enthusiastic backing and his phone calls made Trump’s bid viable.

Adelson quickly connected Trump with core figures among Christian Zionists like John Hagee who supported the most radical policies of Israel unconditionally and he set up Mike Pompeo (also linked to the Koch brothers) to be a central policy player. Adelson probably also played a role in introducing to Trump another rising Christian Zionist, Vice President Mike Pence.

Christian Zionist churches across the United States play a critical role in delivering votes and raising money for conservative causes. Trump’s willingness to embrace the extreme demands of these churches allowed the ministers of these churches to back him in spite of his multiple marriages and his lax and indulgent values.

Adelson did not spend those hours at his rolodex for nothing. He got an administration (if not a Trump) that blindly embraced Israel, and granted full support in any Israeli military conflict with Iran.

The “War with China” Lobby

The promotion of military conflicts and the sales of overpriced weapons systems is an exquisitely bipartisan show and even the peacemakers cannot function in Congress without a thumbs up from the big boys. For a total outsider with an unimpressive reputation, and no political experience, there was not much room at the trough for Trump.

A bit of sniffing around, however, revealed that there was one group in the military industrial complex that was extremely unhappy in spite of the bloated defense budget and who were looking for someone to champion their unpopular cause during the Obama years.

That group consisted of the weapons manufactures who supply the big heavy equipment like aircraft carrier groups, fighter planes, nuclear weapons and missile defense systems.

Donald’s Rumsfeld’s “War on Terror” had introduced the dangerous concept of a “revolution in warfare” and much of their bulky hardware was viewed as outdated by a new generation of security experts.

The new focus on intelligence fattened up their rivals and cost them some big military contracts as the Pentagon increasingly mimicked the CIA.

In addition, a push by new upstarts like Boston Robotics to lock them out permanently and make satellites, drones, robots and AI the focus for military spending had them seeing red.

Although these contractors liked Russia as an adversary, only a massive Pacific War with China scenario could justify the piles of hardware that they wanted to produce. No surprise that these groups were pushed over the edge when Obama proposed military-military cooperation with China, including inviting China to participate in the RIMPAC naval exercises in Hawaii.

The “war with China” faction is not a specific corporation. They are large sections of Northrop Grumman, Lockeed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon and other contractors who stood to benefit from a push for big ships and high-tech fighter planes, for the tools for massive amphibious landings. At the same time, companies also had units who are not interested in that market.

Trump offered to dump the one-China policy of Nixon in the dustbin of history and to adopt aggressive actions in East Asia that would kick of a “new Cold War.” This group fell in line behind Trump and gave him the security credentials that he lacked.

Trump’s Achievements

Looking back on the four years of Trump, much of the damage attributed to him was rather the product of institutional decay that was sped up by the mind-numbing spiritual gangrene which infected America after the 9.11 incident. Trump must take responsibility for allowing criminal figures to run the show, to strip the government of expertise and to push for war with China and Iran, but Trump was most certainly not the mastermind.

He felt as he was under house arrest himself at the White House when the big boys got into fights—and he was keenly aware that the powers that be were more than happy to throw him under the bus—as the ultimately did—to achieve their goals.

And yet, as foolhardy as Trump’s bid to use these outcasts from the DC banquet of spoils as a means to take control of the Republican Party, and then topple the corrupt system from within may have been, the following efforts suggest that at some level Trump maintained a commitment to setting things right, and that he tried to address issues that other politicians were afraid to touch.

The following actions will not be mentioned at the impeachment trial, but they should be.

1. Commitment to 9.11 truth

In his interview with Fox 5 News on September 11, 2001, Donald Trump made comments that opened up serious doubts concerning the 9/11 conspiracy theory that Arab terrorists holding papercutters took down three skyscrapers with two planes. Trump continued address this issue in private and he was not afraid to maintain close ties with 9/11 truth activists.

His willingness, as sitting president, to tolerate, and even to encourage, the discussion of the scientific problems with the official story was risky for his health and it alienated him from mainstream politicians, Democrat and Republican. His willingness to take on this impossible task represented a sincere loyalty to his supporters—a solidarity that that he never gave up even as he hobnobbed with the rich and powerful.

2. Demand for the release of classified documents on the Kennedy Assassination

Donald Trump used executive orders in October of 2017 in an attempt to force the CIA and the FBI to release all remaining classified documents concerning the Kennedy assassination of 1963. The criminal conspiracy in global finance, industry and government to kill Kennedy is obvious to anyone who has looked into the case even superficially. Yet the Federal Government still refuses to release the remaining documents that will make clear for the world what happened, and exactly who was responsible for what.

Trump’s push to get the papers released was not a favor for historians and conspiracy buffs.

The manner in which global finance was able to murder a president in cold blood when he tried to restore accountability to intelligence and to the military produced a slow-growing cancer in the executive branch that has festered ever since. Many institutional problems, such as the inability of any president to subject the Pentagon or the CIA to a meaningful audit, can be traced back to that sad day in November, 1963.

In effect, every American president knows that he can killed with impunity like Kennedy, or publicly humiliated, if he or she dares to hold to the Constitution or to challenge the shadow government of finace.

Trump’s actions were brave, and even inspiring. You can be sure that neither Bernie Sanders nor Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, darlings of the “left,” will never dare to make such a demand.

3. Attacking the use of immigration to destroy the lives of American workers   

The vicious attacks (in government and in the streets) on immigrants that were encouraged by the rhetoric pouring forth from the mouth of Donald Trump were cruel and irrational.  Such actions should be condemned.

But we can walk and chew gum at the same time as citizens. As offensive and divisive as Trump’s rhetoric was, we must recognize two critical facts: 1) a series of classified directives and secret laws prevented Trump from talking directly about how the immigration crisis was linked to actions of corporations and investment banks; 2) his Democratic opponents were intimately involved in implementation of immigration as a weapon for class warfare but they were never called on this point by so-called “progressive” public intellectuals.

The immigration rush from Central and South America to the United States was a result of the plot of multinational to destroy the local economies of those countries and to devastate agriculture and crafts through a ruthless free trade, free investment scheme combined with cash payments to politicians to play stupid.

The working people of Latin America did not have any choice but to try to go to the United States.

At the same time, multinational banks and corporations used immigration policy as part of a strategy to destroy the economic foundations of life for the American worker, rendering him a helpless pawn in their push for a new form of slavery. The Democrats were silent about this greater conspiracy and Trump was right to denounce this deliberate policy to destroy America through immigration.

Secret law and classified directives made it impossible to discuss these brutal policies in the American media. When Trump took the unusual step of actually addressing class warfare via immigration he was forced by circumstances to describe it using caricatures that appealed to racist ideology.

He deserves credit for drawing attention to the issue.

4. Opposition to the free trade ideology  

Trump was the only candidate in the 2016 presidential campaign to address directly the manner in which the promotion of “free trade” regimes have been employed by the rich to destroy the economic foundations of life for Americans.

He was roundly condemned for undermining America’s commitment to global trade agreements and to financial treaties. Conservatives, progressives—and everyone in between—were happy to take a stab. But as inflammatory as his rhetoric may have been, Trump identified a criminal conspiracy of the rich around the world to create economic misery through trade.

The progressive Democratic politicians who claimed to be concerned about working people rarely hesitated to vote for free trade agreements. They pretended that these agreements would help ordinary people when they knew full-well that they were for the benefit of multinational corporations. Trump    stood virtually alone in condemning the trade scam and he deserves credit for his efforts.

5. Open opposition to the mask mandate, to the economic lockdown and to the vaccine regime in the name of COVID19

Donald Trump made numerous attempts to question from the office of the president the promotion of the bogus COVID19 pandemic as a national disaster, the insistence on the mandatory wearing of masks without any scientific basis and the nonsensical demands for an economic lockdown on the economy and the shutting down of public buildings and of schools. He was one of the few politicians willing to take such a position and as a result he gained support in the presidential election from African Americans and other groups who would normally never have supported a Republican.

When Trump questioned the need for the dangerous COVID19 “vaccines” promoted by multinational pharmaceutical corporations like Pfizer that contain destructive mRNA, and a variety of tracers and sensors embedded in DARPA hydrogel, his stand was heroic.

Although Trump took an anti-science stance when he questioned climate change in response to the demands of the Koch brothers, he was 100% supported by the science, and by numerous scientists, in the case of COVID19.

The result? Trump was subject to attacks from every side in the corrupt media for his commonsense statements. The darlings of the Democratic “left” rushed to embrace the corporate puppet Anthony Fauci when he attacked Trump for not shutting down the economy and he promoted these dangerous “vaccines.”

Moreover, when Trump was forced to endorse vaccines, he gave speeches in which he spoke of a “warp drive” project to develop them in months that would normally have taken years or decades.

Trump praised vaccines in a deliberately exaggerated manner as a means of telegraphing the truth to the people about the true nature of vaccines over the barriers to the dissemination of information erected in Washington D.C. Such a move was ingenious and brave—but mocked in the media.

6. Support for an open discussion about criminal conspiracies in the United States

The transformation of progressive sources of journalism into puppet shows where corporate power dresses up its fictions in the used clothing of the American leftist tradition is a tragedy of epic proportions. We witness a pathetic discourse on politics in which the “left” acts as a trained lapdog unable to speak about any of the real conspiracies.

It is to Donald Trump’s credit that he had the bravery to actively engage in an open discussion with those demanding an investigation into the criminal conspiracies taking place in America, and that he encouraged a fundamental questioning of the role of government and of corporations.

Specifically, Trump was attacked from all corners for his connections to believers in the “cult” of QAnon.

QAnon is an insider who leaks information about criminal actions at the highest levels of government. If you do a search for QAnon, you will find articles that condemn him as a fraudulent conspiracy peddler, that denounce his racist and isolationist positions, but you will not see QAnon’s texts quoted so that the reader can judge for himself.

None of the newspapers even gives the website address of QAnon: qanon.pub. Wikipedia dismisses QAnon, saying,

“QAnon is a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory alleging that a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against former U.S. president Donald Trump, who has been fighting the cabal. According to U.S. prosecutors, QAnon is commonly called a cult.”

The assumption that mainstream Democrats (and Republicans) cannot be linked to prostitution and pedophilia is easily proven false. For that matter, no mainstream politician has tried to discredit QAnon by launching international scientific investigations into the claims he makes about the 9/11 incident or the COVID19 campaign.

Significant inaccuracies in QAnon are a problem which can only be addressed through an open effort to identify which parts are accurate. The greater problem is the failure of most intellectuals to condemn the blatant fictions peddled by the New York Times and Washington Post.

In any case, Trump’s willingness as president to take on massive conspiracies is a necessary first step, and much to his credit.

7. Questioning of the legitimacy of the election

We are told over and over again that Biden won the election in a fair and transparent manner and that Trump’s efforts to contest the election are selfish and corrupt. This narrative is a massive fraud.

It is unclear who won that election, or whether it was an election at all. In any case, we should be delighted that Trump is the first candidate who was willing to stand up against the massive manipulation of the vote by corporate powers. We can only wish that Al Gore or John Kerry, or Bernie Sanders, or many others, had had the guts to stand up and refuse to accept the bogus elections that are forced on us.

The 2020 election was fixed from the start. The financial powers that run the United States put out a series of classified directives, and had the Congress pass secret laws that determined who the candidates would be and what topics could, or could not, be discussed.

It is no secret that the Biden camp used every dirty trick in their toolbox to secure the Democratic nomination, including manipulating the vote in the primaries to beat Bernie Sanders.

Why would anyone assume then that the Biden team would not manipulate the vote in a similar manner in the general election—especially in light of the support he received from neoconservatives close to the Bush clan?

In egregious cases like the sudden swing to Biden in Pennsylvania, progressives concerned with the democratic process should have demanded an international investigation that would have documented in a transparent manner the details of the vote. No Democrats have called for even reinstatement of exit polls.

It was to his credit, and not a sign of his selfishness, that Trump refused to concede to the election.

The real crime is that the progressives refused to demand a scientific investigation into the results of the election, rather than throw themselves at the feet of Biden as if he were the reincarnation of Robert Kennedy.

8. Condemnation of endless foreign wars

You know you are in the “Twilight Zone” when progressives who fall all over themselves to condemn Trump for racism and war mongering then fall silent when he, as a sitting president of the United States, condemned the criminal “forever wars” of the last twenty years and attacked the for-profit procurement system for weapons.

Trump comments on September 7, 2020 condemning foreign wars, and denouncing war profiteers, went beyond anything you will find coming out of the mouths of Democrats—and they were not the only such public statement by him. He stated:

“With Biden, shipped away our jobs, threw open our borders and sent our youth to fight in these crazy endless wars. And it’s one of the reasons the military—I’m not saying the military is in love with me, the soldiers are. The top people in the Pentagon probably aren’t because they want to do nothing but fight wars so that all of those wonderful companies that make the bombs, that make the planes, that make everything else stay happy. But we are getting out of the endless wars.”

He ended his comments,

“Let’s bring our soldiers back home. Some people don’t like to come home. Some people like to continue to spend money. One cold-hearted globalist betrayal after another. That’s what it was.”

The entirety of the speech was theatre, and it was not entirely accurate, but Trump managed to slip past the censors a critique of the broken system that no other politician was able to do.

In fact, Trump’s comments are the first attack by a sitting president on that systematic corruption since President Eisenhauer’s condemnation of the “military industrial complex” in his farewell address of January 17, 1961 (almost exactly 60 years ago).

Obama, or Harris, for all their multiculturalism, are incapable of making such a statement because they rose to political power on the backs of private equity and venture capital, organizations that derive much of their cash from weapons sales, the promotion of corporation-centered “free trade” agreements and the tearing down all barriers to global capital’s rampage around the world.

Furthermore, Trump’s own farewell address was pointedly aimed at ordinary soldiers and critical of the political generals who use the military as a means to amass wealth.

His attempt to bond with ordinary soldiers, and to oppose the military profiteers, appears to be a sincere sentiment, and not a political posture.

9. Call to nationalize the Federal Reserve

Donald Trump made a serious effort to bring the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States under the control of the Treasury Department and to reign in the use of American debt by global finance for its own purposes.

How successful that effort to control the creation of money was is difficult to evaluate because the media is controlled by the same financial institutions that dominate the Federal Reserve system. The reports (both pro and anti Trump) are murky and obscure.

Moreover, because financial policy in the Federal Reserve, and in the Treasury Department, is increasingly rendered as classified, it is impossible to have a serious public discussion on fiscal policy.

Trump’s decision to bring in Larry Fink, the CEO of the multi-trillion dollar investment firm BlackRock, to play a central role in the Federal Reserve Bank was at best a Pyrrhic victory.

Trump supporters claim that at least the Rothschilds no longer control the Federal Reserve. I honestly do not know which reports to believe about the status of the Federal Reserve today.

What is clear, however, is that the theft of trillions from the Federal Reserve last year was a reality, and that Trump did try, perhaps unsuccessfully, to do something.

The upcoming show trial of Donald Trump   

Trump paid a price for talking about war profiteering and other criminal conspiracies during the election. He was suddenly diagnosed as positive for COVID19 on October 11 and his campaign was shut down at precisely the moment that was starting to make a discussion of criminal conspiracies central to the campaign.

Source: Emanuel Pastreich

But that was just the beginning of the attack. He was painted in the corporate media as a terrorist leader, like Osama Bin Laden, who incited his racist followers to commit an “armed insurrection.” But the occupation of the Capitol was more of a Laurel and Hardy show than a serious attack or insurrection and multiple reports have raised serious doubts as to what actually transpired. Needless to say, no progressives are asking for an international investigation.

Trump’s lawyers will not be able to address any of the unfair attacks on him by the media during the impeachment trial, nor will they be able to present evidence concerning his contributions to restoring the rule of law in the United States.

Nor will those lawyers be able to demonstrate that the criminal actions that took place during Trump’s administration were for the most part the fault of an executive branch that can no longer be controlled by the president. They cannot describe how Trump was set up for this show trial as a means to draw attention away from greater crimes.

All their efforts must go into defending Trump from the accusation that he masterminded the violent armed insurrection at the Capitol intended to stop the election of Joe Biden as president.

In other words, the door has been opened by this trial to using the full force of the Federal government to treat anyone who questions the vaccine regime, or demand inquiries into conspiracies like 9/11, as a domestic terrorist.

We have an obligation, not just for the sake of Donald Trump, but for the future of our children, to openly condemn this blatantly criminal effort to cook up an “insurrection” and then to blame it on the president.

Source: Emanuel Pastreich and Kim Ki-do

Trump is part professional wrestler, part gameshow host, part mobster. I would not buy a used car from him, but one senses a certain loyalty and decency in him at the same time that he plays a ruthless political game.

He has the humanity and the personal attachments of the gangster. Perhaps Trump was not meant to be president, but he is more transparent than the Democrats who pray in secret at the altar of global finance.

No matter what you may think of his garish taste, his multiple marriages, his sensationalist statements, or of his supporters, Trump took numerous steps to pursue the truth that put him at risk and that deserve our grudging respect.

*

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

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

Featured image is by Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Did The Virus Trigger the 2020 Worldwide Economic Crisis?

February 8th, 2021 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

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.

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LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Last Sunday (January 30th) 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 China. [1]

Three weeks later, on February 20, 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)

 

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

Part One

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.

The Global Research asked him if his research around the H1N1 swine flu in the preceding decade informed his insights into the present situation.)

Michel Chossudovsky: Well, it certainly sets the stage because the WHO was involved in the fraud, and this was actually corroborated, and it even went to the European Parliament. There was a Commission of Inquiry. And they falsified the data on the H1H1. They falsified the impacts. And then they had this big contract with the pharmaceutical industry for the delivery of millions of doses of a vaccine.

And as we recall in Canada, most of those vaccines were dumped because in the process the virus had mutated, they were no longer functional and then the vaccine doses were sent off to developing countries.
Now what developing countries did with those vaccines we don’t know but they were dysfunctional, and we’re talking about millions of doses. And it was discovered of course that this vaccine simply was not functional and could not even be used.

There was no investigation or inquiry in Canada because the government actually spent several hundred million dollars to acquire these vaccines, and then after that, we simply didn’t use them.

So, there is a record of WHO corruption at the highest levels, and that’s on record, and there is also complicity of Big Pharma and of the governments in pushing the vaccine forward.

Now the situation today is somewhat of a different nature, because the pandemic or alleged pandemic is being used to justify drastic economic and social measures which were launched in several stages but more specifically on March 11. 2020.

The governments of 193 countries, members of the United Nations, were ordered to close down their economy as part of the lock-down. In other words, you confine people [in their homes] on the one hand, and then people don’t go to work, so inevitably the economy of the country is partially closed. It’s an engineered recession. It’s the most serious economic crisis in World History. There’s no doubt about that.

Global Research: Actually there were about four separate events that led up – it was in four parts. I think the original part was in January. Could you maybe elaborate on those four steps to economic collapse?

MC: Well, I think the history is very important. And the history reveals the lies. And it reveals a diabolical project. I’ve been following that from the beginning of January 2020.

Now, the first major decision-making process was at Davos, at the World Economic Forum  between the 21st and 24th of January 2020 where they actually discussed a vaccine. And they had been working on the vaccine for several months. We have evidence [statements] to that effect. And the vaccine had already been envisaged on 21-24 of January, at a time when there had been absolutely no announcement of a pandemic.

The only thing that happened was that in early January, the Chinese authorities said that they had identified the virus, and that virus then, of course, became “officially” acknowledged, and that was on the 7th of January.

So two weeks later, the World Economic Forum comes out and says, “ we’ve got a vaccine.” And they had been working on it for several months prior. In fact it went back to the beginning of 2019!

Now, bear in mind that outside China, on the 21st of January, there were virtually no cases of COVID-19, at that time.

GR: And this group just happened to have a vaccine!

MC: [The vaccine was the object of discussion, [the CEO of Moderna presented the mRNA vaccine project]

Then of course on the 30th of January there was a major decision by the World Health Organization by the Director General Tedros who declared a public health emergency of international concern (PHEIC), it was on the 30th of January, it was coupled with something of the order of 83-86 positive cases worldwide outside of China.

Now, anybody who looks at those figures would say, well that does not justify a public health emergency of international concern [PHEIC] with 86 cases out of China!  there were 5  cases in the US, 3 in Canada, 4 in France, 4 in Germany.

Do these numbers justify the declaration of a Worldwide public health emergency?

The fear campaign was sustained by political statements and media disinformation.

Now, the following day, the (former) president of the United States, Donald Trump – makes a statement saying he is suspending air travel with China, and this in a sense was ultimately a trigger mechanism which then led to a crisis in commodity trade and in air travel, and it’s ongoing.

So it started on the 31st of January, and the justification was 5 cases in the U.S.! Okay?

GR: Ha ha.

MC: Five cases in the U.S.! And then you have another stage which is absolutely crucial, that people will remember throughout the world. It’s the financial crash of 2020, which started on February 20th, 2020.

According to analysts, this is the most serious economic collapse in World History. It is far more devastating than the Great Depression of 1929.

GR: And it happened at the same time that the doctor made the announcement of this pandemic in February, correct?

MC: Well, what happened is that on the 20th of February, Tedros, Director General of WHO, makes a statement, he holds a press conference and then he says very explicitly, “the windows are closing”, [he intimates that] the situation is very serious, and we can resolve it but we have to be very proactive.

In other words, he was saying that the situation was tremendously serious and that was a lie! It wasn’t tremendously serious!

There were one thousand and seventy three cases outside of China for a population of 6.4 billion people. Okay?

15 in the US, 8 in Canada, 16 in Germany (see table right)

GR: Yeah.

MC: Now anybody who has an understanding of health indicators or statistics will say that these numbers are ridiculously low.

And I should mention that out of that 1073 cases, approximately sixty per cent came from the Diamond Princess Cruise which was stationed [in Japanese territorial waters] outside the Port of Yokohama.

The people on the ship were confined [to their rooms] and they all got sick, and a lot of them were elderly people. But they took those statistics to push the number of confirmed positive cases up to 1073.

Otherwise it would have be something of the order of 450 cases outside China, out of population of 6.4 billion. billion.

Now, I would say that is a grotesque lie to – if you’re going to say it’s a really serious situation, i.e. we’re going to have a pandemic – well you have to give the figures. They’re about to say – a hundred thousand people there. A hundred thousand there. That did not happen.

No. One thousand and seventy three cases. He acknowledged the figures. Those are WHO figures. They’re undeniable. And what happened? The following day the stock markets collapse.

GR: So you’re saying this is essentially a sense of – a process of basically engineering the collapse. It wasn’t something “Oh! A Stock market crash!” There were some other forces that would push for that to collapse.

MC: Well, you know, the economic analyst will say it’s V the virus that triggered the collapse of the stock markets. Okay? It’s not V the virus! Because there were only a thousand and seventy three cases worldwide outside of China. It wasn’t.

It was the FEAR campaign on the one hand, and it was shear media disinformation and it was conflict of interest – I won’t elaborate on that – between Tedros and powerful financial interests. That financial collapse was engineered.

People had foreknowledge of what Tedros was going to say on the 20th of January, and they had already placed their bets on the stock market, in the hedge funds and, you know, foreknowledge and inside information is the key to money-making on financial markets. Everybody knows that. At least the financial analysts know that. [and it is illegal]

And what happened also is that in the course of that financial crash, there was a process of enrichment which is also unprecedented.

Unprecedented enrichment of the financial establishment. And we know that, of course, the stock market goes down, you speculate. They’re ‘put’ options, okay?  ‘Put’ options, but there are other speculative instruments.

But what I am saying, is that there’s conflict of interest and there is fraud at the highest levels of the financial establishment, and possibly conflict of interest at the level of the World Health Organization.

We can consult the WHO, they have criteria on conflict of interest. But when a scientific statement is made, or when a health emergency is suggested, inevitably this then becomes the bread and butter of the financial establishment. They make money through deception.

GR: Another critical date, of course, as you mentioned earlier is March 11, that was the period during which the lock-downs took place and that again, the wealthy class profited from it.

So, are you saying that we have this collapse that’s fundamentally benefiting the upper class – the billionaire class at the expense of the less wealthy?

MC: Well absolutely what happened on March 11, there was something like forty four thousand cases worldwide outside of China, which is not a large number:

The number of confirmed cases outside China (6.4 billion population) were of the order of  44279 and 1440 deaths (figures recorded by the WHO for March 11, (on March 12) (see table right). (The death figure outside China mentioned in Tedros’s press conference was 4291).

But what was important is that on March 11, which was the official declaration of the pandemic was coupled with a lock-down.

And at the same time the lock-down was to be implemented by freezing or closing down national economies, not totally obviously.

The instructions were transmitted to 193 member states of the United Nations. But there’s a decision making process. Obviously it doesn’t emanate from the World Health Organization. This decision came from higher up, it came from the powers of global capitalism. I won’t get into that at this stage, but I can say first of all as an economist, you don’t resolve a public health crisis by closing down your economy.

First of all, there was no basis for declaring a pandemic with the figures of confirmed cases in early March. Absolutely not! At a time when the situation in China was marked by recovery.

There was no basis for declaring a pandemic on March 11.

But then, if you are to declare a pandemic on March 11, the last thing you do is to close down your economy, because ultimately. you need your economy to sustain, people’s ability to deal with the pandemic!

And what happened on March 11 is that millions and millions of people worldwide were driven into unemployment. Millions of small and medium sized enterprises were driven into bankruptcy. The informal urban sector in developing countries, the self-employed, this is the biggest devastation broadly affecting people worldwide. And somehow, public opinion doesn’t understand that!

You lose your job.

Small and medium sized enterprises go bankrupt.

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! Which is not necessarily corroborated by the figures that I’ve just mentioned.

We had what was called the ‘first wave’ which started in March, and I can say having examined the figures, this has led to mass unemployment, it has led to extreme poverty, and it has led to despair beyond poverty bearing in mind that a large part of the world population is already impoverished. [i.e. in Third World countries.]

When they lose their means of survival, it’s famine.  And the FAO has in fact confirmed that there’s famine in some twenty five countries.

I think it’s much more. All the figures that we get are in a sense conservative, and they don’t address the underlying causality. They don’t tell us that it is the decision on March 11, 2020 which spearheaded global poverty.

I should mention also, because I’ve worked on these issues, that when purchasing power collapses, the first thing that happens in developing countries is under-nourishment at the household level [eventually leading to malnutrition].

People don’t have enough money to buy food. They don’t have enough money to buy essential commodities.

They are in a situation of despair, and if they’re poor and they don’t have savings, they will not be able to pay their rent. If they are middle class, they won’t be able to pay their mortgage or their credit card. In other words, this is a process of social devastation which is unprecedented in World History. And it is hitting every single country on the planet. More than seven billion people.

Now, I can say that because I’ve been studying mechanisms of bankruptcy throughout my career, and I’ve seen ad-hoc mechanisms where creditors come in – IMF, the World Bank come in – and this leads to poverty. But here we have a mechanism which is not even negotiated by a national government with the IMF. It’s a procedure which spreads across the planet and it literally destroys people’s lives

Transcript of Part Two of this Interview with Michel Chossudovsky (Forthcoming)


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

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).

***

On Friday, the International Criminal Court found that it had jurisdiction to consider war crimes and crimes against humanity and the crime of Apartheid in the Palestinian territories.

Israeli politician Abba Eban once quipped that Palestinians never lost the opportunity to lose an opportunity. But Palestinians have carefully, methodically created this opportunity to be heard in an international tribunal. It is the ruling Israeli right wing about which one can now quip about missing opportunities.

Israel has egregiously violated the 1949 Geneva Convention on the treatment of people in Occupied territories by flooding its own citizens into the Palestinian Territories, by stealing Palestinian land from its owners and building squatter settlements on it, and by using disproportional force against Palestinian demonstrators at the Gaza border.

The court will also look into war crimes by Hamas, which was elected in 2006 and retains control of the Gaza Strip.

It has been impossible for anyone to stop Israel’s repeated and serious crimes against the Palestinians because the United States backs them to the hilt and is deeply implicated itself in keeping Palestinians stateless. (The “two-state solution” long since became geographically impossible, and invoking it and an alleged “peace process,” as the Biden administration does, is just a way of keeping the Palestinians from enjoying any human rights).

Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu cynically called the ruling “anti-Semitic,” in the ultimate debasement of a term that has otherwise been central to human rights struggles.

Filistin al-Yawm (Palestine Today) quotes Rami Abdu, head of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor as saying that the International Criminal Court announcement that it has jurisdiction over the Palestinian Territories represents a victory, won by many sacrifices, for justice, freedom and ethical values in the world. It is, he said, the fruit of a Palestinian struggle that has lasted decades to win recognition of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.

As a result, he said, Palestinian victims of Israeli war crimes from various generations will gain the right to seek justice after decades of occupation and to see the perpetrators tried in the Hague. He cautioned, however, that “The decision does not mean the end of the road, and the task will not be easy. The hope is that the Biden administration will adopt a different course from its predecessor, and will refrain from putting any pressure on the court.”

In spring of 2020, Trump declared a national emergency as a pretext for being able to target justices and staff of the International Criminal Court with sanctions because they were looking into alleged crimes by US military personnel in Afghanistan. These outrageous and ineffectual sanctions have been lifted by the Biden administration.

The International Criminal Court was established by the Rome Statute circulated to UN member states in the late 1990s and finalized in 2002. The United States and Israel refused to sign or to recognize the court’s jurisdiction. Some 123 countries have, however, ratified the treaty and so incorporated it into their national law.

The court can take up cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and Apartheid committed by officials in the signatory states. It can apply sanctions to individuals in those governments after trying them. It does not sanction states but individuals. So far its cases have been entirely from Africa.

But the court’s hands are usually tied with regard to non-signatory governments. It cannot move against their officials unless the United Nations Security Council forwards a case to them. Thus, when the murderous regime of Muammar Gaddafi attacked civilians in winter-spring of 2011 during the Arab Spring youth revolt, the Security Council referred the case to the ICC. Its justices considered evidence against Muammar Gaddafi and his son Saif Gaddafi, as well as interior minister Abdullah Sanusi. Arrest warrants were issued by the court for these individuals on June 27, 2011.

The State of Palestine led by Mahmoud Abbas had little hope of the US Security Council asking the ICC to look into Israeli war crimes in the West Bank and Gaza, since the United States almost always uses its veto to protect Israeli officials from sanctions for their illegal occupation policies in the Palestinian Territories that they grabbed beginning in 1967.

The Palestinian David very carefully and with foresight therefore moved to join the International Criminal Court. The first obstacle they faced is that court members have to be members of the United Nations. Since the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the eclipse of Labor in favor of the far, far right Likud and its offshoots, Israel’s policy against the Palestinian people has been predicated on preventing Palestinians from ever having a state. They are to be kept stateless and deprived of the basic human rights that come with citizenship in a state.

So, Palestine sought the same status at the U.N. as is enjoyed by the Vatican, of permanent observer state. The General Assembly can grant this status, and did so for Palestine in 2012. Permanent observer states cannot vote, but they are not voiceless and can attend sessions. Palestine’s prerogatives were expanded in 2019 when the Group of 77 at the UN elected it their chairman that year.

In 2015, the state of Palestine (as the UN calls it) acceded to the International Criminal Court and recognized its jurisdiction in the Palestinian Territories, including East Jerusalem.

This is like three dimensional chess on the part of the Palestinians. Because they now have what is called in the law “standing.” They are a permanent observer state at the UN and they are signatories to the Rome Statute.

Now just one step was left, which was to take to the ICC those Israeli officials operating in the Palestinian Territories in such a way as to violate the Rome Statute. Palestine did not hurry to do so, hoping that the government of Binyamin Netanyahu would see the legal peril and become more reasonable. But Netanyahu kept stealing their land and urging Trump to cut their funding (which he did), and by 2019 the Palestinians concluded that they had nothing left to lose by filing a claim.

The ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, declared a delay while she sought reassurances that the court had jurisdiction over Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

A little over a year later, she has been assured that it does, given the recognition of the Palestine Authority as the government of those region in the Oslo Accords.

As Mr. Abdu said, this step is more the beginning of something rather than its end. Netanyahu will attempt to obstruct the workings of the court. But this is a great day for the international rule of law, and all believers in human rights should rejoice.

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International tribunals tend to be praised, in principle, by those they avoid investigating.  Once interest shifts to those parties, such bodies become the subject of accusations: bias, politicisation, crude arbitrariness.  The United States, whose legal and political personnel have expended vast resources on the machinery of international courts and jurisprudence, remains cold to the International Criminal Court.  The sceptics have tended to win out in Washington, restraining any consent to its jurisdiction. 

The Trump administration made a point of imposing sanctions on court staff, specifically targeting chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, whose entry visa to the US was revoked.  The moves were instigated in response to investigative efforts by the prosecutor into the alleged commission of war crimes by US, Taliban and Afghan forces in Afghanistan. 

Israel has also kept a witheringly hostile eye towards the activities of the ICC.  The acceptance by Palestinian authorities in 2015 of the court’s jurisdiction heralded the next troubling step in scrutinising Israeli actions in the occupied territories.  

In December 2019, Bensouda intimated that there was “a reasonable basis to believe that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip”.  Of interest was the 2014 Israel-Hamas conflict, Israel’s policy of settlements in occupied territory and aggressive responses to protests on the Gaza-Israeli border starting in March 2018. 

Often forgotten by various critics of the court is that Bensouda did not exclusively target the activities of the Israeli Defence Forces; she also included armed Palestinian groups as potential perpetrators of such crimes.  Her concerns were duly formalised in an application to the court as to whether such matters fell within the court’s jurisdiction.  Once resolved, an investigation could commence.

To the ICC pretrial chamber, she submitted “that the Court’s territorial jurisdiction extends to Palestinian territory occupied by Israel during the Six-Day war in June 1967, namely the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza.”  She admitted that the Occupied Palestinian Territory had a “unique history” with the issue of Palestinian statehood having never been definitively resolved.  But the accession of the Palestinians to the Rome Statute was an important factor in her considerations.

In a 2-1 decision, the court found that “Palestine qualifies as ‘the State on the territory of which the conduct in question occurred’ for the purposes” of the Rome Statute.  This was so because Palestine had been accorded the status of a non-Member observer State in the United Nations, and in doing so, “would be able to become party to any treaties that are open to ‘any State’ or ‘all States’ deposited with the [UN] Secretary General”.  Palestine duly had “the right to exercise its prerogatives under the Statute and be treated as any other State Party would.”  It also followed that the territorial jurisdiction of the court “in the Situation in Palestine extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967”. 

The majority, made up of Marc Perrin de Brichambaut of France and Reine Adélaïde Sophie Alapini-Gansou of Benin, were also not convinced that “rulings on territorial jurisdiction necessarily impair a suspect/accused’s right to challenge jurisdiction under Article 19(2)(a) of the Statute.”  (Article 19 covers, in its entirety, challenges to the jurisdiction of the ICC or the admissible nature of a case.)

The response from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was one aged in the barrels of Israeli foreign policy for years: criticism of its military actions could only mean one thing.  “When the ICC investigates Israel for fake war crimes, this is pure anti-Semitism,” he raged in a video statement.  “The court established to prevent atrocities like the Nazi Holocaust against the Jewish people is now targeting the one state of the Jewish people.”  The court was investigating Israel for actions undertaken in pure defence “against terrorists” whilst ignoring the vicious activities of Iran and Syria.  “We will fight this perversion of justice with all our might.”

Israel’s Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan similarly rebuked the ICC for its “distorted and anti-Semitic decision.”  It was “an attack on Israel and all democracies, undermining our ability to defend civilians against terrorism.”  Drawing in the country’s closest ally, Erdan claimed that it was “no accident that both Israel and the United States have refrained from becoming members of this biased and political institution.”

Despite such conflating bluster, much needs to still take place.  Bensouda’s term ends in June and her replacement may see things differently.  The nature of responsibility being investigated also poses difficulties.  ICC defence attorney Nick Kaufman raises a few points.  The use of any disproportionate use of military force is one thing; investigating “the alleged criminality of the settlement enterprise, which has been considered part of Israeli government policy for generations” raises another set of hurdles.  The biggest problem is obtaining probative evidence “that connects the decision makers with the crimes that were allegedly committed.”

US President Joe Biden and the State Department under Antony Blinken are unlikely to be as vicious as the Trump administration towards the ICC, but remain clear about keeping Israel out of the international court’s judicial orbit.  Last month, a State Department spokesman promised that the administration would be revisiting the sanctions regime.  “Much as we disagree with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and the Israeli/Palestinian situations, the sanctions will be thoroughly reviewed as we determine our next steps.”  The Biden administration promises “to help the court better achieve its core mission of punishing and deterring atrocity crimes” with the prospect of even assisting in “exceptional cases”.    

The ICC decision was not one of those cases.  “The United States objects to today’s International Criminal Court decision regarding the Palestinian situation,” came the solemn words of State Department spokesman Ned Price.  “Israel is not a State Party to the Rome Statute.”  Price promised that the US would “continue to uphold President Biden’s strong commitment to Israel and its security, including opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly.”

A formal statement from the State Department took issue with what it considered an overreach of the ICC in attempting to exercise 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.”

Such statements signal a possible frustration of future investigative efforts, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union’s Jamil Dakwar to issue a reminder.  “It’s important to remember that the ICC investigation would also target Palestinian perpetrators of war crimes in the context of hostilities between Israel and Palestinian armed groups, especially in the Gaza Strip.”

Palestinian sources have been all praise for the decision.  The Palestinian Foreign Ministry called it a “historical day for the principle of accountability.”  Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh considered the ruling “a victory for justice and humanity, for the values of truth, fairness and freedom, and for the blood of the victims and their families.” 

Hamas official Sami Abu Zuhri was also pleased, though decided to take from the ruling a very convenient reading.  “We urge the international court to launch an investigation into Israeli war crimes against the Palestinian people.”  His tune, and that of Hamas, may well change once the investigation gets going. 

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

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The following is the full text of a letter published and co-signed by over five dozen British academics, rejecting the UK government’s adoption of the IHRA’s ‘working definition of antisemitism’.

The British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES), Britain’s leading academic organisation for the study of the Middle East and North Africa, also expressed concern about the pressure applied on universities by the UK government to adopt the IHRA definition. According to BRISMES, the government’s reliance on “what many in the academic community consider a faulty definition of antisemitism – will have a chilling effect on academic freedom and the university sector in Middle East Studies and beyond”. Read the full statement by BRIMES here.

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​We, British Academics who are also Israeli citizens, strongly oppose the governmental imposition of the IHRA ‘working definition of antisemitism’ on Universities in England. We call on all academic senates to reject the IHRA document or, where adopted already, act to revoke it.

​We represent a diverse cross-disciplinary, cross-ethnic, and cross-generational group. We all share an extended history of struggles against racism. Accordingly, we have been critical of Israel’s prolonged policies of occupation, dispossession, segregation, and discrimination directed at the Palestinian population. Our historical and political perspective is deeply informed by the multiple genocides of modern times, and in particular, the Holocaust, in which quite a few of us lost members of our extended families. The lesson we are determined to draw from history is that of a committed struggle against all forms of racism.

​It is precisely because of these personal, scholarly, and political perspectives that we are perturbed by the letter sent to our Vice Chancellors by Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, on 9 October 2020. Explicitly threatening to withhold funds, the letter pressures universities to adopt the controversial ‘working definition of antisemitism’ originally proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). Fighting antisemitism in all its forms is an absolute must. Yet, the IHRA document is inherently flawed in ways that undermine this fight. In addition, it threatens free speech and academic freedom, and constitutes an attack both on the Palestinian right to self-determination and the struggle to democratise Israel.

​The IHRA document has been extensively criticised on numerous occasions. Here, we touch on some of its aspects that are particularly distressing in the higher education context. The document consists of two parts. The first, quoted in Williamson’s letter, is a ‘definition’ of antisemitism, which reads as follows:

Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.

​This formulation is both vague in language and lacking in content, to the point of being unusable. On the one hand, it relies on unclear terms such as ‘certain perception’ and ‘may be expressed as hatred.’ On the other hand, it fails to mention key issues such as ‘prejudice’ or ‘discrimination.’ Crucially, this ‘definition’ is considerably weaker and less effective than anti-racist regulations and laws already in force, or in development, in the university sector.​

Moreover, the government’s pressure on higher education institutions to adopt a definition for only one sort of racism singles out people of Jewish descent as deserving greater protection than others who regularly endure equal or more grievous manifestations of racism and discrimination. ​

The second part of the IHRA document presents what it describes as eleven examples of contemporary antisemitism, seven of which refer to the State of Israel. Some of these ‘examples’ mischaracterise antisemitism. They likewise have a chilling effect on University staff and students legitimately wishing to criticise Israel’s oppression of Palestinians or to study the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Finally, they interfere with our right as Israeli citizens to participate freely in the Israeli political process.​

To illustrate, one example of antisemitism is ‘[to claim] that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour.’ Another antisemitic act, according to the document, is ‘requiring of [Israel] … a behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.’ Surely, it should be legitimate, not least in a university setting, to debate whether Israel, as a self-proclaimed Jewish State, is ‘a racist endeavour,’ or a ‘democratic nation.’​

Currently, the population under Israel’s control comprises 14 million people. Nearly 5 million of those are devoid of basic rights. Of the remaining 9 million, 21 percent (circa 1.8 million) have been systematically discriminated against since the establishment of the state. This discrimination manifests itself in dozens of laws and policies concerning property rights, education, and access to land and resources. All 6.8 million people thus prevented from full democratic access are non-Jews. An emblematic illustration is the Law of Return, which entitles all Jews – and only Jews – living anywhere in the world to migrate to Israel and acquire Israeli citizenship, a right extendable to descendants and spouses. At the same time, millions of Palestinians and their descendants, who have been displaced or exiled, are denied the right to return to their homeland.​

Such discriminatory legislation and state practices in other contemporary or historical political systems – ranging from China to the USA or Australia – are legitimately and regularly scrutinised by scholars and the general public. They are variously criticised as forms of institutional racism, and compared to certain fascist regimes, including that of pre-1939 Germany. Indeed, historical analogies are a standard tool in academic research. However, according to the Education Secretary, only those concerning the State of Israel are now forbidden to scholars and students in England. No state should be shielded from such legitimate scholarly discussion.

Furthermore, while the IHRA document considers any comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis a form of antisemitism, many in the Israeli political centre and left have often drawn such comparisons. One recent example is a statement made by Yair Golan, Member of Knesset (Israeli parliament) and former Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Israeli military, in 2016. Another is the comparison between Israel and ‘Nazism in its early stages’ made in 2018 by the Israel Prize Laureate Professor Zeev Sternhell, a renowned Israeli historian and political scientist who was, until his recent death, a world leading theorist of fascism. Such comparisons are also made regularly by the editorials of the leading Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

​The use of such analogies is hardly new. To illustrate, in late 1948, a prominent group of Jewish intellectuals and Rabbis, including Albert Einstein and Hannah Arendt, published a long analysis in the NYT accusing Menachem Begin (Israel’s future prime minister) of leading ‘a political party closely akin in its organization, methods, political philosophy and social appeal to the Nazi and Fascist parties.’

​With its eleven ‘illustrations,’ the IHRA document has already been used to repress freedom of speech and academic freedom (see here, here, and here). Alarmingly, it has served to frame the struggle against Israel’s occupation and dispossession as antisemitic. As recently stated in a letter to the Guardian by 122 Palestinian and Arab intellectuals:

We believe that no right to self-determination should include the right to uproot another people and prevent them from returning to their land, or any other means of securing a demographic majority within the state. The demand by Palestinians for their right of return to the land from which they themselves, their parents and their grandparents were expelled cannot be construed as antisemitic… It is a right recognized by international law as represented in UN general assembly resolution 194 of 1948… To level a charge of antisemitism against anyone who regards the existing state of Israel as racist, notwithstanding the actual institutional and constitutional discrimination upon which it is based, amounts to granting Israel absolute impunity.

In her recent letter endorsing the imposition of the IHRA document on universities in England, Kate Green, MP and Shadow Secretary of State for Education, states that ‘We can only [fight antisemitism] by listening to and engaging with the Jewish community.’ However, as Israeli citizens settled in the UK, many of Jewish descent, and alongside many in the UK’s Jewish community, we demand that our voice, too, be heard, and we believe that the IHRA document is a step in the wrong direction. It singles out the persecution of Jews; it inhibits free speech and academic freedom; it deprives Palestinians of their own legitimate voice within the UK public space; and, finally, it inhibits us, as Israeli nationals, from exercising our democratic right to challenge our own government.

​For these and other reasons, even the lead drafter of the IHRA, Kenneth Stern, publicly warned:

Right-wing Jewish groups took the “working definition”, which had some examples about Israel …, and decided to weaponize it. … [This document] was never intended to be a campus hate speech code … but [at the hands of the Right it has been used as] an attack on academic freedom and free speech, and will harm not only pro-Palestinian advocates, but also Jewish students and faculty, and the academy itself. … I’m a Zionist. But on … campus, where the purpose is to explore ideas, anti-Zionists have a right to free expression. … Further, there’s a debate inside the Jewish community whether being Jewish requires one to be a Zionist. I don’t know if this question can be resolved, but it should frighten all Jews that the government is essentially defining the answer for us. (The Guardian, 13 Dec. 2019).

These concerns are shared by many others, amongst whom are hundreds of UK students, scholars of antisemitism and racism, and numerous Palestinian, Jewish, and social justice groups and organisations in the UK and around the world, such as the Institute of Race Relations, civil rights organisation Liberty, former Court of Appeal Judge Sir Stephen Sedley, and Rabbi Laura Janner-Klausner.

​We join in the demand that UK universities remain firm in their commitment to academic freedom and freedom of speech. We urge UK universities to continue their fight against all forms of racism, including antisemitism. The flawed IHRA document does a disservice to these goals. We therefore call on all academic senates in England to reject the governmental decree to adopt it, or, where adopted already, act to revoke it.

Signatories

  1. ​Prof. Hagit Borer FBA, Queen Mary University of London
  2. Dr. Moshe Behar, University of Manchester
  3. Dr. Yonatan Shemmer, University of Sheffield
  4. Dr. Hedi Viterbo, Queen Mary University of London
  5. Dr. Yael Friedman, University of Portsmouth
  6. Dr. Ophira Gamliel, University of Glasgow
  7. Dr. Moriel Ram, Newcastle University
  8. Prof. Neve Gordon, Queen Mary University of London
  9. Prof. Emeritus Moshé Machover, King’s College London
  10. Dr. Catherine Rottenberg, University of Nottingham
  11. PhD Candidate Daphna Baram, Lancaster University
  12. Dr. Yuval Evri, King’s College London
  13. Dr. Yohai Hakak, Brunel University London
  14. Dr. Judit Druks, University College London
  15. PhD Candidate Edith Pick, Queen Mary University of London
  16. Prof. Emeritus Avi Shlaim FBA, Oxford University
  17. Dr. Merav Amir, Queen’s University Belfast
  18. Dr. Hagar Kotef, SOAS, University of London
  19. Prof. Emerita, Nira Yuval-Davis, University of East London
    2018 International Sociological Association Distinguished Award for Excellence in Research and Practice.
  20. Dr. Assaf Givati, King’s College London
  21. Prof. Yossef Rapoport, Queen Mary University of London
  22. Prof. Haim Yacobi, University College London
  23. Prof. Gilat Levy, London School of Economics
  24. Dr. Noam Leshem, Durham University
  25. Haim Bresheeth, SOAS, University of London
  26. Dr. Chana Morgenstern, University of Cambridge
  27. Prof. Amir Paz-Fuchs, University of Sussex
  28. PhD Candidate Maayan Niezna, University of Kent
  29. Prof. Emeritus, Ephraim Nimnie, Queen’s University Belfast
  30. Dr. Eytan Zweig, University of York
  31. Dr. Anat Pick, Queen Mary, University of London
  32. Prof. Joseph Raz FBA, KCL
    Winner of Tang Prize for the Rule of Law 2018
  33. Dr. Itamar Kastner, University of Edinburgh
  34. Prof. Dori Kimel, University of Oxford
  35. Prof. Eyal Weizman MBE FBA, Goldsmiths, University of London
  36. Dr. Daniel Mann, King’s College London
  37. Dr. Shaul Bar-Haim, University of Essex
  38. Dr. Idit Nathan, University of the Arts London
  39. Dr. Ariel Caine, Goldsmiths University of London
  40. Prof. Ilan Pappe, University of Exeter
  41. Prof. Oreet Ashery, University of Oxford
    Turner Bursary 2020
  42. Dr. Jon Simons, Retired
  43. Dr. Noam Maggor, Queen Mary University of London
  44. Dr. Pil Kollectiv, University of Reading, Fellow of the HEA
  45. Dr. Galia Kollectiv, University of Reading, Fellow of the HEA
  46. Dr. Maayan Geva, University of Roehampton
  47. Dr. Adi Kuntsman, Manchester Metropolitan University
  48. Dr. Shaul Mitelpunkt, University of York
  49. Dr. Daniel Rubinstein, Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts, London
  50. Dr. Tamar Keren-Portnoy, University of York
  51. Dr. Yael Padan, University College London
  52. Dr. Roman Vater, University of Cambridge
  53. Dr. Shai Kassirer, University Of Brighton
  54. PhD Candidate Shira Wachsmann, Royal College of Art
  55. Prof. Oren Yiftachel, University College London
  56. Prof. Erez Levon, Queen Mary University of London
  57. Prof. Amos Paran, University College London
  58. Dr. Raz Weiner, Queen Mary University of London
  59. Dr. Deborah Talmi, University of Cambridge
  60. Dr. Emerita Susie Malka Kaneti Barry, Brunel University
  61. PhD Candidate Ronit Matar, University of Essex
  62. PhD Candidate Michal Rotem, Queen Mary University of London

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New Vision and Leadership of the African Union

February 8th, 2021 by Kester Kenn Klomegah

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The African Union (AU) has held a two-day summit to elect new team, and to discuss a wide range of issues including a rise in coronavirus infections, border disputes and displacement due to fighting.

At the virtual 34th Ordinary Session of the Assembly, Felix-Antoine Tshisekedi, the President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, took over the rotating AU Chairmanship from his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa.

The pan-African body’s assembly elected high-level officials to lead the African Union Commission. Moussa Faki was re-elected for the second term as AUC Chairperson following the end of his first term tenure (2017-2020). The Chairperson of the AU Commission is elected by the Assembly for a four-year term, renewable once.

The Chairperson of the AU Commission is the Chief Executive Officer, legal representative of the AU and the Commission’s Chief Accounting Officer.

Moussa Faki is now deputized by Dr. Monique Nsanzabaganwa from Rwanda. Dr. Nsanzabaganwa secured the majority of votes in a highly contested position, which saw two other female candidates contested for the post. Dr. Nsanzabaganwa becomes the first female to occupy the position of the Deputy Chairperson.

Election of the AU Commission Chairperson and Deputy Chairperson by the Assembly is conducted by secret ballot and a two-thirds majority of Member States eligible to vote. The 2021- 2024 elections of senior leadership for the AU Commission also saw the elections of Commissioners which was undertaken by the Executive Council.

The Executive Council elects the Commissioners, who are then appointed by the Assembly. Commissioners are elected for four years, renewable once.

In line with the Institutional Reforms of the African Union and the goal to improve the efficacy of program implementation, the portfolios of Commissioners were reduced from eight to six

The Executive Council on 6th February 2021 elected the following Commissioners

Amb. Bankole Adeoye (Nigeria) elected to head Political Affairs, Peace and Security docket.

Ms. Josefa Sacko (Angola), re-elected to head Agriculture, Rural Development, Blue Economy and Sustainable Environment.

Amb. Albert Muchanga (Zambia) re-elected to head Economic Development, Trade, Industry and Mining.

Dr. Amani Abou-Zeid (Egypt) re-elected to head Infrastructure and Energy docket.

Elections for the posts of Commissioner Health, Humanitarian Affairs and Social Development and Commissioner Education, Science, Technology and Innovation were postponed to the next meeting of the Executive Council.

The incumbent Commissioners Ms. Amira Elfadil Mohammed (Sudan) and Prof. Sarah Agbor (Cameroon) respectively, will continue to serve in their current positions until the elections are conducted.

In his handing over speech, President Ramaphosa wished the new AU Chairperson, a successful Chairmanship and thanked the Heads of States of AU Member States as well as the AU outgoing bureau, for their support during the tenure of his mandate which he said, was marked by the prevailing sanitary crisis caused by the COVID19 pandemic.

President Ramaphosa highlighted some of the achievements under his chairmanship of the Union notably, the efforts to reduce conflict in the continent under the theme of silencing the guns; the economic empowerment of the women and youths, the enhancement of democracy and good governance, among other development programs under Agenda 2063.

In his acceptance speech, President Tshisekedi said it is a unique privilege for the Democratic Republic of the Congo be given this opportunity as Chair of the African Union at a symbolic and highly significant moment when “we are celebrating the sixty years of the disappearance of a worthy son of the Congo and Africa, Patrice Émery Lumumba, who strongly believed in the great destiny of Africa.

He did not hesitate to organize, in August 1960 in Kinshasa, then Leopoldville, the last Congress in the history of the great movement of Pan-Africanism. On June 30, 1960, shortly before his tragic death, he declared: “Africa will write its own history and it will be in the north and south of the Sahara, a history of glory and dignity”.

The incoming Chair of the Union commended President Cyril Ramaphosa, who, in difficult conditions due to the Covid-19 pandemic, was able to mobilize the efforts of all the countries of the continent and partners to face this challenging moment.

Highlighting the theme of the year 2021, the new AU Chairperson Tshisekedi said, Arts, Culture and Heritage constitute the foundation of the African renaissance and offers the opportunity for Africans to return to our roots. Culture is indeed, as Léopold Sédar Senghor said, at the beginning and at the end of everything, because it embraces all areas of life.

The African Union spearheads Africa’s development and integration in close collaboration with African Union Member States, the Regional Economic Communities and African citizens. The AU vision is to accelerate progress towards an integrated, prosperous and inclusive Africa, at peace with itself, playing a dynamic role in the continental and global arena, effectively driven by an accountable, efficient and responsive Commission.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who previously worked with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a frequent and passionate contributor to Global Research.

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The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Friday declared the court has jurisdiction over war crimes committed in the Palestinian territories.  “The Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine … extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967, namely Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem,” the ICC Judges said.

“Today, Pre-Trial Chamber I of ICC decided, by the majority, that the Court’s territorial jurisdiction in the Situation in Palestine, a State party to the ICC Rome Statute, extends to the territories occupied by Israel since 1967,” ICC said in a statement.

The ICC announcement clears its chief prosecutor to investigate alleged atrocities despite fierce Israeli objections.

The mandate of the ICC is to prosecute people, not countries, including those from states that are not signatories, as long as one party has signed the international treaty, which Palestine did in 2015, while Israel has not signed. Palestine used its UN observer state status, gained in 2012, to join the ICC.

Palestine’s status as an occupied territory rather than a sovereign country had prompted Fatou Bensouda, the ICC chief prosecutor, to wait for confirmation from the judges of the court, headquartered in The Hague, if the ICC had the authority. Bensouda now intends to open a formal inquiry into alleged war crimes in the occupied West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.

The case could include the alleged killings by Israeli soldiers of more than 200 Palestinians, including more than 40 children, at demonstrations along the Gaza frontier in 2018.

War crimes, and ethnic cleansing, may have occurred when Israeli authorities moved Israeli civilians into the West Bank to live in settlements, which were against international law. The majority of those Israeli settlers are American born US citizens. The Geneva Convention prohibits the transfer of civilians into occupied land.

Bensouda, a Gambian lawyer, has said she would investigate both the Israeli military as well as the Palestinian armed groups.

In late 2019, Benouda announced that her office “has concluded with the determination that all the statutory criteria under the Rome statute for the opening of an investigation have been met”, and added, “In brief, I am satisfied that war crimes have been or are being committed in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip.”

Palestine, recognized officially as the State of Palestine by the UN and other entities, is a de jure sovereign state in Western Asia claiming the West Bank and Gaza Strip with Jerusalem as the designated capital, although its administrative center is currently located in Ramallah. The population as of 2019 was about 4.685 million.

Human rights response

“It’s high time that Israeli and Palestinian perpetrators of the gravest abuses – whether war crimes committed during hostilities or the expansion of unlawful settlements – face justice,” said Balkees Jarrah, associate international justice director of Human Rights Watch.

The Israeli response

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denounced the decision, saying in a video statement: “When the ICC investigates Israel for fake war crimes, this is pure antisemitism.” The Israeli government often hides behind the “anti-Semitic” claim in a strategy to absolve claims of war crimes.

“We will fight this perversion of justice with all our might,” Netanyahu said in a video, shaking a fist. He condemned the ICC while labeling all Palestinians as terrorists.

Netanyahu said the country would “protect our citizens and soldiers in every way from legal persecution”. The Israeli government has argued that as Palestine is not a fully-fledged state, it should not be allowed to petition the court. However, the UN declared Palestine observer state status in 2012.

Netanyahu could block ICC officials from entering the Palestinian Territories, which could hamper its work because Israel controls access to the West Bank and Jerusalem, an incontrovertible display of being the military occupier of Palestine.

In late 2019, Israel’s attorney general, Avichai Mandelblit, argued that the ICC had no jurisdiction in the West Bank or Gaza.

Netanyahu, who described the decision as a “black day for truth and justice” and a “baseless and scandalous decision”.

The US response

Former US President Donald Trump’s administration used sanctions against the ICC to block an ICC investigation into the conduct of US troops in Afghanistan.

US state department spokesman Ned Price said Washington had “serious concerns” over Friday’s ICC ruling, and wrote on Twitter: “The United States objects to today’s @IntlCrimCourt decision regarding the Palestinian situation.”

“We will continue to uphold President Biden’s strong commitment to Israel and its security, including opposing actions that seek to target Israel unfairly,”

Price added. Some analysts had thought US President Joe Biden might be fair and balanced in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but it would appear he is set to continue Trump’s blind support for Israel.  President Biden is setting the tone of his administration, advocating old alliances, even in the face of war crime allegations, and un-ending military occupation. After all, the US military under Biden’s command is occupying both Iraq and Syria. Recently, Biden explained his foreign policy would depend on diplomacy and democracy. However, standing against the investigation of war crimes is not democratic.

Palestinian response

Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the decision carried the message that crimes committed would not be dropped and that perpetrators would not go unpunished.

Hussein al-Sheikh, the Palestinian Authority’s civil affairs minister, said on Twitter that the ruling was “a victory for rights, justice, freedom and moral values in the world”.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) welcomes the ruling that could see prosecution of Israeli officials and military as well as Hamas figures.

UN position

The UN General Assembly in Resolution 67/19 “[reaffirmed] the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and independence in their State of Palestine on the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967,” it said.

Based on the relevant UN resolution, the ICC found that the Court has territorial jurisdiction in Gaza City and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Palestinian territories, including the West Bank and East Jerusalem, have been under Israeli occupation since 1967. The occupation is considered illegal under international law.

Covid-19 vaccine 

Israel became the world leader in vaccinating its population against Covid-19, but almost all Palestinian residents of the occupied West Bank are still waiting for their vaccine.

Israel, with a population of about 9.2 million has already inoculated more than 3.3 million people with a first dose. They include a substantial percentage of the roughly 450,000 settlers, who live in occupied Palestine, against international law.

The Fourth Geneva Convention, states occupying powers hold a duty to ensure the public health of people living under occupation to “the fullest extent” possible, especially concerning combating epidemics and diseases.

Israeli officials have said that it has no legal responsibility to provide vaccines to Palestinians.

Occupied Palestine

The occupation of Palestine has lasted indefinitely, with no end in sight, after five decades. Full control over the lives of Palestinians lays in the hands of the Israeli military and is reinforced by the threat of use of force.

In contravention of international law, Israel continues to build parts of the wall/fence in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, expand settlements and restrict the movement of Palestinians with some 600 roadblocks and checkpoints. Amnesty International is also concerned about discriminatory policies affecting access to water for Palestinians.

Israel controls The Gaza Strip, controlling all but one of the crossings into Gaza, the airspace, territorial waters, telecommunications, and the population registry which determines who is allowed to leave or enter Gaza. Israel is the occupying power and is responsible for the welfare of the inhabitants in the strip under international humanitarian law. The Gaza Strip has been under increasing restrictions since 2005 when Israel unilaterally pulled troops and settlers out of the strip.  In June 2007, restrictions tightened to an almost air-tight blockade, deepening the hardship there and virtually imprisoning the entire population of some 2 million.

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Steven Sahiounie is an award-winning journalist.

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Shrinking Ireland: Global Warning in Local Communities

February 8th, 2021 by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

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***

A recent walk at a local beach revealed to me how fast coastal erosion is affecting local communities. This area where I live is essentially a peninsula with two large popular beaches, Donabate beach and Portrane beach which are joined by cliffs, on the coast of north County Dublin, Ireland.

I have already written about erosion at Donabate beach and erosion at the cliffs over the years but, in a far worse condition, is Portrane beach.

As can be seen from photos I took in 2013 compared with the ones I took a few days ago, coastal erosion is happening at a significant rate.

Portrane Beach (looking south), 2013 (Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

Portrane Beach (looking south), 2021 (Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

According to one local resident, David Shevlin,

““We live in the midsection of the beach and our property has lost upwards of about 20 metres of established garden since 2018. […] At the current rate of erosion, our garden was 30 metres and it’s gone to 20 metres in two years so it doesn’t take much to calculate that we don’t have very long.”

Portrane Beach (looking north), 2013 (Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

Portrane Beach (looking north), 2021 (Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

The local council has tried to stem the rate of erosion with concrete Seabees before more permanent groynes are constructed. A groyne is a structure built perpendicular to the shore, that interrupts water flow and limits the movement of sediment and can be made out of wood, concrete, or stone. According to a local spokesman the Seabees will be “an interim solution pending the installation of specially designed Y-shaped groynes structures which will be complemented by a beach renourishment scheme in order to achieve a suitable beach level. This will reduce incident wave energy along the coastline by limiting the prevailing water depth and thus mitigating the threat of erosion.”

The seriousness of the problem can be seen as the Seabees are almost completely submerged at high tides.

Seabees, Portrane Beach, 2021 (Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

The Housing and Planning Minister, Darragh O’Brien, has commented that:

“Around Ireland, it’s projected that by 2050, the impact of coastal erosion could potentially affect up to 2 million people who live within 5km of the coast, all the major cities, and much of the country’s industry and infrastructure and utilities, including transport, electricity and water supplies.”

A European Commission document describes Irish vulnerability to climate change:

“Ireland is the third largest European island. It is situated at the north-west of continental Europe. The coastline measures 4 577 km, bordering the Atlantic Ocean on the north-west and the Irish Sea on the south-east.  More  than  50%  of  the  population  lives  within  15km  of  the  Irish  coastline.  Most  of  the  population  is  concentrated  in  cities,  with  the  major  coastal  cities  being  Dublin,  Cork,  Limerick  and  Galway.”

They further note that:

“Approximately  20%  of  Ireland’s  entire  coast  is  at  risk  of  erosion.  Sea  Level  Rise  (SLR)  combined  with  an  increase  in  severity  and  frequency  of  coastal  storms  is  expected  to  exacerbate  the  problems,  especially  along  the  Atlantic  coast.”

Portrane Beach, 2021 (Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

Historically, vertical seawalls were common but now flat-sloped revetments (sloping structures placed on banks or cliffs in such a way as to absorb the energy of incoming water) using rock or unusual shaped concrete units are used to reduce impact on beaches.

It is interesting to see that

“in the US hard structures such as revetments and groynes are no longer allowed in many states because of potential negative impacts on the beach and coastal protection is provided by nourishing the beach with sand brought in from external sources. This is called beach nourishment and is now the most common method of coastal protection worldwide but is rarely used in Ireland and it needs to be repeated every three to five years to replenish lost sand. This recurring cost does not fit well with how Irish projects are funded.”

Portrane Beach, 2021 (Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

It can be seen that engineers are under serious pressure to come up with new ideas to deal with coastal erosion and, maybe over time and with more experience and newer technology, they will be able to limit erosion with more success. However, we know the seas are rising and despite efforts to hold back the waters, it seems that what is really needed is global action now before large swathes of the planet become uninhabitable.

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

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

Featured image: Portrane Beach, 2021 (Photo: Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin)

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***

George Orwells berühmtes Zitat „Falls Freiheit überhaupt etwas bedeutet, dann bedeutet sie das Recht darauf, den Leuten das zu sagen, was sie nicht hören wollen“ stammt aus dem Vorwort seiner im August 1945 erschienenen dystopischen Fabel „Farm der Tiere: ein Märchen“.

Die schweigende Mehrheit der Bürger weltweit wird mit dem Autor darin übereinstimmen, dass unsere Kinder ein Anrecht auf eine menschenwürdige Zukunft haben. Jedoch wird sie nicht hören wollen, dass sie durch ihr Schweigen unserer heutigen Jugend eine lebenswerte Zukunft verwehrt. Ursache ist ihre Autoritätsgläubigkeit und -hörigkeit, die zum totalen geistigen Gehorsam, zur Verstandeslähmung und zum Nichtstun führt.

Das, was die rebellische 68er-Generation ihren Vätern vorwarf, dass sie sich einem Diktator und einer Tyrannei willenslos unterworfen hätten, das geschieht drei Generationen später wieder. Und wieder leistet nur eine kleine Gruppe mutiger und aufgewachter Bürgerinnen und Bürger Widerstand – und die große Mehrheit schläft und schweigt.

In den Wind gesprochen 

Seit Beginn der von langer Hand geplanten Angst-Pandemie Anfang 2020 weisen unabhängige und angesehene internationale Forscher und namhafte Persönlichkeiten darauf hin, dass es kein medizinisches Problem gibt, sondern ausschließlich ein politisches. Eine globale kriminelle Elite hat sich zum Ziel gesetzt, die Menschheit mithilfe gekaufter Politiker und ihrer Konzernmedien in Angst und Schrecken zu versetzen, um sie zum absoluten Gehorsam zu zwingen. Einige dieser Methoden wurden von Geheimdiensten mit „Erfolg“ erprobt.

Die Angststarre vieler Menschen ermöglicht es dieser kleinen Gruppe von Billionären und sogenannten Philanthropen, die seit langem geplanten und gegen die Zivilbevölkerung gerichteten Pläne einer „Neuen Weltordnung“ und einer „4. Industriellen Revolution“ ohne nennenswerten Widerstand durchzusetzen – mit ungeahnten negativen Konsequenzen für uns Bürger. Die „eingebetteten“ Massenmedien lassen diese ehrlichen Aufklärer mit ihren vom Mainstream abweichenden Meinungen nicht nur nicht zu Wort kommen, sondern sie verhöhnen sie auch noch als Verschwörungstheoretiker und Feinde der Demokratie.

Welche Art von Zukunft die Menschheit zu erwarten hat, wenn es nicht gelingt, diesen Wahnsinn zu stoppen, kann jeder Interessierte in den frei zugänglichen alternativen Internetplattformen nachlesen und nachhören. Zu nennen sind unter anderem die „Neue Rheinische Zeitung (NRhZ)“, „Rubikon“ und „Global Research (GR)“ aus Kanada. Es steht außer Zweifel, dass die geplante neue Welt eine Welt sein wird, in der weder wir selbst noch unsere Jugend leben wollen. Es soll ein Sklavenleben sein, das man nur ertragen kann, wenn man die zukünftige Menschheit durch Propaganda oder Gehirnwäsche oder durch pharmakologische Methoden ruhigstellt, wodurch jeder Wunsch nach Rebellion erstickt wird. Aldous Huxley hat diese Zukunft in seinem Essay „Schöne neue Welt“ eindrücklich und weit in die Zukunft schauend beschrieben.

Aufgrund der erwähnten Einstellungen und Verhaltensweisen der großen Mehrheit haben es freie Geister sehr schwer, sich bei den Mitmenschen mit ihrer abweichenden Meinung Gehör zu verschaffen. Die Mechanismen des teils unbewussten inneren Widerstands der autoritätshörigen Mitbürger sind vielfältig und fast unüberwindlich. Ihre Argumente, Ausreden, Verdächtigungen und Verhaltensweisen erinnern an Erzählungen aus der Zeit des europäischen Faschismus.

Das lange Zeit gehegte Vertrauen in altbewährte und sichere Freundschaften hat plötzlich keinen Bestand mehr; man stellt sich taub, steckt den Kopf in den Sand, weiß es besser, verharmlost, macht den anderen verächtlich, verleumdet ihn – und so weiter und so fort. Vieles ist deshalb in den Wind gesprochen. Wie kann sich bei dieser verrückten Gemengelage ein solidarischer Widerstand aufbauen?

Alleine die unzähligen Besitzer kleiner und mittelständischer Betriebe und Geschäfte sowie die vernachlässigten Pflegeheimbewohner, die vereinsamten, depressiv und suizidal gewordenen Kinder, Jugendlichen und Erwachsenen und viele unvoreingenommene Krankenschwestern und Jugendpsychiater wissen, wovon man spricht und sind für jede solidarische Stimme und Unterstützung dankbar.

Die Leidensfähigkeit der schweigenden Mehrheit ist groß

Diejenigen Mitbürger, die aus Angst oder politischem Opportunismus schweigen und sich gleichzeitig moralisch über die freien Aufklärer stellen, kommen den korrupten Politiker sehr entgegen. Meist unterstützen sie auch noch lautstark deren illegale Verordnungen wie die der Freiheitsberaubung. Um die gegenwärtige Angst-Pandemie möglichst heil zu überleben, wollen sie nicht auffallen, fügen sich den irrsinnigsten Anweisungen der Politiker und Medizinmänner und machen jeden Wahnsinn mit.

Nach Auskunft eines Whistleblowers sollen Mitglieder der globalen kriminellen Elite selbstgefällig und zufrieden geäußert haben, dass Duldsamkeit und Leidensfähigkeit – speziell der deutschen – Bevölkerung sehr groß seien. Deshalb, so ihre Schlussfolgerung, könne man die Geschwindigkeit, mit der die diabolischen Pläne umgesetzt werden, erhöhen.

Erst dann, wenn die Mitglieder der selbstgenügsam vor sich hin schlafenden schweigenden Mehrheit ganz persönlich und direkt von den politisch verordneten Zwangsmaßnahmen eingeholt werden, wird der Aufwachprozess langsam beginnen. Dann kann es aber zu spät sein. Das haben uns die vergangenen Diktaturen eigentlich deutlich vor Augen geführt. Doch wir alle sind Weltmeister im Verdrängen und Ausblenden unangenehmer weltgeschichtlicher Ereignisse der Vergangenheit und fallen leicht der geistigen Amnesie anheim.

Was sind die Ursachen dieser Leidensfähigkeit zum Nachteil unserer Jugend? 

Haben wir aus Angst, Faulheit oder Feigheit den gesunden Menschenverstand beziehungsweise den Mut verloren, uns unseres eigenen Verstandes ohne Anleitung eines anderen zu bedienen? Oder hat die religiöse und autoritäre Erziehung zu diesem Reflex des absoluten geistigen Gehorsams und der Verstandeslähmung geführt?

Ignatius von Loyola, der Gründer des Jesuitenordens, verfasste Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts einen erhellenden Text, auf den das deutsche Wort „Kadavergehorsam“ zurückzuführen ist:

„Wir sollten uns dessen bewusst sein, dass ein jeder von denen, die im Gehorsam leben, sich von der göttlichen Vorsehung mittels des Oberen führen und leiten lassen muss, als sei er ein toter Körper, der sich wohin auch immer bringen und auf welche Weise auch immer behandeln lässt, oder wie der Stab eines alten Mannes, der dient, wo und wozu auch immer ihn der benutzen will (1).“

Doch der Mensch kann sich selbst erkennen und zum Bewusstsein kommen, was ihn daran hindert, nein zu sagen zu Tyrannei und Rechtlosigkeit. Das heißt, sich zu besinnen und zu entdecken, welche speziellen Stärken und Kräfte in ihm schlummern und wie diese für das Gemeinwohl eingesetzt werden können.

Auch über Einstellungen, die das Leben stark einschränken, könnte man nachdenken und überlegen, ob man sie mithilfe von Freunden oder psychologischen Experten nicht besser in Zweifel ziehen und durch förderliche Auffassungen ersetzen sollte. Dadurch könnte unsere Jugend eine echte Chance auf eine menschenwürdige und lebenswerte Zukunft bekommen.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Quellenangabe

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org./wiki/kadavergehorsam; siehe auch 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)

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***

The United Nations Security Council expressed concern in a February 4 statement about the state of emergency in Myanmar, as well as the arrest of political leaders. The statement called for the immediate release of all detainees and the safe and unobstructed access of humanitarian aid to those in need, whilst at the same time reaffirming Myanmar’s sovereignty, political independence, territorial integrity and unity.

The statement was agreed relatively quickly among all Security Council participants after a private discussion regarding the February 2 coup. As noted by diplomatic sources, the wording of the statement was softer than the original draft proposed by the United Kingdom. The document did not mention or condemn the military coup in Myanmar. China and Russia assert that they cannot accept the politicization of the joint statement concerning intervention in Myanmarese affairs. This is supported by a statement made by the Chinese Foreign Ministry which called on the international community to create a favorable external environment for Myanmar to properly resolve their internal differences and help achieve political and social stability.

On Thursday, in his first foreign policy speech at the State Department as U.S. President, Joe Biden said he discussed the situation in Myanmar with his partners and allies. Among the most important of these were India and Japan.

U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan also discussed the Myanmar situation with Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) ambassadors in Washington. He described the events in Myanmar as a coup and noted the importance of regional support for the immediate restoration of democracy. It is unclear if Washington specifically seeks support from ASEAN countries over their position towards Myanmar. Judging by Sullivan’s statement, Washington is considering different options to punish the country. Meanwhile, ASEAN, based on its main principles, shunned any ideas of interfering in Myanmar’s affairs and urged the opposing parties to resolve their conflict legally and peacefully.

Individual ASEAN countries have extremely restrained positions towards Myanmar partly due to the presence of hundreds of thousands of Myanmarese immigrants in their territory. As an example, 80% of all migrant workers in Thailand come from Myanmar, accounting for about 2.6 million registered migrant workers. This is in addition to the 3-4 million unregistered Myanmarese in Thailand. About 340,000 Myanmar nationals live in Malaysia, with more than 154,000 registered for asylum. There are about 200,000 Myanmarese in Singapore. Among these Myanmarese in ASEAN countries are military supporters and those who fled the country due to military rule. Hence, these countries take a cautious approach towards events in Myanmar.

With ASEAN unwilling to serve U.S. interests in Myanmar through the imposition of sanctions and other methods, Washington must look towards its other partners in the Indo-Pacific region, namely India and Japan. India is unlikely to be able to comply with U.S. sanctions against Myanmar, while Japan could do so but with care so as not to harm its companies operating in the Southeast Asian country. India and Japan are moving closer militarily, economically and politically with each other and the U.S. They are building their own infrastructure projects in the region, including in Myanmar, which the U.S. encourages as a means to keep China from expanding its influence through the Belt and Road Initiative.

However, there are many doubts that India will follow in the footsteps of the U.S. with economic sanctions. It is more likely that Japan could impose some kind of economic sanctions on Myanmar only if Washington does. Tokyo will not make this decision unilaterally due to their huge economic interests in Myanmar. Japan, unlike the U.S., will not cut ties with Myanmar because of a military regime as any deterioration in relations will ultimately lead to an increase in Chinese influence in the country.

Senior Japanese and Indian officials always meet with the heads of the civilian government along with representatives of the military elite. This is due to the close ties the Japanese and Indian militaries have with the Myanmarese.

The Japanese Defense Ministry trains Myanmarese officers in military medicine, aviation, disaster relief, and even the Japanese language. The two sides support academic exchanges and Myanmarese officers even train at the Japanese Defense Academy.

For its part, India relies on Myanmarese military support to fight separatists in the northeastern states bordering Myanmar, who often seek asylum in the country. In addition, separatist operations undermine the security and stability of several economic corridors that India is building through Myanmar to reach Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. This economic corridor also challenges Chinese economic dominance in these countries. It is for this reason that India can tolerate military rule and authoritarianism in Myanmar as it ensures the preservation of the state rather than seeing it disintegrate into several smaller countries which will complicate economic advances, as well as embolden separatist movements in northeast India.

Although Washington will likely want to draw on Indian and Japanese support to pressure the Myanmarese military, New Delhi and Tokyo have significant vested interests in the Southeast Asian country, which also includes attempts in limiting Chinese influence. Therefore, Washington will only receive limited support from India and Japan despite these two countries becoming key U.S. allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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Our Children Have a Right to a Decent Future

February 8th, 2021 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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***

George Orwell’s famous quote “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear” comes from the preface of his dystopian fable “Animal Farm: A Fairy Story” published in August 1945.

The silent majority of citizens worldwide will agree with the author that our children have a right to a decent future. However, they will not want to hear that by their silence they are denying our youth today a future worth living. The cause is their belief in and allegiance to authority, which leads to total spiritual obedience, paralysis of the mind and doing nothing.

What the rebellious generation of 68 reproached their fathers for, that they had willingly submitted to a dictator and a tyranny, is happening again three generations later. And again, only a small group of courageous and awakened citizens is resisting – and the vast majority is asleep and silent.

Speaking into the wind

Since the beginning of the long-planned fear pandemic in the early 2020s, independent and respected international researchers and renowned personalities have pointed out that there is no medical problem, but only a political one. A global criminal elite has set itself the goal of terrifying humanity with the help of bought politicians and their corporate media in order to force them into absolute obedience. Some of these methods have been tested by secret services with “success”.

The rigidity of fear of many people enables this small group of billionaires and so-called philanthropists to push through the long-planned plans of a “New World Order” and a “4th Industrial Revolution” against the civilian population without any significant resistance – with unforeseen negative consequences for us citizens. The “embedded” mass media not only do not allow these honest enlightened people with their opinions differing from the mainstream to have their say, but they also ridicule them as conspiracy theorists and enemies of democracy.

What kind of future humanity has to expect if they do not succeed in stopping this madness can be read and listened to by anyone interested in the freely accessible alternative internet platforms. Among others, the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung (NRhZ)”, “Rubikon” and “Global Research (GR)” from Canada should be mentioned.

There is no doubt that the planned new world will be one in which neither we ourselves nor our youth want to live. It is to be a slave life that can only be endured by immobilising future humanity through propaganda or brainwashing or through pharmacological methods, thereby stifling any desire for rebellion. Aldous Huxley described this future impressively and far into the future in his essay “Brave New World”.

Due to the aforementioned attitudes and behaviour of the vast majority, free spirits have a very difficult time making their dissenting opinions heard by fellow human beings. The mechanisms of the partly unconscious inner resistance of the authority-seeking fellow citizens are manifold and almost insurmountable. Their arguments, excuses, suspicions and behaviour are reminiscent of stories from the time of European fascism.

The long-held trust in long-established and secure friendships suddenly no longer holds; one turns a deaf ear, buries one’s head in the sand, knows better, belittles, makes the other person look contemptible, slanders him or her – and so on and so forth. Much is therefore said to the wind. How can solidarity-based resistance build up in this crazy mix?

The countless owners of small and medium-sized businesses and shops alone, as well as the neglected nursing home residents, the lonely, depressed and suicidal children, youths and adults, and many impartial nurses and youth psychiatrists know what is being talked about and are grateful for every solidary voice and support.

The capacity for suffering of the silent majority is great

Those fellow citizens who remain silent out of fear or political opportunism and at the same time place themselves morally above the free enlighteners are very accommodating to the corrupt politicians. Most of the time, they also vociferously support their illegal ordinances such as the deprivation of liberty. In order to survive the current fear pandemic as intact as possible, they do not want to attract attention, comply with the most insane orders of the politicians and medicine men and go along with every madness.

According to a whistleblower, members of the global criminal elite are said to have smugly and contentedly remarked that forbearance and the ability to suffer – especially of the German – population are very great. Therefore, they conclude, one can increase the speed with which the diabolical plans are implemented.

Only then, when the members of the self-sufficient silent majority are caught up personally and directly by the politically imposed coercive measures, will the awakening process slowly begin. But then it may be too late. The past dictatorships have actually made this clear to us. But we are all world champions in suppressing and fading out unpleasant world-historical events of the past and easily fall prey to mental amnesia.

What are the causes of this capacity for suffering to the detriment of our youth?

Have we, out of fear, laziness or cowardice, lost common sense or the courage to use our own minds without the guidance of another? Or has religious and authoritarian education led to this reflex of absolute spiritual obedience and paralysis of the mind?

Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit order, wrote an illuminating text in the mid-16th century to which the German word “Kadavergehorsam” can be traced:

“We should be aware that each one of those who live in obedience must allow himself to be led and guided by divine Providence by means of the superior, as if he were a dead body to be taken wherever and treated in whatever way, or like the staff of an old man to serve wherever and for whatever the wants to use him (1).”

But man can recognise himself and come to consciousness of what prevents him from saying no to tyranny and lawlessness. This means reflecting and discovering what special strengths and powers lie dormant in him and how these can be used for the common good.

One could also reflect on attitudes that severely limit one’s life and consider whether, with the help of friends or psychological experts, it would not be better to cast doubt on them and replace them with more conducive views. This could give our youth a real chance at a humane future worth living.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

(1) https://de.wikipedia.org./wiki/kadavergehorsam; see also 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).

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***

The Salish word for the modern-day National Bison Range translates to “the fenced-in place.” It consists of 18,800 acres in the heart of the Flathead Reservation that was seized by the government in 1908 for the establishment of the federal wildlife refuge. 

But now the refuge is changing hands. An attachment to Congress’s last COVID-19 relief and government spending bills on December 26 initiated the return of the land from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which has overseen the management of the bison range for more than a century, to the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

Herds of bison tens of thousands strong once stretched to the horizons of what would later become the state of Montana. Environmental historians estimate that there were upwards of thirty million bison in North America at the end of the eighteenth century, their range spanning from Northwestern Canada all the way to Florida like a great sash draped across the continent.

In less than a century, that number was reduced to less than 1,000, as overhunting by U.S. and Canadian settlers decimated the once-mighty herds. And then, around 1870, a member of the Pend D’Oreilles tribe named Latati was on a hunt and saw the decline of the mammals that were revered and relied upon by his people. He decided to bring a small group of orphaned calves from the hunting grounds east of the Rocky Mountains, and lead them all the way back to the Flathead Reservation.

Latati’s arduous trek over the Continental Divide with calves in tow was an astounding feat. This journey was foreshadowed by his father Atatice, who suggested bringing bison to tribal land  years earlier but retracted his proposal when tribal leaders voiced concerns about tribal members becoming sedentary without the need to travel east to the hunting grounds.

“The return of this land is a chance for us as a tribe to showcase what was here, and tell the story of how Atatice and Latati started that herd,” Rich Janssen, head of the tribes’ Department of Natural Resources, tells The Progressive. “Educating the public is a big part of our management goals.”

By the late 1800s, the herd on the Confederated Salish and Kootenai reservation had grown into one of the world’s largest free-roaming bison herd. But the property was seized from the tribes by the federal government through a devious policy of allotment that was commonplace at the time, under the Dawes Act of 1887. It allowed the federal government to divide land between tribal members and sell off the surplus to homesteaders.

After allotment, settlers began flooding into the region and with them came fences. With the grazing land fragmented, the tribes had no choice but to sell part of their herd to an American rancher near Kalispell, Montana, and another part to the Canadian government. The U.S. government expressed disinterestin purchasing the herd from the tribes, even though the very same bison would be purchased less than ten years later from the Kalispell rancher to stock the new refuge.

As concern for the bison’s plight grew throughout the country, a group called the American Bison Society formedto prevent the extinction of the iconic mammal. Appealing to President Theodore Roosevelt, the group spearheaded an effort that led Congress to establish the preserve by way of eminent domain.

While the tribes voiced opposition to the seizure of their land for the refuge, they were not recognized as U.S. citizens at the time and so their appeals went unacknowledged. Since 1908, the tribes have struggled to regain their rightful claim to the National Bison Range and what was left of its bison herd. In 1971, the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, ruling on a civil action filed by the tribes, found the bison range to be “private property taken for public use without just compensation,” as the Fifth Amendment forbids.

But it wasn’t until fifty years later that the process of returning the range was initiated, and it didn’t come easy.

“There’s always been pushback,” Janssen says. “But now it’s finally come to fruition.”

The first agreement for the land’s return was signed in 2004, but terminated in 2006 due to resistance from employees of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. After the tribes challenged that termination, another agreement was reached in 2008 but again undone in 2010. The environmental assessment process for a third agreement in 2012 was delayed and never finalized.

Finally, in 2016, the Fish and Wildlife Service got behind the restoration of the National Bison Range to tribal management—though it took four more years for the initiation of the transfer process.

Still, a small but vocal minority continues to voice strong opposition to returning the range to tribal management. Local organizations like All Citizens Equal and Citizens Equal Rights Alliance submitted commentswhen the transfer was being proposed, and members cited racist, anti-Indigenous stereotypes when suggesting the tribes’ incapability to manage the land and wildlife. The groups also claimed the transfer of the bison range would set a dangerous precedent for the delisting of public land.

In reality, the bison range will remain open to the public, under the management of the tribes. Indeed, restoring threatened or endangered species is nothing new to the tribes. Janssen’s department has aided the recovery of threatened and endangered species like trumpeter swans, northern leopard frogs, peregrine falcons, bull trout, and grizzly bears.

“This simply is not an attack on public land,” says Janssen. “It’s righting a wrong that should never have been done in the first place.”

In 2017, the Trump Administration’s Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke publicly stated that the Fish and Wildlife Service would continue to manage the National Bison Range, making sure to note his opposition to returning Indigenous lands. Now, with President Joe Biden’s pick of Deb Haaland, an enrolled member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe, set to fill Zinke’s office, Janssen has hope that tribal land rights may be acknowledged and understood.

“Haaland understands the complexities of our history, and how we look at the landscape,” Janssen says. “Once you lose that cultural connection, you lose a part of your being. I’m hopeful that she will have a better understanding of what that means.”

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Patrick Shea has roots in the Great Lakes States, and is now pursuing a master’s degree in natural resources journalism at the University of Montana.

Featured image is by David Stalling via The Progressive

The Foreign Roots of Haiti’s “Constitutional Crisis”

February 8th, 2021 by Prof. Mark Schuller

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).

***

Haiti’s president’s term has come to an end, but he refuses to step down. Solidarity is urgent.

As per usual, news on Haiti in the United States remains limited, except for during periods of “crisis.” As if on cue, U.S. media began reporting on Haiti’s “constitutional crisis” this week.

Sunday, February 7 is the end of Haitian President Jovenel Moïse’s term, according to the constitution. He refuses to step down. This week, the opposition called for a two-day general strike, uniting around a transition with the head of Haiti’s Supreme Court stepping in.

Most reporting failed to note the international role, and particularly that of the United States, in creating this “crisis.” And nearly all focused only on one segment of the opposition: leaders of Haiti’s political parties.

Predictably, foreign media led their stories with violence. True, the security situation is deteriorating: Nou Pap Dòmi denounced 944 killings  in the first eight months of 2020. But leaving the discussion at “gang violence” whitewashes its political dimensions: on January 22, leaders of the so-called “G9” (the group of 9), a federation of gangs led by former police officer Jimmy Chérisier, alias “Barbecue,” held a march in defense of the Haitian president. National Network for the Defence of Human Rights (RNDDH) reported in August 2020 that the government federated the gangs in the first place.

This “gangsterization” occurred without parliamentary sanction. On January 13, 2020—a day after the 10th anniversary of Haiti’s devastating earthquake—parliament’s terms ended, leaving President Moïse to rule by decree. One such decree came in November as the wave of kidnapping increased: the president outlawed some forms of protest, calling it “terrorism.”

Readers in the United States should not need to be reminded of white supremacists’ violent attack on Congress and the U.S. Constitution on January 6 that killed at least six people, on the heels of coup attempts in Michigan and other vigilante attacks. In the United States, police killed 226 Black people last year. The irony of U.S. officials opining on violence, democracy, or the rule of law is apparently invisible to some readers.

In addition to parallels of state violence against Black people in the United States and Haiti, missing from most stories is context about the specific roles played by previous U.S. administrations—from both parties—in fomenting and increasing that violence.

Haiti’s ruling Tèt Kale party got its start in 2011, when bawdy carnival singer Michel Martelly was muscled into the election’s second round by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the United Nations Special Envoy and co-chair of the Interim Haiti Reconstruction Commission (IHRC) Bill Clinton.

This support from the Clintons, the United States, and the so-called Core Group (including France, Canada, Brazil, the European Union, and the Organization of American States), never wavered, despite the increasingly clear slide toward authoritarianism. In 2012, Martelly installed allied mayorsin all but a handful of towns. Then parliament’s terms expired in 2015, the five-year anniversary of the earthquake, with promises of holding elections never materializing. The vote that did finally lead to the election of Martelly’s hand-picked successor, Jovenel Moïse, was fraudulent. Yet the United States and the Core Group continued to play along—and offer financial support—until finally the electoral commission formally called for its annulment. Because of international pressure, the final round was held weeks after Hurricane Matthew ravaged large segments of the country. It was the lowest voter turnout in the country’s history.

Why would so-called “democratic” countries continue to support the Tèt Kale state? What was in it for Empire?

Having to thank his friends in high places, Martelly’s reconstruction effort focused on providing opportunities for foreign capitalist interests to invest in tourism, agribusiness, sweatshops, and mining. Not surprisingly, donors to the Clinton Global Initiative made out like (legal) bandits.* Ironically, $4 billion available to help fund this disaster capitalism was from Venezuela’s PetroCaribe program, which offered low-cost oil and low-interest loans. With the Haitian state safely under the Clintons’ watch, the transformative potential of this alternative to neoliberal globalization and example of South-South solidarity was squandered. Cue foreign mainstream media’s focus solely on “corruption” of this complex movement demanding #KòtKòbPetwoKaribe? Where are the PetroCaribe funds?

Demonstrators demand accountability for the administration of the PetroCaribe funds. (Medyalokal / Wikimedia)

Demonstrators demand accountability for the administration of the PetroCaribe funds. (Medyalokal / Wikimedia)

This popular movement was an extension of the uprising against International Monetary Fund-imposed austerity. On July 6, 2018, during the World Cup, the Haitian government announced a price hike for petroleum products. Right after Brazil lost the match, the people took to the streets all across the country and shut it down. In Kreyòl, this was the first peyi lòk—a lockdown or general strike.

It was the first time in my 20 years working in Haiti that a mobilization brought together people from every socioeconomic status, at one point reaching two million people across the country (out of a population of 11 million). Faced with this popular swell of dissent, the government increasingly turned to violence, including a massacre in Lasalin, a low-income neighborhood near the port and a stronghold for the party of former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Thinking back to my time in Haiti during the 2003-2004 coup against Aristide and comparing the people on the streets then and now, it seemed likely that Moïse would be forced out by November 2018. Certainly he would be gone by February 7, 2019—two years ago.

So why is he still in office?

Like his predecessor “Sweet Micky,” Martelly’s stage name, the “Banana Man” as Moïse was known during the campaign, had friends in high places. President Donald Trump met with Moïse and other right-of-center hemispheric heads of state at his Mar-a-Lago resort in March 2019. Haiti was crucial in the U.S.-led effort in the OAS to not recognize Nicolás Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela. Despite the billions in aid Haiti received from Venezuela through PetroCaribe, and bilateral cooperation that began in 1815 when Haitian president Alexandre Pétion provided crucial arms and support for Simón Bolívar, President Moïse sided with Trump. In 1962, Haitian president “Papa Doc” Duvalier—whom history and solidarity movements judged as a dictator—did the same thing to Cuba, and the United States generously rewarded him.

President Jovenel Moïse (left) of Haiti and first lady Martine Moïse (right) pose with Donald and Melania Trump in New York City, September 28, 2018. (U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince / Wikimedia)

President Jovenel Moïse (left) of Haiti and first lady Martine Moïse (right) pose with Donald and Melania Trump in New York City, September 28, 2018. (U.S. Embassy, Port-au-Prince / Wikimedia)

Given the new White House occupant, and campaign promises to the key battleground state of Florida, one might think that President Joe Biden would reverse course vis-à-vis Haiti. Why, then, would Immigration and Customs Enforcement continue to deport 1,800 people, some not even born in Haiti, sending not one but two deportation flights on February 4 alone?

Making the connections, the Florida-based Family Advocacy Network Movement (FANM) sent an open letter denouncing state violence and violations of human rights.

The voices within Haiti that foreign corporate media amplify are those of political parties. The Kolektif Anakawona outlined at least two other much larger opposition segments connected to grassroots organizing. On November 29, the popular organization coalition Konbit issued a five-language call for solidarity. The workers’ movement Batay Ouvriye outlined popular demands for whomever takes office. A group of professionals, Fowòm Politik Sosyopwofesyonèl Pwogresis Ayisyen (FPSPA), denounced the United Nations for rushing elections and its support for what FPSPA qualifies as a dictatorship. David Oxygène, with the popular organization MOLEGHAF, critiqued the political party consensus as olye yon lit de klas, se yon lit de plas—rather than a class struggle, it’s a struggle for position (power). Both he and activist Nixon Boumba underscore that the opposition plan is a short-term solution, when Haitian movements are asking for long-term solutions and changing the system. Activist-journalist Jean Claudy Aristil and others point out the fundamental hypocrisy and limits of “Western democracy.” Moneyed interests, including imperial powers, who dominate the political process in Haiti are by no accident part of the same transnational capitalist class that has rigged the system in the United States—the model for other political systems in the Americas.

These Haitian activists and scholars are not asking for U.S. intervention in support of what Oxygène called 2 zèl yon menm malfini—two wings of the same vulture.

They are asking for us to dismantle imperial interference and to join them in transforming our institutions so that people-to-people solidarity and a democratic global economy can then be possible.

* Under his stage name Sweet Micky, Martelly released an album in 2008 called “Bandi Legal” (Legal Bandits). See Sabine Lamour’s essay in the forthcoming Spring 2021 issue of the NACLA Report.

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Mark Schuller is Professor of anthropology and nonprofit and NGO studies at Northern Illinois University and affiliate at the Faculté d’Ethnologie, l’Université d’État d’Haïti. Schuller’s research has been published in over forty scholarly publications. Schuller is the author or co-editor of eight books—including Humanity’s Last Stand: Confronting Global Catastrophe—and co-director/co-producer of the documentary Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy. Recipient of the Margaret Mead Award, Schuller is President of the Haitian Studies Association and active in several solidarity efforts.

Featured image: Jovenel Moïse speaks at his inauguration ceremony after taking the oath of office, Port-au-Prince, February 7, 2017. (UN Photo / Igor Rugwiza / Flickr)

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The Invincible Green Stick of Happiness

February 8th, 2021 by Edward Curtin

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***

After a night of haunting dreams that flowed as if they were written like running water, written on air, as the Roman poet Catullus once said, in the depth of a dark winter morning, I decided that I would take a walk in the afternoon hoping that the sun would then appear, and it did so.

I went walking toward the woods through deep white new-fallen snow all around me and entered a path into the woods across from my house that led toward a deep ravine below which were deep dark caves that once sheltered runaway slaves searching for the happiness of freedom, and I thought of them as I poked under the snow on the odd chance that I might find the green stick of happiness that Leo Tolstoy’s beloved brother, ten-year-old Nikolai, had once told the five-year-old Leo was buried by a ravine on the edge of the forest,  

right image Tolstoi and Gandhi

a stick upon which were written the secret words that would bring love, peace, and happiness to everyone, and would do away with death, for their mother had died three years earlier and their father would die four years later, but I saw nothing and continued deeper into the forest to try to shed a sad feeling from a lock-down that had brought my spirits low as I tried to understand why so many people I knew were so enslaved, their minds forged in manacles, and how sad and dispirited it made me knowing that they were locked away from me in some conventional reality sold to them by liars, but perhaps you like the word depressed and you can use it if you want, but all I know is that the spirit of happiness had escaped me as I trudged deeper into the forest between the high pine trees until the trail I walked was intersected by another and a man met me there,

Image below: Albert Camus with his best friend Michel Gallimard, both of whom died from a car crash on  4 January 1960. On the right is Jeannine, Michel’s wife, who survived the crash. “Albert Camus, Michel y Jeannine Gallimard” by Antonio Marín Segovia is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

as if he knew I was coming, a man with a long white beard and piercing eyes and we nodded and then he continued beside me and asked me what I was looking for, which startled me, and I was speechless and he said he’s been through here many times, especially by the ravine, and Leo told me he never could find the green stick of happiness his brother once told him was buried there but he was not giving up, he never would do that since he loved his brother who would never lie, he knew the stick existed and that’s why he himself was buried there, and he told me to continue seeking, because the stick was real and yes, those slaves knew it and were in that ravine for a reason, so we walked on as a man approached us who said his name was Albert, and I said Camus, and he said yes, let’s walk together guys, for these woods are dark and deep I know, but look up at the sky, the clouds have parted and the sparkling sky is speaking to us, right Leo, who said yes, I remember when Andrei in my book War and Peace lay wounded on the battlefield and looked at the sky, I wrote that he realized then that that lofty sky was infinite and that happiness was possible, that especially in the midst of battle you have to look up and realize that, that there are deeper reasons for things and petty concerns shield the spirit of truth and that even in the midst of war you can glimpse that reality, and it sounded good,

I had heard their spiels before, or had read them to be accurate, they were great writers but this was my life and I couldn’t live in their books, but I wasn’t reading, I was walking, or was I dreaming, and then we came to the end of the path leading out of the woods and the sky opened out from the vast tree cover and they were gone and I was all alone again as usual,

dispirited and heading back home on the road by the lake when I looked up at the sparkling blue sky and light that radiated off the snowy frozen lake and rose back to the sky in columns of undulating glory and felt the sun that had warmed the day and heard birds in the trees and was overwhelmed with a rush of happiness I can’t describe but it was not a dream and I walked in joy for a few minutes, knowing I had found the stick and that in the depth of winter, as Albert said, I had finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer, but that it came and went like running water, like flowing air, but it was enough for now.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He is the author of the new book: https://www.claritypress.com/product/seeking-truth-in-a-country-of-lies/

Featured image: Tolstoy’s grave on the edge of the ravine at his estate Yasnaya Polyana “Ясная поляна, могила Л.Н. Толстого 2” by Alexxx1979 is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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In the morning of 5 February 2021, a distinguished gentleman, professional, in his early 70s, impeccably dressed in suit and tie (no name shall be mentioned) – was running to catch an 8 AM train at the Geneva principal railway station, Cornavin.

He was in a hurry not to miss the train, and was just about to put on the obligatory mask, when two gendarmes grabbed him, one on each arm told him about mask obligation, he responded that he was just about to put it on – which was visible to the police, as he held a mask in his hand – and that he had to run to catch the train.

The policemen harassed him, despite the fact that he had a medical certificate that dispensed him from wearing a mask, for serious health reasons which he explained to them. He is 72 years old and had in the past two lung embolisms and has breathing difficulties. He also has hearing aids. The strings of the mask infringe on the effectiveness of the hearing aid.

He kept pleading with them that he had to go and needed to catch the train. No chance, they didn’t let go. He couldn’t move is arms. They held him tight, pressed him against a wall. They asked for his ID. The gentleman gave them his wallet to look for it. He got nervous and kept repeating that he would put the mask on, but could not miss the train, that they please would let him go.

Finally, they got the ID and released them, took all the details from the ID and told him that he would get a hefty fine for shouting at the police. This gentleman, whom I know, would certainly not shout at the police, maybe getting upset and speaking with a firm voice, but not shouting.

In the meantime, many similar cases have come to my attention, including one, where a medical doctor issued a mask dispensation to a patient for chronical breathing difficulties. The person was brutally arrested in a train for not wearing a mask despite the medical certificate. He was told that he will be summoned by the Court.

In another case, mass brutality on children was ordered by a municipality in Switzerland sending a letter to the parents requesting them that all school-age children, including from Kindergarten, had to be tested for covid-19 within 24 hours. In the meantime, everybody, including parents had to remain in quarantine.

The case is not unique. It is now in the hands of lawyers. What they will be able to achieve is unclear.

This – dear reader – I hope many of you in Switzerland – is no longer a question of health or reason, but only of obedience. It marks the beginning of a fascist tyranny.

As a side note, the German newspaper “Die Welt am Sonntag” just revealed today, that the German Ministry of the Interior, had “hired” scientists to prepare studies and reports for the German Government to spread fear and to justify repressive measures against people and society in the name of covid. See 8 min. video in German https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOD-cmUrdEg . If this happens in Germany, it may be strongly suspected to also happen in Switzerland.

Police behavior of this kind is exactly compatible with the Swiss anti-terror law under which children of 12 years of age could be arrested, and police without any evidence, just “suspicion”, can enter any house and arrest “terror suspects”.

In other words, anybody who voices his/her opposition to the ever-increasing oppression under the pretext of covid-health protection, may be considered a terrorist. A people’s referendum against it has been launched and will presumably be voted on in June 2021.

The “anti-terror law” – if final approval goes through – would be the worst and most stringent law against human and civil rights in the western world, even surpassing the US Patriot Act.

And this what is happening in France.

People wake up.

Such atrocities may soon become common place.

The more we accept these inhuman police – and maybe soon military – infringements on our human and civil rights, the more such atrocities will become law, either imposed and approved by the government, or exerted as ‘common law’.

Dear fellow citizens do not accept this turn to fascism – unfortunately to various degrees already visible in many western countries. Protest! Resist!

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

Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

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***

A positive aspect of the recent anti-ivermectin statement by Merck is that dozens of ‘big pharma’ lobbyists, who immediately shared the statement on Twitter, are now getting exposed, among them many journalists, a US NIH representative, some industry-linked professors, and one of the most influential German government ‘covid science communicators’.

Keep in mind that Merck provided no evidence, whatsoever, for any of its claims, did not refute any of the existing evidence, studies and meta-studies, and falsely claimed ‘unproven safety’. The entire statement is a desperate appeal to (supposed) authority, and anyone pushing it is simply exposing themselves as a lobbyist not interested in actual evidence-based medicine.

What Merck could have done, but didn’t do, since April 2020, is running and publishing its own ivermectin trial. What Merck also could have done, but didn’t do, is disclosing in its statement that it recently signed a $356 million deal to supply the US with a much more expensive, newly developed experimental anti-covid drug. But doing this may not have been in Merck’s interest, of course.

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Crony COVID Contracts in the UK

February 8th, 2021 by Nigel Barlow

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***

The Labour Party is calling on the Government to urgently clean up its Covid procurement as it emerges almost £2 billion in total has been spent on “crony” contracts going to Conservative friends and donors.

The amount of money spent on contracts awarded to companies that have links to the Conservative Party has almost doubled since the first wave, rising to nearly £2 billion following Labour’s original tally of £1 billion in October 2020, and despite stark warnings from the National Audit Office in November.

The total cost of contracts that have gone to Tory friends and donors could have provided free school meals to every one of the 1.4 million pupils who are eligible – for over 3 years.

Of the £23.1 billion the public sector has spent on Covid, 85% – or £19.7 billion – have been awarded by central government, highlighting the centralisation of outsourcing not attuned to local needs.

In a speech from Labour Party headquarters in Southside, Rachel Reeves, Shadow Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, will demand the Government takes urgent action to stop cronyism consuming its outsourcing and contracts by urgently restoring tendering rules with improved transparency to scrutinise contracts.

And she will urge the Government to claw back taxpayer money on contracts that haven’t delivered what they’ve promised, to counter increasing concerns from the public on waste of funds.

She will also outline key policies a Labour government would put in place to tackle the increasing lack of transparency, cronyism and taxpayer waste at the heart of the Government’s outsourcing practice.

“This Government has eroded not only our public services to the brink of collapse, but so much of what it means to be an honourable and transparent government.

“While this Tory Government has denied key workers in our public services a pay rise, they paid 900 management consultants at Deloitte £1,000 a day to work on test and trace.

“The beating heart of our country is the key workers who have kept us going through this last year. That’s why we applauded them. Children weren’t banging pots and pans for management consultants. They were clapping our key workers.

“The public is also paying a high price for this Government’s mismanagement and waste. This current Tory Party is rife with conflicts of interest. It’s all cheques and no balances.

“People expect all of us seeking government to spend their money with care and respect – and a Labour government will.

“Labour will clean up government contracting by strengthening FOI, introducing a new Independent Anti-Corruption Commissioner, and an Integrity and Ethics Commission to make us a world leader in good governance and transparency.”

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Featured image is from About Manchester

India Needs Course Correction on Myanmar

February 8th, 2021 by M. K. Bhadrakumar

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First published on August 24, 2020

Numerous scientific studies reveal that the face mask is detrimental to a person’s health.

According to Dr. Russell Blaylock: by wearing a face mask, “the exhaled viruses will not be able to escape and will concentrate in the nasal passages, enter the olfactory nerves and travel into the brain. ….

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In a French supermarket, an employee was violently arrested, mistreated, forcibly taken away and taken into custody by a patrol of gendarmes while he had lowered his mask (mandatory now in France in closed public places) to “take a breath” of fresh air.

The face mask has become the symbol of the terror that those who have usurped power (including our governments) are inflicting on defenseless populations.

It is no longer a question of health or reason, but only of obedience.

it should be understood that the “pandemic” of “COVID-19” is a global swindle, imposed by force by a powerful financial plutocracy, the vilest thing in mankind, with the complicity of corrupt governments and media, and that the masks worn permanently are a source of infection, they prevent us from breathing, damage our health and humiliate us.

By imposing “face masks”, “protective visors”, protective suits, “social distancing”, it is society which they want to destroy, to leave the individual totally naked, like a laboratory guinea pig, facing the destructive power, invisible “virus”.

The Video in French shows how a supermarket employee is violently arrested. What were dealing is the criminalization of the State, the evolution towards a police state.


Police control in the Carrefour Contact store in Breil-sur-Roya…

An employee on duty since 6am has a “badly placed” mask right under his nose… Result?

The soldiers go into action. Unbelievable! Look, share, comment …

The original source of this article is pocombelles
Copyright © Le Rouge et le Blanc, pocombelles, 2020

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***

Foreign operatives raided the headquarters of the Iranian Quds Force’s Unit 840 in the hearth of Damascus, Israeli sources claim. The Israeli news outlet Intelli Times reported on January 28 that an unidentified “Western intelligence agency” allegedly carried out the covert operation four months ago.

The headquarters is located in a residential building in the neighborhood of Kaf Susa, 3 kilometers away from the Syrian Presidential Palace. The Ministry of Interior is located in the same neighborhood, which is guarded by two detachments from the Military Intelligence Directorate.

A video of the operation shows the agents seizing documents inside the Iranian headquarters and holding down one of the Syrian guards. Syrian activists noted that the alleged “Western agents” in the video spoke fluent Arabic with a distinctive Syrian accent.

Last November, the Israeli Defense Forces accused the Unit 840 of planting three explosive devices along the Israel-Syria contact line in the occupied Golan Heights. Tel Aviv responded to the operation with a series of airstrikes on central and southern Syria.

Intelli Times said that the Unit 840 is commanded by Yazdan Mir, also known as “Sadir Baqiri.” The leader has two aides, Mukhtabi Hashimi and Mohssin Mohamad. The Israeli side insists that the unit is training personnel in Syria to launch attacks against “Western targets.”

The Israeli report is highly questionable. Nevertheless, the Israeli intelligence carried out similar daring operations in Lebanon, Syria, Iran and many other countries in the past. The report itself could be considered as a message to Syria and Iran amid the growing tensions in the region.

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Joe Biden was inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States amidst an armed fortress in the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021. Twenty-five thousand National Guard troops were deployed to ensure a peaceful transition of power for the American plutocracy.

The scene was reminiscent of the nomination of Hubert Humphrey at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where the candidate was shielded from anti-war demonstrators by thousands of riotous police and armed National Guard troops.  The year was 1968.

Such moments reveal the essence of the American police state.

In his inaugural address, Biden pledged to be a president who represented all Americans as he pleaded for “unity” in a society more polarized than it was during the height of the Vietnam war.

Using tired and vapid rhetoric to intone the “triumph of democracy,” Biden seemed unaware that genuine democracy reflects the will of the people. In America the peoples’ interests have been systematically repudiated by neoliberal Democrats and Republicans alike.

Biden was the victor in a hotly disputed race, resulting in violent protests, fomented by Trump,  that marred the certification of the presidential election on the very steps of the Capitol where he took the oath of office.

In a bona fide democracy, elections would be free, fair and transparent. In the United States, billions are spent on elections, third-party and insurgent candidates such as Ralph Nader, Jill Stein, and Bernie Sanders are routinely thwarted by the political establishment and the corporate media, the use of computer software to record electronic ballots in voting machines owned by private companies such asDominion or Diebold opens the door to charges of hacking and fraud, and the antiquated electoral college can negate the popular vote.

Prior to the 2020 vote, credible evidence exists to prove that Presidential elections were stolen in 1824, 1876, 1888, 1960, 2000, and 2004.

Just a short time before the restrained pomp and circumstance of the inauguration, angry pro-Trump rioters took over the Capitol building, sending its congressional inhabitants and their aids scurrying for cover like so many frightened vermin.

The congressional representatives of corporate America seem not to understand the hatred they provoke by sending a $600.00 covid ‘relief’ check to millions of citizens who are facing eviction, hunger and joblessness amidst the pandemic lockdown while funneling billions of dollars to their rich benefactors.

Nor do they understand the seething anger of a dispossessed white working class that was thrown overboard in a globalized and financialized economy by Wall Street and the Washington political establishment, creating a fertile ground for Trump to propagate his fake right-wing populist rhetoric and xenophobic malevolence.

The depth of economic depression in the United States will drive Biden and the Democrats to posture as ‘tribunes of the people’ by increasing relief in the next covid-19 bailout package after holding back on the size of the second round of stimulus aid to defeat Trump.  But they will not provide the American people with genuine relief by providing a program of ‘Medicare for All’ and ‘Universal Basic Income’ for the duration of the pandemic lockdown and beyond.

For Democrats and Republicans alike, the political game is all about power, not people.  The Republicans steal everything in sight for the rich while the Democrats throw a few more scraps to the people to mollify their discontent.

The irony that his party is the first to compel an impeachment trial of a president after he has left office is lost on Biden.  Such actions do not ensure unity, they guarantee unbreachable divisiveness.  The second impeachment trial of Trump will not end in conviction.  It will further polarize the American electorate and allow the Democrats and Republicans to continue the shell game of legislative politics in a power sharing arrangement that guarantees the people get nothing while plutocracy gets everything.

The second impeachment of Donald Trump by the Democrats represents not only an act of political retribution for his defeat of Hillary Clinton in 2016, but an attempt to neutralize their arch enemy by circumventing any possibility he may run for re-election to the nation’s highest office in 2024.

By impeaching Trump a second time, Democrats are further enraging his legions of followers who believe the election was stolen.  The venomous Democrats led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Senator from Wall Street and Israel, Chuck Schumer, are throwing kerosene on a raging political fire.  The result will further polarize and already fractured social and political landscape in a country whose people are armed to the teeth.

It should be remembered that the result of the FBI assaults on the Weaver family at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992 and the Branch Davidians at Waco, Texas in 1993 was the domestic terrorist attack in Oklahoma Cityin 1995.

And the direct result of bombing a Federal office building in Oklahoma City was Clinton’s Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, a stark precursor to Bush’s USA Patriot Act of 2001.  Using the pretext of fighting terrorism, these two notorious pieces of legislation effectively neutralized key elements of the Bill of Rights, consigning the 1st,4th, 5th, 6th and 8th amendments of the U.S. constitution to dead letters.

Trump supporters will now be collectively identified as ‘domestic terrorists’, ‘white supremacists’, and ‘neo-Nazis’ to justify intensifieddomestic repression in the ‘war on terror’.  Next in line to be targeted are the ‘extremists’ on the left, such as Antifa, supporters of Black Lives Matter, and prominent critics of empire.  As the greatest threat to the American plutocracy comes from the redistributive class politics of the left, not the right, it will be the left that bears the ultimate burden of political repression.

Despite lofty rhetoric, the Democrats care very little for democracy and the rule of law.  If they respected democracy, they would not have fomented coup d’états in Honduras in 2009 or Ukraine in 2014.  They would not have destroyed Libya in 2011 or Syria in 2014.  They would not have invented Russiagate and Ukrainegate to justify the first unsuccessful impeachment of Trump in 2018.

Nor would they continue to wage economic warfare in Venezuela to engineer regime change in a beleaguered country where 40,000 lives have already been lost because of U.S. imposed asset seizure, sanction and embargo.

In his inaugural speech, Biden promised to re-establish international alliances so the United States could be a “force for good” in the world. The U. S. has not been a ‘force for good’ in the world since it won the first anti-colonial revolution against the British in 1783.  The abolition of slavery completed that revolution with the conclusion of the civil war in 1865.

These revolutions were won at the expense of indigenous peoples who were exterminated between 1622 and the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 and Mexican peoples who were internally colonized in the American southwest at the conclusion of the Mexican-American war in 1848.  With its victory in the Spanish American war of 1898, the U.S. became a global imperialist power and has not looked back since.

U.S. global destabilization of democratically elected governments in the 21st century perpetrated by Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump include coups in Venezuela in 2002, Georgia in 2003, Ukraine in 2004, Haiti in 2004, Occupied Palestine in 2007, Honduras in 2009, Egypt in 2013, Ukraine in 2014, and Venezuela in 2019.

All the foregoing U.S. sponsored coup d’états were successful except for American failure to overthrow Hamas in Gaza and the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela.

Now the U.S. has turned its sights on Russia and is using the Navalny affair as a pretext to execute a color revolution in the Kremlin.  Biden and his lackeys should beware of provoking the Russian bear.  The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists have moved the doomsday clock to 100 seconds before midnight, no small part because of belligerent and confrontational U.S. policies toward Russia that have provoked a new arms race involving the development and deployment of hypersonic weapons.

Presidential commitment to democracy and the rule of law is a fiction easily dismissed by a cursory reading of U.S. imperialism’s history. Amidst the fractious polarization of American politics, one reality remains constant, continuity of the imperial presidency driven by the rapacious greed of a corporate plutocracy the chief executives serve.

Donald Monaco is a political analyst who lives in Brooklyn, New York.  He received his Master’s Degree in Education from the State University of New York at Buffalo in 1979 and was radicalized by the Vietnam War.  He writes from an anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist perspective.  His recent book is titled, The Politics ofTerrorism, and is available at amazon.com

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Against the backdrop of the recent change in the White House administration, and the absence of clear harbingers of the United States’ desire to reduce the number of armed conflicts around the world, it is worth noting that in many respects the present conflicts owe their existence to how they are pumped with American weaponry.

The results of a study on global defense spending published by the information analysis center Jane’s bear testimony to the fact that in 2020 they increased by 1.9%, reaching 1.9 trillion USD and showing continuous growth for seven years.

Europe showed the largest growth in its defense budgets in 2020: the countries in the region increased their defense spending by 5.6% compared to 2019, which naturally can be chiefly explained by the active steps taken by the Donald Trump administration concerning the mandatory allocation by NATO countries of at least 2% of their GDP for defense needs. In addition, the targeted propaganda campaign by Washington and its closest allies “to search for enemies” and incite Russophobic sentiments also had the obvious goal of making other European countries increase their purchases of weapons and military equipment, and primarily from the United States. And for this, the White House did not have any aversion to using any means, up to outright blackmail accompanied by sanctions, against anyone that bought weapons that were not from the United States; one clear example of this is the escalating standoff between the United States and Turkey due to Ankara’s purchase of S-400 air defense system from Russia, and the threat of Washington impose sanctions for doing that.

Countries in the Asia-Pacific region have also substantially ramped up the size of their expenses that fall under this category. But even this, without any doubt, was something that Washington could not have helped but play a hand in; it has toughened its opposition to the growing authority China holds in the region, creating and introducing the propaganda slogan “about the growing danger from the PRC”, and forcing many states to increase their spending on military spending and procuring many new types of weapons.

However, the experts at Jane’s report a possible slowdown in the growth of global defense spending in 2021 due to the economic consequences of the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic: “It is likely that all regions except Europe, the Asia-Pacific, and Latin America will implement defence spending cuts in 2021, bringing global defence spending down to its lowest level since 2013. It is possible that the worst effects of the COVID-19 pandemic will also manifest themselves in 2022, when governments can begin to significantly limit funding for this kind of spending”.

However, this decline in military spending will only be temporary, according to these same experts at Jane’s, and the growth in that will continue in the near future – and could reach 2.23 trillion USD by 2030.

At the same time, it is worth reiterating the well-known truth that military spending has a significant impact on the GDP of countries, and on both the social and political situations that are fostered in them. The negative consequences are due to pulling away resources in the countries that import weapons away from other sectors in the national economy, encroaching upon social programs, and boosting the level of discontent among the population. This result is especially pronounced in the poorest countries, where a significant part of military spending is associated with importing expensive military equipment.

One vivid European example of the negative consequences of an increase in military spending is the rather ill-considered policy adopted by the Baltic states – Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia – whose leadership, by increasing purchases of foreign weapons and equipment, is investing the funding for its military budgets in foreign industries, and in the United States in particular. For example, striving to obsequiously demonstrate her phenomenal loyalty to Washington, at the beginning of January this year Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte, during a remote meeting with the US Ambassador to Vilnius, Robert Gilchrist, proclaimed her commitment to channel 2% of the country’s GDP – as demanded by Donald Trump – and even more to national security and defense, as well as her plans to increase the military budget to 2.5% of GDP by 2030. The share of defense spending as part of GDP in Estonia also equals 2.25%.

It is noteworthy that, in contrast to these Baltic states, the current share of Germany’s military budget as part of its national GDP is less than 1.6%. However, the Baltic states at the same time are at a clear disadvantage compared to Germany, since they are essentially investing in a foreign economy, while Germany mostly invests in its own. The considerable amount of funding that the Baltic states take from their budgets to purchase of foreign systems ultimately feed arms manufacturers alone, and primarily in the United States, which, for its part, not only develops its own economy and the arms market, but also use new military technologies in the civilian sphere – and this, again, has a beneficial effect, including for American social welfare indicators. It is common knowledge that the massive injection of money into the US military-industrial complex after the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (military spending increased from three to more than four percent of US GDP) became, according to many economists, the most important factor in allowing America to emerge from the crisis of the “new economy” at the turn of the century, and achieve positive economic dynamics from 2003-2006.

Therefore, it can be affirmed that for arms exporters, and in richer countries, the positive and negative impact that the growth of military spending has balance each other out to a certain extent. This is a positive effect which, even if we do not take into account the openly expansionist goals of establishing external hegemony as a weapons exporter, contributes to the growth of employment in the military-industrial complex in the country that makes the weapons, develops many ancillary sectors throughout the economy, provides fiscal revenues to the budget, and conspicuously enriches the military and-political elite in that country.

Therefore, it is not surprising that American manufacturers are just the ones that occupy dominant positions in the list of the top 100 companies in the world in terms of arms sales, and for its part this has allowed the United States to remain the world leader in the arms market in terms of sales for many years. Including due to drawing upon the military budgets of other countries in its favor.

In this regard, Donald Trump’s statement four years ago, at his inaugural speech, that America is enriching the world at its own expense is fundamentally fake piece of propaganda that serves, above all else, as a requirement put forth for other countries to increase their spending on armaments by increasing purchases of American-made military equipment and weapons.

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Vladimir Danilov, political analyst exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook“.

Featured image is from NEO

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The Russia-Africa Partnership

February 7th, 2021 by Armen Khachatryan

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***

In this interview with Armen Khachatryan, Deputy Chief Executive Officer and Programme Director at the Roscongress Foundation, and now a member of the newly created Public Council under the Secretariat of the Russia–Africa Partnership Forum, argues that the first Summit held in October 2019 ultimately seeks to inject a new dynamism in the existing Russia-Africa relations.

According to him, as the African continent undergoes positive transformation, platforms for dialogue between Russia and Africa are profoundly changing too. The Russia–Africa Summit demonstrated the sheer enormity of potential that exists for collaboration across various areas, and one of the outcomes of that historic event was the establishment of the Secretariat of the Russia–Africa Partnership Forum. The Secretariat further created a Public Council, the body also incorporates a Coordinating Council, Research Council and Media Council.

Speaking with Kester Kenn Klomegah early January 2021, Armen Khachatryan unreservedly stressed that building on the existing relations and all that have been achieved over the past few years, needs new platforms such as the Public Council. This Public Council aims primarily to uplift and solidly support the relations into a new stage, change perception among the public and give it an entirely new outlook into the future. Here are the interview excerpts:

Kester Kenn Klomegah: A meeting of the Public Council of the Russia–Africa Partnership Forum Secretariat took place early November 2020. What were the main outcomes of the event?

Armen Khachatryan: It was the first kick-off meeting held last year. We determined the objectives facing the Public Council of the Russia–Africa Partnership Forum Secretariat. Specifically, these were to do with implementing the decisions of the inaugural Russia–Africa Summit and organizing the second summit, which is planned to take place in 2022. We discussed the current state of Russian-African relations in the humanitarian sphere, as well as the potential to develop them further. We also set out the council’s plan of action.

KKK: In your opinion, what social initiatives were prioritized – particularly at this time when Russia is seriously looking to focus on Africa?

AK: Humanitarian cooperation has recently played an increasingly significant role in the development of Russian-African relations. The lively discussions at the Russia–Africa Economic Forum in October, 2019, in Sochi are testament to the importance of joint social initiatives, and to the shared desire to implement them. I believe this is with good reason, as collaboration in this area can help build an atmosphere of mutual trust. It is absolutely essential to forge sustainable partnerships in different spheres with Africa.

In terms of priorities, areas in which we have traditionally collaborated include education, healthcare, culture, the environment, safety and security and so forth. All of these fields possess enormous potential for Russia and Africa to work together, and our country is ready to share its experience and expertise on mutually beneficial terms. Unlike some other countries, Russia wants a strong Africa with genuine sovereignty and a competitive economy. With this in mind, I would place particular emphasis on education. From my point of view, Africa’s most valuable asset is not its natural resources, but its people.

Young people currently make up a significant percentage of the population across the African continent. And that figure is going to increase further still. The population of the continent has already passed the 1.3 billion mark, with a median age of about 20. Around 60% of the population are young people under the age of 25. And according to forecasts, by 2050 the elderly will account for just 9% of the population. Given these numbers, we not only need to increase quotas for African students looking to study in Russia, but also open branches of our universities in African countries. That would allow us to offer a Russian education to many more African students as well as establish student exchange programmes.

KKK: By all appearances, aspects to do with education and professional training – and issues of humanitarian nature – are currently being examined in keeping with the course that has been delineated. Do you think that civil society should be involved in extending the reach of public diplomacy between Russia and Africa?

AK: There is no doubt that collaboration between Russia and Africa should extend across the board, and take place at various levels. It should not be limited to ties between government officials and members of the business community. In any country, ordinary citizens make up the majority of the population, and for countries to collaborate effectively with one another, there needs to be an understanding of their perspectives and wishes. Therefore, as we look to establish direct ties and foster an environment conducive to regular dialogue with the people of various African nations, it is vital to involve civil society more closely.

It would appear sensible to provide more opportunities to people in Africa in terms of volunteering and doing internships at large Russian companies that are looking to build their presence on the African continent. The aim would be for these people to potentially be offered jobs at the companies’ African branches. Human resources need to be at the heart of our efforts, given their potential role in strengthening ties in both industry and science.

For our part, the Roscongress Foundation, as a socially oriented non-financial development institution, is open to proposals and is ready to provide assistance in promoting Russia’s image in African countries. This includes through organizing business, cultural and sporting events. As far as this is concerned, I imagine that the Foundation will receive support from Russian embassies and Rossotrudnichestvo’s offices in African countries.

KKK: Do you envisage any problems during attempts to better leverage Russia’s soft power and to strengthen public diplomacy in Africa? Do you view competition from other foreign players as a challenge?

AK: I don’t think it’s entirely appropriate to use the term “soft power” in this instance. In this regard, I am of the same opinion as Yevgeny Primakov, Head of Rossotrudnichestvo. The term I take issue with is “power”, which implies pressure of some kind. We have no intention of pressurizing anyone. We are in favour of equal relations with all of our partners, and this includes African nations. In particular, we are guided by the principle of “African solutions to African problems.”

Obviously, there is competition, but I would not call that a challenge as such. Our main objective is not to compete with someone, but to offer our own perspectives on certain issues, communicate our values, and build a positive image of Russia in the eyes of people in Africa. Let me explicitly reiterate here, we are not exerting power in any way. People in Africa will have the benefit of several alternative perspectives, and will be able to choose the approach they feel is closest to them. This, in my opinion, is the principle of equality and mutual respect.

Of course, there are things that are hampering efforts to implement a systemic Russian humanitarian policy in Africa. For example, Rossotrudnichestvo has only eight offices across Africa’s 54 nations. It would appear that Russian-African ties would benefit from Russia opening new diplomatic missions in the region. If we want Russia’s voice to be heard on the African continent, special attention needs to be given to this issue.

KKK: In terms of the media landscape, what steps need to be taken to improve the work done by various outlets? How can we better inform society about events in both parts of the world? Why, for example, news in Africa rarely reported on in Russia?

AK: In terms of working with the African continent, I believe that raising awareness on both sides is one of the most important issues we face. It is difficult to talk about joint ventures, for example, to develop the SME sector, when the African continent remains so little known in Russia, and in Africa, there is only a vague notion of what Russia is. The Russia–Africa Summit and Economic Forum played a crucial role in addressing this, as did the 2018 FIFA World Cup. That event saw many people from Africa visit Russia for the first time. They were able to see with their own eyes what our country is like, instead of being presented an image by the Western media. People were following events using various information resources.

These events played a huge role in helping to shape the media landscape. However, this exchange of information needs to be done on a more permanent basis. It’s worth pointing out that in today’s world, awareness can be raised in more ways than just via the media. Given the spread of social media, the student exchanges I mentioned earlier could, over time, play a much more important role in cultivating Russia’s image than conventional media channels. However, in order to achieve this, it is vital to work with young people in both Russia and Africa.

Going back to conventional media, I believe that first of all, Russian news agencies need to expand their network of correspondents in Africa. That would allow our journalists to work with primary sources, rather than rely on material put together by foreign news agencies. It will also be important to get Russian and African journalists working together, for example, through placement programmes, master classes, roundtables and so forth.

To answer the question on news in Africa being reported on in Russia, things are developing. Telegram channels dedicated to the African continent are appearing, for example, so it is possible to stay up-to-date with key events. One organization which is doing much to leverage Telegram channels is the Association of Economic Cooperation with African States (AECAS). Its members include the Roscongress Foundation, which has considerable experience in developing and implementing humanitarian initiatives. AECAS is also currently working to build an integrated space for people in Russia and Africa to obtain information. This appears to me to be a very promising area. Admittedly, when it comes to large news agencies, the problem is that there are not enough events to report on which would garner widespread interest. However, I am in no doubt that as Russian‑African relations develop further, things will improve in this area.

KKK: The second Russian-African Public Forum took place in November 2020. In his welcome address, Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov said that amendments needed to be made to policy initiatives in order to respond to changing realities in Africa. What was he referring to, and what is your take on “changing realities” in Africa?

AK: First of all, I would say that the African continent has undergone an enormous transformation over the last few years. Across all areas, Africa has become much more profoundly involved in the economic processes driving globalization. Partners in Africa are implementing a programme to ease the movement of goods, capital and people, and to employ new technology in business and marketing. This has made the African economy more open and attractive to foreign investors.

The first Russia–Africa Economic Forum in Sochi served as yet another clear demonstration to the Russian and global community that the African economy is becoming more organic. It served as proof of Africa’s increasingly significant role in the global economy. Indeed, the continent has a direct bearing on global growth, and on progress in science and technology. Africa’s economic ties with the rest of the world are certainly no longer solely about supplying raw materials and being a market for finished products.

The socioeconomic growth we are witnessing, together with the global economy’s accelerated transition to a new wave of tech innovation, has meant that Africa’s role and position in the global economy has shifted significantly. The continent is also becoming an important growth pole in terms of global demand. Consumer spending on the continent has already reached US$ 680 billion. According the World Bank, this figure is set to grow to US$ 2.2 trillion by 2030.

As the continent undergoes this transformation, platforms for dialogue between Russia and Africa are profoundly changing too. The Russia–Africa Summit demonstrated the sheer enormity of potential that exists for collaboration across various areas. It was a historic milestone for Russian-African cooperation. One of the outcomes of the event was the establishment of the Secretariat of the Russia–Africa Partnership Forum.

In addition to a public council, the body also incorporates a coordinating council, research council, and media council. Never before in Russia’s modern history has there been such a serious mechanism for bringing together expertise and best practices from all sides and across all areas. It is set to act as a foundation to develop all aspects of Russian-African partnership, and to effectively position Africa’s transformation, which we briefly discussed earlier.

The high-level summit also led to the establishment of the Association of Economic Cooperation with African States, which will serve as a platform to strengthen business ties between Russia and Africa.

KKK: The situation is so diverse – politics, economy and culture – in Africa. In your opinion, what are the best pathways for promoting policy initiatives, as well as the social aspects of diplomacy with Africa?

AK: That is quite important, but I don’t think we should try to identify a single “best” or “universal” pathway. It’s important to understand that Africa is a diverse continent – every country is unique, and requires an individual approach. And that’s before we consider that methods and initiatives that are employed in one region of the world – for example, Europe – are not at all necessarily appropriate for countries in Africa. We need to meticulously analyse each initiative, and be sure to draw the greatest possible benefit from them.

Generally speaking, there needs to be a focus on working with people, and in particular, with young people in Africa. These efforts should be based upon the needs of the population. And as I mentioned earlier, the pathways to achieving our aims could look very different from one another. Africa, just like Russia, is blessed with a wealth of extremely young talented people: some make films, others dance, others draw. But that’s not the important thing. What’s important here is to do everything we can to connect the lives of people in Africa with our country – we show that Russia is ready to help develop their talents.

After all, these people could well become the thought leaders of the future, as well as ambassadors for Russian-African relations. These people could help foster a positive image of Russia in their respective countries. We are ready to engage and cooperate with intergovernmental organizations, civil society and African partners, work constructively to consolidate the results from the first summit and what both Russia and Africa further set in the joint declaration in Sochi, in October 2019.

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Jerusalem is considered an important religious city for Muslims, Christians and Jews, however, Washington recognizes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.  The controversial move of the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem by the Trump administration was confirmed by the majority of the senate late Thursday night. 

Both Democrats and Republicans voted yes to keep the US Embassy to Israel in Jerusalem with 97 senators voting in favor, while only 3 senators including Democrats Tom Carper of Delaware, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders who is an Independent from Vermont voted against the amendment.  Republican senators Jim Inhofe from Oklahoma and Bill Haggerty from Tennessee submitted the amendment within the $1.9 trillion Covid-19 budget resolution.  Inhofe had previously tweeted that the US Embassy will remain permanently in Jerusalem with this vote.  Inhofe tweeted “It’s an important message that we acknowledge Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”  

It should not be a surprise knowing that the majority of Democrats and Republicans always vote in favor of Israel.  The American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is the most powerful lobby in Washington D.C. has most of the US politicians in their pockets.   It also should be of no surprise that the Biden administration is full of Zionists who support Israel including his Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken who was asked by a pro-Israel senator Ted Cruz during a Senate confirmation hearing “Do you agree that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and do you commit that the United States will keep our embassy in Jerusalem?” Blinken replied with “Yes and Yes.”

Where does the Biden administration stand concerning Israel’s security? Well, let’s look at Biden’s choice for the US envoy to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield who should be concerning for the entire Middle East.  At a Senate confirmation hearing in late January, Thomas-Greenfield said that

“If I am confirmed as the US ambassador to the United Nations, I look forward to standing with Israel – standing against the unfair targeting of Israel, the relentless resolutions that are proposed against Israel unfairly”

“[and that] I hope to work closely and look forward in fact to working closely with the Israeli embassy, with the Israeli ambassador to work to bolster Israel’s security, and to expand economic opportunities for Israelis and Americans alike, and widen the circle of peace” she also said that “I think it goes without saying that Israel has no closer friend than the United States, and I will reflect that in my actions at the United Nations.”

Notice that Thomas-Greenfield did not mention the Palestinians when she said that she wants “to expand economic opportunities for Israelis and Americans alike” is an affirmation of what is to come in the months and years ahead concerning Israel and its Arab neighbors.  The Biden administration is basically continuing what all previous US administrations have done in the past, support Israel on every level, no matter what the Arab world says.

Here is the list of both Democrat and Republican Senators who voted in favor for the US Embassy to remain in Jerusalem:

  • Baldwin (D-WI), Yea
  • Barrasso (R-WY), Yea
  • Bennet (D-CO), Yea
  • Blackburn (R-TN), Yea
  • Blumenthal (D-CT), Yea
  • Blunt (R-MO), Yea
  • Booker (D-NJ), Yea
  • Boozman (R-AR), Yea
  • Braun (R-IN), Yea
  • Brown (D-OH), Yea
  • Burr (R-NC), Yea
  • Cantwell (D-WA), Yea
  • Capito (R-WV), Yea
  • Cardin (D-MD), Yea
  • Carper (D-DE), Nay
  • Casey (D-PA), Yea
  • Cassidy (R-LA), Yea
  • Collins (R-ME), Yea
  • Coons (D-DE), Yea
  • Cornyn (R-TX), Yea
  • Cortez Masto (D-NV), Yea
  • Cotton (R-AR), Yea
  • Cramer (R-ND), Yea
  • Crapo (R-ID), Yea
  • Cruz (R-TX), Yea
  • Daines (R-MT), Yea
  • Duckworth (D-IL), Yea
  • Durbin (D-IL), Yea
  • Ernst (R-IA), Yea
  • Feinstein (D-CA), Yea
  • Fischer (R-NE), Yea
  • Gillibrand (D-NY), Yea
  • Graham (R-SC), Yea
  • Grassley (R-IA), Yea
  • Hagerty (R-TN), Yea
  • Hassan (D-NH), Yea
  • Hawley (R-MO), Yea
  • Heinrich (D-NM), Yea
  • Hickenlooper (D-CO), Yea
  • Hirono (D-HI), Yea
  • Hoeven (R-ND), Yea
  • Hyde-Smith (R-MS), Yea
  • Inhofe (R-OK), Yea
  • Johnson (R-WI), Yea
  • Kaine (D-VA), Yea
  • Kelly (D-AZ), Yea
  • Kennedy (R-LA), Yea
  • King (I-ME), Yea
  • Klobuchar (D-MN), Yea
  • Lankford (R-OK), Yea
  • Leahy (D-VT), Yea
  • Lee (R-UT), Yea
  • Lujan (D-NM), Yea
  • Lummis (R-WY), Yea
  • Manchin (D-WV), Yea
  • Markey (D-MA), Yea
  • Marshall (R-KS), Yea
  • McConnell (R-KY), Yea
  • Menendez (D-NJ), Yea
  • Merkley (D-OR), Yea
  • Moran (R-KS), Yea
  • Murkowski (R-AK), Yea
  • Murphy (D-CT), Yea
  • Murray (D-WA), Yea
  • Ossoff (D-GA), Yea
  • Padilla (D-CA), Yea
  • Paul (R-KY), Yea
  • Peters (D-MI), Yea
  • Portman (R-OH), Yea
  • Reed (D-RI), Yea
  • Risch (R-ID), Yea
  • Romney (R-UT), Yea
  • Rosen (D-NV), Yea
  • Rounds (R-SD), Yea
  • Rubio (R-FL), Yea
  • Sanders (I-VT), Nay
  • Sasse (R-NE), Yea
  • Schatz (D-HI), Yea
  • Schumer (D-NY), Yea
  • Scott (R-FL), Yea
  • Scott (R-SC), Yea
  • Shaheen (D-NH), Yea
  • Shelby (R-AL), Yea
  • Sinema (D-AZ), Yea
  • Smith (D-MN), Yea
  • Stabenow (D-MI), Yea
  • Sullivan (R-AK), Yea
  • Tester (D-MT), Yea
  • Thune (R-SD), Yea
  • Tillis (R-NC), Yea
  • Toomey (R-PA), Yea
  • Tuberville (R-AL), Yea
  • Van Hollen (D-MD), Yea
  • Warner (D-VA), Yea
  • Warnock (D-GA), Yea
  • Warren (D-MA), Nay
  • Whitehouse (D-RI), Yea
  • Wicker (R-MS), Yea
  • Wyden (D-OR), Yea
  • Young (R-IN), Yea

*

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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

***

Globally, there is an ongoing trend of a handful of big companies determining what food is grown, how it is grown, what is in it and who sells it. This model involves highly processed food adulterated with chemical inputs ending up in large near-monopoly supermarket chains or fast-food outlets that rely on industrial-scale farming.

While the brands lining the shelves of giant retail outlets seem vast, a handful of food companies own these brands which in turn rely on a relatively narrow range of produce for ingredients. At the same time, this illusion of choice often comes at the expense of food security in poorer countries that were compelled to restructure their agriculture to facilitate agro-exports courtesy of the World Bank, IMF, the WTO and global agribusiness interests.

In Mexico, transnational food retail and processing companies have taken over food distribution channels, replacing local foods with cheap processed items, often with the direct support of the government. Free trade and investment agreements have been critical to this process and the consequences for public health have been catastrophic.

Mexico’s National Institute for Public Health released the results of a national survey of food security and nutrition in 2012. Between 1988 and 2012, the proportion of overweight women between the ages of 20 and 49 increased from 25 to 35 per cent and the number of obese women in this age group increased from 9 to 37 per cent. Some 29 per cent of Mexican children between the ages of 5 and 11 were found to be overweight, as were 35 per cent of the youngsters between 11 and 19, while one in ten school age children experienced anaemia.

Former Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Olivier De Schutter, concludes that trade policies had favoured a greater reliance on heavily processed and refined foods with a long shelf life rather than on the consumption of fresh and more perishable foods, particularly fruit and vegetables. He added that the overweight and obesity emergency that Mexico faces could have been avoided.

In 2015, the non-profit organisation GRAIN reported that the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to the direct investment in food processing and a change in Mexico’s retail structure (towards supermarkets and convenience stores) as well as the emergence of global agribusiness and transnational food companies in the country.

NAFTA eliminated rules preventing foreign investors from owning more than 49 per cent of a company. It also prohibited minimum amounts of domestic content in production and increased rights for foreign investors to retain profits and returns from initial investments. By 1999, US companies had invested 5.3 billion dollars in Mexico’s food processing industry, a 25-fold increase in just 12 years.

US food corporations began to colonise the dominant food distribution networks of small-scale vendors, known as tiendas (corner shops). This helped spread nutritionally poor food as they allowed these corporations to sell and promote their foods to poorer populations in small towns and communities. By 2012, retail chains had displaced tiendas as Mexico’s main source of food sales.

In Mexico, the loss of food sovereignty induced catastrophic changes to the nation’s diet and many small-scale farmers lost their livelihoods, which was accelerated by the dumping of surplus commodities (produced at below the cost of production due to subsidies) from the US. NAFTA rapidly drove millions of Mexican farmers, ranchers and small businesspeople into bankruptcy, leading to the flight of millions of immigrant workers.

Warning for India

What happened in Mexico should serve as a warning as Indian farmers continue their protest against three recent farm bills that are designed to fully corporatize the agrifood sector through contract farming, the massive roll-back of public sector support systems, a reliance on imports (boosted by a future US trade deal) and the acceleration of large-scale (online) retail.

If you want to know the eventual fate of India’s local markets and small retailers, look no further than what US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in 2019. He stated that Amazon had “destroyed the retail industry across the United States.”

And if you want to know the eventual fate of India’s farmers, look no further than the 1990s when the IMF and World Bank advised India to shift hundreds of millions out of agriculture in return for up to more than $120 billion in loans at the time.

India was directed to dismantle its state-owned seed supply system, reduce subsidies, run down public agriculture institutions and offer incentives for the growing of cash crops for export to earn foreign exchange. Part of the strategy would also involve changing land laws so that land could be sold and amalgamated for industrial-scale farming.

The plan was for foreign corporations to capture the sector, with the aforementioned policies having effectively weakened or displaced independent cultivators.

To date, this process has been slow but the recent legislation could finally deliver a knock-out blow to tens of millions of farmers and give what the likes of Amazon, Walmart, Facebook, Cargill, Archer Daniels Midlands, Louis Dreyfus, Bunge and the global agritech, seed and agrochemical corporations have wanted all along. It will also serve the retail/agribusiness/logistics interests of India’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, and its sixth richest, Gautam Adani.

During their ongoing protests, farmers have been teargassed, smeared and beaten. Journalist Satya Sagar notes that government advisors fear that seeming to appear weak with the agitating farmers would not sit well with foreign agrifood investors and could stop the flow of big money into the sector – and the economy as a whole.

And it is indeed ‘big’ money. Facebook invested 5.5 billion dollars last year in Mukesh Ambani’s Jio Platforms (e-commerce retail). Google has also invested 4.5 billion dollars. Currently, Amazon and Flipkart (Walmart has an 81% stake) together control over 60% of the country’s overall e-commerce market. These and other international investors have a great deal to lose if the recent farm legislation is repealed. So does the Indian government.

Since the 1990s, when India opened up to neoliberal economics, the country has become increasingly dependent on inflows of foreign capital. Policies are being governed by the drive to attract and retain foreign investment and maintain ‘market confidence’ by ceding to the demands of international capital. ‘Foreign direct investment’ has thus become the holy grail of the Modi-led administration.

Little wonder the government needs to be seen as acting ‘tough’ on protesting farmers because now, more than ever, attracting and retaining foreign reserves will be required to purchase food on the international market once India surrenders responsibility for its food policy to private players by eliminating its buffer stocks.

The plan to radically restructure agrifood in the country is being sold to the public under the guise of ‘modernising’ the sector. And this is to be carried out by self-proclaimed ‘wealth creators’ like Zuckerberg, Bezos and Ambani who are highly experienced at creating wealth – for themselves.

According to the recent Oxfam report ‘The Inequality Virus’, Mukesh Ambani doubled his wealth between March and October 2020. The coronavirus-related lockdown in India resulted in the country’s billionaires increasing their wealth by around 35 per cent, while 170,000 people lost their jobs every hour in April 2020 alone.

Prior to the lockdown, Oxfam reported that 73 per cent of the wealth generated in 2017 went to the richest 1 per cent, while 670 million Indians, the poorest half of the population, saw only a 1 per cent increase in their wealth.

Moreover, the fortunes of India’s billionaires increased by almost 10 times over a decade and their total wealth was higher than the entire Union budget of India for the fiscal year 2018-19.

It is clear who these ‘wealth creators’ create wealth for. On the People’s Review site, Tanmoy Ibrahim writes a piece on India’s billionaire class, with a strong focus on Ambani and Adani. By outlining the nature of crony capitalism in India, it is clear that Modi’s ‘wealth creators’ are given carte blanche to plunder the public purse, people and the environment, while real wealth creators – not least the farmers – are fighting for existence.

The current struggle should not be regarded as a battle between the government and farmers. If what happened in Mexico is anything to go by, the outcome will adversely affect the entire nation in terms of the further deterioration of public health and the loss of livelihoods.

Consider that rates of obesity in India have already tripled in the last two decades and the nation is fast becoming the diabetes and heart disease capital of the world. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), between 2005 and 2015 the number of obese people doubled, even though one in five children in the 5-9 year age group were found to be stunted.

This will be just part of the cost of handing over the sector to billionaire (comprador) capitalists Mukesh Ambani and Gautum Adani and Jeff Bezos (world’s richest person), Mark Zukerberg (world’s fourth richest person), the Cargill business family (14 billionaires) and the Walmart business family (richest in the US).

These individuals are poised to siphon off the wealth of India’s agrifood sector while denying the livelihoods of many millions of small-scale farmers and local mom and pop retailers while undermining the health of the nation.

*

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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.

Presentation to the Korea University Conference, February 7, 2021

Dear Friends,

My thoughts are with the Korean people. With my Korean friends.

I wish to express my solidarity with the Korean people in their long standing struggle waged at different periods of Korean history including the ongoing reunification campaign, which will bring North and South Korea together in a unified nation state.

I recall the movements against the presidency of Mrs Park Guen hye and the Candlelight Movement.

Among my many friends in Korea, I wish to pay tribute to Lee Seok-ki, leader of the Unified Progressive Party (UPP) for his commitment to political and civil rights.

The Korean identity and longstanding culture prevail despite acts of Japanese aggression extending back to the Joseon dynasty in the late 16th Century, and more recently, the annexation of your country by Japan in 1910, followed by the invasion by US forces in 1945, which allegedly “liberated” South Korea from Japan, while imposing a new colonial-style  regime in South Korea.

We must of course also reflect on the crimes committed by US forces against the people of Korea during the Korean War (1950-53).

 

The 1997 Asian Crisis 

My relationship with Korea extends back to 1997 when your country was the object of an outright act of “economic warfare”.

I am referring to the 1997 Asian Crisis. As we recall, the incoming president Kim Dae-jung was obliged by Washington together with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to hand over a large part of the Republic of Korea’s economic assets (including high technology corporations) to “friendly” US investors.

One case in point was the “purchase” of Korea First Bank (KFB) which was acquired by a Texas crony business entity linked to the Bush family. It was sold “at a negative price”. What this means is that the ROK government was ordered to pay subsidies to the US investors which they then used to “buy up” Korea First Bank. It was a financial fraud on behalf of global creditors. 

The Corona Crisis

I mention this because it is relevant to an understanding of the ongoing Covid-19 crisis which on March 11, 2020 was marked by instructions emanating from the global financial establishment to close down the national economies of 193 member states of the United Nations as a means to resolving a Worldwide public health crisis.

This decision was based on lies and deception. What it implied was an engineered bankruptcy program, which has resulted in a Worldwide process of concentration of both financial and real economic wealth, coupled with mass poverty and unemployment.

Under the control of powerful creditors, real economic assets are slated either to be eliminated (as in the case of the small and medium sized enterprises), confiscated, taken over or purchased at a negative price.

The same powerful financial interests which triggered the 1997 Asian crisis, largely through the destabilization (short-selling) of Asian currencies (Korean Won Thai Baht, Indonesian Rupiah) are now involved in overseeing the current covid crisis.

I will proceed by providing a short history of the Corona pandemic, focussing on the lies and deceptions, as well as the fear campaign. I will also provide evidence that this pandemic is a big lie.

Its purpose is to provide a pretext and a justification to the destabilization of national economies worldwide.

Global Economic and Social Crisis 

We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in World history.

Worldwide, people have been misled both by their governments and the media as to the causes and devastating consequences of the Covid-19 “pandemic”.

We are living history, yet our understanding of the sequence of events since January 2020 has been blurred largely as a result of media propaganda.

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext and a justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair.

More than 7 billion people Worldwide are directly or indirectly affected by the diabolical economic and social measures applied Worldwide to combat the alleged spread of the corona epidemic. The media has casually described the dramatic consequences of the lockdown as “collateral damage”.

People’s lives are destroyed. Famines have erupted in more than twenty developing countries.

Does this not constitute an act of war directed against humanity?

The pandemic is a bold face lie.

Timeline

The first stage of this crisis (outside China) was launched by the WHO on January 30th 2020 at a time when there were 5  cases in the US, 3 in Canada, 4 in France, 4 in Germany.

Do these numbers justify the declaration of a Worldwide public health emergency?

The fear campaign was sustained by political statements and media disinformation.

People are frightened. They are encouraged to do the PCR test, which is flawed. A positive PCR test does not mean that you are infected and/or that you can transmit the virus.

The RT-PCR Test is known to produce a high percentage of false positives. Moreover, it does not identify the virus.

From the outset in January 2020, there was no “scientific basis” to justify the launching of a Worldwide public health emergency.

In February, the covid crisis was accompanied by a major crash of financial markets. There is evidence of financial fraud.

February 20-21, 2020

On the day of the WHO director General Dr. Tedros’ historic press conference (February 20, 2020) the recorded number of confirmed cases outside China was 1073 of which 621 were passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess Cruise Ship (stranded in Japanese territorial waters).

From a statistical point of view, the WHO decision pointing to a potential “spread of the virus Worldwide” did not make sense.  Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that he was

“concerned that the chance to contain the coronavirus outbreak was “closing” …

“I believe the window of opportunity is still there, but that the window is narrowing.”

These shock and awe statements by Dr. Tedros (based on flawed concepts and statistics), had set the stage for  the February financial collapse. There is evidence of financial fraud which was conducive to a massive redistribution of money wealth in favor of a handful of billionaires and financial institutions.

And on March 11, 2020: the WHO officially declared a Worldwide pandemic at a time when there were  44,279 cases and 1440 deaths outside China out of a population of 6.4 billion (Estimates of confirmed cases based on the PCR test)..

Immediately following the March 11, 2020 WHO announcement, confinement and lockdown instructions were transmitted to 193 member states of the United Nations.

Unprecedented in history, applied almost simultaneously in a large of number countries, entire sectors of the World economy have been destabilized. Small and medium sized enterprises have been driven into bankruptcy. Unemployment and poverty are rampant.

The social impacts of these measures are not only devastating, they are ongoing under what is described as “A Second Wave”.  There is no evidence of a “Second Wave”. Amply documented the PCR estimates are flawed.

The health impacts (mortality, morbidity) resulting from the closing down of national economies far surpass those attributed to Covid-19.

Famines have erupted in at least 25 developing countries according to UN sources.

The mental health of millions of people Worldwide has been affected as a result of the lockdown, social distancing, job losses, bankruptcies, mass poverty and despair. The frequency of suicides and drug addiction has increased Worldwide.

“V the Virus” is said to be responsible for the wave of bankruptcies and unemployment. That’s a lie. There is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.

It’s the powerful financiers and billionaires who are behind this project which has contributed to the destabilization (Worldwide) of the real economy.

Since early February 2020, the Super Rich have cashed in on billions of dollars.

Amply documented it’s the largest redistribution of global wealth in World history, accompanied by a process of Worldwide impoverishment. 

Let us put this in historical perspective. The outcome of this pandemic is the destabilization of national economies,  extensive unemployment, mass poverty, bankruptcies and a rupture in the structures of transport and international trade.

The economic landscape has been redesigned. Powerful financial interests acting as global creditors have taken control of the national economies of numerous countries.

People in Korea and Japan have experienced the plight of US led wars. These wars are ongoing in the Middle East, striking one country after another. In recent years, the instruments and modalities of US led wars have evolved: sanctions, acts of political destabilization, the imposition of strong economic medicine, privatisation, market manipulation, etc.

The pandemic coupled with propaganda and the fear campaign is an instrument of warfare. It consists in imposing a Worldwide process of  economic, social and political destabilization.

What has happened is the imposition of so-called guidelines demanding the closure of national economies with a view to resolving a public health crisis. It’s a bold face lie.

The instrument of submission is the creation of the largest global debt in World history.

The creditors ultimately control nation states. They intend to impose a system of “global governance” which will override the sovereignty of nation states. In may regards, what people worldwide are living is the stranglehold of global debt.

The COVID-19 public health “emergency” under WHO auspices was presented to public opinion as a means (“solution”) to containing the “killer virus”.

If the public had been informed and reassured that Covid is “similar to Seasonal Influenza”, the fear campaign would have fallen flat. The lockdown and closure of the national economy would have been rejected outright.

“The Great Reset”

Since the outset of the corona crisis, an unprecedented process of “enrichment of the super rich” has occurred.

The same powerful creditors which triggered the Covid Global Debt Crisis are now intent upon establishing a  “New Normal” which essentially consists in imposing what the World Economic Forum describes as the “Great Reset”:

“Using COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions to push through this transformation, the Great Reset is being rolled out under the guise of a ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in which older enterprises are to be driven to bankruptcy or absorbed into monopolies” (Colin Todhunter)

What is at stake is the power and extension of the US dollar in the hands of the financial establishment. A wealthy superrich minority is intent upon taking total control of the real economy.

What is at stake is the restructuring of the global economic and landscape.

The scheme is not limited to eliminating Small and Medium Sized enterprises, it consists in acquiring and confiscating bankrupt corporations including airlines, hotel chains, etc. It is marked by a dramatic restructuring of the public sector. The welfare state which was developed in the post World War II period is intent upon be scrapped.

In the US a massive stimulus plan largely funded by public debt is geared towards supporting the privatization of social services and infrastructure. Large amounts of public money will be channeled towards to defense contractors.

In developing countries, what we are witnessing is a process of massive impoverishment.

For more details, see Professor Chossudovsky’s E-Book entitled:

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

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***

Introduction 

It is noteworthy to mention that at the beginning of the Israeli election campaigns, especially the parliamentary, a process of party formation begins and a process of divisions within the existing Zionist parties also begins. This will be followed by a process of unification of small parliamentary parties to form larger parties. Small parties are also formed by ex-generals of the Israeli army.

The most helpful factor for all these political processes is that there are a number of shared attributes among all Zionist parties. With the exception of Palestinian Arab parties and the Israeli Communist Party, Zionist Jewish parties share Zionist ideology, right-wing politics and ethnicity. In addition, there is almost complete national consensus among most Zionist parties on many political issues such as: rejecting the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, excluding and ignoring Palestinian Arab issues of the Palestinian indigenous citizens, refusing to stop colonial settlement, and refusing to dismantle existing colonial settlements.

The political environment fosters right-wing ideology in Israel provided by the dominant colonial authority. This ideology is metaphorically known as Zionist ideology. This right-wing ideology becomes more extreme as fear, terror and panic dominate the consciousness of the Jewish Israeli citizen, who feels the weakness of the Zionist state as a result of its external failures, especially during its defeat in two wars in Lebanon, as well as a result of external challenges that may come from the axis of resistance, as a result of the internal challenges produced by the Palestinian resistance in the colonized territories and the degree of disintegration and slackness that began to emerge in the structure of the Zionist colonial entity.

A critical view of The Zionist parties

Nowadays in Israel, there are a number of right-wing parties opposed to the Likud party that are seeking to overthrow the Netanyahu group. There are also new and small parties that are seeking to change the balance of party power. Israeli parties are experiencing political turmoil due to their focus on personalities and their avoidance of discussing social, political and economic issues. There is no pioneering idea or pilot program that distinguishes a party from the other, especially when it comes to Palestinian issues.

All Zionist parties support the Zionist apartheid regime that exists inside the colonized territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. Even the “left-wing” Meretz party, whose leader Nitzan Horowitz has shown political readiness to align his party with the most extremist right wing parties in Israel. In a recent declaration, Mr. Horowitz asserted that “…the party does not rule out joining elements with whom it has never thought of working with, such as Bennet’s “right-wing” party, Yisrael Bitayno, of Lieberman.”[1] These two parties are known to be representatives of the extreme Zionist right.

Most Zionist parties suffer from a structural crisis on the level of leadership due to the nature of colonial settlement communities that lack an environment for the formation and growth of political leaders with a new political vision and a realistic and creative strategic dimension. These parties lack leaders with principles, who are willing to discuss humanitarian principles and defend humanitarian causes. The colonial settlement environment produces opportunistic leaders who seek to monopolize power, conspire, and hold a political supermarket. Zionist politicians behave as if they were in a market, they buy loyalties and appoint loyalists to positions they do not deserve. We see these shallow leaders controlling the joints of class political power because of their alliance with the dominant settler capitalist class. In short, they run a colony and do not run a country that seeks to develop and serve the interests of all its inhabitants. A good example of this caliber of politician is the current Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Important Impressions of Benjamin Netanyahu

Those who met or worked with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu believe that he is a liar with distinction, and possess a high degree of readiness to commit fraud and deception. In addition, he is narcissistic, opportunistic, and immoral. These qualities were confirmed recently by a press interview conducted by Israeli journalist Yossi Millman with the former director of the CIA Director John Brennan. When asked about his impressions of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, John Brennan replied:

Netanyahu is very cautious and a cunning politician, and has survived several attempts to remove him from office. In my opinion, he has a cunning understanding and manipulative control over Israeli domestic politics. But he is not a man of principles and not a moral person. In meetings with him, alone or as part of a delegation, I found that his description of reality was a distortion of the truth. But in this way he is a typical politician. He will change his mind and positions and will not honour his promises, if it is in his political interest. Did he lie to me personally? My answer is that he interferes with the facts.[2]

According to the assessment of the Israeli journalist Asa-el Amotz, the morality system adopted by Netanyahu regarding his position on the Likud party is evident. “Likud has no longer been a party for promoting politics or even discussing political issues only. In the past, Likud founder Menachem Begin believed in the power of ideas and the leader’s submission to the party, but Netanyahu believes in the idea of power and the party’s submission to the leader.”[3]

Racism, Terror and Incitement in Electoral Propaganda

The media propaganda of right-wing Israeli parties is based on fueling the security concerns of the Jewish public. We see, for example, that the political-ideological discourse of Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu is always based on a number of constants, the most important of which are intimidation and creation of panic among the Israeli-Jewish citizens regarding the “Iranian atomic threat”, the danger of Hezbollah’s precision missiles, and the danger of Palestinian resistance missiles. Netanyahu’s election speeches are full with the repetitive claims that “Iran is trying to acquire an atomic bomb and intends to use it to exterminate the Jewish people in Israel”.

The Removal of Vital Interests

Image on the right is from IMEMC

The focus in Zionist political discourse, especially in electoral propaganda, on intimidation and racial hatred, on the degree of brutality, and on colonial violence against the indigenous Palestinian population, i.e. on the factor of the so-called “security”, produces, in turn, psychological effects that are compressing on the social awareness of the Israeli-Jewish citizens forcing them to sympathize and reconcile in harmony with this situation. The Zionist leaders made this reality appear as if it is epitome of the Israeli-Jewish national consensus.

These stressful psychological effects are aimed at removing the awareness of the Israeli-Jewish citizens away from their real interests and from hot issues affecting their quality of life, such as health, education, economy, housing, standard of living and unemployment. Israeli citizens currently suffer from poor health services especially at hospitals, increasingly expensive education and housing, an increasing degree of administrative and financial corruption, and an increasing degree of social violence, especially among the indigenous Palestinian population.

In addition to the rhetoric of intimidation and panic, the Israeli right, particularly Netanyahu, employed racist attitudes in his political speech by inflaming the racist hatred of Jewish Israelis against the indigenous Palestinians of both the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and against Palestinian citizens and foreign workers. Through his speech and the behavior of his party in the Zionist parliament, Netanyahu succeeded in promoting the racist nature of the government, its institutions, its military and settlement organizations and its policies on the ground. His party, with the help of a right-wing majority in the Zionist parliament, enacted a number of racist laws. He also succeeded in turning the state of brutality and racism into the backbone of his political discourse.

The Prime Minister’s record is full of racist rhetoric and attitudes, he is responsible for the Kamenitz Law to speed up the demolition of Palestinian homes, and for the demolition of the village of Al-Araqeeb in the Negev for 182 times[4], for the continued construction of the Apartheid Wall, the legislation of the Nationality Law, and the abolition of Arabic as an official language. Netanyahu prides himself on the Nationality Law and does not deny his role in its legislation. When actress Rotem Sela’ criticized his government for its racist policies towards the Palestinian citizens of the Zionist State, Benjamin Netanyahu replied: “First and foremost an important correction: Israel is not a state for all its citizens. According to the Nationality Law that we have adopted, Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish people alone.”[5]

Because of his authoritarian positions within the Likud party, he has caused internal divisions that have resulted in the disintegration of part of his party’s leadership, such as Gideon Sa’ar, which led to the founding of a new right-wing party called “The New Hope”. Netanyahu has been threatened by the new party that is strongly rivaling him for the votes of the Zionist right and may prevent Netanyahu from winning enough seats to form the next government. The rest of the right-wing Zionist parties have also expressed their distaste for Netanyahu’s dominance of the Zionist right and are seeking to replace him. These negative developments have prompted Netanyahu to change his electoral strategy.

The Relentless Pursuit of Arab Electoral Potential

In order to adjust Netanyahu’s expected loss in the upcoming elections, the prime minister sought to acquire a portion of the votes of Palestinian citizens. In order to do so, Netanyahu has found it necessary to improve his electoral image among Palestinian citizens. So, he issued false promises in which he promised the Palestinian public to “eliminate crime inside Palestinian society as it was eliminated in the Jewish community.” He spoke of “increasing budgets” for Arab municipal and local councils.” Netanyahu suddenly retreated. Instead of inciting and lying to the Arab public, he adopted a strategy of containment and incubation.”[6]

Despite his previous racist record, we are recently witnessing a different trend by Benjamin Netanyahu. In an effort to attract enough Palestinian votes to win one or two more seats, Benjamin Netanyahu has visited a number of Palestinian cities and towns such as Nazareth, Umm al-Fahm and Tira, with the aim of capturing Palestinian electoral votes. He said he was ready to put an “Arab” candidate on the party’s list of candidates for the Knesset for later appointment to the post of minister.[7], and during his visit to Nazareth, Netanyahu “apologized” for his racist remarks towards Arabs. “Peace be upon you,” he said in Arabic.” I think that The Arabs of Israel should be an integral part of Israeli society.”[8]

The Grooming of the Islamic Movement by Netanyahu

In addition to adopting this different approach, Natanyahu pursued a two-way electoral strategy: attacking and inciting against the “Joint List”[9] and accusing it of “losing the confidence of the Arab masses”, and the second: attempting to create a political rift within the “Joint List” with a view of liquidating it. Netanyahu succeeded in luring the list of the “Southern Islamic Movement” (the Muslim Brotherhood Movement) led by Mansour Abbas, and pushed it to split from the “Joint List”. In preparation for this, Netanyahu’s Likud party showed a desire for rapprochement with the Muslim Brotherhood Movement led by Mansour Abbas. “Mansoor Abbas has revealed his aversion to the Israeli left and his support for the right, and has repeatedly defended the role of the Israeli police in the violence that is rampant in the Arab community in Israel.”[10]

According to the Israeli Minister Tsahi Hanegbi, the real ambition of the Likud party behind the rapprochement with the Muslim Brotherhood is in the disintegration of “the Joint List” and then the “theft” (in his own words) of Arab votes from Mansour Abbas.”[11]

The Muslim Brotherhood and its Opportunistic Positions

The split of the Muslim Brotherhood Movement from the “Joint List” has weakened the “Joint List” and made it vulnerable to active pursuit by Zionist parties, which believe that the dismantling of the “Joint List” is in their interest and that the “Joint List” is only a big store of potential Palestinian votes. Netanyahu’s Likud party is ready to put a Palestinian candidate, or perhaps two, in its election list. Other Zionist parties have begun their frenzied pursuit to capture Palestinian votes and have placed Palestinian candidates in their electoral lists such as the Israelis and Meretz parties.[12]

In a statement by Mansoor Abbas, the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, he expressed his reservation from the left by saying that “in religious matters I am a right-winger. I have a lot more in common with Shas and Yehadut Hatorah than I have with Meretz and Kahul Lavan.”[13]

At this juncture, we do not want to ask Abbas to tell us what the Muslim Brotherhood has in common with the Shas and Yahdot Hatorah parties, two racist parties with adherence to a settler colonial ideology. But such statements and political positions cast the Muslim Brotherhood movement in the category of cheap political opportunism. The so-called “Islamic morals” put forward by the Muslim Brotherhood Movement constitute nothing but a cover that hides its political opportunism and gives it false credibility. Apparently, his desire to become a “minister” in the right-wing government headed by the super corrupt Benjamin Netanyahu is overwhelming. Within this government, which runs a colony and oppresses an entire people, Abbas will have the opportunity to get closer to those with whom he has “common denominators.”

Concluding Remark

Right-wing ideology in colonial settlements can be seen as an extreme nationalist ideology, but this is not a fascist ideology as some leftists mischaracterize it. However, it should be stressed here that much of the behavior of the settler colonialists is very similar to that of fascist regimes and fascists. The fascist regime does not believe in multi-party systems, parliaments, trade unions or elections, but rather they adhere to worship of the state, a one-party regime, and they espouse hostility to both democracy and the political left.

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Notes

[1] Marzouk, Al-Halabi, “Parental Sin: Between Mr. Shepherd and the Baggage Holder,”https://www.haokets.org/ar, 11-1-2021

[2] Millman, Yossi, “The Life of an Intelligence Man” – Interview with John Brennan, former President of the CIA, Haartz Supplement (in Hebrew), 4-12-2020, p. 24

[3] ASA-EL, AMOTZ, “Inflation of new parties exposes system’s ailments”, https://www.jpost.com, 2-1-2021

[4] Bakri, Qasim, “Demolition of Al-Araqeeb for 182 times”, https://www.arab48.com, 20-1-2021

[5] Spiro, Amy, “Netanyahu to Rotem Sela: Israel is not a country of all its citizens”, https://www.jpost.com, 10-3-2019

[6] Reuters, Monte Carlo International, “Netanyahu changes his attitude towards the Arabs in Israel: They must become an equal part of society”, https://www.mc-doualiya.com, 20-1-2021

[7] Ibid.

[8] Reuters – Monte Carlo/AFB, “Natanyahu changes his tone towards the Arabs in Israel: They should be an integral part of society”, https://www.mc-doualiya.com, 20-1-2021

[9] The “Joint List”, is a coalition of three Palestinian secular parties (ZS)

[10] Abu Kbash, Bilal, “Netanyahu aspires to win even in alliance with the Arabs”, https://24.ae, 9-1-2021

[11] Ibid.

[12] Sama-Occupied Jerusalem, “member of the Arab United List, Abas Mansour Defends Netanyahu”, (in Arabic) ،https://samanews.ps,2-12-2020

[13] Occupied Jerusalem- Sama, “Member of the Joint Arab List Abbas Mansour defends Netanyahu”, https://samanews.ps, 2-12-2020

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First published on December 17, 2021

Life cannot return to normal until there is a vaccine for COVID 19.

At least, that is what governments, corporations, and their mainstream propaganda media outlets have been incessantly arguing. Interestingly, the development of that vaccine was “warp speed,” allegedly at the behest of the Trump administration.

“Warp speed” also took place in other countries like the UK, where shots have been administered. This information has caused some to question whether the vaccine was ready long before the announcement was made or, indeed, before the pandemic ever began.

They tried to warn us about mandated vaccines

Years ago, “conspiracy theorists” were ridiculed for warning of a system in which vaccines would be required to access normal aspects of life. Today, however, government officials and MSM are now openly discussing the very same system.

In case you have been living under a rock for the past several weeks, here are several instances where the “public discussion” has centered around the idea of a “vaccine passport” or “immunity passport” or the general blockade and sanctioning of anyone not willing to take the jab.

Chief Medical Officer of Health for Ontario Dr. David Williams recently stated that individuals who refuse the COVID-19 vaccination might “face some limits.” Some of the “limits” he suggested included not being able to enter a hospital or nursing home without showing proof of having been vaccinated without personal protective equipment.

Welcome to the new normal: Vaccine Passports and Health Passes

For the moment, vaccine passports are mainly intended for international travel. However, their use can be extended to many other areas of life. Vaccine passports in the form of free mobile apps in which a traveler (or event goer, employee, or shopper) uploads their COVID-19 test results or vaccination status. 

There are currently two existing vaccine passports options, one being operational in the United States right now.

  • Common Pass: Created by Commons Project, this health pass has been in international use since October on United and Cathay Pacific flights between New York, London, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Common Pass operates via Apple’s Health app on iOS and CommonHealth for Android. It connects to 230 US health systems. It functions as a scannable QR code and can store a passenger’s test or vaccine data and travel plans. (It is not yet publicly available for download.)
  • IATA Travel Pass: Expected to launch in early 2021, IATA Travel Pass, is currently under development by the International Transport Association. According to the IATA website, the digital pass for travelers is: A global and standardized solution to validate and authenticate all country regulations regarding COVID-19 passenger travel requirements.

Vaccination tickets: the future of concert and event-goers

Ticketmaster announced that it is exploring the possibility of requiring proof of vaccination for ticket purchases and entrance to events. An article published on Billboard stated: 

Ticketmaster has been working on a framework for post-pandemic fan safety that uses smartphones to verify fans’ vaccination status or whether they’ve tested negative for the coronavirus within a 24 to 72-hour window.

Many details of the plan, still in development, will rely on three separate components: the Ticketmaster digital ticket app, third party health information companies like CLEAR Health Pass or IBM’s Digital Health Pass, and testing and vaccine providers like LabCorp and CVS Minute Clinic.

If the vaccination tickets are approved, how would it work?

The Billboard article gives further details about what people will have to do to attend concerts and other events. 

  • After purchasing tickets, concert fans will have to provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination or test negative 24-72 hours before the event
  • Fans must have proof of vaccination or test results delivered to a health pass company, such as CLEAR or IBM
  • Health pass company verifies the attendee’s COVID-19 status to Ticketmaster (Ticketmaster will not be granted access to fan’s medical records)
  • Vaccinated fans or those with negative test results would be issued the credentials needed to access the event by Ticketmaster
  • Fans testing positive or who can not verify their status will not be granted access to any event. 

Different states will have different requirements

The primary role of health pass companies will be to collect data from testing and medical providers and deliver status updates to partner companies. This would be done in a secure, encrypted way that complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA).

For individuals financially privileged enough to afford to buy the ever-more expensive tickets from the Ticketmaster’s monopoly, the world will have taken a giant step forward into the “new normal.”

Airlines are quickly following suit

From CNN:  Australia’s national carrier Qantas will require future international travelers to provide proof of vaccination against Covid-19 before flying.

The airline’s CEO Alan Joyce said in an interview with CNN affiliate Nine News on Monday that the move would be a “necessity” when coronavirus vaccines are readily available.

Joyce said the airline was looking at changing its terms and conditions to “ask people to have a vaccination before they get on the aircraft.”

“Whether you need that domestically, we will have to see what happens with Covid-19 in the market. But certainly, for international visitors coming out and people leaving the country, we think that’s a necessity,” the Qantas chief said.

While Qantas is the first airline to indicate that Covid-19 vaccinations would be a must before travel, others may soon require this as well.

Whatever the “new normal” is for travel will quickly spill over into everyday life

Researchers suspect these new “passports” will quickly be extended to employment, education, and even buying food. 

Judging by the behaviors of those around us, all of those concerns are entirely legitimate. 

What will you do if you can’t attend a favorite event, or fly to see your family? Will you have a choice? If so, what choice will you make? Is this the hill you’re willing to die on or will you go with the flow? Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Featured image is from The Organic Prepper

The COVID-19 Pandemic as a Psychological Coup d’Etat

February 6th, 2021 by Richard Gale

We have almost reached a full year since the spread of SARS-Cov2 was proclaimed a pandemic.  If we are to believe the World Health Organization’s and individual governments’ official statistics, the number of confirmed cases is reaching 100 million with over 2 million deaths. Indeed, if these numbers can be relied upon, we can surely acknowledge there is a real pandemic.

It would be common sense, therefore, to expect, in fact demand, international health agencies and governments to make every effort to identify the virus’ origin.  Suspicions that the virus, now responsible for the spectrum of medical symptoms known as Covid-19, may have been bioengineered and escaped from a maximum security BSL-4 lab in Wuhan, China, were already voiced within a month after its identification was first reported.   Several highly respected medical experts, including Dr. David Relman at Stanford University, have suggested there is a strong likelihood that the virus escaped the Wuhan facility. To date, early queries about its origins remain unanswered and new questions are mounting.

Recently, Jamie Metzl, a WHO advisor who earlier served under Biden in the Senate and in Bill Clinton’s National Security Council and State Department, told the Toronto Sun that the hypothesis of the virus’ natural origin in a Wuhan wet market is “a lie.” It is no secret, Metzl noted, that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was heavily engaged in “gain of function” research to “amplify the virility of viruses.”

That there is very reasonable evidence that coronaviruses were being engineered in a laboratory goes back to 2003 and perhaps earlier.  That year, many Russian medical scientists, including Moscow’s head epidemiologist Dr. Nikolai Filatov, shared their opinions that the first SARS outbreak originated from a bioweapons lab.

In January 2020, less than a month since the first reported case in Wuhan, Dr. Igor Nikulin, a former member of the United Nation’s Commission on Biological and Chemical Weapons, stated in an interview that the US has been funding biolaboratories throughout the world, such as Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Taiwan, Philippines, etc, and “wherever there are these American biolaboratories, or near them, there are outbreaks of new diseases, often unknown.”  This was also confirmed by the founding president of EcoHealth Alliance, Dr. Peter Daszak, a fundamental player in the saga of “gain of function” research on coronavirus and other viral pathogens.  During an interview at a scientific conference in Singapore in early December 2019, Daszak, less than a month before the first Covid-19 case in Wuhan, stated,

“You can manipulate them in the lab pretty easily… Spike protein drives a lot of what happens with the coronavirus. Zoonotic risk. So you can get the sequence, you can build the protein — and we work with Ralph Baric at [the University of North Carolina] to do this — and insert the backbone of another virus and do some work in the lab.”

Baric, by the way, told New York Magazine, “Can you rule out a laboratory escape? The answer in this case is probably not.”  Baric has first hand knowledge of this probability. In 2016, one of the researchers in his University of North Carolina biosafety Level 3 lab was bitten by a mouse infected with a bioengineered SARS coronavirus strain.  Worse, according to records obtained by ProPublica, the scientist was permitted to resume her life without quarantine.   Baric’s lab also encountered other incidents that could have potentially released its engineered viruses upon the American public, however the university has refused to provide details.  Back in 2015, Baric had warned that a bat virus could jump species and infect humans.

In a study published in October 2003 for the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Baric and his colleagues had “assembled a full-length cDNA of the SARS-CoV Urbani strain, and have rescued molecularly cloned SARS viruses (infectious clone SARS-CoV) that contained the expected marker mutations inserted into their component clones.”  This infectious coronavirus clone was subsequently patented but only after the CDC overruled the US Patent Office’s denial of issuance. That same year, Bill Gates appointed Anthony Fauci to serve on his foundation’s Global Grand Challenges Scientific Advisory Board.  Shortly thereafter efforts commenced to develop a SARS-CoV vaccine, which included Moderna and Johnson and Johnson. To date, Moderna has been granted over 130 federal US patents to develop a vaccine against SARSCoV-2, including a military DARPA grant for mRNA vaccine technology in 2013.

EcoHealth Alliance, according to Alexis Baden-Mayer, lead attorney and director for the Organic Consumers Association, has conducted remarkable investigative research into the “gain of function” studies and the primary individuals behind the overseeing and funding this research. She has discovered that the majority of EcoHealth’s funding derives from the US Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health and Anthony Fauci.  Baden-Mayer’s probing inquiries uncovered a cabal of controversial figures, including Daszak, Baric and his Chinese colleague Dr. Shi Zheng-li at the Wuhan lab, Bill Gate’s Foundation director Scott Dowell, former Human and Health Services’ director Dr. Robert Kadlec and Anthony Fauci.  Together this group – a part of what journalist Brian Berletic has called the Pandemic Industrial Complex – has been engaged in private contracts with military bioweapons projects and virus hunting in the wild for “gain of function” studies for a couple decades.

Curiously, there is another character deeply connected with Daszak and the “gain of function” studies sponsored by EcoHealth: David R Franz.  Franz serves as EcoHealth’s policy health advisor. According to Baden-Mayer, who has investigated Franz’s history and background, he was formally a commander at Ft. Detrick’s bioweapons laboratory that was working on “gain of function” studies on pathogens for developing bioweapons. He was also involved in the anthrax investigations shortly after 911, and was a colleague of Dr. Bruce Ivin who was accused for the release of encapsulated anthrax aerosol mailed to Congressional legislators shortly after his mysterious death.

Recently, Dr. David Martin – founder of the company M-CAM and a fellow at the University of Virginia’s School of Business Management – released his dossier on Anthony Fauci summarizing over two decades of investigations into the very disturbing research and patents filed for “synthetically altering the Coronaviridae (the coronavirus family) for the express purpose of general research, pathogenic enhancement, detection, manipulation and potential therapeutic interventions.” Before the first SARS outbreak in 2003, Baric filed a patent for producing “an infectious, replication defective, coronavirus.” In other words, the University the North Carolina, with federal grants, was amplifying a coronavirus to make it more infectious.

Despite the questionable nature of this patent’s and others’ filing status by the CDC, and because patent law forbids patenting any life form, the government and its laboratories sealed under contract, cornered the coronavirus market. In the event of a coronavirus outbreak, only those corporations or institutions that acquired licensure from the NIH would be permitted to work with these bioengineered viruses for developing therapeutic drugs and vaccines.

Controversy has arisen over the confusion about the actual number of Covid-19 deaths and whether or not many if not most deaths are due to other causes.  Deaths in the presence of SARS2 are not the same as deaths due to the virus.  We heard this narrative repeated before and stated directly by the CDC back in 2003.  During the first SARS outbreak, the CDC in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report dated April 4, 2003 stated that “anyone showing signs of fever or respiratory symptoms who travelled in or near areas affected by the virus would be labeled a SARS patient despite many of these individuals being diagnosed with other respiratory illnesses.”

David Martin has released his “The Fauci/Covid-19 Dossier,” a 205 page document citing specific charges against the CDC, Dr. Anthony Fauci and his National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease, and individuals engaged in coronavirus “gain of function” research for funding and allegedly conspiring to commit acts of terror, lying to Congress, conspiring to engage in criminal commercial activity, illegal clinical trials and market manipulation and allocation. These are serious charges and the data Martin has collated is near conclusive and deeply disturbing. The Dossier has been filed with the US Attorney General, and is essential reading for everyone to understand the details about how the current pandemic may be an orchestrated strategy unraveling over the course of twenty years.

During a recent video appearance, Dr. Martin condensed the background of alleged corruption, illegal patents and preparatory planning for the pandemic long before the outbreak. Speaking at the February 2016 Forum on Medical and Public Health Preparedness for Catastrophic Events, Daszak stated,

“… until an infectious disease crisis is very real, present, and at an emergency threshold, it is often largely ignored. To sustain the funding base beyond the crisis, we need to increase public understanding of the need for MCMs [Medical Counter Measures] such as a pan-influenza or pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of process.”

It is important to observe how Daszak lays out a strategy for a coronavirus or influenza pandemic to be framed as a commercial opportunity for the benefit of corporations and their investors, and the role the media will play in maximizing such profit.  In retrospect, Daszak’s scenario has played out accurately according to plan. Worse, the pandemic is now being manipulated by the World Economic Forum, the IMF, Bill Gates and the transnational class of corporate and banking elites, as well as the Biden administration and the Chinese, British, Canadian and German governments, as an opportunity to completely restructure the global economy. This will necessitate a thorough overall of the entire economic system thereby strengthening the global institutionalization of commercial oversight that will eventually nullify the independence of the modern nation state.

Martin’s Dossier continues to outline a series of purported illegal actions to deal with the pandemic that Fauci has undertaken as head of NIAID. These include

1) acting against the American Medical Association’s April 2020 recommendation that “face masks should not be worn by healthy individuals from acquiring respiratory infections because there is no evidence to suggest that face masks worn by healthy individuals are effective in preventing people from becoming ill.”

2) acting against existing published studies that show “to date, not a single study has confirmed that social distancing of any population prevented the transmission of, or the infection by SARS CoV-2.” And

3) in violation of FTC Act 15 U.S.C. 41, no product or service can be advertised to “prevent, treat or cure human disease unless you possess competent and reliable evidence… substantiating that the claims are true at the time they are made.”  This third point applies to NIAID’s promotion of face masks as well as Fauci’s aggressive push to make the drug Remdesivir, which Fauci is personally financially invested in, as a first line for treatment.

If these charges of illegal activity against sound scientific evidence, are true, they warrant a thorough investigation in an international criminal court to determine their motivations.  The mishandling of the pandemic has caused enormous suffering and deaths for billions of people. Lives and livelihoods have been completely upended and our leaders are telling us things will never return to the old normal. In the meantime, the dominant forces of capitalism, aside from profiting over this catastrophe, are now framing the pandemic as an opportunity that will further reconfigure all of our social structures, including commerce, education, transportation and monitoring healthcare. It is a coup d’état against civilization’s collective psyche to foment a regime change in behavior that will eventually turn humanity into the slaves of technology as a means for social conditioning. Our only weapon against the likes of Fauci, Gates, and the transnational class of elites is educating ourselves of the damning investigations being conducted by individuals such as Dr. David Martin, Alexis Baden-Mayer, Reiner Fuellmich, Robert Kennedy Jr and others who are making every effort to shed light on the darkness in Washington and governments around the world determined to launch a Brave New World.

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The numbers reflect the latest data available as of Jan. 29 from the CDC’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System website. Of the 501 reported deaths, 453 were from the U.S. The average age of those who died was 77, the youngest was 23.

As of Jan. 29, 501 deaths — a subset of 11,249 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 Jan. 29, 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 an adverse event was linked to a vaccine.

VAERS Data 1/29/21

As of Jan. 29, about 35 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, 453 of the 501 reported deaths were in the U.S. Fifty-three percent of those who died were male, 43% 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 59% of those who died, while the Moderna vaccine was taken by 41%.

The latest data also included 690 reports of anaphylactic reactions to either the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines. Of those, the Pfizer vaccine accounted for 76% of the reactions, and the Moderna vaccine for 24%.

As The Defender reported today, a 56-year-old woman in Virginia died Jan. 30, hours after receiving her first dose of the Pfizer vaccine. Doctors told Drene Keyes’ daughter that her mother died of flash pulmonary edema likely caused by anaphylaxis. The death is under investigation by Virginia’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and the CDC.

Last week, the CDC told USA TODAY that based on “early safety data from the first month” of COVID-19 vaccination the vaccines are “as safe as the studies suggested they’d be” and that “everyone who had experienced an allergic response has been treated successfully, and no other serious problems have turned up among the first 22 million people vaccinated.

Other vaccine injury reports updated this week on VAERS include 139 cases of facial asymmetry, or Bell’s palsy type symptoms, and 13 miscarriages.

States reporting the most deaths were: California (45), Florida (22), Ohio (25), New York (22) and KY (22).

The Moderna vaccine lot numbers associated with the highest number of deaths were: 025L20A (20 deaths), 037K20A (21 deaths) and 011J2A (16 deaths), 025J20A (16 deaths) . For Pfizer, the lot numbers associated with the most reports of deaths were: EK5730 (10 deaths), EJ1685 (23 deaths), EL0140 (19 deaths), EK 9231 (17 deaths) and EL1284 (13 deaths). For 135 of the reported deaths, the lot numbers were unknown.

The clinical trials suggested that almost all the benefits of COVID vaccination and the vast majority of injuries were associated with the second dose.

While the VAERS database numbers are 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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Big Pharma and Big Profits: The Multibillion Dollar Vaccine Market

February 6th, 2021 by Timothy Alexander Guzman

First published on January 27, 2016.

Of relevance to an understanding of the Covid Vaccine Initiative

The business of vaccines is soon to become a major source of profits for the world’s largest pharmaceutical corporations. A press release (Business Wire, January 21st 2016) published by marketwatch.com says that Technavio, one of the leading technology research and advisory companies in the world predicts that pharmaceutical corporations who produce vaccines will reach an estimated $61 billion in profits by 2020.

Today the vaccine market is worth close to $24 billion. The report titled ‘Global Human Vaccines Market 2016-2020’ gives an “in-depth analysis” of the possible revenues and “emerging market trends” globally. According to the Press Release:

The report study indicates that the introduction of new products is fueling the growth of the market. Moreover, the significant expansion of the current product offerings is also expected to boost the market growth. Due to the increasing prevalence rates of various infectious diseases such as diphtheria, influenza, hepatitis, pneumococcal diseases, and meningococcal diseases, there has been a notable increase in the use of vaccines across the globe

What is interesting about the report is that Pharmaceutical corporations are targeting Latin America and the Caribbean with its new vaccines soon to be on the market. Merck & Co, Pfizer and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) are expected to dominate Latin America and the Caribbean (Puerto Rico currently operates as a manufacturing hub for Merck, Pfizer and Abbott Laboratories):

In terms of geography, the Americas dominated the global human vaccines market in 2015, accounting for about 45% of the total revenue. The US was the largest revenue contributor to this region in the same year, capturing a significant portion of the global market. The Americas will continue to dominate the human vaccines market during the forecast period because of the increase in the prevalence of infectious diseases and cancers. In addition, increase in strategic alliances with expected entry of novel vaccines, is also expected to propel the growth of the market in this region

The report also says that there are two types of human vaccines, Therapeutic (cancer, metabolic disorders, chronic illnesses, and infectious diseases) and Preventable human vaccines markets (pediatric vaccinations) that are estimated to reach $55 billion worldwide. The Atlantic magazine published an article in 2015 titled ‘Vaccines Are Profitable, So What?’ Author Bourree Lam says:

While the main fixation of anti-vaccine groups is an old, discredited study linking vaccination to autism, another is a conspiracy theory circulated online that both doctors and pharmaceutical companies stand to profit financially from vaccination—which supposedly leads to perverse incentives in advocating for the public to vaccinate.

But that argument is historically unfounded. Not only do pediatricians and doctors often lose money on vaccine administration, it wasn’t too long ago that the vaccine industry was struggling with slim profit margins and shortages. The Economist wrote that “for decades vaccines were a neglected corner of the drugs business, with old technology, little investment and abysmal profit margins. Many firms sold their vaccine divisions to concentrate on more profitable drugs”

Maybe it was true at some point in time that manufacturing vaccines were unprofitable, but in today’s world, it’s all profits. What motivated pharmaceutical corporations to focus on the vaccine market in the last decade or so according to The Atlantic?

Since 2000, the Gavi Alliance has provided vaccination for 500 million children in poor countries, preventing an estimated 7 million deaths. GlaxoSmithKline reported that 80 percent of the vaccine doses they manufactured in 2013 went to developing countries. Additionally, vaccines that could turn a profit in high-income countries—constituting 82 percent of global vaccine sales in terms of value, according to the World Health Organization—hit the market

Lam also wrote that there were “two “blockbuster” vaccines also hit the market: pneumococcal conjugate for meningitis and other bacteria infections, and a vaccine for human papillomavirus (HPV). The industry grew”.

Merck is the only pharmaceutical giant licensed to produce and sell the measles vaccine called Prodquad and theMMR II (also used for the measles, mumps and rubella) and Varivax, a vaccine for the chicken pox. According to Lam, all three vaccines combined amounted to more than $1.4 billion in sales profits for Merck in 2014. The controversialHPV vaccine, Gardasil also brought in $1.7 billion in profits for Merck. “While a spokesperson for Merck told The Atlantic that vaccines remained one of its key areas of focus—it generated $5.3 billion in sales in 2014—she did not comment on the profit margins” Lam wrote. Of course the Merck spokesperson would not comment on the profitability of vaccines because Merck would expose itself to more controversy. Analysts say that the profit margin is“between 10 to over 40 percent.” Lam also says that “while the vaccine industry is likely more profitable now than in the 1970s or 1980s, this is the result of global market forces”. Lam forgot to mention that billionaire couple Bill and Melina Gates pledged at least $10 billion for worldwide vaccination programs supposedly to combat polio and the measles, this is where Merck & Co profit. It is also well known that Bill Gates appointed the former president and CEO of Merck, Raymond Gilmartin to the board of directors of Microsoft which lasted for more than 11 years before he announced his retirement in 2012.

Are pharmaceutical corporations motivated by profits? “Profits from vaccine production aren’t a valid argument against vaccinations—the most important question is whether vaccines are safe and effective, and the answer is unambiguously yes” wrote Lam. In 2015, Former Merck Employee and whistleblower Brandy Vaughan Spoke out against the state of California’s vaccination mandate bill SB277 and said:

The U.S. gives more vaccines than any other country in the world. Our childhood schedule for under the age of one has twice as many vaccines as other developed countries. What else do we have? The highest infant mortality rate of any developed nation. Finland has the lowest. They only give 11 by age six. Mississippi has the highest rate of vaccination in the U.S.–highest infant mortality rate. These numbers do not lie. But you will not hear that on the media, and that is not what Senator Pan will tell you.

What we have with vaccines is the highest profit margin pharmaceutical drug on the market. Drug companies make more money off vaccines than they do any other pharmaceutical drug, in terms of profit margin. There is a lack of rigorous safety studies. And they don’t have the incentive to do them because they have no liability.

Vaccines are the only products in the U.S. that do not have liability. You cannot sue for injuries or death. But that is only in the U.S. Around the world, there are law suits because of serious injuries and deaths because from vaccines. In Spain over Gardasil. In Japan over Gardasil. The flu shot was taken off the market for under five in Australia after deaths and injury. Prevnar was banned in China. Pfizer’s vaccination program was kicked out of the country. France just pulled Rotavirus off their schedule after infant deaths and injuries

With a forecast of $61 billion in projected sales, rest assured new vaccines will be developed for almost anything. Actor and comedian Jim Carrey did say that “150 people die every year from being hit by falling coconuts. Not to worry, drug makers are developing a vaccine”. With 271 vaccines in production, Jim Carrey’s comments, which were criticized by the mainstream media, may not be so farfetched after all.

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Vaccination’s Dilemma: Unsafe at Any Dose

February 6th, 2021 by Richard Gale

This incisive article first published in May 2016 analyses the issue of mandatory vaccination.

The CDC and advocates for mandatory vaccination consistently repeat a dangerous mantra that finds no warranted basis in medical science.  This monolithic industry, now a massive network of private and government institutions, state senates, and supported by a compliant media, want us to believe that science has finally settled the debate over vaccine safety and efficacy.  All the data is in, so we are told, and no further research and discussion is necessary because vaccines have been officially ruled to pose no neurological and immunological risk to infants, children, pregnant mothers, adults and the elderly.  This official policy is founded upon flawed premises and a primitive understanding about the complexities of the human body and its multifaceted immunological system.

This argument’s fallacy is actually quite simple. Valid science is never settled.  The myth of “settled science,” which is especially endemic to the biological and medical sciences that rely on private financial interests, is sheer propaganda.  Valid science, on the other hand, constantly seeks new discoveries to acquire further knowledge and greater understanding. The pursuit to fully comprehend the complexity of our biological, immunological and physiological systems, therefore, is in perpetual infinite regress. Today’s justifications for medical intervention, whether by drugs or vaccines, eventually become tomorrow’s barbarities as science further penetrates the hidden functions and operations of the human organism.  Hence valid medical research should elicit new questions and not settle upon incomplete facts that are then proselytized as universal truths.

A medical science that refuses to ask new questions and settles upon disputed beliefs to sustain an industry’s financial portfolio is Scientism, a quasi-faith-based creed now institutionalized to promulgate repressive laws. These laws then advance Scientism’s authority. Unfortunately, today this accurately represents the sad state of vaccine research and vaccination policy. Modern vaccine science, and conventional medicine in general, has morphed into a new fascism, a rigid doctrine that has sacrificed the foundations of scientific integrity on the altar of institutional greed, privilege and profit.

During the past decade we have witnessed outbreaks of infectious disease among the fully vaccinated. We observe new viral strains appearing that escape current immunization. There are rising rates in autism and neurological disorders and increases in autoimmune conditions never before observed in large percentages of children. And there is a growing body of research pointing to vaccination’s adverse effects upon our immune systems. All of these trends, and many more, give sufficient reason to undertake a serious review of official claims over vaccine safety and efficacy. The evidence on the ground for the alarming rates in childhood illnesses parallel to the ever-increasing number of childhood vaccinations and the government’s ridiculous one-size-fits-all policy behind mass indiscriminate vaccination should convince us that vaccine safety is far from a settled matter.

The official CDC position on vaccines is that they are “unavoidably unsafe.”  As New York University’s professor of law Mary Holland has repeatedly stated, the CDC can’t have it both ways. Vaccines cannot be simultaneously safe and unsafe. Yet, by mincing terms, spinning propaganda and misinterpreting and manipulating scientific research to whitewash vaccine’s life-threatening risks, this is what the government pressures parents to believe.[1]

If we can accept the claim that vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe,” then the question is how unsafe are they?  And now we possess an enormous body of yet to be challenged research, clinical trials, case examples of severe vaccine injury and court compensations paid out to families with vaccine-injured children to conclude that vaccine development has a very long way to go before a medically proven safe vaccine will ever be created. Unfortunately it is our opinion that this research is being ignored or at best marginalized by the most rabid CDC supporters and proponents of mass vaccination.

If the most compelling and thorough medical research indicates that there is no such thing as a safe vaccine, then what are we to make about those in the growing community opposing vaccination who demand safer vaccines while claiming to be pro-vaccine?

First we must acknowledge that all vaccines are “unavoidably unsafe” and this was a 2011 Supreme Court ruling in the Bruesewitz versus Wyeth case.[2] Therefore all vaccines on the market are categorically unsafe. Perhaps in some distant future a vaccine, which remains only in the imagination of science fiction, will be developed to effectively and safely immunize against an infectious disease. So far, such a vaccine does not exist. Therefore, conscientious efforts to adhere to the precautionary principle and vigilant and consistent evaluation and reevaluation of the risks and benefits of vaccination is both essential and a human right that governments should encourage, protect and uphold.

The majority of vaccine ingredients have been shown repeatedly to have toxic consequences contributing to serious neurological and autoimmune conditions.  These effects can be immediate, such as in the case of a child who undergoes seizures and is left with permanent neurological damage shortly after vaccination. Or effects through repeated vaccination can be accumulative and display symptoms many years later. In fact, there is very little scientific data, and nothing conclusive, about repeated vaccinations’ long term and accumulative immunosuppressive risks.  The vaccine industry continues to rely upon outdated research, industry funded studies, conflicts of interest with federal agencies and even scientifically irrelevant data to make its case that vaccine additives and ingredients pose no medical risks.  What the industry’s arsenal of research sorely lacks is biological and gold standard placebo controlled clinical trials to support this position.  In short, accepted vaccine research is little more than junk science. And junk science can make for the best propaganda to convince a population into the deception of vaccine safety.  Joseph Goebbels understood this all too well when he stated, “A lie told often enough, people will believe it, and you will even come to believe it yourself.”

For those who demand the removal of vaccines’ toxic ingredients yet remain pro-vaccine in principle, another and perhaps darker equation of vaccine risks is being ignored or seriously misunderstood.  It is not simply the aluminum compounds, ethylmercury or thimerosal, Polysorbate 80, formaldehyde and other vaccine additives that are associated with vaccines’ portfolios of risks and adverse reactions, including those listed in every vaccine manufacturing and product insert and found in the National Institutes of Health Pubmed database of peer-reviewed medical literature.  These compounds’ neurotoxic risks are well known and physicians, pediatricians, and scientists are increasingly being forced to acknowledge them and question  the vaccine paradigm.

For example, any and every vaccine that contains aluminum, in any amount, is categorically unsafe regardless of a person’s age.  This principle should be accepted as a biological and medical fact without question, yet pro-vaccinators deny it outright.  In 2015, autoimmune disease researcher Dr. Yehuda Shoenfeld at Tel Aviv University published the definitive textbook on vaccines’ adverse effects that are now contributing to a wide variety of autoimmune diseases, including fibromyalgia, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, narcolepsy, connective tissue disease, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue syndrome, lupus, type 1 diabetes and a host of others. The majority of the 37 scientific papers in Shoenfeld’s Vaccines and Autoimmunity identify the adjuvant aluminum as a crucial culprit contributing to the epidemic rise in autoimmune disorders both in the US and abroad.[3]

In mid-2014, concerns over aluminum adjuvants in vaccines, and the HPV vaccine in particular, reached the French Parliament for review.  Unlike scientific committee reviews conducted in the US Congress, French politicians publicly weighed in carefully on the data behind the increase in HPV vaccine-injuries in order to rule on the benefits and risks of promoting the Gardasil and other vaccines containing aluminum.[4]  France has now established a precedent for the way other governments’ health officials and legislative bodies should address the growing questions toward vaccine safety.

Pro-vaccine political correctness is fundamentally based upon the faulty assumption that only known neurologically toxic ingredients, such as aluminum and mercury, need to be removed or replaced with safer compounds.  There is no sound argument against the removal of these ingredients that will make vaccines safer.  Federal agencies tell us that these toxic metals are in insufficient amounts to pose a toxicological risk and are readily expelled naturally by a child’s body.  Although no amount of aluminum and mercury in any quantity has been proven absolutely safe, when an infant receives 3, 4 or more vaccinations during a single doctor’s visit, the amount of toxins introduced into its body mounts well above the EPA’s and FDA’s level of safety.

Fifteen years ago, the CDC’s argument may have been sufficient to increase confidence in  today’s dominant vaccine paradigm. But science advances. Knowledge of the human genome, the emergence of the new science of epigenetics, and a deeper understanding of the body’s immunological activity is opening our horizons to a larger panorama of bio-molecular possibilities and the viral and bacterial activities that are forcing a growing number of scientists to conclude that we really don’t know as much about vaccination’s impact and risks upon the human organism as we previously thought.

If it can be ascertained that there are serious health risks from the viral and bacterial components that go into a vaccine and the genetic debris and contamination due to vaccine manufacturing’s primitive technology, then the removal of toxic chemicals is insufficient for safer vaccines. However one wishes to interpret it, vaccines introduce pathogens into the body. These pathogens interact with our body’s cells and DNA in known and unknown ways. Our medical understanding about host-pathogen interactions and viral epigenetics are adolescent.  For example, in 2010, researchers from the National Brain Research Center in India reported that our scientific understanding of viral “mechanisms of epigenetic control of gene expression continues to baffle scholars.”  Even what we know so far, the scientists conclude, “is still complete.”[5]  Evidence suggests that undesirable viral and genetic activity introduced through vaccines is contributing to the every-increasing infectious disease outbreaks among heavily vaccinated populations, such as the April 2016 mumps outbreak at Harvard University infecting over 40 students and the many pertussis outbreaks during the past several years.  That is, infected persons are mostly fully vaccinated.  Consequently, we are witnessing what European scientists warned in 2012, that viral epigenetic mechanisms are steadily evading our immune systems.[6] Therefore, vaccines are increasingly becoming ineffective as new viral strains emerge and the length of immunity provided by vaccines are lessening.

The Human Genome Project ended less than two decades ago.  Genomics’ new subdivision of epigenetics has only gained attention during the past ten to fifteen years. Already epigenetics is turning our earlier beliefs about DNA and genes upon its head.  Barbara Lo Fisher summarizes epigenetics as “stimuli-triggered changes in gene expression that are inheritable and occur independent of changes to the underlying DNA sequence.”[7]  In other areas of epigenetic and toxicological research, other than vaccine science, there is greater acceptance of environmental factors’ affects upon our body’s DNA. It is now accepted that chemicals commonly found in every day products, such as the endocrine disruptive phthalates and bisphenol-A, are altering gene expression and creating havoc with normal hormonal activity.  Food companies are increasingly becoming convinced that pesticides used in huge amounts on genetically modified crops are interfering with our bodies’ genes and are removing GMO ingredients from their products.  High fructose corn syrup, processed sugar, and junk food are also becoming more widely accepted as genetic risks contributing to the dramatic increases in obesity, allergies and weakened immune systems.

Science still has very limited knowledge about how bacterial and viral genes interact with our own DNA, gene regulation, and individual genetic dispositions after being injected into the body.  This remains a dark area of medical science that scientists are only recently beginning to dive deeper into. Therefore, current vaccine science, says Dr. Toni Bark, is “Frankenscience.”[8]  Doctors, physicians, CDC heads and health officials really have very little clear idea about what we are actually injecting into our children nor its long term consequences on our natural immune systems.

Back in 1971, University of Geneva scientists published a remarkable discovery in the journal World Medicine.  According to their study foreign biological materials that enter directly into the blood stream can potentially become part of us and even combine with our own DNA. This activity known as “jumping genes,” and first postulated in the 1930s by Nobel laureate Barbara McClintock, still largely remains a mystery.[9] These were some of the early precursory hypotheses and studies that would later become epigenetics.

Nevertheless, during the last dozen years biomedical and environmental research, which is unfailingly ignored and denied by the vaccine industry, is gradually mapping new terrains in our genetic understanding.  Renowned British epigenetic researcher Dr. Mae-Wan Ho from the Institute of Science in Society has observed that “vaccines themselves can be dangerous, especially live, attenuated viral vaccines or the new recombinant nucleic acid vaccines; they have the potential to generate virulent viruses by recombination and the recombinant nucleic acids could cause autoimmune disease.”[10]  One day it will be conclusively shown that viral and bacterial vaccine components, as well as vaccines’ toxic chemicals, are fundamentally altering the human genome, weakening natural immunity that gives rise to autoimmune diseases, and directly contributing to both short and long term onset of debilitating life-threatening illnesses affecting millions of people throughout the world.

As we have noted, environmental medicine is diligently pursuing epigenetic investigations to better understand how exogenous chemicals and toxins affect the body’s immune system and genetic disposition. Simultaneously epigenetics remains an anathema within the vaccine industry. This is because epigenetics is the vaccine industry’s greatest threat and may well be the harbinger of vaccination’s collapse in the future. For that reason we increasingly observe the pro-vaccine community aggressively associating vaccine-injury illnesses with parental gene inheritance.  Seeming vaccine injuries, the CDC informs us, are all due to inherited genes and are not stimulated by vaccine interference. More recently we are being told that genes associated with autism have always been present in the human genome.[11]  Yet, no one references the other body of research, such as a University of Montreal analysis, that has discovered the majority of these so-called autism genes are de novo.[12] De novo genes are genetic mutations that appear for the first time in a parent’s germ cell or during the development of the fertilized egg itself.  The most likely causal candidates accounting for de novo mutations are epigenetic. Consequently, a woman who is vaccinated during pregnancy will have her unborn child at a higher risk of de novo mutations due to the toxic stew of chemicals, additives and viruses she was injected with. In order to skirt the evidence supporting this scientifically plausible hypothesis, the CDC and its minions in the vaccine industry must continue to rely upon an older, determinist, and regressive view of genetics that denies epigenetic activity. Fortunately this outdated genetic paradigm is rapidly being deconstructed and proven unsound by other scientific disciplines.

Other examples are Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome or EDS (a connective tissue disorder) and Osteogenesis Imperfecta (a disorder characterized by brittle bones). Both conditions are known inherited genetic disorders and associated with a series of identifiable gene mutations. And both illnesses are increasing at an alarming rate among young children and adolescents.

In 2014, Dr. Lloyd Phillips conducted independent research to determine why so many young adolescent and teenage girls were rapidly coming down with more serious expressions of EDS.  His findings concluded that these otherwise healthy girls carried an EDS genetic marker which remained dormant until shortly after receiving the HPV vaccine or Gardasil. [13]

A similar discovery was made by Dr. Robert Kendall Endres in 2009 who noted in 1962 there were approximately 10,000 cases of brittle bone syndrome worldwide. By 1978 there were 836,000 cases and over 4 million in 2000. This increase parallels the rapid increase in the number of vaccinations recommended in the CDC’s vaccine schedule and the WHO’s global vaccination initiatives.  Although both disorders are associated with certain inherited gene mutations, the plausibility of vaccination  as the triggering culprit responsible for their expression and activation cannot be ruled out. [14]

Any one of the many vaccines on the market today can cause enormous genetic and epigenetic disruption in any human being. Epidemiologists are puzzled about why  some people according to plan for any given vaccine and why others don’t. For example, only 10% of people receiving the MMR vaccine generate high levels of measles antibodies following vaccination while another 10% don’t respond at all.  Dr. Gregory Polland at Mayo’s Vaccine Research Group realizes this is undoubtedly due to genetic mutations and an individuals’ genetic code.[15]  The one-size-fits-all vaccination policy now advocated by the CDC and its leading spokespersons such as Paul Offit therefore has no rational and sound basis in science.

Since 1996, the CDC’s vaccine divisions and the World Health Organization (WHO) have known they have a very serious health problem with genetic contamination in every vaccine that relies upon animal cell culturing. This is a very dark side of the vaccine industry’s manufacturing methodology.  The fact that genetic contamination, much which remains unknown and unidentified, is being injected into infants as young as 24 hours after birth receives absolutely no attention and is ignored by those who espouse political correctness on their pro-vaccine posturing.

In the past we have reported on the primitive methodology that vaccine makers still utilize to culture the viruses that go into vaccines.[16]  In 1999, the FDA convened a non-public regulatory meeting to review the health hazards of undesirable viral DNA fragments and protein contamination in all vaccines relying on animal cell culturing. Concerns were particularly focused upon vaccines using fertilized chicken eggs: the influenza, MMR and yellow fever vaccines. Among the most worrisome contaminants were prions (tiny proteins responsible for incurable diseases in both humans and animals), viral oncogenes capable of causing cancer, viral variants that might cause AIDS, and multiple known and unknown viruses present in the viruses’ culture medium.  The executive scientists present acknowledged that recombination activity between viral codes and cells in the tissue culture is common and therefore the same can certainly occur in a child’s body after vaccination.[17] Again, Barbara Lo Fisher warns that “because viruses are constantly mutating and recombining with each other and scientists do not understand how viruses and genes interact, it is clear that what is not known about the effects on human health of widespread use of live virus vaccines is far greater than what is known.”[18]

Current vaccine technology makes it impossible to filter out all genetic contamination and DNA debris from vaccine preparations.  Therefore the FDA has set weight limits on the amount of foreign genetic contamination permitted. Since vaccine manufacturers have been unable to meet these restrictions, the CDC has reduced the requirements to apply only to cancerous cell lines. Other DNA contamination allowances were increased one hundred fold. According to the FDA’s industry guidelines on vaccine production, the removal of foreign DNA and protein contamination from vaccines employing human and animal cell lines is a “non-binding recommendation.”[19] A recent example of a vaccine temporarily removed from the market by the FDA is Glaxo’s rotavirus vaccine Rotarix. In 2010, an independent California laboratory identified a foreign pig virus, porcine circovirus 1 or PCV1, present in Rotarix.  The CDC immediately reported that this contaminant posed no risks, although babies as young 2 months old were being vaccinated with this swine virus contaminant.  The laboratory also found avian leukosis virus in the MMR vaccine and monkey retrovirus fragments in Paul Offit’s RotaTeq vaccine.[20]

There are approximately 100 million allowable segments of DNA contamination permitted in any single vaccine dose.  Much of this unwanted genetic and foreign protein rubbish has never been fully identified and sequenced.  And vaccine makers are not required to identify what all of this genetic debris consists of. If a child follows the CDC’s recommended vaccination schedule from moments after birth until she or he reaches six years of age, 49 doses of 14 vaccines will have been administered.  Isnt it therefore time to pause and review the huge amount of DNA contamination, known and unknown viral genetic fragments children are receiving directly into their bloodstreams and ask whether or not this may be contributing to the enormous rise in childhood autoimmune conditions, including common adult diseases now frequently appearing in children

Dr. Howard Urnovitz is an immunologist trained at the University of Michigan and a leading advocate for informing scientists about vaccine-associated genetic mutations.  He is perhaps best known for his research into genetic alterations among veterans suffering from Gulf War Syndrome. Although GWS has been associated with a wide range of toxic exposures, including chemical weapons, organophosphates, depleted uranium, an experimental anthrax vaccine, pesticides and other causes, Urnovitz’s discovery was singular. He identified genetic sequences in a particular chromosome well known as a “hot spot” for polymorphisms among many veterans. What was unusual was that the sequences were non-human and similar to the enteroviral segments from the oral polio vaccine administered to the veterans.[21] Although this research cannot conclude that veteran’s GWS symptoms are directly related to the vaccine’s polio virus, it confirms the deep concern over viral genes introduced via vaccination jumping and recombining with our body’s DNA.

In light of the above discussions about gene jumping, recombination of pathogenic viral sequences merging with our bodies own DNA, undesirable mutations, and expression and activation of hereditary genetic predispositions leading to serious autoimmune complications and diseases, consider the following.  Merck’s Rotateq vaccine for the protection of infants from rotavirus is a genetically engineered vaccine that includes five combined human and cow strains of rotavirus, first developed by Paul Offit at the Children’s Hospital of Pennsylvania.  This viral concoction combines bovine rotavirus strains that causes diarrhea in cows with viral strains causing diarrhea in humans. This recombinant, engineered viral strain is then cultured on African Green Monkey kidney tissue.  The seed stock that is later used to manufacture future lots of the vaccine also includes fetal bovine (cow) serum and porcine trypsin (an enzyme derived from a pig’s pancreas).[22]  Are we the only ones who share grave trepidations that an infant will receive a series of 3 rotavirus injections by the age of six months? And we are to believe that it is normal and safe for an infant to be unnaturally exposed to an artificial and abnormal pathogen in this manner?

The genetically engineered rotavirus vaccines, similar to many of the newer vaccines positioned to come on the market in the very near future, contain an attenuated live virus. These vaccines are already raising serious questions about their influential impact upon the vitality of the immune system, our bodies’ gut microbiome and the even environmental ecologies.  In 2012, Norwegian scientists are the University of Tromso concluded that “genetically engineered or modified viruses (GMVs) are being increasingly used as live vaccine vectors and their applications may have environmental implications…. In all cases there may be circumstances that enable GMVs to jump species barriers directly, or following recombination with naturally occurring viruses.”[23]

Finally, the CDC aggressively follows a one-size-fits-all policy in its efforts to keep the entire American population vaccinated.  Today there are over two hundred new vaccines in the pipeline and eventually coming to market.  As new spikes in diseases occur consistently with each new vaccine approved and entered in the CDC’s recommended vaccination schedule, so also will other disease conditions increase as well as new disorders never observed before.  Americans today are less healthy than previous generations. More and more people have compromised immune systems and are rapidly becoming immunodeficient.  Surprisingly no federal agency or official institution tries to track the total number of Americans with serious compromised immune systems other than recipient of organ transplants, cancer or positive HIV diagnoses.  The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Associations estimates that 50 million people have any one of 100 and perhaps over 140 different life-threatening autoimmune diseases. The American Cancer Society reports 1.6 new cancer cases annually and rising. Federal health officials downplay the severity of this epidemic by only counting 24 autoimmune diseases.[24]

In addition, poverty is on the rise and conservative estimates record 22% of all children living below the poverty level.  Forty eight million Americans live in insecure food households and are clinically malnourished.  This too is contributing to the increase in weakened immune systems and diseases.   Other health disorders such as chronic lack of sleep, stress, and anxiety are now be associated with weakened immunity and candidates for immunosuppressive disorders.  All told, anywhere between 30-50 percent of Americans have weakened immune systems that make them far more susceptible to adverse complications due to vaccines. And live attenuated virus vaccines, which include measles, mumps, rubella, influenza, rotavirus, chickenpox, smallpox, and the live polio vaccine in foreign countries have been shown repeatedly to weaken natural immunity and make the recipient more predisposed to other viral infections.

It is essential that we accept that the science and technology to support vaccine safety remains in its infancy.  For those vaccine developers who are looking at vaccination’s epigenetic effects on the human genome, our bodies’ microbiome, and the immune system new and unexpected concerns over safety are coming to light.  Moreover, no one is a greater expert on a child’s reaction to a vaccine than a parent. But most parents don’t have the scientific background to advocate for vaccine-induced injuries. Nor do the physicians, pediatricians, nurses and pharmacists who oversee vaccination have the time and specialized medical training to fully understand each and every vaccine’s immunological and genetic complexities. Consequently, the official doctrine of vaccine safety is completely based upon blind belief and faith. Yet medical interventions imposed and mandated on the public should be based solely on scientific proof of safety, and the pro-vaccine industry and federal authorities have never convincingly made their case based on gold standard scientific principles.  Until the vaccine industry does so, no child’s or adult’s life should ever be put at unnecessary risk.

Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries. Dr. Gary Null is the host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on nutrition and natural health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including Autism: Made in the USA, War on Health: The FDA’s Cult of Tyranny and Silent Epidemic: The Untold Story of Vaccination.

 

Notes

[1]  Habakus L and Holland M, Vaccine Epidemic.  Skyhorse Press, New York 2012

[2]  Bruesewitz et al vs Wyeth LLC. http://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/10pdf/09-152.pdf

[3]   Shoenfeld Y, Agmon-Levin N. Vaccines and Autoimmunity. San Francisco: Wiley, 2015

[4] “France: Aluminum Adjuvants and HPV Vaccines Up for Debate.” http://sanevax.org/france-aluminum-adjuvants-hpv-vaccines-debate/

[5]  http://www.academia.edu/3661430/Epigenetic_modulation_of_host_new_insights_into_immune_evasion_by_viruses

[6]  Fisher, BL. “Emerging Risks of Live Virus and Virus Vectored Vaccines,”  National Vaccination Information Center, 2014

[7]  Fisher BL. Ibid.

[8]  Null, G.  Silent Epidemic: The Untold Story of Vaccines (documentary film), 2013

[9]  https://vactruth.com/2012/03/13/vaccines-human-animal-dna/

[10] Ho M-W.  “The vaccines are far more deadly than the swine flu,” Institute of Science in Society, July 27, 2009

[11] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160321123650.htm

[12] https://research.chusj.org/en/Communications/Nouvelles/2010/Autisme-et-schizophrenie-Des-chercheurs-evaluent-l

[13] http://www.gardasilsyndrome.com

[14] http://vaccineimpact.com/2015/are-vaccines-altering-our-genes-causing-brittle-bones-in-infants/

[15] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110922134546.htm

[16] Gale R and Null G. “Vaccines Dark Inferno: What is Not on Insert Labels.” September 28, 2009. http://blog.garynull.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/VaccinesDarkInferno2.pdf

[17] Gale R and Null G.  Ibid

[18] Fisher, BL. “Emerging Risks of Live Virus and Virus Vectored Vaccines,”  National Vaccination Information Center, 2014

[19] Gale R and Null G. Ibid

[20] http://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/April-2010/Vaccine-Contamination-Pig-Virus-DNA-Found-in-Rota.aspx

[21] Buttram H.  “Vaccines and Genetic Mutation,” October 11, 2002 http://www.whale.to/a/yurko.html

[22] http://www.nvic.org/NVIC-Vaccine-News/April-2010/Vaccine-Contamination-Pig-Virus-DNA-Found-in-Rota.aspx

[23] http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs/25756.pdf

[24] Schall T. “How many Americans are immunocompromised,” Bioethics Bulletin. February 11, 2015

 

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Can We Trust the World Health Organization (WHO)?

February 6th, 2021 by Richard Gale

First published on May 6, 2020

Many more questions are being raised than there are answers being discovered concerning the recent strains of coronavirus. Where and how did it originate? Was it the result of human engineering and manipulation or is it a strain that mutated naturally?  What are the best tests to determine exposure and infection? Why are so many infected individuals asymptomatic? Are all elderly people equally susceptible to infection and how much do co-morbidities determine outcomes? These are just several of the important questions that still require definitive answers.

The ultimate international authority for infectious diseases is the World Health Organization (WHO). Because of its acceptance by the world’s national governments, it has been extremely successful in its mission. The WHO is the final word in determining whether the spread of a serious pathogen is ruled as a pandemic or not. For the majority of the medical community, the media and the average person, the WHO is the front line command post for medical prevention (i.e., vaccination) and treatment. Consequently it’s rulings are often regarded as the gold standard by which many nations design their health policies and intervening protocols to protect their citizens.  On matters of global health, the WHO holds dominance.

We are currently being told by the Director General of the WHO that the solutions for curtailing the COVID-19 pandemic are self-isolation, distancing, masks, and, for those in acute stages of infection, ventilation. To date there is no drug that has been found to be universally safe and effective. Therefore, all efforts, with massive funding, are being devoted to rapidly get a coronavirus vaccine on the market.  And in this effort, the WHO is a close ally and advocate in the US’s federal health system, notably the CDC and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Most people assume the WHO acts independently from private commercial and national government interests for the welfare of the world’s population. However, at best this is an assumption. Moreover, the very legitimacy of the WHO as a gold standard of health is questionable. The organization has been accused of conflicts of interests with private pharmaceutical companies and mega-philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, as well as being riddled with political alliances, ideologies, and profiteering motives.  An article in the National Review called the WHO “scandal plagued” with “wasteful spending, utter disregard for transparency, pervasive incompetence, and failure to adhere to even basic democratic standards.” We would also add that its level of incompetence has resulted in serious misinformation about the medical risks of vaccines and other health-threatening chemicals.  For example, during the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak in China, the organization reported it could not find any evidence of human transmission. Now we know it is perhaps the most transmittable respiratory viral infection encountered in modern medical history.

Given the halls of power within the WHO, we are outlining some of the more salient reasons why the organization’s declarations about infectious diseases, pandemics and vaccination should not entirely be trusted.

Vaccine Promotional Misconduct

Very few will know that for a long time, the WHO’s recommendations for certain vaccines were kept secret.

Writing in a 2006 issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, Dr. Marc Girard uncovered “scientific incompetence, misconduct or even criminal malfeasance” over the intentional inflation of vaccines’ benefits while undermining toxicity and adverse effects. Dr. Girard was called upon as a medical expert by the French courts in a criminal trial against the WHO after French health officials obliged the organization to launch its universal Hepatitis B vaccine campaign. The campaign resulted in the deaths of French children.  Consequently, Girard gained access to confidential WHO documents. He notes that the WHO’s “French figures about chronic liver diseases were simply extrapolated from the U.S. reports.” He further accused the WHO serving “merely as a screen for commercial promotion, in particular via the Viral Hepatitis Prevention Board (VHPB), which was created, sponsored,and infiltrated by the manufacturers.”

Orchestration of Pandemic Panics

Ab Osterhaus - Wikipedia

Before the current COVID-19 pandemic, there was the H1N1 swine flu scare in 2009 that came and went as a church mouse. However, at the very start the WHO’s fear mongering of a global contagion that could exceed the death counts of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was based on false assumptions.  The analysis was undertaken by the WHO’s senior consultant on viral outbreaks Dr. Albert Osterhaus (image on the right) who carries the nickname “Dr. Flu.” Osterhaus is head of the Department of Virology at Erasmus University in the Netherlands. At the time of the H1N1 pandemic, he was the president of the European Scientific Working Group on Influenza (ESWI), an organization funded by the major vaccine manufacturers including Baxter, MedImmune, Glaxo, Sanofi Pasteur and others. It is ESWI’s agenda to vaccinate the entire world against the swine flu. It was also Osterhaus who transformed an otherwise potentially bad flu season into a global pandemic. The WHO has been criticized harshly in the media for changing the definition of a “pandemic” and in doing so has been charged with benefitting the pharmaceutical industry. Moreover, the British Medical Journal reported that the WHO failed to report conflicts of interest in its H1N1 advisory group. The journal’s Editor-in-Chief Fiona Godlee wrote, “WHO must act now to restore its credibility, and Europe should legislate.”

According to a financial forecast published by JP Morgan, the collaboration between the WHO and Osterhaus’s ESWI to orchestrate the pandemic would have profited the pharmaceutical industry up to $10 billion. The popular German magazine Der Spiegel reported:

“The WHO and those in charge of public health, the virologists and the pharmaceutical laboratories….  created a whole system around the imminence of a pandemic. There is a lot of money at stake, as well as networks of influence, careers and whole institutions! And the minute one of the flu viruses mutates we’d see the whole machine roll into action.”

Epidemic of Conflict of Interests

According to former World Bank geopolitical analyst Peter Koenig, about half of the WHO’s budget is derived from private sources — primarily pharmaceutical companies but also other corporate sectors including the telecommunication and agro-chemical industries. It also receives large donations from large philanthropic organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. It is believed, according to Koenig, that the appointment of the WHO’s current Director General, Dr. Tedro Adhanom, was due to Gates’ influence. Tedros is the former Chairman of Gates funded GAVI Vaccine Alliance. GAVI’s sole mission is to vaccinate every child in the world. The WHO and the US and British governments are the primary partners and the largest funder is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

There is in our opinion little doubt that the WHO is another one of Gates’ bought off entities for furthering his personal agenda to promote vaccines, genetically modified seeds and chemical agriculture in the developing world. Barbara Loe Fisher at the National Vaccine Information Center estimates that

“only about 10 percent of total funding provided by Gavi ($862M) was used to strengthen health systems in developing countries, such as improving sanitation and nutrition, while nearly 80 percent was used to purchase, deliver and promote vaccines.”

The WHO as America’s Poodle

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s fact sheet for the US government and WHO, the US is the largest contributor to the global organization. The CDC also provides its technical support and has liaisons at the WHO’s Geneva headquarters and regional offices. In summary, there is a strong rationale to suggest that the WHO, aside from its global health programs in other countries, is largely doing the bidding of the US government to advance corporate interests and American neoliberal hegemony.

Vaccine Adverse Effects Monitoring System Needs Overhaul

The WHO’s Global Advisory Committee on Vaccine Safety is the group responsible for administering vaccine programs in poorer, developing countries. It is also responsible for gathering data on incidents of vaccine injuries. Any deaths following vaccination campaigns are ignored and ruled as coincidental. This policy is based on the erroneous assumption that if no one died during a vaccine’s clinical trials, then the vaccine should be regarded as automatically safe and unrelated to any deaths that might occur. Consequently, the WHO’s monitoring system is seriously flawed and requires a major overhaul.

One of the more controversial incidences is the WHO’s collaboration with the Bill Gates funded GAVI Vaccine Alliance campaign to launch the pentavalent vaccine (diphtheria, pertussis, tetanus, HIP and Hepatitis B)  in Africa and later in South and Southeast Asia. In India, health officials recorded upwards to 8,190 additional infant deaths annually following pentavalent vaccination.  The WHO response was to reclassify its adverse event reporting system to disregard “infant” deaths altogether. Dr. Jacob Puliyel, a member of the Indian government’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization concluded,

“deaths and other serious adverse events following vaccination in the third world, that use WHO-AEFI classification are not recorded in any database for pharmacovigilance. It is as if the deaths of children in low (and middle) income countries are of no consequence.”

WHO’s Depopulation Efforts with Vaccines

Without doubt, the most nefarious activity conducted by the WHO is its alleged support and distribution of vaccines to poorer developing countries that may have been intentionally designed to decrease population rates.  Back in 1989, the WHO sponsored a symposium at its Geneva headquarters on “Antifertility Vaccines and Contraceptive Vaccines.” The symposium presented proposals for vaccines that were later discovered to have been laced with the sterilizing hormones HCG and estradiol; the former prevents pregnancy and triggers spontaneous abortions and miscarriages, and the latter can turn men infertile.

In 2015, the Kenyan Conference of Catholic Bishops reported its discovery of a polio vaccine laced with estradiol that was manufactured in India and distributed by the WHO. A year earlier, Dr. Wahome Ngare from the Kenyan Catholic Doctors Association uncovered a tetanus vaccine specifically being administered to women, also distributed by the WHO, that contained the HCG hormone. All of the polio vaccine samples tested contained HCG, estrogen-related compounds, follicle stimulating and luteinizing hormones, which will damage sperm formation in the testes. Even more disturbing, this vaccine was going to be administered to children under five years of age.

However, this is not the first time the WHO appears to have made efforts to use vaccination campaigns for depopulation.  A decade earlier, in 2004, the WHO, UNICIF and CDC launched a vaccination campaign to immunize 74 million African children during a polio outbreak. The initiative encountered a serious obstacle. In Nigeria, laboratory tests on the WHO’s vaccine samples resulted in the presence of estrogen and other female hormones. And in the mid-1990s, a tetanus vaccine being administered to Nicaraguan and Filipino girls and women in their child-bearing years was discovered to contain HCG, which accounted for a large number of spontaneous abortions that were reported by Catholic health workers.

Illegal Vaccine Experiments

In 2014, The Economic Times of India published a report that provided details of a joint venture between the WHO and the Gates Foundation to test an experimental HPV vaccine on approximately 16,000 tribal girls between the ages of 9 and 15 unwittingly. The experiment was conducted in 2008, and the vaccine is now what we commonly know as Gardasil. Many of the girls, the report states, became ill and some died.

The following year the WHO and Gates Foundation conducted a similar experiment on 14,000 girls with the HPV vaccine Cervarix. Again “scores of teenage girls were hospitalized.” Investigations led by Indian health officials uncovered gross violations in India’s laws regarding medical safety. In numerous cases there was no consent and the children had no idea what they were being vaccinated for. The Indian Supreme Court has taken up a case against the duo for criminal charges.

WHO’s Double Standards of Vaccine Safety

A more recent scandal erupted during the WHO’s Global Vaccine Safety Summit convened in December 2019. Days before the summit, one of the WHO’s medical directors for vaccination, Dr. Soumya Swaminathan, appeared in a public advertisement touting the unquestionable safety of vaccines and ridiculing parents who speak out against vaccination. She assured viewers that the WHO was in control of matters and monitored any potential adverse risks carefully. However, during the Summit, the same Dr. Swaminathan acknowledged vaccine health risks and stated, “We really don’t have very good safety monitoring systems.” Another Summit participant, Dr. Heidi Larson stated,

“We have a very wobbly ‘health professional frontline’ that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. When the frontline professionals are starting to question or they don’t feel like they have enough confidence about the safety to stand up to the person asking the questions. I mean most medical school curriculums, even nursing curriculums, I mean in medical school you are lucky if you have half a day on vaccines.”

And more noteworthy were the statements by Dr. Martin Howell Friede, Coordinator of the WHO’s Initiative for Vaccine Research,

“… I give courses every year on how do you develop vaccines, how do you make vaccines. And the first lesson is while you’re making your vaccine if you can avoid using an adjuvant please do so. Lesson two is if you’re going to use an adjuvant use one that has a history of safety. And lesson three is if you’re not going to do that, think very carefully.”

In other words, what the WHO presents to the public contradicts what is discussed behind closed doors, another example of the veil of secrecy the organization operates within.

Suppression of the Dangers of Depleted Uranium

The use of depleted uranium pervades military missiles and bombs. Tons of depleted uranium were deployed during the US invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  It is estimated that the US fired over 300,000 rounds of depleted uranium, or 1,000 tons, during the 2003 Iraq war. In both countries, the WHO has been very active in providing health needs to the populations affected.  However, in regions where bombing was most intense, such as in Fallujah Iraq, there has been a high prevalence of congenital birth defects. This was uncovered by an on-the-ground investigation conducted by the Brussels Tribunal. According to a BBC documentary, there is no longer any doubt about depleted uranium’s association with genetic damage and birth defects.  According to an article published in the British Medical Journal in 2013, the WHO intentionally suppressed the scientific evidence. The question remains why? Hans von Sponeck, a former Assistant Secretary General for the United Nations has suggested that “the US government sought to prevent WHO from surveying areas in southern Iraq where DU has been used and caused serious health and environmental dangers.”  Here we find a likely case of the WHO doing the bidding of the US government and its military adventures in regime change.

There are many other questionable activities that the WHO has been involved with over the years. However, the above provide sufficient evidence to argue the case that, at least within the upper echelons of the WHO, global health does not stand in high priority. The organization employs over 7,000 people around the world and most of these have deep concern for improving the lives of populations in poor and developing nations. On the other hand, the WHO’s leaders are there largely because the powers of Washington, London and the pharmaceutical industry benefit by the organization advancing its agendas.

Of course, the WHO is not the only health entity with a legacy of corruption. Corruption appears to be systemic throughout global health and national health agencies. This topic was featured last year in the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. Author Dr. Patricia Garcia writes,

“Corruption is embedded in health systems. Throughout my life—as a researcher, public health worker, and a Minister of Health—I have been able to see entrenched dishonesty and fraud. But despite being one of the most important barriers to implementing universal health coverage around the world, corruption is rarely openly discussed.”

Bear in mind, the WHO, along with Bill Gates and his Foundation, and Anthony Fauci at the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Disease, are leading the efforts to develop a COVID-19 vaccine. Do you believe we can trust their judgment and the intense public relations effort that will immediately follow after such a vaccine reaches the market?

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Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null co-direct Progressive Radio Network. They are frequent contributor to Global Research.

Lucida analisi politica fatta da Manlio Dinucci – Giornalista ed Esperto di Geopolitica, membro del Comitato No Nato No War – nell’intervista realizzata da Beatrice Silenzi – Giornalista. La situazione economica dell’Italia è sull’orlo di un baratro, quella di governo non è più sostenibile: la politica punta su Mario Draghi, Economista e personaggio internazionale di spicco. Una scelta che qualcuno plaude, mentre da altri è vista coma la logica conseguenza di un rinnovamento mondiale che prende il nome di Grande Reset. Il nostro debito è alle stelle, la svendita del Paese è vicina e così pure una dolorosa Patrimoniale. Cosa succederà d’ora in poi? Quali saranno i nuovi assetti geopolitici e quali i nuovi nemici da combattere nell’ambito della Nato, di cui facciamo parte? A queste domande risponde Dinucci, invitando ciascuno di noi a doverose riflessioni. (4 Febbraio 2021)

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Bill Gates and Neo-Feudalism: A Closer Look at Farmer Bill

By Robert F. Kennedy Jr, February 05 2021

Bill Gates has quietly made himself the largest owner of farmland in the United States. For a man obsessed with monopoly control, the opportunity to also dominate food production must seem irresistible.

Mandatory Face Masks

By Stephen Lendman, February 05 2021

Last month by executive order, Biden mandated face masks in federal buildings and on its land. His order falsely claimed that he’s “relying on the best available data and science-based public health measures (sic).”

Yemeni Journalist: “Saudi Arabia Failed in Yemen Despite US Support”

By Yousra Abdulmalik and Steven Sahiounie, February 05 2021

Yemen has suffered through a violent war on its population by forces backed by Saudi Arabia for nearly seven years, during which 233,000 people have been killed, and has left the majority of the civilians’ dependent on aid.

F-15 Eagles from the 493rd Fighter Squadron at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, England

Defense Contractors Like Raytheon Aren’t Blameless in Yemen Crisis

By Shayna Lewis, February 05 2021

The villagers of Arhab were in a celebratory mood before the bomb exploded, killing 31 and maiming many more. Among the death and debris, investigators would later find a bomb fragment with a serial code indicating it came from Tucson — home of Raytheon Technologies.

Macron’s Anti-Islamic Crusade Fails

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, February 05 2021

What would, at first, be a bill to officially combat the extremism of Islamic separatists has been converted into a mere document reaffirming French national ideology. Criticized by humanitarians, the bill that would be a “law against Islamic separatism” could only be discussed among parliamentarians under the name “Bill to reinforce republican principles”.

Atlantic Council Calls for Regime Change in China

By Alan MacLeod, February 05 2021

Influential D.C. think tank the Atlantic Council has printed a 26,000-word report laying out its strategy for combating China. Published anonymously, the report states that “the single most important challenge facing the United States” in the twenty-first century is China’s growth to rival their own power.

Bayer Makes New $2 Billion Plan to Head Off Future Roundup Cancer Claims

By Carey Gillam, February 05 2021

Monsanto owner Bayer AG said Wednesday it was attempting again to manage and resolve potential future Roundup cancer claims, laying out a $2 billion deal with a group of plaintiffs’ attorneys that Bayer hopes will win approval from a federal judge who rejected a prior plan last summer.

Hassan Diab’s Long Odyssey of Injustice Continues

By Hassan Diab Support Committee, February 05 2021

We are shocked and outraged by the French Court of Appeal decision on 27 January 2021 to refer Dr. Hassan Diab’s case to trial, three years after a lower court set him free because of overwhelming evidence of his innocence.

Indigenous People and Justice in Nicaragua’s North Caribbean Coast

By Dr. Loyda Martinez Rodriguez and Tortilla Con Sal, February 05 2021

“My name is Loyda del Carmen Martínez Rodríguez, and I am the Single Local Judge for the municipality of Waspam, Rio Coco. We have prosecuted six cases of usurpation of communal domain of indigenous peoples, where people who are not natives of that community have come to misappropriate land of indigenous peoples.”

The Erasing of Human Identity

By S. M. Smyth, February 05 2021

We are being subjected to a concerted campaign of deliberate nullification of any sense of who we are. Can we recognize ourselves when we look in the mirror when most of the face is covered with a mask and a pair of anxious eyes looks back at us? Is this us? Is this you or me? Is anybody home? How can you tell?

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Hassan Diab’s Long Odyssey of Injustice Continues

February 5th, 2021 by Hassan Diab Support Committee

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We are shocked and outraged by the French Court of Appeal decision on 27 January 2021 to refer Dr. Hassan Diab’s case to trial, three years after a lower court set him free because of overwhelming evidence of his innocence. The decision of the Court of Appeal is the continuation of a long odyssey of injustice that Hassan and his family have endured for more than 12 years. Hassan’s French lawyers plan to appeal the decision to France’s Supreme Court.

In 2018, French investigating judges dismissed the case and released Hassan from prison due to lack of evidence. Since then, the case has only grown weaker in light of further exonerating evidence. Another handwriting analysis commissioned by the French Court of Appeal delivered a scathing critique and rebuke of the “Bisotti report” that was used to extradite Hassan from Canada in 2014. Witnesses and documents prove that Hassan was in Lebanon writing his university exams at the time of the 1980 bombing. Hassan’s fingerprints, palm prints and physical description do not match those of the suspect.

After more than 40 years and since no one was indicted, the French Court of Appeal is clinging onto Hassan Diab to keep the case going. The victims of the 1980 Rue Copernic bombing and their families deserve justice, but this cannot be achieved by subjecting an innocent man to a trial. French authorities would better serve the victims and their families by trying to find the true perpetrators of this awful crime.

We are preparing a letter-writing campaign urging the Canadian government to put an end to Hassan Diab’s long and Kafkaesque ordeal. You will soon receive information about this and other actions we are planning.

Hassan, his wife, and children have suffered enough. As the long odyssey of injustice continues, we must continue the fight!

Please Donate to Hassan’s Legal Defence in France

Please make a donation to help cover the cost of Hassan’s ongoing legal defence in France. Your support is vital to protect Hassan’s rights and prevent his wrongful conviction. A donation of any amount is much appreciated and can make a difference!

To donate, please visit the following page and choose from one of the various ways to donate.

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Featured image is from Ottawa Citizen

Atlantic Council Calls for Regime Change in China

February 5th, 2021 by Alan MacLeod

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

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Influential D.C. think tank the Atlantic Council has printed a 26,000-word report laying out its strategy for combating China. Published anonymously, the report states that “the single most important challenge facing the United States” in the twenty-first century is China’s growth to rival their own power.

To do so, the report states that the U.S. must use “the power of its military,” the dollar’s role as the global reserve currency, and American control over technology and communication to suffocate the nation of 1.4 billion people. It advises President Biden to draw a number of “red lines” past which the U.S. would directly intervene (presumably militarily). These include Chinese attempts to expand into the South China Sea, an attack on the disputed Senkaku Islands, or moves against Taiwan’s independence. A North Korean strike on any of its neighbors would also necessitate an American response against China, the report insists, because “China must fully own responsibility for the behavior of its North Korean ally.” Any backing down from this stance, the council states, would result in national “humiliation” for the United States.

Perhaps most notably, however, the report also envisages what a successful American China policy would look like by 2050: “the United States and its major allies continue to dominate the regional and global balance of power across all the major indices of power;” and that head of state Xi Jinping “has been replaced by a more moderate party leadership; and that the Chinese people themselves have come to question and challenge the Communist Party’s century-long proposition that China’s ancient civilization is forever destined to an authoritarian future.” In other words, that China has been broken and that some sort of regime change has occurred.

Repping the national security state

The Atlantic Council is a NATO-offshoot organization funded by the U.S. and other allied governments, including the Gulf dictatorships. Among its largest corporate sponsors include weapons manufacturers like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing. Its board of directors is full of high statespeople like Henry Kissinger, Colin Powell, and Condoleezza Rice as well as senior military figures such as retired generals Wesley Clark, David Petraeus, H.R. McMaster, James “Mad Dog” Mattis, Lt. General Brent Scowcroft and Admiral James Stavridis. At least seven former CIA directors are also on the board. Thus, the council could be said to represent the consensus opinion of the national security state.

The organization has been responsible for much of the most hawkish, bellicose rhetoric surrounding Russia and China for some time. For instance, it has put out a number of studies that claim that virtually every European political party outside the establishment beltway — from Labour and UKIP in the U.K. to Syriza and Golden Dawn in Greece and PODEMOS and Vox in Spain — are secretly controlled by Russia, functioning as the “Kremlin’s Trojan Horses.”

“The Longer Telegram”

The council’s new anonymous report, named “the Longer Telegram,” is a direct reference to American diplomat George Kennan’s 1946 “Long Telegram.” Kennan’s report, sent from Moscow, argued that the U.S. should completely abandon its wartime alliance with the Soviet Union and immediately pursue a strategy of hostile “containment,” and is considered one of the founding documents of the Cold War. By consciously associating itself with Kennan, the Atlantic Council is implicitly heralding the arrival of a new global conflict with China.

Kennan is appreciated among historians for being one of the most straightforward talkers in the national security establishment. In 1948 he outlined what the U.S. position and interests were:

We have about 50% of the world’s wealth, but only 6.3% of its population…. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity…We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction…We should cease to talk about vague and… unreal objectives such as human rights, the raising of the living standards, and democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better.”

Biden takes the helm

Throughout 2020, President Biden’s team quietly stated that their entire industrial and foreign policy would revolve around “compet[ing] with China,” with their top priorities being “dealing with authoritarian governments, defending democracy and tackling corruption, as well as understanding how these challenges intersect with new technologies, such as 5G, artificial intelligence, quantum computing and synthetic biology.” The Trump administration had already begun a global campaign to damage Chinese giants like Huawei and TikTok. From his team’s statements, it appears likely that Biden will carry on its anti-Beijing stance.

However, many top officials in Washington see the prospect of a hot war with China as a distant one. “Most of the U.S.-China competition is not going to be fighting World War Three…It’s going to be kicking each other under the table,” one source told the Financial Times in May. Others argue for a worldwide culture war against Beijing, including the Pentagon commissioning “Taiwanese Tom Clancy” novels, intended to demonize China and demoralize its citizens, bombarding its people with stories of the deaths of their (only) children.

Whatever Washington decides to do, it appears that the groundwork has already been laid at home. Just three years ago, Americans had a neutral view of China (and nine years ago it was strongly favorable). Today, the same polls show that 73% of Americans dislike China, with only 22% holding a positive opinion of the country. Thus, it is far from clear that there will be much public pushback at all to a coming second Cold War.

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Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as a number of academic articles. He has also contributed to FAIR.orgThe GuardianSalonThe GrayzoneJacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

Featured image is from Global Village Space

The Erasing of Human Identity

February 5th, 2021 by S. M. Smyth

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

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We are being subjected to a concerted campaign of deliberate nullification of any sense of who we are. Can we recognize ourselves when we look in the mirror when most of the face is covered with a mask and a pair of anxious eyes looks back at us? Is this us? Is this you or me? Is anybody home? How can you tell?

The deliberate stripping of individual identity is a technique practiced under certain specialized circumstances. Sometimes this happens in the process of initiation into a particular group, whether religious or secular. Nuns, army recruits, and prisoners of war are shorn, and new clothing provided to cement a new identity. A group identity supersedes former loyalties. The individual is renamed: given a new personal identity within the group. Rituals and ceremonies are performed as the person is inculcated into the ways of the tribe.

Because the new individual identity is within the auspices of the group, this identity is subordinate to the norms and dictates of the group, the tribal taboos, the customs of the new country. Thus, one can be censured for insubordination, and if necessary re-educated, the indoctrination refreshed, ground in deeper, as in degaussing a magnetic tape.

The boundaries of traditional identities are being blurred, even erased. It is becoming politically incorrect to use terms like man and woman, parent and child, brother and sister, uncle, aunt, niece, nephew, cousin and any other label of this kind, including personal pronouns. One wonders who is the Miss Manners making these rules?

Within a religious order or army unit, obedience is seen as freedom and a source of pride. The relinquishment of the individual ego frees the acolyte from ordinary concerns to be part of a higher destiny, perhaps to be “bound for glory.” Or maybe glory will bind them. At any rate, the discipline of the order requires strict subordination to the good of the group. Sometimes the ultimate sacrifice.

Love and loyalty demand, if called for, the laying down of one’s life for the greater good. Perhaps like the Carmelite nuns of Poulenc’s opera braving the guillotine, or stout-hearted British soldiers on the eve of battle in Shakespeare’s Henry V. “Cry, God for Harry, England and Saint George!”

Now the people of the entire world are asked to lay down their lives for the good of all. I don’t remember signing up, do you?

Suddenly we awake to find ourselves treated like prisoners of war or raw recruits ready for boot camp basic training. Left, right, left, right, hup two three four. Yes sir, no sir, three bags full, sir!

Conquerors stripped the vanquished, moving them from their land, the source of their strength. They were left in a strange and unfamiliar landscape, disoriented, disorganized and confused. Often with only the clothes they were standing up in, and with no means of sustenance. Isolated, sometimes even forbidden to speak to others in their own language, their spirit was deliberately broken as, in less enlightened times, you would break a wild mustang.

They were captured, corralled, their movements watched and controlled. And they were punished if they strayed off the reservation. Needless to spell out the parallels.

Can the majority, bound by conventional respect for those placed in authority above us, make a break for it? Will they plan in secret, like the French Resistance, to put a spoke in the tank tracks?

Or will they march, out in the open, beckoning the forces of law and order, and will those forces tuck their helmets under their arms and march in solidarity with the people they have sworn to serve and protect?

And is there honey still for tea?

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S. M. Smyth was a founding member of the 2006 World Peace Forum in Vancouver and organized a debate about TILMA at the Maple Ridge City Council chambers between Ellen Gould and a representative of the Fraser Institute.

This Week’s Most Popular Articles

February 5th, 2021 by Global Research News

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In March 2020, the CDC changed the way COVID-19 deaths are reported on death certificates, resulting in a dramatic — and possibly illegal — inflation of fatalities that drove restrictive public health policies threatening health freedom

Only 6% of COVID-19 deaths include only COVID-19 as the cause on the death certificate, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This means for the other 94%, additional causes are listed, with an average of 2.9 additional conditions or causes of death included.[i]

“This is the most important statistical revelation of this crisis,” according to a study by the Institute for Pure and Applied Knowledge (IPAK), as it reveals that many “COVID-19 deaths” may have been due to other causes. In fact, the CDC published new guidelines on March 24, 2020, which alter the way deaths are recorded exclusively in cases of COVID-19.

The guidelines were published without peer-review or opportunity for public comment, and resulted in a dramatic and misleading inflation in “COVID-19” deaths, which would have been deemed due to other causes using the CDC’s longstanding system of data collection and reporting established in 2003. As IPAK’s report questioned:[ii]

“Why would the CDC decide against using a system of data collection & reporting they authored, and which has been in use nationwide for 17 years without incident, in favor of an untested & unproven system exclusively for COVID-19 without discussion and peer-review?”

CDC Changed Death Certificate Recording Rules for COVID-19 Only

IPAK’s report reveals a historical timeline of events showing how a number of incidents conspired to inflate COVID-19 fatality data and, in turn, justify restrictive public health policies like lockdowns, quarantines, business closures and social distancing. One key issue has to do with the way cause of death is recorded in the case of comorbidities.

In 2003, the CDC published the “Medical Examiners’ and Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting” and “Physicians’ Handbook on Medical Certification of Death.” Part I of a death certificate includes the immediate cause of death, listed in order from the official cause of death (a) down to underlying causes that contributed to death (in descending order of importance, as b, c, d).

Part II of the death certificate includes other significant conditions that are not related to the underlying causes in Part I. According to the report:[iii]

“Comorbid conditions have been listed on Part I of death certificates as causes of death per the CDC Handbook since 2003 to ensure accurate reporting can be developed. Comorbidities are seldom placed in Part II. Part II is typically the section where coroners and medical examiners can list recent infections as underlying, initiating factors.

Prior to the CDC’s March 24th decision, any co-morbidities would have been listed in Part I rather than Part II and initiating factors such as infections including the SARS-COV-2 virus, would have been listed on the last line in Part I or more commonly in Part II.”

After the March 2020 guideline change, however, comorbidities were to be listed in Part II, which meant COVID-19 could be listed exclusively in Part I:[iv]

“This has had a significant impact on data collection accuracy and integrity. It has resulted in the potential false inflation of COVID-19 fatality data and is a potential breach of federal laws governing information quality.”

New CDC Guidelines Inflate COVID-19 Deaths by at Least 16.7-Fold

The report examined COVID-19 fatalities through August 23, 2020 and compared them using the CDC’s guidelines that had been in place since 2003 and those put into place in March 2020 for COVID-19. You can see the results in their figure below, which shows, “Had the CDC used the 2003 guidelines, the total COVID-19 [fatalities would] be approximately 16.7 times lower than is currently being reported.”[v]

Image source: IPAK PHPI, COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Perspective October 12, 2020, Figure 9

‘This Leaves Me Speechless’

On Twitter, investigative health journalist Nicolas Pineault wrote, “If this is accurate, this leaves me speechless.”[vi] Indeed, not only did the CDC leave no records as to how it made the decision to change how deaths are reported, but some estimates suggest they may have resulted in an inflation of COVID-19 fatalities of over 90%, while violating U.S. law:[vii]

Previous reports detailed the substantial changes on how causes of death were forcibly modified by the CDC through the NVSS, and how together, both federal agencies inflated the actual number of COVID-19 fatalities by approximately 90.2% through July 12th, 2020.

We believe this deliberate decision by the CDC and NVSS [National Vital Statistics System] to deemphasize pre-existing comorbidities, in favor of emphasizing COVID-19 as a cause of death, is in violation of 44 U.S. Code 3504 (e)(1)(b), which states the activities of the Federal statistical system shall ensure ‘the integrity, objectivity, impartiality, utility, and confidentiality of information collected for statistical purposes.'”

The public health implications of an artificial inflation of COVID-19 deaths are immense, as rates of anxiety, depression[viii] and suicidal thoughts[ix] are on the rise — a direct result of restrictive COVID-19 health policies.

Only with accurate data can individuals and health officials make decisions to truly protect health, and as the report noted, “It is concerning that the CDC may have willfully failed to collect, analyze, and publish accurate data used by elected officials to develop public health policy for a nation in crisis.”[x] It’s also one more reason why now is more important than ever to take a stand for health freedom.

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Notes

[i] U.S. CDC January 27, 2021 https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#ExcessDeaths

[ii] IPAK PHPI, COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Perspective October 12, 2020 https://t.co/nRoW2TGdK7?amp=1

[iii] IPAK PHPI, COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Perspective October 12, 2020 https://t.co/nRoW2TGdK7?amp=1

[iv] IPAK PHPI, COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Perspective October 12, 2020 https://t.co/nRoW2TGdK7?amp=1

[v] IPAK PHPI, COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Perspective October 12, 2020 https://t.co/nRoW2TGdK7?amp=1

[vi] Twitter, Nick Pineault October 15, 2020 https://twitter.com/nickpineault1/status/1316744440917250049

[vii] IPAK PHPI, COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Perspective October 12, 2020 https://t.co/nRoW2TGdK7?amp=1

[viii] University of Wisconsin, The Impact of School Closures and Sport Cancellations on the Health of Wisconsin Adolescent Athletes https://cdn1.sportngin.com/attachments/document/33fe-2195426/McGuine_study.pdf#_ga=2.138358896.1736658140.1612045938-245521230.1612045938

[ix] BMJ 2020;371:m4095 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4095

[x] IPAK PHPI, COVID-19 Data Collection, Comorbidity & Federal Law: A Historical Perspective October 12, 2020 https://t.co/nRoW2TGdK7?amp=1

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***

Israel is becoming increasingly assertive in its strikes and raids, allegedly against Iranian positions, on Syrian soil.

This is more than likely owed to the fact that US activity is at a low-point following Joe Biden’s inauguration.

Israel feels threatened by the slim possibility that the Iran Nuclear Deal will be revived. As such it is left to fend for itself and it appears to be doing so quite ferociously.

In the late hours of February 3rd, the Israeli military launched a large-scale attack on southern Syria. The Syrian Arab Army General Command said that that air-to-ground and ground-to-ground missiles were launched in a heavy barrage.

According to local sources the barrage targeted Damascus International Airport, Mezzeh Military Airport, a Syrian Arab Army base near the district of Kiswah, and a series of military sites in Daraa and al-Quneitra.

The Syrian military says that some of the missiles were intercepted, others caused only material damage.

Israel’s primary targets in the region are Iranian positions, or those of pro-Iranian groups and proxies. This includes Hezbollah targets, to limit the efforts of its Lebanese neighbor.

It is plain to notice what has changed in the most recent attack – it was launched from Israeli soil. In usual practice, the Israeli air force encroaches on Lebanese airspace to carry out its raids.

On February 3rd, however, an Israeli drone was targeted by a Hezbollah anti-aircraft missile. This is a rare occurrence, even if it only targets a drone. It means that the airspace encroachment is becoming more dangerous.

This is a testament to Hezbollah’s increasing capability in limiting Israel’s freedom of action.

The increasing Israeli activity in both frequency and scale, are providing a window of opportunity to ISIS terrorists throughout Syria, and predominantly in Homs and Deir Ezzor.

In the early hours of February 3rd, a surprise attack by an ISIS cell resulted in the deaths of at least 12 pro-Syrian government fighters.

There has been an increased intensity of ISIS attacks in recent weeks. It is quite self-evident that this arose amid Israel’s continued attacks on Syrian Army positions and civilian infrastructure under the pretext that they host Iranian forces.

Even if the Syrian Arab Army is preoccupied with defense, its allies in the form of Russia and Iran are picking up the slack.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is set to establish a tribal force in Deir Ezzor. The main aim of this force will be to support the Iranian and pro-Iranian forces in the region and to serve in a style similar to the “ISIS Hunters”. Despite Israel’s “best efforts” Tehran’s influence in Syria is growing, and this is more evidence of that.

A region that has received less attention in recent weeks, due to the general chaos, is Idlib.

Russian warplanes continue pounding the al-Qaeda-linked “moderate opposition” in the area, attempting to put a stop to its adventurism beyond the demilitarized zone. The ceasefire must hold and Moscow attempts to limit militants’ attempts to compromise it.

Meanwhile, the terrorists in Idlib are being whitewashed, and presented anew as “freedom fighters”. PBS Frontline presented the head of Jabhat al-Nusra (currently Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham) as a reformed hero, working towards peace. For years he had a $10 million bounty on his head for leading the world’s No 1 terrorist organization. That appears to be no more, he is now a hero fighting against suppression.

The chaos in the Middle East is growing, amid increasing Israeli activity and renewed attempts to whitewash known terrorists by MSM. Despite Damascus’, Moscow’s and Tehran’s best efforts, the situation has the potential to get much worse, before it gets any better.

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150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

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***

Yemen has suffered through a violent war on its population by forces backed by Saudi Arabia for nearly seven years, during which 233,000 people have been killed, and has left the majority of the civilians’ dependent on aid, according to the UN. The Saudi-led Arab coalition, supported by the US government, is responsible for Yemen’s economic and humanitarian crises.

To understand what might be next for Yemen, Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse reached out to Yousra Abdulmalik who is a Yemeni journalist. She covers the war in Yemen for local Yemeni media.

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Steven Sahiounie (SS):  The administration of former President Trump supported the Saudi war on Yemen, and participated in it.  What changes would you like to see in the new Biden administration’s Yemen foreign policy?

Yousra Abdulmalik (YA):  Nothing.  The history of the United States of America, which has not exceeded the 235 years since the end of the Independence War is full of huge numbers of wars that no country in the world has ever had before. According to documents and statistics, 93% of the life of the United States is the wars it waged against the world.

We find a clear absence in the strategy of the Americans in ending their wars. Often the wars fueled themselves and drained the Americans until they were forced to return to their countries, as happened in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, and others.

For example, the Palestine issue, that nothing happened to it. The American faces inside the White House are changing, but that America’s hostile policy, especially towards the Arabs has not changed and will not change, no matter who the president is.

SS:  President Biden recently stopped selling weapons to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, because of the war on Yemen. Biden said the US participation in the war on Yemen was a mistake. How do you perceive this act by Biden, and do you think it might lead to the end of the war on Yemen?

YA:  The Biden administration has imposed a temporary freeze on U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and is scrutinizing purchases by the United Arab Emirates as it reviews billions of dollars in weapons transactions approved by former President Trump, according to U.S. officials.

The war is only possible because Western countries — and the United States and Britain in particular – continue to arm Saudi Arabia and provide military, political and logistical support for the war. The Western powers are active participants and have the power to stop the world’s most acute humanitarian crisis.

With the beginning of the twenty-first century, the United States of America continued its bloody wars against the world and focused during this period on launching direct or proxy wars against the Middle East countries, under the pretext of fighting terrorism, especially after the September 11 events.

It has become clear to everyone, after 222 years of American aggression against the world, that this country is ready to violate the sovereignty of states and human rights in all countries that do not follow its orders. Here we are completing the decade and a half since the United States and its allies launched the so-called “War on Terrorism, “Washington has not yet been able to eliminate terrorist groups. On the contrary, its spread has increased and has not been able to achieve any change in Afghanistan. Until now, America has spent two trillion dollars since the 2001 attacks. The US economy is still bleeding because of this war.

On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump won the presidency, after his election campaign in which he promised to put an end to Saudi Arabia, which he said that its war on Yemen comes in light of its ambitions to control Yemen and plunder its wealth. Contrary to what he promised, Trump has given the US-Saudi aggression coalition the green light.

SS:  President Biden recently lifted some sanctions off the Anti-Saudi resistance movement in Yemen, which allows humanitarian aid to flow into Yemen. Will this action have a role in breaking the siege that the Saudi regime enacted upon the Yemeni people?

YA:  Biden just talked about reviewing the relations with Riyadh.  Adding Ansarollah to the terror list will provide a legal justification and cover for the Saudi crimes against Yemen. Once the name is added, it would not be an easy job to remove it.

“As noted by Secretary-designate [Anthony] Blinken, the State Department has initiated a review of Ansarullah’s terrorist designations,” the spokesperson said on Friday.

The US decision to designate the Ansarollah movement, which has been effectively the government of Yemen for the last five years, is aimed at justifying any form of aggression against Yemen. This is the way the US views the world.

America is also playing the terrorism card and trying to demonize everyone who does not accept the American tutelage and consider it a terrorist entity that must be fought and besieged economically and politically, as is the case with the resistance movements that America announced that it was placed on the terrorist regulations.

From another angle, the six-year inhumane siege represents Saudi Arabia’s last hope to bring Ansarollah to its knees.

The U.N. says 13.5 million Yemenis already face acute food insecurity, a figure that could rise to 16 million by June.

The United Nations and aid groups have warned “This designation comes at a time when famine is a very real threat to a country devastated by six years of conflict, and it must be revoked immediately. Any disruption to lifesaving aid operations and commercial imports of food, fuel, medicine, and other essential goods will put millions of lives at risk,” the aid groups said in a statement on Sunday.

Despite all these goals set by the Americans, the blacklisting remains largely symbolic and would not impact the movement’s position and power both on the political and war stages. In the past, Washington blacklisted other resistant movements like Lebanese Hezbollah and some units of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) to undermine them, but what is observable is the bold presence of Hezbollah and the PMF in home and regional developments.

SS:  Do you perceive the recent acts by the Biden administration towards Yemen as being connected to a future Iranian nuclear deal?

YA:  America has also turned now to new means, which is to impose economic sanctions on countries and entities that are not subject to the American will, as is happening with Iran, Syria, and other countries, even Russia and China.

The policy of the new US administration on Iran is very much the same as that of the Trump administration and that the only difference is in the rhetoric used.

The standard for changing the American behavior starts from lifting the embargo to stopping the many interventions they have carried out in Iran in the past and wish to continue.

SS:  How do you see the future of Yemen? Could Yemen be possibly split into North and South states?

YA:  The US terrorist designation appears to be a desperate attempt by the former US administration to step up pressure on Ansarollah, the popular Houthi movement, backed by the Yemeni armed forces and allied popular groups, after the Saudi regime failed to fulfill its objectives in Yemen after years of war, despite all the support it received from the US and other Western states.

The movement now has an upper hand both on the battleground and also the political ground over the aggression and its home and foreign backers, hence powerfully and smartly marring all plots designed by foreign sides. The Yemeni revolutionary forces step up their missile, drone, and sea strikes at Saudi economic arteries.

Unlike areas under the control of Ansarollah, areas under the control of UAE, which is a main part of the coalition, witness an insecurity situation that increased the assassinations of Imams of mosques and security and military leaders, lootings, spread of al-Qaeda and Daesh militias, and clashes between the coalition’s paid fighters for influence as well as rape and murder crimes against women and children.

Buzzfeed website issued a report revealing that UAE hired American ex-soldiers to kill its political enemies in southern Yemen, while the Associated Press reported about secret prisons there to torture and sexually abuse Yemeni detainees on suspicion of belonging to Daesh and al-Qaeda. CNN also said in a report that Saudi and UAE “have used the US-manufactured weapons as a form of currency to buy the loyalties of militias or tribes, bolster chosen armed actors, and influence the complex political landscape,”. Above all, Southern Yemenis themselves, who accepted the coalition in the past, are holding protests, demanding the UAE and the coalition to leave their country.

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

Indigenous People and Justice in Nicaragua’s North Caribbean Coast

February 5th, 2021 by Dr. Loyda Martinez Rodriguez

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***

Tortilla con Sal: Perhaps compañera, you could identify yourself and explain to us about the property remediation process and about cases you have adjudicated.

Dr. Loyda Martínez Rodríguez: Ok. My name is Loyda del Carmen Martínez Rodríguez, and I am the Single Local Judge for the municipality of Waspam, Rio Coco. We have prosecuted six cases of usurpation of communal domain of indigenous peoples, where people who are not natives of that community have come to misappropriate land of indigenous peoples. So, how has this procedure been carried out? In the territories, the owners of the land, who are the presidents of the territorial governments, file a complaint with the National Police. The National Police receives these and does all the investigative work. Then they refer the cases to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and the Public Prosecutor’s Office files the accusation before the Single Local Court. We have sentenced these people with the maximum penalty of 3 years, and have thus sent them to the penitentiary in Managua or Matagalpa.

Also, I have participated in dialogue between mestizos and Miskitos in which there are territories that want to resolve the remediation process by means of a leasing agreement with the territory. They make the proposal, then the territory, its president will decide if they are going to lease or not. So, we have carried out these procedures as a judicial authority… by way of accompaniment, then. So you see, we heve participated listening to both parties, the mayor of the municipality has invited me to participate and listen to proposals made by the non-indigenous party.

The State has vindicated the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples’ right to the land, and the State is also a guarantor in the efforts to secure social peace in our country and in our region. It is a process in which the State has guaranteed and has given those peoples this right, but the political opposition always does not see this. They also say that the cases we have prosecuted are of little importance. But no. The indigenous peoples are being protected and the rights the indigenous peoples are being vindicated. And the State has contributed a great deal to this because no other government had ever recognized the indigenous peoples, giving them a title to what before was only private property, where only the oligarchy and the bourgeoisie had the right to own land.

But now the State has guaranteed, has extended that legal protection by which the people of the Caribbean Coast have received the title to their land. And not only the title. You can go to the community and see how they have advanced significantly. They have their land, their crops and much more. It is the State has guaranteed that these peoples have their land in legal terms, namely the title to their property.

Likewise, we have made progress in this aspect of property remediation, and we are not trying to drag it out, although the opposition always sees it like that. But there has been a lot of progress, because there is a dialogue between mestizos and Miskitos in which the State guarantees as established in Law 445 that those communities, that now have their legal title, can lease their land and that is allowed by law. But this is something that as regards the State and the territories, each territory president is able say whether they want to lease or not.

TcS: What’s the relationship between the justice administered by the State, which you represent, and the justice of the indigenous peoples, which is represented at the community level by their wihsta?

Loyda: You see, the State allows positive law and customary law, for the State there are the local judges, the district judges and iIn the case of customary law there are the wihstas, the original community authorities. Today in the Political Constitution and the reforms to it, the wihstasare recognized as the original community authorities of the indigenous and Afro-descendant peoples, with which the State interacts, as in Article 20 of Nicaragua’s Penal Code, and as is also recognized in the Political Constitution. So, what do we do in that regard? We work together. We constantly train our wihstas in new legislation, and how those laws should be administered in their community.

And the law also establishes that they can mediate, and that mediation can be done via the Single Local Court which registers how citizens choose the form of justice they prefer. They can choose the positive justice that we represent or they can choose customary justice. So the citizen chooses one or other of those two forms of justice. Then, as long as it’s in accordance with the law… they administer justice. So then, what do we do? In those cases that can be resolved amicably without the need to go to court, we write the resulting mediation in the mediation register that we have kept for many years. So that means there is access to justice, and for reasons of cost, or distance, people are able to choose their form of justice in their community, which we recognize and we respect the work of our traditional authorities, namely, the wihstas.

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Spain’s Galician Health Law Includes Mandatory Vaccination

February 5th, 2021 by Merran Laginestra

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***

The reform of the Galician health law that the Popular Party has registered in the Galician Parliament includes the possibility for the government to force the population to be vaccinated.

If they refuse to do so, the administration could impose penalties of between 1,000 and 60,000 euros, depending on the seriousness of the consequences that the refusal could have for public health.

The regulation, as promised by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, will be in force in February. A month earlier, the Ministry of Health hopes to have the first vaccines against the coronavirus, although, as Salvador Illa, Spanish Heath Minister recently stated, experts advise that it should not be compulsory.

Under a complete media blackout, a proposal to modify the Public Health Law, 8/2008 of 10 July, is to be approved in Galicia, which will subsequently be imposed on the rest of the autonomous communities.

  • Submission to compulsory vaccination.
  • Submission to anal PCR
  • Submission to hospitalisation by force
  • Detention of civilians in isolation centres that are already being built for this purpose
  • Closure of businesses and seizure of assets
  • Suspension of civilian recreational and cultural activities
  • Tracking and computer monitoring of citizens
  • Detention of individuals or groups suspected of “dangerous” activities
  • Control and management of social centres
  • Control and management of social centres by a government employee
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Merran Laginestra is an independent researcher and activist.

Note

http://www.parlamentodegalicia.es/…/Bibli…/B110051_3.pdf

Featured image is from Inga – stock.adobe.com

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***

The villagers of Arhab were in a celebratory mood before the bomb exploded. The small Yemeni town had just struck water on a new well when a precision-guided munition crashed into the site, killing 31 and maiming many more. 

Among the death and debris, investigators would later find a bomb fragment with a serial code indicating it came from Tucson — home of Raytheon Technologies.

The U.S. government is providing the weapons that are destroying a country, and Arizonans are unwittingly involved. We all deserve better.

It’s time to confront the powerful interests of the arms industry, stop arms sales to those who are indiscriminately bombing civilians, and end U.S. complicity in the war in Yemen for good.

Arms sales helped create a disaster

Since 2015, the United States has been militarily backing the authoritarian governments of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as they intervene in Yemen’s civil war, including by arming them with more than $85 billion worth of bombs, drones and fighter jets.

These sales have proven to be nothing short of a disaster. U.S.-sold weapons are regularly used to commit apparent war crimes, have repeatedly fallen into the hands of violent non-state actors, and have served only to prolong the conflict.

Yemen’s war rages on today, and the country is now the world’s largest humanitarian disaster – and U.S.-made bombs are partly to blame.

But despite the total failure of this strategy to bring peace or security, the sales continue. There’s a simple explanation for that: the weapons industry wants them to.

Raytheon, others aren’t passive actors

While companies like Raytheon, whose missile program is headquartered in Tucson, pretend that they’re merely passive actors meeting their products’ demand, they actually have a large hand in the decision-making process.

Every year, Raytheon and the rest of the weapons industry spend millions of dollars influencing elections and lobbying for more arms sales – fueling horrific wars like Yemen’s for the sake of profits. The blood money from these sales isn’t going to everyday employees either: while Raytheon assembly workers receive about $37,000 per year, its CEO brings home more than 450 times that.

And it looks like the lobbying is paying off. Late last year, the U.S. Senate narrowly rejected legislation to block part of President Trump’s last-minute $23 billion weapons sale to the UAE when Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Kyrsten Sinema defected from the Democratic party to vote “no.”

Understandably, Kelly and Sinema, along with other Arizonans, might worry that jobs depend on these sales. But the fact is, the arms industry is a poor job creator. Every government dollar spent on weapons manufacturing creates less jobs than the same spent on teachers, nurses, frontline pandemic responders, or green energy workers. Places like Huntsville, Ala. — former weapons hot spots that are successfully transitioning to green technology — can show us the way.

We’d be better off without these weapons

Arizonans don’t want their hard work to go toward massacring civilians halfway around the world, and they don’t want their senators voting to sell arms to dictators.

I should know. As a born-and-raised Arizonan and proud UofA alum, I care deeply about what’s best for my home state. And as the digital campaign director of one of the country’s leading anti-militarism advocacy organizations, I have seen Raytheon lobbyists in action as they trample the voices of everyday people from across the country, including our thousands of grassroots activists in Arizona.

With President Biden’s recent decision to pause arms sales to the UAE and Saudi Arabia pending review, we’re closer than ever to ending this terrible practice for good. Now is the time to put the pressure on.

From Arhab to Tucson, the Arabian Desert to the Sonoran, everyday people would be better off without Raytheon’s weapons. It’s time for Arizona to say no to these disastrous arms sales and the corporate powers that back them.

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Shayna Lewis grew up in Pinetop-Lakeside, AZ, and is digital campaigns director at Win Without War, a Washington D.C.-based group advocating progressive national security solutions. Reach her at [email protected].

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***

Monsanto owner Bayer AG said Wednesday it was attempting again to manage and resolve potential future Roundup cancer claims, laying out a $2 billion deal with a group of plaintiffs’ attorneys that Bayer hopes will win approval from a federal judge who rejected a prior plan last summer.

Notably, the deal calls for Bayer to seek permission from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to add information on the labels of its glyphosate-based products such as Roundup that would provide  links to access to scientific studies and other information about glyphosate safety.

Additionally, according to Bayer, the plan calls for establishment of a fund that would compensate “qualified claimants” over a four-year program; setting up an advisory science panel whose findings could be used as evidence in potential future litigation; and development of research and diagnostic programs for medical and/or scientific research into the diagnosis and treatment of non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The plan must be approved by U.S. District Judge Vince Chhabria of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. Chhabria has been overseeing the Roundup multidistrict litigation.

Bayer said qualifying class members over the next four years would be eligible for levels of compensatory awards based on guidelines set forth in the agreement. The “settlement class” refers to people who were exposed to Roundup products but have not yet filed a lawsuit claiming injury from that exposure.

Settlement class members would be eligible for compensation between $10,000 and $200,000, Bayer said.

According to the agreement, the distribution of the settlement fund would break out as follows:

  • Compensation Fund – At least $1.325 billion
  • Diagnostic Accessibility Grant Program – $210 million
  • Research Funding Program – $40 million
  • Settlement Administration Costs, Advisory Science Panel Costs, Settlement Class Notice Costs, Taxes,
    and Escrow Agent Fees and Expenses – Up to $55 million
The proposed settlement plan for future class action litigation is separate from the settlement agreement Bayer made with lawyers for tens of thousands of plaintiffs who have already brought claims alleging exposure to Roundup and other Monsanto glyphosate-based weed killers caused them to develop non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

Bayer has been struggling to figure out how to put an end to the Roundup cancer litigation since buying Monsanto in 2018. The company lost all three trials held to date and lost the early rounds of appeals seeking to overturn the trial losses.

Juries in each of the trials found not only that Monsanto’s glyphosate-based herbicides cause cancer but also that Monsanto spent decades hiding the risks.

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***

On January 6, 2021, I was contacted by a nurse who works in a hospital on the outskirts of Toronto, Ontario. Toronto is Canada’s most populous city, and the fourth largest city in North America. 

The Ontario government’s website claims that “escalating [COVID-19] case counts have led to increasing hospitalization rates and capacity challenges in many large urban hospitals” which “are reaching critical limits.” As a result, the province has continued to enforce lockdowns, mandatory masking and social distancing.

Yet this whistleblowing nurse, as you can read below, works in a “large urban hospital” and reports a very different story. She has provided sufficient evidence, and links to public records, to satisfy me that she is indeed a nurse working for over a decade in multiple Canadian hospitals. To protect her identity, position and family, details about her and her place of work have been changed or omitted, without altering her message.

Nurses Scared to Speak Out

John Manley: Why do you prefer to use a pseudonym?

Nurse Andrea: I’d really like to avoid losing my job or my licence. It’s important to speak out, but at the same time, there’s no sense in becoming a martyr, because all evidence seems to suggest I’ll be crushed.

JM: Are you sure you are a nurse working in Canada, not communist China?

NA: Yes, we are now officially living in a kind of Soviet Covidestan, where lockdowns, masks, and vaccines are the brutally state-enforced ideology. It does give me a sense of terror and anxiety. Then again, I make my points loud and clear to my colleagues, but I don’t proselytize. I maintain strict professional boundaries with patients and play by the rules. I need to lurk until the time is right to strike.

Empty Emergency Room

JM: Can you describe what the emergency room situation is like in your hospital? I would imagine, since the province is in lockdown and under a declared state of emergency that the situation there must be exhausting.

NA: I’ve been doing overtime in ICU because ER is literally empty at times. Eventually a bunch of ambulances may show up all at once (no COVID) and make it feel busy, but this is the nature of ER. Otherwise, hours and hours may go with only 20-40% occupancy. The overall hospital tracker shows total hospital occupancy approximately 70%.

JM: Does not the staff question this low volume during not only a “pandemic” but also a time of year when hospitals in Ontario are normally so overwhelmed they are resorting to “hallway healthcare”?

NA: The other day a member of the leadership team was saying how our ER volume is about half what it was a year ago (before the “deadly pandemic”). Someone said, “But there’s so many cases… why are volumes lower?” I said, “Maybe the virus is not as deadly as the hype suggests?” Those kinds of comments are usually met with silence.

Mostly Non-COVID Patients

JM: Can you give me an example of the type of non-COVID patients you are caring for?

NA: A man came in with his dad from the nursing home. He was furious because his dad was held in isolation, not fed, and was sinking into decline at the nursing home because no family could come see him. I see this with frequency.

JM: Can you give me another example of the type of cases you are seeing?

NA: Busy day in the fracture room, yesterday. Lots of mangled limbs from slipping on the ice. None of it COVID, though everyone gets COVID swabbed before orthopaedic surgery, even asymptomatic patients with straightforward limb injuries.

This just proves we all need to stay home. You can slip on your front porch and overwhelm the “Icey U.”

ICU Caring for Only Nine Patients

JM: If you are taking shifts in ICU, I would then assume that is where the real COVID crisis is happening?

NA: Yes it’s true that we are at 90% occupancy (with far more ventilators than usual). But let’s put this in perspective: If an ICU has ten beds, then discharging 2 patients brings us down to 70% capacity. Not everyone in ICU absolutely needs to be there. There has always been incentive to keep ICU at near full capacity.

JM: I’m sure ICU care is intense, but nine patients does not sound overwhelming to me.

NA: First off, I do not diminish the hard work and the heroism of my colleagues. But let’s be real, staff still have time to stand around and chat, take their coffee breaks, and check their phones. Sometimes staff needs moral support rather than alleviate any acute life-threatening staff shortage or assist resuscitative acts.

JM: So it’s not a “war zone” like the media says?

NA: The ICU looks exactly like an ICU should look: busy with really sick people.

JM: So the media is exaggerating?

Critical Care Rationing Latest Media Scare Story

NA: The other day, I was reading the National Post in the hospital lobby and the latest media scare story is about critical care rationing. Once again, they are talking about “war zones” and we are being scared to think “doctors may have to choose who lives and who dies.”

So when I got back to the ICU I had a chance to talk about rationing with an illustrious ICU doctor. We were conducting daily rounds on a chronically ventilated patient well past the average life-expectancy with many debilitating conditions demonstrating no hope for any quality of life. However, they are kept alive (physiologically with machines) because the family insists on keeping them going “at all costs.”

JM: So a person well past eighty, with almost zero hope of recovery, is receiving critical care in a time of supposed medical rationing? It doesn’t sound like doctors are having to make hard choices about who should live and who should die.

NA: The general sentiment here is that, contrary to doctors and nurses being forced into a moral quagmire of health care rationing, many would welcome a return of professional autonomy. We would prefer to act on an objective clinical judgement, not the emotional whims of families who cannot accept the reality of death.

The truth is that our government healthcare system has set up an impossible situation. On the one hand, medically illiterate families are given a level of decision making power to keep people alive on ventilators ad infinitum despite all indicators pointing to total, utter, and abject futility. On the other hand, the amount of resources required for this is impossible to sustain. It has always been impossible, bankrupting our healthcare system for decades.

Futile Use of Intensive Care Resources

JM: You’re saying, then, that even many of the doctors do not agree that there is precedent for the use of these intensive care procedures?

NA: Intensive care has saved many lives and is a very important element of hospital care, even during this COVID “crisis.” But at the same time, it’s not magic. Doctors need to feel comfortable saying: “Sorry, we’ve done all we can for your loved one, but there is no hope for return to quality of life, it’s time to say goodbye…”

JM: It sounds like a denial of the reality of death?

NA: That is true and it’s what I’ve been saying since March: ICU and ventilator worship will result in an ocean of futility when applied to every elderly person who is already nearing the end of their life-span with multiple chronic organ dysfunctions. In fact, nurse burnout in the ICU can be attributed to the suffering we cause after sticking tubes into every orifice and forcefully restraining elderly people as they rot away in bed when they are simply trying to die.

JM: In New York, Italy and China there has been much evidence and testimonials from nurses showing that patients were not dying form COVID but from being placed on ventilator prematurely. Have you seen much unwarranted intubation in your hospital?

NA: Thankfully, I haven’t seen this directly, first-hand. However, I called BS on the ventilator-worship back in March and April last year and was vindicated. I’ve worked with intubated patients for a long time. One of the biggest drivers of ventilation was the same as for lockdown: fear. Especially during the early phase of the COVID “crisis,” there was extreme media-induced paranoia among nurses and doctors about a uniquely deadly and unusually transmissible coronavirus. The belief was that intubation would prevent aerosolized spread of the virus to staff. I heard these conversations first hand.

Death by Ventilators and Lockdowns, Not COVID

JM: Was death from ventilation very common during the first wave, or something that only happened occasionally?

NA: We had an epidemic of physician-induced death from ventilators in the first wave, no doubt. That is beyond dispute. Death from ventilators and lockdown, not COVID. This has been well documented in places like New York.

Widespread Government-Caused Horror

JM: How do you feel being made to work in such an oppressive environment?

NA: I’m glad I still get to work, even under this oppression. I feel so terribly for those forced out of work. I see them sometimes come to the hospital, suicidal. But even many of them are not directing their rage at the people in power who did this to them. When I’m not working, I start stewing in my own rage about what is going on with lockdown. Working in a hospital I can play pandemic theatre. I’m busy taking care of sick people — often very few of them actual COVID cases — that it takes my mind away from the widespread government-caused horror from the pandemic response.

JM: Thank you for speaking out.

NA: Sadly, the enemies of rationality and freedom are all around us, including our neighbours, family, and friends. I firmly believe future historians will look back on this time with the same sense of horror we feel today about medical and social engineering atrocities of the past — such as eugenics, forced lobotomies and medical experimentation on “undesirables.”

I thank you very much for this opportunity to mark my word today.

*

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John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, naturopaths and chiropractors. Since March 2020, he has been writing articles that question and expose the contradictions in the COVID-19 narrative and control measures. He is also completing a novel, Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story. You can visit his website at MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca.

He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from CDC

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Bioweaponized COVID Vaccines

February 5th, 2021 by Stephen Lendman

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).

***

Throughout the post-WW II period, both right wings of the US war party used and continue to use chemical, biological, radiological, and other banned weapons on invented enemies.

Earlier, biological warfare was waged on Native Americans by use of smallpox infected blankets.

Throughout US history, dirty wars at home and abroad included use of banned weapons.

Mass-vaxxing for seasonal flu-renamed covid is a form of biowarfare on human health. Today it’s being waged worldwide.

An all-out US/Western state-sponsored/Big Media proliferated mass deception campaign is all about convincing ordinary people to volunteer as guinea pigs for the largest ever human experiment that risks enormous harm to the health and well-being of everyone going along with the scam.

Vaccines don’t protect, as falsely claimed.

They’re an enormous cash cow for Big Pharma, why they’re promoted and pushed by Big Government.

Covid vaccines are the motherlode of them all to let Pharma cash in big on a bonanza of profits if things go as planned.

Children’s Health Defense explained that “(c)hildhood health epidemics have mushroomed along with the childhood vaccine schedule.”

“Vaccines contain many…neurotoxic, carcinogenic…ingredients,” including mercury, aluminum, formaldehyde, MSG, aborted human fetal cells, and other substances that risk serious harm to health.

Heavily promoted annual flu shots (vaccines) contain mercury and other toxins linked to development of neurological disorders and other serious diseases.

All of the above are dangerous. When combined, they exponentially increase the threat to health and well-being.

US dark forces in cahoots with Pharma and media press agents are harming generations of infants, youths and adults in pursuit of their diabolical aims.

Pharma claims about vaccine effectiveness and safety are fabricated.

Based on what’s known so far, covid vaccines are far more harmful to health than others developed earlier.

Unapproved by the FDA highlights the hazards they pose.

It’s why no one wanting to protect and preserve health should go near them.

The risk of near-or-later-term harm is overwhelming, especially when combined with use of other drugs.

They all contain ingredients that risk harm to health.

Instead of protecting public health, governments in the US, West and elsewhere support Big Pharma — no matter the hazards posed by toxins in their drugs.

Days earlier, noted spinal surgeon/former Association of American Physicians and Surgeons president Dr. Lee Merritt called covid vaccines “weaponized medicine,” adding:

These experimental vaccines are “biologically manipulated bioweapon(s).”

Whenever “anybody” challenges their safety, they’re “censored.”

“We had a lot of bioweapons over the years and the one I was very worried about was smallpox.”

“But most of these bioweapons were either hard to distribute or there was treatment for them.”

“(T)here is a host of evidence that shows coronavirus is a naturally occurring very benign virus that doesn’t even give most people the cold but at the most it’ll give you a common cold.”

“If we are at biowarfare right now as a part of this multi-dimensional warfare, if you have a treatment in your back pocket they cannot terrorize you with viruses and that’s important because…(the vaccine) doesn’t prevent transmission by their own admission.”

No vaccines are needed for seasonal flu-renamed covid.

Merritt stressed that the “chance of survival” and recovery from “viral flu” exceeds 99.9%

When vaxxed for covid, you’re “not getting a vaccine,” Merritt explained.

What’s injected alters the human genetic code, transforming vaxxed individuals into genetically modified organisms.

The damage is irreversible. It’ll show up incrementally over time that eventually is highly likely to greatly harm millions or potentially billions of people.

Merritt stressed that if a foreign adversary wanted to wage biowarfare on the US, hazardous covid mRNA vaccines would be “perfect binary weapon(s).”

Merritt’s advice: Relief from what’s going on is “easy.”

“Turn off your TV…(T)ake off your mask.” Resume your normal life as before.

Ignore hazardous to health, state-approved, Big Media proliferated pro-mass-vaxxing propaganda.

Merritt isn’t alone. Thousands of doctors and scientists worldwide warned against use of experimental covid vaccines.

They’re unsafe, don’t protect, and risk enormous harm to health when used as directed.

*

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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/

Macron’s Anti-Islamic Crusade Fails

February 5th, 2021 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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

***

Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron has been trying to make Islamic radicalism his number one enemy. The isolationism practiced by some of the most radical Islamic immigrant communities began to worry Paris about the risk of possible separatist riots in order to form areas within French territory where French law does not prevail. However, this concern for national security does not seem to be a priority for most French politicians, the mainstream media and religious movements who have been severely criticizing Macron and forcing changes in measures.

What would, at first, be a bill to officially combat the extremism of Islamic separatists has been converted into a mere document reaffirming French national ideology. Criticized by humanitarians, the bill that would be a “law against Islamic separatism” could only be discussed among parliamentarians under the name “Bill to reinforce republican principles”. The criticisms against the text not only eliminated the original title but also were the topic of 2,647 amendments by the deputies of the Assembly. The left considers the project “stigmatizing” for French Muslims; the right and the national populists of Marine Le Pen consider this insufficient to combat the problem; representatives of all religious cults also affirm their disapproval; many of the deputies of the Macron’s party itself, La Republique En Marche (LREM), are divided on the issue.

What Macron wanted to present as one of the last major marks of his mandate – and certainly one of the last laws before next year’s presidential elections – risks being reduced to simple norms totally ineffective to contain the penetration of radical Islam into all popular sections of French society – which tends to create a breeding ground for terrorism and separatism. But it is unlikely that the chaos generated by the project and the scenario of discussions and disagreements will be controlled until the next elections. Definitively, Macron and his strategists were left alone in their crusade attempt.

French religious movements are strongly opposing Macron’s crusade. Among the various measures that have been proposed to combat Islamic radicalism, the mandatory schooling of minors from the age of 3 stands out. This is to avoid indoctrination within the family and to prevent children attending clandestine Islamic schools, which are becoming more and more common in the peripheries. The Catholic Church criticizes this point in particular because it can also harm its interests when fighting religious vigilance on the education of children. Still, representatives of other religions, like Protestants and Jews, recognize the need for a law to curb the spread of extremism, but fear what they call “side effects in all cults” – something like a scenario of religious intolerance on the part of an aggressive secular state. Obviously, those who criticize the presidential initiative most are the representatives of the French Islamist movements, who interpret the control over cultural associations and educational activities as a real attack on civil liberties.

Religious criticisms of the project combine with materialist criticisms, which highlight the value of civil liberties and the liberal principles that built not only France but all contemporary Western European civilization. “Stigmatizing” Muslims as a risk to national security is unimaginable for representatives of the liberal left and less radical political wings – even if such “stigmatized” groups also disrespect such freedoms, as in the case of forced marriages, demands of “virginity certificates” from young women and obligation to wear veils, which are common practices in Islamic communities.

There is even more radical opposition to Islamic sectarianism than that of Macron, which is the position of Marine Le Pen, with whom Macron shares favoritism for the next elections. Macron defeated Le Pen in 2017 precisely by betting on a humanitarian speech, opposing Le Pen’s “radical Europeanism”, which wants to impose even tougher norms on Muslims, such as, for example, the ban on the use of the veil on women. Macron, with a new election process approaching, made a strategic decision by creating his own crusade against Islam. The president’s strategists imagined that in doing so he would be able to co-opt votes from the pro-Le Pen electorate, but they ignored the strength of humanitarians.

With the reforms to the project, humanitarians broke Macron’s strategy, which now can no longer represent a middle ground between Le Pen’s extremist nationalism and the left’s liberal humanitarianism. The French president will only have to choose between adopting a totally liberal speech again or radicalizing his positions even further, making them similar to Le Pen’s – but this would make him lose his current electoral base.

In the end, the episode shows the overwhelming strength of European humanitarianism and generates reflections on what will become of the future of secular societies and their policies to combat terrorism and civil rights violations.

*

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Mandatory Face Masks

February 5th, 2021 by Stephen Lendman

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).

***

Governments in the US and West are mortal enemies of ordinary people.

Virtually everything playing out today reflects new world order dystopian harshness that’s causing enormous harm to countless millions of people for the benefit of privileged ones.

Last month by executive order, Biden mandated face masks in federal buildings and on its land.

His order falsely claimed that he’s “relying on the best available data and science-based public health measures (sic).”

Effective February 2, the CDC mandated face masks “on public transportation and at transportation hubs.”

In the US, it’s now required “by all travelers into, within, or out of the United States, e.g., on airplanes, ships, ferries, trains, subways, buses, taxis, and ride-shares.”

“The mask requirement also applies to travelers in US transportation hubs such as airports and seaports; train, bus, and subway stations; and any other areas that provide transportation.”

The order applies to everyone “awaiting, boarding, disembarking, or traveling on airplanes, ships, ferries, trains, subways, buses, taxis, and ride-shares as they are traveling into, within, or out of the United States and US territories.”

According to the DHS, Transportation Security Admin. personnel are authorized to enforce the mandate.

Along with other federal authorities, state and local ones are required to do the same thing nationwide.

Failure to comply risks federal civil charges, prosecution, imprisonment and fines.

Ignored is that face masks don’t protect and risk harm to health from extended use.

Porous to permit breathing, minuscule viral spores penetrate them easily, concentrate, and are inhaled.

When masked, normal breathing is impaired and exhaled air can go into eyes and irritate them.

Earlier I quoted noted neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock saying the following about face masks:

“As for the scientific support for the use of face masks, a recent careful examination of the literature, in which 17 of the best studies were analyzed, concluded that:”

“None of the studies established a conclusive relationship between mask/respirator use and protection against influenza infection.”

“(N)o studies have been done to demonstrate that either a cloth mask or the N95 mask has any effect on transmission of the COVID-19 virus.”

“Any recommendations, therefore, have to be based on studies of influenza virus transmission.”

“The fact is, there is no conclusive evidence of their efficiency in controlling flu virus transmission.”

Other experts stressed that face masks don’t work as claimed.

They’re ineffective and potentially harmful to health.

Dr. Jim Meehan explained that “Viral particles move through face masks with relative ease.”

“Your mask is a petri dish experiment” by permitting viral spores to penetrate, concentrate in nasal passages, “enter the olfactory nerves and travel to the brain.”

What’s going on and likely to worsen ahead with follow-up mandates is a colossal, state-sponsored scam.

Masks should be banned in public, not mandated.

By letter to Wisconsin lawmakers, James Fetzer said “(m)ask mandates (are) killing us slowly.”

Virtually all positive PCR test results are false.

Lockdowns and quarantines caused infinitely more harm to countless millions of people than any combination of the most serious diseases.

Social distancing disrupted normal interactions of everyday life.

The so-called SARS-CoV-2 virus allegedly responsible for causing covid may not exist.

No one found it suggesting its nonexistence.

How can a nonexistent virus cause illness?

Virtually everything reported about covid is fake news.

Unexplained is that so-called covid is renamed seasonal flu — with none of what’s going on today.

We’re being systematically lied to and otherwise deceived by politicians, Pharma, and their media press agents.

Their claims have nothing to do with science, nothing remotely related to truth-telling.

The scam includes mass-vaxxing with unapproved, hazardous covid vaccines that risk serious irreversible harm to health, shortened lifespans, contraction of major diseases, possible death for the nation’s elderly, and no protection.

All of the above and likely much more to come risks unprecedented harm to countless millions of people.

Mass resistance is the only alternative, pushing back against what no just societies would tolerate.

Otherwise based on where things heading if not challenged, free and open societies in the US and West will no longer exist — permanent dystopian harshness replacing them.

*

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

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 The White House Facebook

Selected Articles: Towards 2030, NATO Is Shaping Our Future

February 4th, 2021 by Global Research News

Is It True that the New Covid Variants Are Very Dangerous?

By Rosemary Frei, February 04 2021

According to what we hear from officials and the mainstream media, the new variants are the most dangerous and unpredictable beings since Osama bin Laden.

The PCR Test does not Identify the Virus: Covid “False Positives” Used to Justify the Lockdown and Closure of the National Economy.

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 04 2021

We are led to believe that the corona epidemic has entered into a Second Wave, and that the virus is spreading relentlessly. That’s a lie. The PCR test used to estimate covid positive cases is flawed. There is no second wave.

“COVID-19 The Great Reset” – “Delete” Humanity

By Peter Koenig, February 04 2021

The Big Picture of the plan is clear. It plays out in front of our eyes. And we do not want to see it. Or we are blinded by the relentless lie- and deceit-propaganda stream flooding us with false news and outright lies about covid – and what’s to come.

Towards 2030, NATO Is Shaping Our Future

By Manlio Dinucci, February 04 2021

The report painted the picture of a world characterized by “authoritarian States seeking to expand their power and influence”, posing to NATO allies “a systemic challenge in all security and economy fields”.

What is In Store for The World. BAKS Recommendation to German Government: “Support Military Strike by the USA and/or Israel Against Iran!”

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, February 04 2021

What is in store for the world? US Secretary of State Antony Blinken claimed on 1.02.2021 that Iran was only a few months or even weeks away from possessing enough fissile material to build a nuclear bomb, which was reason for the USA and Israel to intervene militarily.

Why Israel Is Joining the Pentagon’s ‘Arab NATO’

By Jonathan Cook, February 04 2021

With none of the usual fanfare associated with such a momentous decision, the Pentagon announced last month a major reorganisation to bring Israel – for the first time – inside its military command in the Middle East alongside the Arab states.

World Court to Hear Iran’s Case Against US Sanctions

By Stephen Lendman, February 04 2021

Unilaterally imposed sanctions by one nation on others breaches international law. UN Charter Article II prohibits the practice. It mandates that all member states “settle…disputes” according to the rule of law.

The Decline and Fall of the American Empire

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, February 04 2021

The irony of the Bush administration’s imperial pretensions was that America has been an empire from its very founding, and that a White House staffer’s political use of the term “empire” in 2004 was not emblematic of a new and rising empire as he claimed, but of a decadent, declining empire stumbling blindly into an agonizing death spiral.

“Power Games All Over the Place”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz, February 04 2021

Struggle is a process, a process that doesn’t end in Washington. And it’s a process which too many Democrats who become energized largely by the presidential drama every four years, often relinquish. Republicans meanwhile press ahead in the shadows, like in state capitals.

The Legacy of Cicely Tyson: Pioneer for Representation in Film, Fashion and Television

By Abayomi Azikiwe, February 04 2021

In the January and February issue of Essence magazine excerpts from a newly released autobiography by Cicely Tyson, Just As I Am, provide insights into the nearly one century life’s journey of a legend within the entertainment and cultural milieu in the United States.

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***

Was steht der Welt bevor? US-Außenminister Antony Blinken behauptete am 1.02.2021, dass der Iran nur wenige Monate oder gar Wochen davon entfernt sei, genug spaltbares Material für den Bau einer Atombombe zu besitzen, was für die USA und Israel Grund für eine militärische Intervention sei (1). Beweise für seine abenteuerliche Behauptung legte er nicht vor. Zwei Tage zuvor empfahl die Bundesakademie für Sicherheitspolitik (BAKS) der deutschen Regierung in einem Arbeitspapier, “im Extremfall” einen Militärschlag der USA und/oder Israels gegen den Iran zu unterstützen, wenn baldige Verhandlungen über das Atomabkommen mit dem Iran keine Lösung brächten (2). Sollen die Deutschen dafür gewonnen werden, Väter, Söhne und Töchter an der Seite der USA und Israels in einen Angriffskrieg zu schicken mit unabsehbaren Folgen für die gesamte Menschheit? Das widerspricht Artikel 26, Absatz 1 des deutschen Grundgesetzes und den „Nürnberger Prinzipien“.

Wie lautet die Stellungnahme des deutschen Parlaments und der Regierung zu dieser existentiellen Frage? Das deutsche Volk hat das Recht, dies zu erfahren. Bei den Vätern des deutschen Grundgesetzes herrschte in diesem Punkt Einigkeit: Von deutschem Boden soll nie wieder Krieg ausgehen! Seinen Ausdruck fand dieser Konsens in Art. 26, Abs. 1 des Verfassungswerks. Hat er noch Bestand?

Wäre es nicht die historische Verantwortung Deutschlands und seiner Regierung, die befreundeten Regierungen der USA und Israels mit allen Mitteln von einem völkerrechtswidrigen Angriffskrieg abzuhalten und eine Verhandlungslösung anzustreben – anstatt an einem Kriegsverbrechen mitzuwirken?

Im Jahr 2008 legte sich die deutsche Kanzlerin vor der israelischen Knesset fest, dass die Sicherheit Israels „deutsche Staatsräson“ sei und dass dies in der Stunde der Bewährung keine leeren Worte bleiben dürften. Unter „Staatsräson“ versteht man den Grundsatz, dass der Staat einen Anspruch darauf hat, seine Interessen unter Umständen auch unter Verletzung der Rechte des Einzelnen durchzusetzen, wenn dies im Sinne des Staatswohls für unbedingt notwendig erachtet wird.

Die Mehrheit des deutschen Volkes wird einer Kriegsbeteiligung nicht zustimmen. Über diese und jede andere Kriegsbeteiligung sollten allein die deutschen Bürger in einer Volksabstimmung entscheiden. Es wird höchste Zeit, so schwerwiegende Entscheidungen nicht Hasardeuren zu überlassen.

*

Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Diplom-Psychologe und Erziehungswissenschaftler.

Quellenangabe

(1) de.rt.com › der-nahe-osten › 112612-us-aussenminister…

(2) de.rt.com › der-nahe-osten › 112472-baks-empfiehlt-b…


150115 Long War Cover hi-res finalv2 copy3.jpg

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.

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-6-0
Year: 2015
Pages: 240 Pages

List Price: $22.95

Special Price: $15.00

Click here to order.

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***

The coronavirus student, a species brought forth in the world of education by the pandemic.

When universities and schools across the globe were given varying and often contradictory messages on the safety of continuing in class teaching and participation, the seeds of confusion and fear were sown.  The broadest, most acceptable solution, at least in terms of safety, was moving learning to an online format.     

One evident issue, notably in higher education, is the attractions offered by remote or virtual learning.  Finally, those championing cost saving measures by physically exiling the teacher from the classroom in favour of stale, pre-recorded sessions of lifeless content, had a pretext.  In consulting the literature on what is banally called “E-learning,” the following article in Quantity and Quantity suggests what it consists of: “technology-based learning through websites, learning portals, video conferencing, YouTube, mobile apps, and thousand [sic] type of free available websites for blended learning tools.”

All these platforms have undeniable uses.  A multifaceted technological environment contaminated by Google, YouTube and social media has found a way into pedagogical technique and learning.  But the tool so fashioned is never the complete human; true learning must have, on some level, a flesh and blood contact if it involves other humans, a connection by which the cerebral cortex can be stimulated and thrilled.   

Without realising it, those who arrived at terms such as “remote learning” were accurate to a fault: learning in remote fashion is emotionally stripping and estranging, a learning experience forged on the dark side of the moon.  Glacial and discouragingly distant, the impression is one of being left abandoned in a garage without an understanding of the tools at hand and how they might best be used.  The poor abandoned sod is left to seek inspiration from elsewhere, in the process enriching the already obscenely wealthy tech giants of Silicon Valley. 

Student responses to this change of learning circumstances have varied. 

Anxiety and stress remain central, hindering any adaption to online education. 

Nor is this helped by the unevenness of technological access of the global student population, occasioned by the often ridiculous assumption that each member of the human race is plugged into the weirdly wonderful Internet. “Although these inequalities existed earlier,” observe the authors of a study of student responses to online learning in an Indian university, the Netaji Subhas University of Technology, “the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed this digital divide.”

The response to online learning also varies depending on which authority you wish to consult.  But the impressiveness of learning in a physically tangible environment is clear.  The survey study of opinions from 358 students at the Netaji Subhas University of Technology found that 65.9% thought in-class learning more rewarding.  Some 68.1% of students did concede that academics had improved their online teaching abilities since the beginning of the pandemic, while 77.9% found it useful.

A more personal touch is offered by a highly sanitised student account in the University of Queensland’s Contact Magazine.  Such material should always be treated with due care, given the publishing outlet and the manicured, lipstick rich enthusiasm of the student.  But even here, the Bachelor of Engineering honours candidate can admit to “personal challenges around remaining motivated and up to date now that my schedule is more fluid”.  There was also the temptation to spend more time watching Netflix.  “Unfortunately,” she concedes, “many of my courses had a large practical component to them, which are no longer available.” 

While forms of online learning have distinct advantages in, for instance, coping with COVID-19 restrictions and mitigating the risks of transmission, a bigger picture is always at play in the world of organisational management.  Motives are multiple, and rarely do they centre with absolute certainty upon protecting student welfare.   

One driving motivation behind moving educational institutions to the online world is the replication of management even as teaching staff are reduced.  Academics have been made redundant as student enrolments fall, coaxed into making recordings and content that can endlessly be reused.  There are threats of departmental amalgamation and a cancellation of courses.  But there is always more room for the addition of COVID-19 bureaucrats.  As ever, more individuals otherwise unconnected to the actual process of teaching and research will find a way to louse up matters.  These good sorts, with a brief of faux compassion, are charged with not inconsiderable surveillance and direction powers.  Their role is to keep a good wide eye on staff and students to ensure they are observing hygiene practices, undertaking re-education modules on how best to teach and learn in a “COVID-19 safe” way, and root out the deviants. 

There are other, telling implications.  The pandemic crisis has been productive to aspiring razor gangs obsessed with trimming budgetary expenditure across entire entities.  The property paladins have been smacking their lips, keen to snap up more space needlessly occupied by instructors and their students.      

What many institutions are doing is delivering an emaciated model of teaching and learning while keeping the costs of taking the subjects at the same, pre-coronavirus level.  The modern learning institution has become the clearing house for glorified correspondence courses.  By the time the vaccination drive has parked most of the world’s population into appropriate spots of security, the learning environment will have a permanently cold and mechanical sense to it.  Students of the future will be none the wiser. 

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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]

Featured image is by BAZA Productions, courtesy of ShutterStock.

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According to what we hear from officials and the mainstream media, the new variants are the most dangerous and unpredictable beings since Osama bin Laden.

Everyone needs to stay safe from these invisible but murderously mighty microbes by shunning contact with the unwashed, unmasked and unvaccinated.

But is that drastic approach — which is accompanied by severe curtailment of civil liberties and constitutional rights — warranted?

It turns out that the case for the variants’ contagiousness and dangerousness centres largely on the theoretical effects of just one change said to stem from a mutation in the virus’s genes. And, as I’ll show in this article, that case is very shaky. I also have an accompanying nine-minute ‘explainer’ video lower down this article.

That one change is known as N501Y — scientific shorthand for the substitution of one protein building block (amino acid) for another at position 501 in the part of the virus called the spike protein. Specifically, position 501 lies in the portion of the spike protein that’s responsible for the intimate coupling between the virus and cells that lets the virus slip inside and multiply.

[Note that any such amino-acid switcheroo is correctly called a change, not a mutation. Mutations occur only in genes. For some reason many scientists and scribes who ought to know better are mistakenly calling N501Y and other amino-acid changes ‘mutations.’ ]

A very preliminary study published Dec. 22, 2020, suggested that N501Y also is present in the South African variant named 501Y.V2. And another very preliminary study, published January 12, 2021, asserted it was also present in the new strain emerging from the Brazilian jungle, dubbed P.1.

Video is from Rosemary Frei

On top of that, the South African variant is being reported as evading immunity and B.1.1.7 sharing this escape route.

And scientists are depicting new variants with N501Y on board as spreading very fast. Some say they make herd immunity impossible, so every single person on earth has to be vaccinated. The models also suggest B.1.1.7 is up to 91% deadlier than the regular novel coronavirus.

(Yet so far it seems the main basis for officials saying it’s more deadly is shown in the minutes of the Jan. 21, 2021 meeting of an influential UK committee called New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group [NERVTAG]. There, they cite modeling papers which haven’t yet been published – which means that until they’re published there’s no way to check their work.)

Three Non-Peer-Reviewed Theoretical-Modeling Papers Catapulted Variants into the Spotlight

Public-health officials, politicians and the mainstream media around the world turned their collective headlights on the variants right after the publication of three theoretical-modeling papers on B.1.1.7, a variant originating in the U.K.

The first was a Technical Briefing by Public Health England published Dec. 21 (it’s the first of an ongoing series of reports on the variant authored by people working at the agency and at other institutions), the second a paper published Dec. 23 by a mathematical-modeling group at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and the third a theoretical-modeling manuscript posted Dec. 31 by a large group of UK scientists.

None of the three papers was checked over for accuracy by objective observers – a process called ‘peer review.’ Nonetheless, all three were portrayed as solid science by many scientists, politicians, public-health officials and the press.

(I reached out for  comment to Public Health England, as well as to the first author of the second paper Nicholas Davies, and to the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The only reply I received was from a media-relations person at Public Health England; she told me no one was available for an interview.)

Neil Ferguson was a co-author of the first and third papers. The UK government has relied on Ferguson’s mathematical modeling for many years. This is despite his work turning out to be highly inaccurate time after time.

He  also supposedly stepped down from his government-advisory role last May after being caught secretly meeting with his married lover during a time when it was illegal to make contact with anyone outside of one’s household, thanks in large part to his modelling. But he was quickly restored to positions of influence. In an article and accompanying video coming out next week, I describe the connections and conflicts of interest surrounding Ferguson and the modeling papers’ other authors.

What Effect Is N501Y Said to Have?

In N501Y, the amino acid that’s swapped out at position 501 in the spike protein is asparagine; by scientific convention it’s represented by the letter ‘N.’ The amino acid that’s swapped in in its place is tyrosine, and it’s represented by the letter ‘Y.’ Hence ‘N501Y.’

Position 501 in the amino-acid sequence sits in the part of the spike protein that protrudes from the surface of the virus. Specifically, it’s said to lie in the region of the spike protein that latches or ‘binds’ to the mechanism that is the gatekeeper for whether the virus can enter the cell. That gate-keeping mechanism is known as the ‘ACE2 receptor.’

This region of the spike protein – known as the ‘receptor binding domain’ (RBD) — binds to the gate keeping mechanism, the ACE2 receptor. When the RBD and the ACE2 receptor bind, the cell membrane, which is the circular barrier between the area outside the cell and the cell contents, opens up and allows the virus to enter.

N501Y is posited to make the spike protein bind tighter to the ACE2 receptor. Influential theoreticians have performed mathematical modeling based on this hypothesis. This modeling suggests that this tighter binding allows the virus to enter more easily, and that therefore this makes the virus more transmissible.

Yet as far as I’ve been able to find, there is still no concrete, direct proof of this. And note that epidemiological data cannot be used to definitively detect the effect of an amino-acid in a virus. Only experiments involving direct observation of the virus’s interaction with the body can determine that.

The main evidence that the top three theoretical-models cite as proof of stronger bonding between the N501Y form of the novel coronavirus and the RBD is from just three scientific manuscripts, and these describe experiments with the virus in mice or petri dishes, not observation of whether in fact the variants are truly more contagious or more deadly. 

Details of the Three Papers That Underpin the Assertion that N501Y Bolsters Contagiousness

One of those three papers was published Sept. 25, 2020, in Science. It describe experiments involving involving six rounds of division of the virus in mice.

The researchers found a large amount of the virus in the mice lungs right from the first round of division. Based on this, they pronounced the virus to have “enhanced infectivity.” However, they didn’t actually test whether the virus is  more transmissible/contagious – that is, whether it moves from mouse to mouse more easily.

They performed ‘deep sequencing’ and reported that they found the N501Y change in the ‘mouse-adapted’ virus. Next they did ‘structural remodeling’ on it and wrote that this analysis “suggested that the N501Y substitution in the RBD of SARS-CoV[-2] S protein increased the binding affinity of the protein to mouse ACE2.” All of this is very different than direct observations of the variant virus’s behaviour in mice or humans.

The second paper was posted on bioRχiv on Dec. 21, 2020. It describes an “engineered decoy receptor for SARS-CoV-2.” The complicated series of molecular-biological manoeuvers in vitro were performed that is hard to follow and understand – there is no ‘Methods’ section laying out  the details and sequence what they did; rather, the researchers’ approach to their experiments is scattered across all sections of the paper including in the accompanying Supplementary Material. This is many steps removed from real-life situations. The authors conclude from their manoeuvers that laboratory-mutated novel coronavirus with the N501Y mutation seems to bind more tightly to their ‘engineered decoy’ form of the RBD receptor than the RBD receptor that normally occurs in nature.  (The idea, it seems, is that this ‘engineered decoy’ could be injected into people with the goal of getting the new variant to bind to it rather than to cells, thereby stopping it from gaining entry into cells and reproducing.)

bioRχiv is an online-only journal. (It’s pronounced ‘bioarchive’; that’s because the Greek letter χ is pronounced ‘kai.’ I presume the letter χ is used in the journal’s title because the χ2 [‘chi-square’] test is a widely used form of statistical analysis in scientific papers.) The journal has tagline ‘The Preprint Server for Biology.’ ‘Preprint’ means non-peer-reviewed. bioRχiv focuses entirely on Covid-19-papers and is sponsored by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. It has a sister publication medRχiv that also focuses on Covid-19,

The Initiative is the creation of Facebook head Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan. Facebook has been among the very active censors of information including scientific papers that diverge from the official narrative about Covid.

The third paper  was posted on the website of the online journal bioRχiv on June 17, 2020, and then in Cell on Sept. 3, 2020.

Like the other two papers, it is extremely removed from direct observation of the virus’s behaviour in live animals or humans. In fact, the third paper doesn’t even use human or animal cells. It involves a ‘yeast-surface-display platform’ as a basis for performing ‘deep mutational scanning’ of the novel coronavirus’s RBD. That ‘platform’ is an artificial structure the paper’s authors constructed for measuring binding between antibodies and various RBD regions containing an array of mutations.

According to this paper, the N501Y amino-acid change results in stronger binding of the virus to the RBD.

However, the papers’ authors state in the last section of their paper that “It is important to remember that our maps define biochemical phenotypes of the RBD, not how these phenotypes relate to viral fitness. There are many complexities in the relationship between biochemical phenotypes of yeast-displayed RBD and viral fitness.” Translation: “Just because our biochemistry experiments showed that the presence of N501Y or other changes in the RBD seems to make the RBD bind tighter to the ACE2 receptor, we don’t know whether any of these changes make the virus more ‘fit’/transmissible.”

And note also that one of the authors of the third paper, Allison Greaney, is quoted as saying in an August 2020 article from the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center where she and several of the other authors work, that “The virus already has a ‘good enough’ ability to bind to ACE2. There’s no reason to believe that going beyond that level will make it more pathogenic or transmissible. [And] [b]ut the RBD may be able to tolerate a number of mutations.”

As another note, the third paper was first published in bioRχiv and then published three months later in the peer-reviewed journal Cell. In Cell the paper is labelled ‘Elsevier-Sponsored Documents’ (see image below)(Elsevier is the publishing empire that owns Cell, among hundreds of other journals). I couldn’t find anything online about what ‘Sponsored’ means, nor about what or who sponsored this particular paper; and I couldn’t find any other papers with this designation. So I emailed Cell’s PR manager John Caputo on the evening of Jan. 18 and followed up by leaving him a voicemail message on Jan. 19. I haven’t heard back from him.

A Brief Word About Another Amino-Acid Change in B.1.1.7

I’ll quickly turn to another of the key changes said to be present in B.1.1.7. This change, the deletion of three amino acids was described in a paper published on the website of medRχiv on November 13, 2020. (Earlier in this article I mention that medRχiv is creation of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.)

The mutation purportedly makes B.1.1.7 invisible to one of the three key functions of the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. That function is detection of the gene that has the genetic code for one of the two main spike proteins on the outer surface of the novel coronavirus.

However, that conclusion is based on only sequencing of the virus in a mere six people who tested positive for the novel coronavirus. On top of that, the paper was not subjected to scrutiny by other scientists (a process known as ‘peer review’) before it was published.

In addition, the Covid diagnoses of those six people were themselves determined by PCR. And PCR has been shown to have a very high rate of false positives — that is, to very frequently give a positive result in people who in fact do not harbour the novel coronavirus at all.

The authors of that paper themselves conclude that “this result should be interpreted with caution. As a limited number of samples with the S-negative profile [i.e., tests that were positive for two of the three portions of the PCR test but not for the third, S-gene, portion] were sequenced, we could not exclude the presence of other S mutations associated with this profile…. Moreover we could not determine whether the deletion affected the primer or other probe-binding region as their coordinates were not available.”

It’s a good bet that similar sleights of hand are behind the new wave of papers and headlines focusing on the amino-acid change dubbed E484K.

What’s the lesson from all this?

That the pronouncements about the dire danger posed by the new variants aren’t based on solid science.

They appear to be aimed more at scaring the public into submitting to harsher and longer restrictions than helping to create truly evidence-based policies.

So follow the golden rules. Read the primary scientific-paper sources. Analyze them and think for yourself. Don’t let your reasoning be swept away by the 24-7, fear-filled news cycle.

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After obtaining an MSc in molecular biology from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, Rosemary Frei pivoted and became a freelance writer. That led to 22 years as writer and journalist focusing on medicine. She pivoted again in early 2016 to full-time, independent activism and investigative journalism. Her website is RosemaryFrei.ca.

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We are led to believe that the corona epidemic has entered into a Second Wave, and that the virus is spreading relentlessly. That’s a lie. 

The PCR test used to estimate covid positive cases is flawed. There is no second wave.

The test is being used extensively to hike up the numbers with a view to justifying the lockdown with devastating social and economic consequences including the engineered bankruptcy of the urban services economy, tourism and air travel. 

Confirmed by prominent scientists as well as by official public health bodies including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Covid-19 is a public health concern but it is NOT a dangerous virus.

The unspoken truth is that the novel coronavirus provides a pretext and a justification to powerful financial interests and corrupt politicians to precipitate the entire World into a spiral of mass unemployment, bankruptcy, extreme poverty and despair. 

More than 7 billion people Worldwide are directly or indirectly affected by the corona crisis.

Flawed Estimates

Nothing in the Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Test and the resulting “estimates” justifies closing down the national economy with a view to resolving a public health crisis.

Moreover, recent scientific reports including a January 20th, 2021 “Retraction” by the WHO confirm that the PCR test yields invalid estimates. The WHO states explicitly that retesting is required. (see below)

Read carefully: According to Pieter Borger, Bobby Rajesh Malhotra , Michael Yeadon , Clare Craig, et al.   

“if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a [amplification] threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used (as is the case in most laboratories in Europe & the US), the probability that said person is actually infected is less than 3%, the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%  (Review Report of Corman-Drosten et al)


The following text is based on Chapter II of Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book entitled.

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

(click here to access full text consisting of 9 chapters)


Identification of the Virus

The RT-PCR test does not identify/ detect the virus. What it detects are fragments of viri. According to renowned Swiss immunologist Dr B. Stadler

So if we do a PCR corona test on an immune person, it is not a virus that is detected, but a small shattered part of the viral genome. The test comes back positive for as long as there are tiny shattered parts of the virus left. Even if the infectious viri are long dead, a corona test can come back positive, because the PCR method multiplies even a tiny fraction of the viral genetic material enough [to be detected].

The Question is Positive for What?? The PCR test does not detect the identity of the virus, According to Dr. Pascal Sacré,

these tests detect viral particles, genetic sequences, not the whole virus.

In an attempt to quantify the viral load, these sequences are then amplified several times through numerous complex steps that are subject to errors, sterility errors and contamination.

Positive RT-PCR is not synonymous with COVID-19 disease! PCR specialists make it clear that a test must always be compared with the clinical record of the patient being tested, with the patient’s state of health to confirm its value [reliability]

The media frighten everyone with new positive PCR tests, without any nuance or context, wrongly assimilating this information with a second wave of COVID-19. (emphasis added)

While the RT-PCR test was never intended to identify the virus, it nonetheless constitutes from the very outset of the crisis (January 2020) the cornerstone of the official estimates of Covid-19 “positives”. Moreover, these PCR tests are not routinely accompanied by a medical diagnosis of the patients being tested. 

WHY then was the RT-PCR adopted??

The Controversial Drosten RT-PCR Study

F. William Engdahl in a recent article documents how the RT-PCR Test was instated by the WHO at the outset, despite its obvious shortcomings in identifying the 2019-nCoV. The scandal takes its roots in Germany involving “a professor at the heart of Angela Merkel’s corona advisory group”:

On January 23, 2020, in the scientific journal Eurosurveillance, of the EU Center for Disease Prevention and Control, Dr. Christian Drosten, along with several colleagues from the Berlin Virology Institute at Charité Hospital, [together]  with the head of a small Berlin biotech company, TIB Molbiol Syntheselabor GmbH, published a study entitled, “Detection of 2019 novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV) by real-time RT-PCR” (Eurosurveillance January 23, 2020).

While Drosten et al’s Eurosurveillance article (undertaken in liaison with the WHO) confirmed that “several viral genome sequences had been released”, in the case of 2019-nCoV, however, “virus isolates or samples from infected patients were not available … “(emphasis added):

“The genome sequences suggest presence of a virus closely related to the members of a viral species termed severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-related CoV, a species defined by the agent of the 2002/03 outbreak of SARS in humans [3,4].

We report on the the establishment and validation of a diagnostic workflow for 2019-nCoV screening and specific confirmation [using the RT-PCR test], designed in absence of available virus isolates or original patient specimens. Design and validation were enabled by the close genetic relatedness to the 2003 SARS-CoV, and aided by the use of synthetic nucleic acid technology.”  (Eurosurveillance, January 23, 2020, emphasis added).

What this (erroneous) statement suggests is that the identity of 2019-nCoV was not required and that “validation” would be enabled by “the close genetic relatedness to the 2003-SARS-CoV.”

The recommendations of the Drosten study (supported by the Gates Foundation) pertaining to the use of the RT-PCR test applied to detecting 2019-nCoV were then transmitted to the WHO. They were subsequently endorsed by the Director General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom. The identity of the virus was not required.  

The above also explains the subsequent renaming by the WHO of the 2019-nCoV to SARS-CoV-2.

The Drosten et al article pertaining to the use of the RT-PCR test Worldwide (under WHO guidance) was challenged in a November 27, 2020 study by a  group of 23 international virologists, microbiologists et al. “Their careful analysis of the original [Drosten] piece is damning. …They accuse Drosten and cohorts of “fatal” scientific incompetence and flaws in promoting their test” (Engdahl, December, 2020).

According to Pieter Borger, Bobby Rajesh Malhotra, Michael Yeadon, Clare Craig, Kevin McKernan, et al 

In light of all the consequences resulting from this very publication for societies worldwide, a group of independent researchers performed a point-by-point review of the aforesaid publication [Drosten] in which 1) all components of the presented test design were cross checked, 2) the RT-qPCR protocol-recommendations were assessed w.r.t. good laboratory practice, and 3) parameters examined against relevant scientific literature covering the field. 

The published RT-qPCR protocol for detection and diagnostics of 2019-nCoV and the manuscript suffer from numerous technical and scientific errors, including insufficient primer design, a problematic and insufficient RT-qPCR protocol, and the absence of an accurate test validation. Neither the presented test nor the manuscript itself fulfils the requirements for an acceptable scientific publication. Further, serious conflicts of interest of the authors are not mentioned. Finally, the very short timescale between submission and acceptance of the publication (24 hours) signifies that a systematic peer review process was either not performed here, or of problematic poor quality.  We provide compelling evidence of several scientific inadequacies, errors and flaws. (November 27, 2020 Critique of Drosten article, emphasis added)

The results of the PCR Test applied to SARS-2 are blatantly flawed. Drosten et al had recommended the use of a 45 amplification cycle threshold, which was endorsed by the WHO in January 2020. 

According to Pieter Borger,  et al

The number of amplification cycles [should be] less than 35; preferably 25-30 cycles. In case of virus detection, >35 cycles only detects signals which do not correlate with infectious virus as determined by isolation in cell culture…(Critique of Drosten Study)

The WHO’s RT-PCR “Retraction” (January 20, 2021)

The RT-PCR test was adopted by the WHO on January 23, 2020, following the recommendations of  the Drosten study quoted above. It had been commissioned and financed by the Gates Foundation.  The Drosten study had recommended a maximum amplification cycle threshold of 45, which was widely applied by national health authorities. 

WHO “Mea Culpa”

One year later on January 20th, 2021, the WHO came out with the admission that the PCR tests will yield biased results if they are conducted above a certain cycle threshold used for amplification.

Below is the text of the WHO’s “retraction” which acknowledges that the test results conducted by national governments are flawed and that a process of “retesting” is required: 

WHO guidance Diagnostic testing for SARS-CoV-2 states that careful interpretation of weak positive results is needed (1). The cycle threshold (Ct) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load. Where test results do not correspond with the clinical presentation, a new specimen should be taken and retested using the same or different NAT technology.

WHO reminds IVD users that disease prevalence alters the predictive value of test results; as disease prevalence decreases, the risk of false positive increases (2). This means that the probability that a person who has a positive result (SARS-CoV-2 detected) is truly infected with SARS-CoV-2 decreases as prevalence decreases, irrespective of the claimed specificity.

Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information. (emphasis added)

What this admission by the WHO confirms is that most of the covid positive estimates currently conducted under the so-called “Second Wave” (with amplification cycles in excess of 35) are invalid.

According to Pieter Borger, et al (quoted above):

“if someone is tested by PCR as positive when a threshold of 35 cycles or higher is used the probability that said person is actually infected is less than 3%, the probability that said result is a false positive is 97%  (Critique of Drosten Study

The above quote confirms unequivocally that the tests adopted by the governments to justify the destabilization of their national economy are flawed.  Moreover the SARS-CoV-2 virus has not been identified.  SARS-CoV-1 was used as “a proxy” for SARS-CoV-1. 

And if it cannot be identified by the PCR test, this invalidates the test.

If the SARS-2 virus cannot be identified, does this not also haVE a bearing on the development of a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine? 

 

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By laying out unrealistic demands to Iran and engaging in fearmongering about its nuclear program, Secretary of State Tony Blinken has underscored America’s real intent about rejoining the controversial agreement.

President Joe Biden has made rejoining the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, popularly known as the Iran nuclear deal) one of the top priorities of his administration, reversing course from the direction taken by former President Donald Trump who, in May 2018, withdrew the US from the landmark 2015 agreement.

However, the gap between Biden’s stated desire and the ability of his foreign policy team, headed by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to bring it to fruition may be insurmountable.

In a recent statement, Blinken warned that if Iran continued to unilaterally lift the various restrictions on its nuclear program mandated under the JCPOA, it would be able to produce enough fissile material for a nuclear weapon within “a matter of weeks.”

But this assertion is fundamentally flawed. In keeping with its policy of ending JCPOA restrictions as a remedial action permitted under Article 36 of the agreement should other parties be in fundamental noncompliance (which the US is, by issuing sanctions), Iran has begun the process to enrich uranium to 20 percent, and convert that uranium to metal. This would be used to produce fuel plates needed to power a research reactor in Tehran used to produce medical isotopes.

As of January 29, Iran had accumulated some 17 kilograms of 20 percent uranium, part of a strategic plan to produce 120 kilograms of the material per year, at a rate of 10 kilograms per month on average.

Iran would need to convert some 250 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium into 25 kilograms of the 90 percent enriched uranium needed for a nuclear weapon. Under Iran’s plans, which have been briefed to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and are being monitored by IAEA inspectors, it would take approximately two years for Iran to accumulate that amount of 20 percent enriched uranium – a fact incompatible with Blinken’s assessment of “a matter of weeks.”

Further undermining Blinken’s contention is the fact that, by converting the 20 percent enriched uranium into metallic fuel plates, Iran has made it impossible to use this material in any “breakout” weapons program, given the complexities associated with reconverting the metal into uranium hexafluoride for subsequent insertion into gas centrifuges for follow-on enrichment to 90 percent. As such, Iran’s actions actually inhibit its ability to pursue a nuclear weapon, something Blinken ignores completely.

But Blinken’s Iran problem goes much further than giving misleading statements about the country’s nuclear capabilities and intent. His prescription for the US rejoining the JCPOA is little more than a poison pill designed to kill the agreement. “Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts,” Blinken recently said, ignoring the country’s citation of its rights under Article 36 (which means that until the US lifts sanctions, Iran is in fundamental compliance), and the fact that Iran has signaled that all of its measures taken to date are “fully reversible.”

“[I]t would take some time, should it [Iran] make the decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance and time for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations,” Blinken said. If Iran were to return to the deal, it would only serve as a precursor to what Blinken called a “longer and stronger agreement” that would address other “deeply problematic”issues.

The biggest hurdle is that Iran has ruled out linking a US return to the JCPOA with any negotiation of a new agreement along the lines that Blinken spoke of. An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Saeed Khatibzadeh, rejected any notion of US-Iranian bilateral negotiations about the JCPOA. “The US needs to return to its commitments,” Khatibzadeh said, “and if that happens, it will be possible to negotiate within the framework of the joint commission of the JCPOA.”

The Iranian position makes sense from a legal standpoint – it is, after all, the US that has left the agreement and, if it seeks to rejoin it, all negotiations must take place within the framework of the agreement itself, and not some new negotiating mechanism that does not conform to the letter of the law.

One of the fundamental flaws in the Iranian position, however, is its failure to recognize that, from the US’ perspective, the JCPOA was never meant to be an agreement which would reach fruition, but rather a stop-gap tool used by the US to contain Iran’s nuclear program in a manner which conformed to US domestic political concerns, and not the reality of Iran’s nuclear ambition. In short, the JCPOA was designed to ensure that Iran would not be able to acquire enough fissile material usable in a nuclear device for at least a year after violating the mechanisms of control envisioned under the agreement.

Some of these mechanisms of control are permanent, such as a ban on any Iranian work on nuclear explosive devices and on the reprocessing of spent reactor fuel, needed for the separation of plutonium. These two bans represent the most effective means of blocking Iran’s path toward a nuclear weapon. So, too, do the enhanced inspection arrangements which enable inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency to request access to undeclared sites.

Others, however, expire under the terms of so-called ‘sunset clauses’. Two of the most important ‘sunset clauses’ involve Iran’s ability to increase the number and types of enrichment centrifuges (expiring in 2025) and increase the amount of low enriched uranium it can stockpile (expiring in 2030). The Iranians view these two clauses as the most important achievements of the JCPOA negotiations, as they guarantee that Iran will be able to fulfil its plans for a viable indigenous nuclear energy program, a right guaranteed to it under Article IV of the nonproliferation treaty, to which it is a signatory.

This, however, was never the intent of the US. According to President Barack Obama, whose administration negotiated the JCPOA, the purpose of the ‘sunset clauses’ was to buy time for Iran, once sanctions were reduced, to “start focusing on its economy, on training its people, on reentering the world community, to lessening its provocative activities in the region.”

According to Obama, by entering the JCPOA, the US made it possible to “strengthen the hand of those more moderate forces inside of Iran.” The JCPOA was “not dependent on anticipating those changes. If they don’t change at all, we’re still better off having the deal.”

Obama’s point of view was driven by US intelligence assessments which, in 2015, put Iran’s “breakout times” at two or three months. By entering the JCPOA, the US was “purchasing for 13, 14, 15 years assurances that the breakout is at least a year … that – that if they decided to break the deal, kick out all the inspectors, break the seals and go for a bomb, we’d have over a year to respond. And we have those assurances for at least well over a decade.”

The important takeaway is what Obama said next. “And then in years 13 and 14, it is possible that those breakout times would have been much shorter, but at that point we have much better ideas about what it is that their program involves. We have much more insight into their capabilities. And the option of a future president to take action if in fact they try to obtain a nuclear weapon is undiminished.” In short, if Iran did not use the JCPOA as a vehicle to understand that it did not need a nuclear program, and voluntarily abandon its nuclear activities, then the US would take action that would prevent the ‘sunset clauses’ from ever expiring.

Unfortunately for Obama, Biden, and the proponents of the JCPOA, Trump wasn’t willing to play that game. Recognizing that the underlying logic behind the Obama approach to the JCPOA was predicated on the belief that Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions were only being temporarily delayed by the ‘sunset clauses’, Trump simply withdrew from the agreement, moving the time for presidential action forward by a decade. In many ways, Trump’s approach to Iran, while fundamentally flawed, was at least honest. The same cannot be said about the Obama administration which negotiated the original deal, or the Biden administration which is now compelled to deal with the fallout of Obama’s deceit and Trump’s actions in response to that deceit.

Time is running out for Biden and Blinken if they hope to revive the JCPOA. Iran’s conservative-dominated parliament has set a deadline of February 21 for the US to lift sanctions that had been reimposed when Trump removed the US from the JCPOA. If the US fails to act, then Iran will likely suspend the enhanced inspections of its nuclear sites by the IAEA, and further increase its uranium enrichment capacity.

“We have said time and again that if the US decides to go back to its international commitments and lift all the illegal sanctions against Iran, we will go back to the full implementation of JCPOA, which will benefit all sides,” Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, said recently. But Takht-Ravanchi’s comments assume that the Biden administration can move forward on the JCPOA in good faith, rather than with the intent of the original US negotiation.

The Obama administration, however, never intended the JCPOA to be anything other than a stop-gap measure designed to buy the US time when it came to managing Iran’s nuclear program. Thanks to Trump, the clock has run out. For Biden, Blinken, and the rest of the Obama-era policy makers who are now back in power and who sowed the seed of this, the time has come to reap the whirlwind. Biden may seek to blame Trump for failing to rejoin the JCPOA, but he only has himself to blame.

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Scott Ritter is a former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and author of ‘SCORPION KING: America’s Suicidal Embrace of Nuclear Weapons from FDR to Trump.’ He served in the Soviet Union as an inspector implementing the INF Treaty, in General Schwarzkopf’s staff during the Gulf War, and from 1991-1998 as a UN weapons inspector. Follow him on Twitter @RealScottRitter

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In the January and February issue of Essence magazine excerpts from a newly released autobiography by Cicely Tyson, Just As I Am, provide insights into the nearly one century life’s journey of a legend within the entertainment and cultural milieu in the United States.

Essence, which celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2000, is a publication designed to illustrate the role of African women in history and the modern world. Tyson, 96 years old, passed away on January 29 of natural causes.

She was born to immigrant parents from the Caribbean island of Nevis. Tyson came into existence in 1924 during the period that is popularly known as the Harlem Renaissance. Beginning in the first decade of the 20th century, Harlem was rapidly transforming from a European immigrant community to one which became largely occupied by Black and Latin American peoples.

During this period which began many years prior to the 1920s, witnessed a flowering of African American literary, musical and political contributions to the overall struggle for freedom and self-determination. Personalities such as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Bessie Smith, W.E.B. Du Bois, Claude McKay, Josephine Baker, among many others, gained prominence domestically and internationally during this period.

People of African descent from the southern U.S. and the Caribbean flooded into New York City and other urban areas in what later became known as the Great Migration. Although this category of mass geographic movement is associated with the rise of industrial capitalism, the people who participated in this migratory phenomenon were not just seeking economic improvement. Many saw the large and medium-sized cities to which they fled as potential avenues for greater social and political liberation.

Tyson writes in her book that:

“The United States has never been ‘one country under God’ but several nations gazing up at him, dissimilar faces huddled beneath a single flag…. The era I grew up in both deepened my racial wound and soothed it with the healing balm of the arts. My childhood spanned the 1920s and 1930s, two of the most economically memorable and culturally rich decades in American history –a period when Negro literature, music and culture flourished.”

The author mentions some of the hallmarks in Harlem such as the Savoy Ballroom and the Cotton Club along with musicians Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton, whose contributions shaped the consciousness and cultural life of the early decades of the 20th century. Tyson acknowledges the philosophical reflections of Alain Locke, author of The New Negro, published in 1925 and the works of James Weldon Johnson, a songwriter and poet who composed the Black National Anthem, entitled “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” She mentions the classic book, “The Souls of Black Folk,” published at the dawn of the 20th century in 1903 by Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois, which was still being read voraciously by the successive generations of the 1920s and 1930s.

The Economic Crisis and the Struggle for Liberation

Of course, with the stock market crash of October 1929, African Americans and African Caribbean people were disproportionately impacted by the Great Depression which lasted until the beginning of the U.S. intervention in World War II. Tyson reviews the mass mobilizations surrounding the Scottsboro Boys case, which originated on the borders between Alabama and Tennessee in 1931 where nine African American youth were falsely accused of raping two white women on a freight train. In addition, the book reviews other horrors of the 1930s such as the U.S. government’s sponsored Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, where African American men were recruited to participate in a longitudinal study on the impact of the deadly disease. The men were promised free healthcare while in fact being denied treatment for Syphilis long after penicillin was discovered as an effective treatment.

Tyson goes on to point out that the Depression years resulted in a consolidation of legalized segregation and national oppression against Black people:

“The attack on our humanity continued in 1934. That year, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) established redlining, a set of racially discriminatory real estate and bank-lending practices that barred Blacks from purchasing homes in white neighborhoods—and thus set the stage for wealth disparity between Black and white households that remains to this day. Home and land ownership are the primary means by which Americans have historically amassed wealth, and when Blacks were locked out of bank loans and segregated into slums, we were robbed of the potential to build fortunes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal brought a measure of relief for poor Blacks, but some of its policies, such as redlining, made the New Deal a raw one for us.”

Transcending Barriers and Achieving Recognition

While coming of age in Harlem, Tyson’s mother vehemently opposed her entering the acting business. Her mother felt that it was a profession filled with criminality and debauchery. However, Cecily continued to pursue her dreams.

She came to the attention of Ebony magazine, founded by John Johnson after the conclusion of World War II with a small loan from his family. By the 1950s, Ebony, Jet and other media projects sponsored by Johnson Publications, became a mainstay in the households of African Americans.

Tyson modelled for the fashion ads so prevalent in the magazine. Later she made appearances in a number of television and film productions. In 1963, she became one of the first African American women to wear natural hair over the television series entitled “East Side/West Side.” By 1967, she would appear on the cover of the groundbreaking Miles Davis album entitled “Sorcerer.” Tyson became a partner of the legendary Jazz icon, known for his innovative sound and fashion. The two of them were often photographed while in public setting trends for African Americans and broader segments of the population.

According to an article in Variety magazine the day after her death:

“Tyson broke into movies with the 1959 Harry Belafonte film “Odds Against Tomorrow,” followed by “The Comedians,” “The Last Angry Man,” “A Man Called Adam” and “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.” Refusing to participate in the blaxploitation movies that became popular in the late ’60s, she waited until 1972 to return to the screen in the drama ‘Sounder,’ which captured several Oscar nominations including one for Tyson as best actress.”

In 1974, she played the leading role in a television drama entitled “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman”, based on an actual book released in the early 1960s chronicling the life and times of an African American woman born into slavery and living through Reconstruction, Jim Crow and the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. She also appeared in another television drama mini- series centered upon the novel by Gloria Naylor, known as ”The Women of Brewster Place.” The 1989 series was produced by Oprah Winfrey.

The same Variety review of her career mentioned above says: “She was nominated a total of 16 times in her career, also winning for supporting actress, in 1994 for an adaptation of “Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All”; she was nominated five times for guest actress in a drama for “How to Get Away With Murder.”

Cecily Tyson through her own work and interventions in the movements of the African American people has secured a position within history. Her efforts will continue to motivate women and oppressed peoples in the generations to come.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

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