Global Research

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

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).

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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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“It is race, is it not, that puts the hundred millions of India under the dominion of a remote island in the north of Europe. Race avails much, if that be true, which is alleged, that all Celts are Catholics, and all Saxons are Protestants; that Celts love unity of power, and Saxons the representative principle. Race is a controlling influence in the Jew, who, for two millenniums, under every climate, has preserved the same character and employments. Race in the negro is of appalling importance. The French in Canada, cut off from all intercourse with the parent people, have held their national traits. I chanced to read Tacitus ‘On the Manners of the Germans,’ not long since, in Missouri, and the heart of Illinois, and I found abundant points of resemblance between the Germans of the Hercynian forest, and our Hoosiers, Suckers, and Badgers of the American woods.”  — Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Race must be viewed as a social construction. Human interaction rather than natural differentiation must be seen as the source and the continued basis for racial categorization.” — Prof. Ian F. Haney Lopez, “The Social Construction of Race”

The concept of race from physico-biological to socio-cultural

Race is basically a physico-biological concept and this is obviously attested by the fact that people differ in terms of certain physical features courtesy of the genetic factor. By and large, we automatically distinguish the geographical origins of people though it is true that times are a-changing, so to speak, and many of them were born and are now residents in locations not originally of their ancestors’. Pakistanis and Indians in UK, black Africans in the US . . . Arabs in Spain . . . Chinese in Germany . . . Italians in Argentina . . . Southeast Asians in Italy . . . Filipinos in Arab countries . . . . The list could go on and on as the issue of migration has become commonplace in the modern world. With this development is the emergence of the issue of race that goes beyond the physico-biological. At this point, the concept of race becomes more of a social matter.

In a social context where multiple racial presences is a reality, problems in the area of cultural differences heighten the fundamental discrepancies created by skin-color distinction. However, it is always the dominant racial stock in such a society that assumes the standard-setting prerogative. In this condition, the dominant segment spontaneously claims cultural ascendancy over and above the rest. In the process, a hierarchical ladder–a racial caste system, if you will–is set up on the basis of how far removed the others are from the ascendant standard-setting race. This matter taken seriously could be construed as an undying extension of the ancient master-slave mentality though with all the modifications necessary to toe the superficial line of “decency” that defines what a modern society is supposed to look like.

If a dominant racial group in society enjoys more benefits, privileges, rights and opportunities than the others, the issue of race as a concept becomes social. The general situation presents the superiority of the former over the latter. At this point, thinking people get curious and wonder why the former becomes more superior than the latter. We want to know what inherent genetic qualities does the dominant group possess that make it superior. Is it in terms of physical strength? Is it in the exquisite physical endowments their men and women have? Or perhaps in their unequalled intelligence? While contemplating these, we could go on  and on thinking of other factors generally held by members of a race who consider themselves dominant and superior over the others.

The rise of “racial superiority” in multi-racial societies

In a lot of multi-racial societies that used to be colonies of white-skinned Europeans, racial superiority is reckoned in terms of physical appearance especially the facial features and the skin complexion. This concern is one important area of consideration to better understand what basically colonial mentality is. The closer one’s facial features and skin complexion are to those of the colonizers’ descendants, the more they are treated with special attention, appreciation and affection. An African American (or an African European for that matter) woman is considered pretty if she possesses certain caucasian qualities that make her far different from the typical African. In this context, aesthetic judgment–which is precisely social or socio-cultural, if you will–is thus heavily influenced by the caucasian standard. This matter is much more pronounced in beauty pageants, both local and international so that a southeast Asian contestant should have some caucasian features to qualify. And this is true across the board wherever we find societies that used to be colonies of white empires in bygone eras.

However, in another categorical consideration like when it comes to physical prowess as in sports, those of African descent have proven in various events their excellent talents. In US professional basketball alone as a case in point, African Americans have shown their superiority for several succeeding generations. But this could be mistakenly construed as a unilateral assessment if we are not aware of the fact that white European hoopsters are of equal talents, skills and capabilities and all these have been witnessed in international campaigns like the World Cup. Once realized on a balanced scale, the final analysis yields to us the conclusion that after all, race is a non-factor in matters of physical strength.

The same is true in terms of intelligence as it is an established fact that high-level intelligence is normally  possessed by people in all racial groups everywhere. So long as we don’t make the Nobel Prize in various categories (except the peace prize)–where the majority of the awardees are caucasian–as the standard to judge the superior intelligence of one race over the other, we are on the right track to argue that intelligence transcends the racial divide. In the same vein, we likewise find stupid people everywhere so that nobody can ever lay reasonable claim to the notion that stupidity is one specific characteristic of some particular racial units. Economic backwardness is therefore not proof that a nation is inhabited by people whose stupidity is inherent to their racial roots . In practically all instances, these societies have long been victims of a series of politically generated setbacks that could be traced from the early days of colonization to the most recent mismanagement of governments run by incompetent and corrupt leaders while the more critically thinking intelligentsia are threatened and gagged by all possible means as well as hunted, imprisoned and even assassinated.

Zionist Israel as the most blatant case of unabashed racism in the 21st century

The worst case of racial issue as a social problematization that has hugged world news in the present dispensation is Israeli Zionism. It is based on a religious ideology that is purely mythical, even a blatant lie, that doesn’t have any historical justification. It has laid claim over a geographical portion of the Middle Eastern region which is now called Israel by virtue of the 1948 implementation of the Balfour Declaration. The whole scenario that has developed through time since Israel was first inaugurated is the bitter displacement of the land’s original inhabitants: the Palestinians. The ensuing violence that has resulted to carnage and catastrophic massacres perpetrated by the Zionist Israelis is absolutely aimed to totally annihilate the Palestinians.

Zionism as an ideology using the Jewish religion as a front promotes a brand of racism that puts to shame all previous racisms recorded in world history. The issue of race in Zionism transcends the physico-biological as it claims that the “God” of the Jewish Torah has given Israeli Jews a special recognition as the most important people in the world being “God’s chosen”. However, as far as the physico-biological aspect is concerned, the so-called “Israelis” belong to a racial stock so far different from that of the Palestinians since the latter are Semitic while the former are of ancient Turkic origin.

Israel’s exclusivist formulation grounded on invented socio-cultural presuppositions has promoted the monumental lie that Israelis are of Semitic stock and all attempts to bitterly attack and condemn the bullying perpetrated by Israel over the Palestinians is definitely “anti-Semitic”. In the modern world, nothing matches Zionism as it immorally stands out to notoriously promote the superiority of a race as a social construction based on concocted lies of malevolent personalities who being atheists do not even believe in the “God” whom they claim have chosen them and intended to bring them to the “promised land”.

Conclusion: Racial discrimination as cultural unilateralism 

However, racism as a serious problematique is not monolithic but in most instances, if not all, coincidental with the political or the economic or the social or even a combination of any or all of these factors. This consideration sustains more the notion that racism is more cultural than natural. In the case of Nazi Germany, racism was coincidental to an adversarial positioning against what was then perceived as Jewish dominance in the economic affairs of Germany. In the US, racial discrimination of the European-American populace towards the African-Americans was more of a social-status issue which had grown from an economic condition that spawned the mentality that the raison d’etre of African-Americans in the US was for the sole purpose of being “used as tools of economic production”.

Pockets of racism, big and small, are all over the world. Yet, there is nothing to blame about this hideous problem except the fact that cultural unilateralism initially spawns it to its negative extremes and drives it onwards to its most despicable form.

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Prof. Ruel F. Pepa is a Filipino philosopher based in Madrid, Spain. A retired academic (Associate Professor IV), he taught Philosophy and Social Sciences for more than fifteen years at Trinity University of Asia, an Anglican university in the Philippines. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia Pacific Research. 

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“Stop Mitch McConnell!” screams yet another message to my inbox.

Wait a minute. I understood that the power Mitch McConnell  wielded over the Senate (and the nation), thwarting all attempts at progressive reform and adequate Covid relief, ended two weeks ago.

Where are Georgia’s Democratic victories that leveled the playing field? That 50-50 party share in Congress’ powerful upper house would endow VP Kamala Harris with decisive power; wouldn’t it? The hard campaigning that wrenched away two seats from senate Republicans ended McConnell’s rule; didn’t it?

Democratic senator Charles Schumer, the putative replacement of McConnell as Senate leader, has leapt into prominence in recent weeks. But this Jan 21^st article in The Hill affirming Schumer’s status nevertheless suggests that it’s kind of unclear how much control he and 49 Democratic senators will have. Can Schumer hold sway over the Senate? Can he prevail over his predecessor?

The two men have to work together to allocate the powerful senate committee chairmanships, to decide on the filibuster, and how much of Biden’s $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” are acceptable. Then there’s the Senate trial over Trump’s impeachment; McConnell could derail a conviction. Yes, the former majority leader condemned Trump for inciting the January 6^th attack on the Capitol, implying his support for a conviction by the Senate. Yet last week, McConnell joined 44 GOP-Republican senators to deny the 60 votes needed for a swift and clear verdict against Trump.

Schumer’s inexperience and his lackluster job as minority head does not offer much encouragement regarding how as majority leader, he might override resistance from McConnell.

Republicans have already begun placing obstacles in the way of some of Biden’s promised policy reversals, e.g., ending deportations. A Texas judge has temporarily delayed that, an example of influence wielded by Republican judges appointed by the Trump administration. 

Call me pessimistic, but pursuing stories behind the political headlines is simple civic responsibility. 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.

That’s where powerful governors and state legislators pursue agendas which are sometimes regressive. Take the recently passed anti-protest laws aimed as much at peaceful protestors like you and me as at right-wing mobs threatening the Capitol. According to a report by the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law examined by The Intercept, some of these laws were drawn up before the January 6^th riot. We learn that new bills passed across varying states “contain a dizzying array of provisions that serve to criminalize participation in disruptive protests. The measures range from barring demonstrators from public benefits or government jobs to offering legal protections to those who shoot or run over protesters.” Some proposals, we learn, “…would allow protesters to be held without bail and (they would) criminalize camping… A few bills seek to prevent local governments from defunding police.”

Many of these oppressive laws are passed by state governments where Republicans advanced their strength in last November’s election. Where those gains are is listed in a November 6^th article by Forbes Magazine. We learn, for example:

“In 22 states, Republicans will hold unified control over the governor’s office and both houses of the legislature, giving the party wide political latitude — including in states like Florida and Georgia where Democrats hoped to take a legislative majority.

Republicans flipped the governor’s mansion in Montana and both legislative bodies in New Hampshire on Tuesday, granting the party unified control in two new states.

Democrats will only hold both the legislature and governor in 15 states, and while the party did not lose any of those states, its hopes of flipping legislatures and forming unified governments in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Minnesota went unrealized.

Eleven states will have divided governments in 2021, unchanged from this year: Democratic governors will need to work with Republican legislators in eight states, and Republican governors will contend with Democratic lawmakers in three.”

Note Forbes’ own observation about the quiet headways made by Republicans “State legislative races are usually low-intensity affairs: The issues at play are highly localized, media attention is scant…”  “elections took on special meaning because of redistricting…. Beyond redistricting, state lawmakers also have broad control over policy. Some observers believe conservative state legislatures may try to pass severe abortion restrictions, cueing up legal battles that could end with parts of Roe v. Wade being relitigated by the Supreme Court. Also, the 11 states with divided governments will probably contend with partisan gridlock.”

Check out your state.

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BN Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon. 

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In 2004, journalist Ron Susskind quoted a Bush White House advisor, reportedly Karl Rove, as boasting, “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.” He dismissed Susskind’s assumption that public policy must be rooted in “the reality-based community.” “We’re history’s actors,” the advisor told him, “…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

Sixteen years later, the American wars and war crimes launched by the Bush administration have only spread chaos and violence far and wide, and this historic conjunction of criminality and failure has predictably undermined America’s international power and authority. Back in the imperial heartland, the political marketing industry that Rove and his colleagues were part of has had more success dividing and ruling the hearts and minds of Americans than of Iraqis, Russians or Chinese.

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.

Americans were not always so ignorant of the imperial nature of their country’s ambitions. George Washington described New York as “the seat of an empire,” and his military campaign against British forces there as the “pathway to empire.” New Yorkers eagerly embraced their state’s identity as the Empire State, which is still enshrined in the Empire State Building and on New York State license plates.

The expansion of America’s territorial sovereignty over Native American lands, the Louisiana Purchase and the annexation of northern Mexico in the Mexican-American War built an empire that far outstripped the one that George Washington built. But that imperial expansion was more controversial than most Americans realize. Fourteen out of fifty-two U.S. senators voted against the 1848 treaty to annex most of Mexico, without which Americans might still be visiting California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Nevada, Utah and most of Colorado as exotic Mexican travel spots.

In the full flowering of the American empire after the Second World War, its leaders understood the skill and subtlety required to exercise imperial power in a post-colonial world. No country fighting for independence from the U.K. or France was going to welcome imperial invaders from America. So America’s leaders developed a system of neocolonialism through which they exercised overarching imperial sovereignty over much of the world, while scrupulously avoiding terms like “empire” or “imperialism” that would undermine their post-colonial credentials.

It was left to critics like President Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana to seriously examine the imperial control that wealthy countries still exercised over nominally independent post-colonial countries like his. In his book, Neo-Colonialism: the Last Stage of Imperialism, Nkrumah condemned neocolonialism as “the worst form of imperialism.” “For those who practice it,” he wrote, “it means power without responsibility, and for those who suffer from it, it means exploitation without redress.”

So post-World War Two Americans grew up in carefully crafted ignorance of the very fact of American empire, and the myths woven to disguise it provide fertile soil for today’s political divisions and disintegration. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” and Biden’s promise to “restore American leadership” are both appeals to nostalgia for the fruits of American empire.

Past blame games over who lost China or Vietnam or Cuba have come home to roost in an argument over who lost America and who can somehow restore its mythical former greatness or leadership. Even as America leads the world in allowing a pandemic to ravage its people and economy, neither party’s leaders are ready for a more realistic debate over how to redefine and rebuild America as a post-imperial nation in today’s multipolar world.

Every successful empire has expanded, ruled and exploited its far-flung territories through a combination of economic and military power. Even in the American empire’s neocolonial phase, the role of the U.S. military and the CIA was to kick open doors through which American businessmen could “follow the flag” to set up shop and develop new markets.

But now U.S. militarism and America’s economic interests have diverged. Apart from a few military contractors, American businesses have not followed the flag into the ruins of Iraq or America’s other current war-zones in any lasting way. Eighteen years after the U.S. invasion, Iraq’s largest trading partner is China, while Afghanistan’s is Pakistan, Somalia’s is the UAE (United Arab Emirates), and Libya’s is the European Union (EU).

Instead of opening doors for American big business or supporting America’s diplomatic position in the world, the U.S. war machine has become a bull in the global china shop, wielding purely destructive power to destabilize countries and wreck their economies, closing doors to economic opportunity instead of opening them, diverting resources from real needs at home, and damaging America’s international standing instead of enhancing it.

When President Eisenhower warned against the “unwarranted influence” of America’s military-industrial complex, he was predicting precisely this kind of dangerous dichotomy between the real economic and social needs of the American people and a war machine that costs more than the next ten militaries in the world put together but cannot win a war or vanquish a virus, let alone reconquer a lost empire.

China and the EU have become the major trading partners of most countries in the world. The United States is still a regional economic power, but even in South America, most countries now trade more with China. America’s militarism has accelerated these trends by squandering our resources on weapons and wars, while China and the EU have invested in peaceful economic development and 21st century infrastructure.

For example, China has built the largest high-speed rail network in the world in just 10 years (2008-2018), and Europe has been building and expanding its high-speed network since the 1990s, but high-speed rail is still only on the drawing board in America.

China has lifted 800 million people out of poverty, while America’s poverty rate has barely budged in 50 years and child poverty has increased. America still has the weakest social safety net of any developed country and no universal healthcare system, and the inequalities of wealth and power caused by extreme neoliberalism have left half of Americans with little or no savings to live on in retirement or to weather any disruption in their lives.

Our leaders’ insistence on siphoning off 66% of U.S. federal discretionary spending to preserve and expand a war machine that has long outlived any useful role in America’s declining economic empire is a debilitating waste of resources that jeopardizes our future.

Decades ago Martin Luther King Jr. warned us that “a nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”

As our government debates whether we can “afford” COVID relief, a Green New Deal and universal healthcare, we would be wise to recognize that our only hope of transforming this decadent, declining empire into a dynamic and prosperous post-imperial nation is to rapidly and profoundly shift our national priorities from irrelevant, destructive militarism to the programs of social uplift that Dr. King called for.

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher with CODEPINK and the author of Blood On Our Hands: the American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Featured image is from The Transnational

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According to official estimates, Donald J. Trump obtained a little more than 74 million votes in the November 2020 presidential election losing to Joseph Biden who secured a little more than 81 million votes. Biden won by a comfortable margin but Trump also performed remarkably well. What explains his performance? Analysis of his performance may reveal the growing influence of a certain combination of forces that may shape elections in not only the United States but also in other parts of the world in the coming years.

Considering that most of the popular media channels, many established business outfits, professional groups, women’s organisations and youth movements were against Trump, how did he succeed in harnessing so much support? Let us not forget that more than the media and various entities, Trump’s failure to handle the coronavirus epidemic which resulted in tens of thousands of deaths and spiralling infections eroded considerably his support base.

While a variety of factors may have been responsible for the votes that Trump garnered— including his incumbency — certain observers have highlighted his appeal to a huge segment of the majority White population and his economic record as decisive.  As he did in his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump successfully projected himself as the defender of the interests of the Whites at a time when demographic changes favouring the Hispanic population on the one hand and Black political empowerment on the other (Obama’s 8 years in the White House as a case in point) were allegedly jeopardising the position of the majority community. Baseless as these allegations were, they were craftily manipulated to the advantage of the fear-mongers.

Fear manipulation by itself would not have worked if Trump had not proven that he could also deliver the goods — even if it was superficial. During his four years as president of the US, it is true that he created jobs for not only the majority but also for the minorities including Blacks, Hispanics and Asians. Businesses at all levels flourished and the economy appeared to be benefitting segments of society.

It is this combination — Trump at the forefront of identity politics and Trump pushing the economy forward that seems to have helped Trump in his electoral campaign. This combination of forces would have ensured his political triumph, some analysts argue, if it had not been for the pandemic.

Within his White constituency, the force that mobilised mass support for Trump came from the Christian Right. The Christian Right comprises diverse elements including Christian Zionists who in recent times have come to view Trump as a divinely chosen leader who will fulfil their ideological mission through Israel. This is why many Christian Zionists blindly endorsed Trump in the November 2020 US Election.

When we turn from the US to India, the world’s largest democracy, the nexus between identity politics and economic achievements becomes even more obvious. In recent elections, the ruling Bharatiyya Janata Party (BJP) which assumed power on its own in 2014 has projected itself as the champion of Hindutva, of Hindu nationalism  — a party sworn to protect Hindus against alleged moves by Muslims and other minorities in India to weaken the link between the religion  and the Indian polity.   In the 2019 General Election, after 5 years in power, its Hindutva credentials even more pronounced, the BJP had a greater grip upon the Hindu vote. Its readiness to erase manifestations of Islam in the public arena from place – names to historical narratives was testimony to its fidelity to the religion.

But the BJP also has a people oriented development agenda. It is committed to not only creating jobs and raising incomes but also to building much needed public facilities. Its claim to have built “a million toilets “ since coming to power in 2014 has had some impact upon popular sentiments. The BJP often talks about its rural transformation programmes and how it has reached out to the urban poor.

The BJP’s identity politics provides psychological support to its development agenda just as its development agenda derives its moral strength from its adherence to identity symbols and forms. However as in the US, the issue is how identity politics tends to encourage exclusive tendencies within the body politic. It strengthens dichotomies and divisions in society. The real challenges facing the people in the economy, in politics and in societal relations are often marginalised as bigotry and prejudice take centre stage. Thus some religious or cultural symbol manipulated by the elite may capture the popular imagination though what requires attention in society may be falling educational standards or universal health care.

Political parties or political leaders who do not want to see the politics of identity expressed through bigotry and communal stances dominate their societies especially if they are multi-ethnic are often in a quandary. How do they defeat such politics while remaining faithful to politics that is inclusive, honest and committed to justice and integrity?  There is one thing that they should not do. They should not play the same game of exploiting religious or communal sentiments to gain electoral support. The entire system will sink deeper into the communal cauldron. Neither should the opponents of bigotry and communalism dismiss the impact of these forces as a temporary phenomenon which will disappear in time.

The sane response is to examine in depth the eternal values and principles embodied in the great religious and humanistic philosophies and present their wisdom as an alternative discourse. In other words, what is universal and inclusive, what is just and compassionate in our traditions should be articulated as the real, authentic message of our belief systems. This should be done with courage and integrity whatever the bigots and communalists may say, and however harsh and aggressive their pronouncements and actions may be.

At the same time, those of us who are fighting bigots and communalists with an exclusive agenda should also put forward development policies and programmes that are just, inclusive and humane. In concrete terms, if the former seeks to build colleges it would be primarily to equip the next generation with the character, knowledge and skills that serve the public good rather than strengthen the elite stratum of society. As articulators of an alternative, promoting peace and harmony through shared values and principles that bind diverse communities together would be our cherished goal, not the propagation of attitudes that create barriers among us and sow the seeds of mutual distrust and suspicion. Likewise, those of us who subscribe to an alternative vision of society, will expose the corrupt and the greedy regardless of whether he or she is on our side or not.

If those of us who are opposed to bigotry and communalism possess and practise the right values and principles, it will not be possible for the manipulators of identity politics to spread their influence in society.

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi attends the 3rd Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Summit in Bangkok, Thailand, November 4, 2019. /VCG Photo

With the USA Biden Presidency, Washington has rejoined the Global Warming agenda of the Paris Accords. With China making loud pledges about meeting strict CO2 emission standards by 2060, now the World Economic Forum is about to unveil what will transform the way we all live in what WEF head Klaus Schwab calls the Great Reset.

Make no mistake. This all fits into an agenda that has been planned for decades by old wealth families such as Rockefeller and Rothschild. Brzezinski called it the end of the sovereign nation state. David Rockefeller called it “one world government.” George H.W. Bush in 1990 called it the New World Order. Now we can better see what they plan to impose if we allow.

The Great Reset of the World Economic Forum is a 21^st Century rollout for a new form of global total control.

“We only have one planet and we know that climate change could be the next global disaster with even more dramatic consequences for humankind. We have to decarbonise the economy in the short window still remaining and bring our thinking and behaviour once more into harmony with nature,” declared WEF founder Schwab about the January 2021 agenda.

The last time these actors did something at all similar in scope was in 1939 on the very eve of World War II.

War & Peace Studies

At that time the Rockefeller Foundation financed a top secret strategy group working out of the New York Council on Foreign Relations. It was known as the War and Peace Studies and headed by ‘America’s Haushofer,’ geographer Isaiah Bowman of Johns Hopkins University. Before German Panzer tanks had even rolled into Poland, they were planning a postwar world where the United States would emerge as the sole victor and replace the British as the global hegemonic power.

Formulation of a US-dominated United Nations and Bretton Woods monetary order based on the dollar was part of their project. In 1941 as America formally entered the war, the CFR group sent a memo to the US State Department:

“If war aims are stated which seem to be solely concerned with Anglo-American imperialism, they will offer little to people in the rest of the world. The interests of other peoples should be stressed. This would have a better propaganda effect.”

That successful project has been the framework of what Henry Luce in 1941 called the American Century, and lasted until quite recently.

Now those same families, again including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rothschilds in the person of Lynn de Rothschild’s “Council for Inclusive Capitalism with the Vatican,” are moving to create the next generation in their pursuit of global domination. It’s being called the Great Reset. It requires global government, a plank significantly endorsed by the Jesuit Pope Francis. Its PR man, Klaus Schwab, is a self-admitted protégé of Rockefeller insider Henry Kissinger, from their days 50 years ago at Harvard.

‘Build Back Better’

In May, 2020 as the coronavirus had caused global panic lockdowns far beyond the initial outbreak in Wuhan, the British Crown Prince Charles, together with the World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab, unveiled what they gleefully named the Great Reset. Increasingly world political and business leaders are using terms such as “the Great Reset,” or “the Fourth Industrial Revolution” and thecall to “Build Back Better” which the Biden Administration prefers. They all are anchored on the same set of dramatic global changes. The US Green New Deal and the EU European Green Deal are all part of it.

The most striking fact about the agenda of the Great Reset is that it is being advanced by the same giga-rich plutocrat families responsible for the flaws of the present world economic model. They, not we, have created ruin of organic fields and nature with their Roundup glyphosate and toxic pesticides. They have ruined the air quality in our cities by the transportation models they force on us. They created the “free market” model of globalization that has ruined the industrial base of the United States and the industrial EU nations. Now, as they blame us for an alleged catastrophic emission of CO2, we’re being conditioned to accept guilt and be punished in order to “save the next generation” for Greta and friends.

The 4th Industrial Revolution

Behind the seductive rhetoric of the Powers That Be on creating a “sustainable” world, lies an agenda of raw eugenics, depopulation on a scale never before tried. It is not human, in fact, some call it “transhuman.”

In 2016 WEF head Schwab wrote a book titled Shaping the Future of The Fourth Industrial Revolution. In it, he describes the technological changes coming with the 4th Industrial Revolution of 5G smart phones, Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence that link everything to everything to make the most banal decisions for us such as buying more milk or turning down the stove. At the same time data is centralized in private corporations such as Google or Facebook to monitor every breath we take.

Schwab describes how new generation technologies, already being rolled out by Google, Huawei, Facebook and countless others, will allow governments to “intrude into the hitherto private space of our minds, reading our thoughts and influencing our behavior…Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will not stop at becoming part of the physical world around us — they will become part of us,” said Schwab. “Today’s external devices — from wearable computers to virtual reality headsets — will almost certainly become implantable in our bodies and brains.”

Schwab adds, “What the fourth industrial revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity.” Among those fusion technologies are, “active implantable microchips that break the skin barrier of our bodies,” Schwab explained. These “implantable devices will likely also help to communicate thoughts normally expressed verbally, through a ‘built-in’ smartphone, and potentially unexpressed thoughts or moods by reading brain waves and other signals.” I don’t know about you but I am not eager to have the state or Google read my brainwaves.

Control Our Food

The confusing aspect for many is the plethora of front groups, NGOs and programs which all lead to the same goal: the drastic control over every member of society in the name of sustainability—UN Agenda 2030. Nowhere is it more ominous than in their plans for the future of our food. After creating the present system of globalized industrial agriculture, agribusiness, a project begun in the 1950s by the Rockefeller Foundation, the same circles now advocate “sustainable” agriculture which will mean a shift to genetically edited fake foods, lab-made synthetic meats and such, even including worms and weeds as new food sources.

The WEF’S Schwab has partnered with something called EAT Forum, which describes itself as a “Davos for food” that plans to “set the political agenda.” EAT was created in Sweden in 2016 with support from the UK Wellcome Trust (established with funds from GlaxoSmithKline), and the German Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. Lab-grown synthetic gene-edited meats are being supported among others by Bill Gates, the same one backing Moderna and other genetically edited vaccines. EAT works among others with Impossible Foods and other biotech companies. Impossible Foods was initially co-funded by Google, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Recent lab results showed the company’s imitation meat contained toxic glyphosate levels 11 times higher than its closest competitor.

In 2017 EAT launched FReSH (Food Reform for Sustainability and Health) with the backing of Bayer AG, one of the world’s most toxic pesticide and GMO producers that now owns Monsanto; the China-owned GMO and pesticide giant Syngenta, Cargill, Unilever, DuPont and even Google. This is the planned food future under the Great Reset. Forget the traditional family farmer.

In his 2020 book on The Great Reset, Schwab argues that biotechnology and genetically modified food should become a central pillar to global food scarcity issues, issues which COVID has exacerbated. He is pushing GMO and especially the controversial gene-editing. He writes “global food security will only be achieved if regulations on genetically modified foods are adapted to reflect the reality that gene editing offers a precise, efficient and safe method of improving crops.” Gates, a project partner with Schwab since years, has argued the same.

EAT has developed what it refers to as “the planetary health diet,” which the WEF champions as the “sustainable dietary solution of the future.” But according to Federic Leroy, a food science and biotechnology professor at University of Brussels, “The diet aims to cut the meat and dairy intake of the global population by as much as 90% in some cases and replaces it with lab-made foods, cereals and oil.”

Like everything else with the Great Reset, we will not be given a real choice in food. EAT notes it will be forced on us by, “hard policy interventions that include laws, fiscal measures, subsidies and penalties, trade reconfiguration and other economic and structural measures.” We will all be forced to eat the same synthetic diet or starve.

This is just a hint of what is being prepared under the guise of COVID-19 lockdowns and economic collapse, and 2021 will be a decisive year for this anti-human agenda. The introduction of AI, robots, and other digital technologies will enable the Powers That Be to dispose of hundreds of millions of workplaces. Contrary to their propaganda, new jobs will not be sufficient. We will become increasingly “redundant.”

This all seems too surreal until you read from their own descriptions. The fact that the cabal of the world’s most influential corporations and billionaires sit on the board of WEF with Kissinger’s student, Klaus Schwab, along with the head of the UN and of the IMF, with the CEOs of the world’s largest financial giants including Blackrock, BlackStone, Christine Lagarde of the European Central Bank, David Rubenstein of Carlyle group, Jack Ma, richest billionaire in China, is proof enough this Great Reset is not being done with our true interests at heart, despite their silky words. This dystopian agenda is 1984 on steroids. COVID-19 was merely the prelude.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. 

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

Featured image is from NEO

Seeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl

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

Year: 2007

Pages: 341 pages with complete index

List Price: $25.95

Special Price: $18.00

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

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

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

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

***

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.

It bans the threat or use of force by one nation against another.

Under Article 41, unilaterally imposed sanctions by one nation against others have no legal validity.

No nation or combination thereof may intervene against another without Security Council authorization.

It’s permitted only in self-defense or to enforce the rule of law when breached by a nation-state.

Security Council members alone may legally impose sanctions on nations, entities or individuals.

US sanctions on targeted nations constitute war by other means.

They’re weaponized to pressure, bully, and terrorize targeted nations into bending to its will.

Nations observing them are complicit in law-breaking.

In 1933, years before the UN Charter’s creation, the Montevideo Convention of Rights and Duties prohibited nations from intervening in the internal affairs of others — calling their sovereign territory “inviolable.”

The principle of non-intention is affirmed in other international law.

Notably throughout the post-WW II period, the US and its imperial partners operate by their own rules exclusively.

Their actions repeatedly and flagrantly breach core international law principles.

Nations unwilling to subordinate their sovereign rights to a higher power in Washington are considered enemies of its interests.

In late January at his first news conference, Tony Blinken said US sanctions on Iran will remain in place until its ruling authorities comply with unacceptable US demands.

He falsely accused the Islamic Republic of being “out of compliance on a number of fronts, and it would take some time, should it make a decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance, and (some time) for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations (sic).”

Under JCPOA Articles 26 and 36, Iran continues to comply with principles of the landmark nuclear agreement.

Increasing uranium to 20% purity and other actions taken are reversible in short order if the US and E3 countries fulfill their abandoned obligations.

It’s for them to take good will first steps, not Iran.

They breached the agreement, not the Islamic Republic.

Their “credible path back to diplomacy” is all about getting Iran to accept unacceptable demands it rejects.

Claiming Iran is “divert(ing) toward making nuclear weapons in return for sanctions relief from world powers” is a bald-faced Big Lie.

No evidence remotely suggests it. Plenty of indisputable evidence proves otherwise.

Biden/Harris hardliners are pursuing a path of confrontation with Iran, not mutual cooperation.

It’s an ominous sign for what may lie ahead.

Iran is not in violation of “JCPOA curbs.”

The US and E3 countries are in flagrant violation of breaching their JCPOA obligations.

On Wednesday, a 16-judge International Court of Justice (ICJ) panel agreed to hear Iran’s case against illegally imposed US sanctions — supported by its imperial partners.

Submitted to the Court in 2018, Iran accused the Trump regime of breaching the 1955 US-Iran Treaty of Amity, Economic Relations, and Consular Rights by imposing unlawful sanctions.

Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif applauded the court’s decision, tweeting:

“The @CIJ_ICJ just dismissed all US preliminary objections in the case brought by Iran over unlawful US sanctions.”

“Another legal victory for Iran following 3 Oct. ’18 Order.”

“Iran has always fully respected int’l law.”

“High time for the US to live up to 𝙞𝙩𝙨 int’l obligations.”

In October 2018, Pompeo unilaterally ended the friendship treaty with Iran.

It was in force when Iran submitted its complaint to the Court.

It’ll likely take some time before the ICJ rules on this issue.

If it favors Iran over the Trump regime, it has no power to force US compliance.

In 1986, the IDJ’s ruling for Nicaragua was ignored by the US.

The Court ordered Washington to pay reparations to Nicaragua for contra war mass slaughter, destruction, and related high crimes against a sovereign state.

The pattern is virtually sure to repeat if the Court supports Iran’s legal claim against the Trump regime.

In October 2018, the ICJ ruled for Iran against US sanctions on humanitarian goods, calling Trump regime measures “illegitimate and cruel.”

Pompeo and other regime hardliners ignored the ruling.

A similar response is virtually certain whenever judicial rulings go against US actions and interests.

It’s how the scourge of US imperialism operates.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

Featured image is from Al-Masdar News

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).

***

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.

Until now, Israel has belonged to the US military’s European command, or Eucom, rather than the Middle Eastern one, known as Central Command, or Centcom. The decision effectively jettisoned the traditional wisdom that Israel’s inclusion in Centcom would increase friction between the US and Arab states, and would make the latter more reluctant to share intelligence or cooperate with the Pentagon.

Those concerns were felt especially keenly when the US had large numbers of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Back in 2010, David Petraeus, then Centcom’s commander, expressed fears that the price of too-overt military collusion with Israel could be exacted on US forces stationed in the region.

But Israel’s long-standing goal has been to force the Pentagon to restructure Centcom, and pressure had mounted from pro-Israel lobby groups in Washington in the final months of the Trump administration. The decision looked very much like a “parting gift” to Israel from President Donald Trump as he stepped down.

Military ‘normalisation’

Israel’s formal transfer to Centcom has not yet taken place, but the move was cemented last week with the first visit to Israel by General Kenneth McKenzie, the current head of Centcom, since Joe Biden entered the White House. Alongside Israel’s military chief of staff, Aviv Kohavi, McKenzie planted a tree – officially to mark the Jewish holiday of Tu Bishvat but symbolically representing a new era in their strategic partnership.

On Friday, after a meeting with the US general, Benny Gantz, Israel’s defence minister, issued a statement praising the Pentagon’s reorganisation, saying it would “afford Israel opportunity to deepen cooperation with new regional partners and broaden operative horizons”.

The decision to bring Israel inside the US military command in the Middle East is best viewed – from Washington’s perspective – as the culmination of efforts to push the Arab states into public “normalisation” with Israel.

Military normalisation can now be added to the political, diplomatic and economic normalisation that formally began last September when two Gulf states, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, signed the so-called Abraham Accords with Israel. Morocco and Sudan have also announced their own peace deals with Israel, and other Arab states are likely to follow suit once the dust settles with the incoming Biden administration.

Since the signing of the Abraham Accords, the UAE has been forging strong trading ties with Israel and has helped to establish the Abraham Fund, designed to finance the infrastructure of occupation Israel has used to deprive the Palestinians of statehood. When flights to Dubai were launched in November, Israeli tourists poured into the UAE to take advantage of the new friendly relations and escape lockdown restrictions back home.

In fact, it is widely reported that such visits have become one of the main ways Israel has imported new variants of Covid-19. Last week, Israel effectively closed its borders – except to General McKenzie – to keep the virus in check.

Growing confidence

On the face of it, Israel’s desire to move into Centcom – a kind of Middle East Nato covering several Arab states with which Israel still has hostile relations – appears counter-intuitive. But, in fact, Israel will make major strategic gains.

It will align US security interests in the region even more closely with Israel’s, at the expense of its Arab neighbours. It will aid Israel’s continuing efforts to crush the national ambitions of the Palestinians, with many Arab states’ either explicit or implicit cooperation. It will accentuate political tensions within the bloc of Arab states, further weakening it. And it will help to build pressure on recalcitrant Arab states to join the broader consensus against Israel’s one remaining significant regional foe: Iran.

It is significant that Washington’s long-standing concern about Israel’s presence in Centcom damaging US relations with the Arab states has apparently evaporated.

Once, the US was careful to distance itself from Israel whenever the Pentagon got deeply mired in the region, whether it was the US Gulf war of 1990 or the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Those calculations no longer seem relevant.

The move demonstrates a growing US confidence that the Arab states – at least those that matter to Washington – are unperturbed about being seen to make a military accommodation with Israel, in addition to political and economic engagement. It underscores the fact that the oil-rich Gulf states, alongside Israel, are now the key drivers of US foreign policy in the region and suggests that the most important, Saudi Arabia, is waiting for the right moment to sign its own accord with Israel.

Move out of the shadows

Israel, it is expected, will continue to conduct military exercises in Europe with Nato countries, but will soon be able to build similar direct relations with Arab armies, especially those being rapidly expanded and professionalised in the Gulf using its oil wealth.

It is likely that Israeli officers will soon move out of the shadows and publicly train and advise the UAE and Saudi armies as part of their joint roles in Centcom. Israel’s particular expertise, drawing on decades of surveilling, controlling and oppressing Palestinians, will be highly sought after in Gulf states fearful of internal dissent or uprisings.

As the Israeli scholar Jeff Halper has noted, Israel has shown how effective it is at translating its military and security ties with armies and police forces around the world into diplomatic support in international bodies.

The Middle East is not likely to be different. Once Israel has become the linchpin of more professionalised armies in the region, those states dependent on its help can be expected to further abandon the Palestinian cause.

Regional divide-and-rule

Another dividend for Israel will be complicating Washington’s relations with the Arab region.

Not only does Centcom operate major bases in the Gulf, especially in Bahrain and Qatar, but it leads the proclaimed “war on terror”, with overt or covert operations in several Arab states, including Iraq and Syria.

It will be harder for the US to disentangle itself from Israel’s own openly belligerent operations, including air strikes, in both countries, that are conducted in flagrant violation of international law. Tensions between the US and Baghdad have in the past escalated over Israeli air strikes in Iraq, with threats to limit US access to Iraqi airspace.

With Israel inside Centcom, the US and its most favoured Arab states are also likely to be more directly implicated in Israel’s major military operations against the Palestinians, such as the repeated “wars” on Gaza.

This will pose a significant challenge to the region’s cooperative institutions such as the Arab League. It is almost certain to drive an even deeper wedge between pro-Washington Arab states and those accused of being on the wrong side of the “war on terror”.

The result could be a regional divide-and-rule policy cultivated by Israel that mirrors the decades-long, disabling divisions Israel has generated in the Palestinian leadership, most pronounced in the split between Fatah and Hamas.

Anti-Iran front

The biggest bonus for Israel will be a more formal alliance with Arab states against Iran and shepherding more ambivalent states into Israel’s orbit.

That appears to have been the purpose of the recently well-publicised reconciliation between the UAE and Saudis on one side and Qatar on the other, achieved in the dying days of the Trump administration. One of the chief causes of the lengthy blockade of Qatar related to its insistence on maintaining political and economic ties with Tehran.

Israel’s aim is to force the Biden administration’s hand in continuing Trump’s belligerent anti-Iran policy, which included aggressive sanctions, assassinations and tearing up the 2015 nuclear agreement with Tehran signed by Barack Obama. That deal had given inspectors access to Iran to ensure it did not develop a nuclear bomb that might neutralise the strategic clout Israel gains from its nuclear arsenal.

Inside Centcom, Israel will be able to work more closely with Gulf allies to sabotage any efforts inside Washington to revive the nuclear accord with Tehran. That point was underscored last week when an online security conference, hosted by Tel Aviv University, was attended by two Gulf ministers.

At the conference, Kochavi, Israel’s military chief of staff, issued an unprecedented public rebuke to Biden over recent statements that he wished to revive the nuclear deal. Kochavi called the agreement “bad and wrong strategically and operatively”, claimed that Iran would launch nuclear missiles at Israel once it had them, and declared that a go-it-alone attack by Israel “must be on the table”.

Bahrain’s foreign minister, Abdullatif al-Zayani, observed that Israel and the Gulf states would have a better chance of preventing any US conciliation towards Iran if they spoke in a “unified voice”. He added: “A joint regional position on these issues will exert greater influence on the United States.”

That view was echoed by Anwar Gargash, the UAE’s foreign affairs minister.

Middle East bogeyman

In a sign of how the Biden administration is already fearful of taking on a broad Middle Eastern alliance against Iran, the new president’s pick for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said last month it was “vitally important” to consult with Israel and the Gulf states before re-entering the deal.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, desperate to bolster his electoral fortunes and deflect attention from his looming corruption trial, has every incentive to prise open that chink.

Ensuring Iran remains the Middle East’s number one bogeyman – the focus of western hostility – is in the joint interests of an Israel that has no intention of ending its decades-old obstruction of Palestinian statehood and of Gulf states that have no intention of ending their own human rights abuses and promotion of Islamic discord.

Mike Pompeo, Trump’s departing secretary of state, planted a landmine last month designed to serve Israeli and Saudi interests by highlighting the fact that a number of al-Qaeda leaders have found shelter in Iran. That echoed the Bush administration’s – in this case, entirely fanciful – claim of ties between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein as a pretext, along with non-existent WMD, for the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003.

With Israel’s arrival in Centcom, the lobbying for a repeat of that catastrophic blunder can only grow – and with it, the prospects for renewed conflagration in the Middle East.

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***

The founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, Klaus Schwab, has said that unless “everybody” is vaccinated for COVID-19, then “nobody will be safe,” despite numerous deaths, serious side effects, and unknown consequences on fertility resulting from the vaccines.

Schwab, who holds doctorates in economics and engineering, made the statement as part of a joint discussion on stakeholder capitalism, as part of the World Economic Forum’s recent Davos Agenda meeting. Speaking to CNN Business Emerging Markets Editor John Defterios, Schwab used a question of governmental cooperation with businesses as a means to pronounce his view about vaccine roll-outs across the world.

“One lesson we take out of this crisis is the notion of mutual interdependence. Because even as individuals, we had to take care not to infect someone else and not to be infected. And the same we have to apply now on a global level.”

“As long as not everybody is vaccinated, nobody will be safe,” Schwab declared.

Schwab has long welcomed the arrival of COVID-19, saying that the disruption which has been caused was a “unique window of opportunity,” in which to bring about the Great Reset. We must “build a new social contract…We must change our mindsets” and our “lifestyles,” he has remarked.

In his recent book, COVID-19: The Great Reset, Schwab pointed to regular vaccinations as the only way in which to exit the vicious cycle of lockdown restrictions. “It looks like even a semblance of a return to ‘business as usual’ for most service companies is inconceivable as long as COVID-19 remains a threat to our health. This in turn suggests that a full return to ‘normal’ cannot be envisaged before a vaccine is available.”

He mentioned the “political challenge” of “vaccinating enough people worldwide,” since “we are collectively as strong as the weakest link.” Schwab welcomed the “high enough compliance rate” whilst simultaneously decrying the rise of anti-vaxxers,” who posed a threat to the global vaccine delivery.

“It will be very hard to fight COVID-19 without an effective treatment or a vaccine,” he claimed, “and, until then, the most effective way to curtail or stop transmission of the virus is by widespread testing followed by the isolation of cases, contact tracing and the quarantine of contacts exposed to the people infected.”

Schwab’s plea for the global population to be vaccinated, in order to apparently bring about safety from COVID-19, comes in direct opposition to his own words in his book. He directly stated that “the corona crisis is (so far) one of the least deadly pandemics the world has experience over the last 2000 years. In all likelihood, unless the pandemic evolves in an unforeseen way, the consequences of COVID-19 in terms of health and mortality will be mild compared to previous pandemics.”

Continuing, Schwab wrote that COVID “does not constitute an existential threat, or a shock that will leave its imprint on the world’s population for decades.”

Despite these words, the WEF has been instrumental in developing the “CommonPass” in conjunction with the Commons Project, which would serve as a health passport in the post-COVID world, allowing or denying people the ability to travel, depending on their health and vaccination record. Paul Meyers, CEO of the Commons Project, announced in a WEF video, that the CommonPass would be a “platform that lets people safely and securely collect their health information, whether it is a negative COVID test result, or eventually a record of a COVID vaccination.”

Reporting on the news, LifeSiteNews’ Jeanne Smits wrote:

“The truth of the matter suggested by this new worldwide app is, of course, that global rules with global implementation will allow control of all potential travellers (from country to country, from city to city) with regard to their COVID-19 status.”

However, whilst Schwab calls for universal vaccinations to protect the world from COVID-19, he seems to ignore the advice and warnings from a number of medical health professionals, who have issued grave warnings about the hastily developed experimental injections.

The former vice president of Pfizer Dr. Michael Yeadon has flatly rejected the need for any vaccines for COVID-19, saying “there is absolutely no need for vaccines to extinguish the pandemic. I’ve never heard such nonsense talked about vaccines. You do not vaccinate people who aren’t at risk from a disease. You also don’t set about planning to vaccinate millions of fit and healthy people with a vaccine that hasn’t been extensively tested on human subjects.”

Dr. Theresa Deisher, whose doctorate is in molecular and cellular physiology from Stanford University, has also rejected the need for a vaccine for COVID, explaining that it “has less than a 0.03 percent fatality rate and most of those people, I believe 92 percent or above, have other health problems; we’re making a vaccine at warp speed for a virus that doesn’t look like it’s going to need a vaccine.”

She also added that

“(i)t is possible, but I don’t believe it is desirable, nor do I believe that it’s safe,” with as much as “15 percent of the very healthy young volunteers (experiencing) significant side effects.”

Indeed, recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has revealed that by January 22, at least 273 people in the had died after receiving a COVID vaccine. Most of the deaths occurred within 48 hours of receiving the vaccine.

A further 9,854 adverse events had also been reported as potentially linked to the vaccine, although the number could well be much higher, as a 2012 Harvard study found that the system by which such events are reported, VAERS, only isolates about 1% of such injuries.

Not only that, but a warning issued about Pfizer’s vaccine, stipulated that pregnancy should be avoided for two months after the injection, and breastfeeding mothers shouldn’t receive it. The paper also revealed that there was no knowledge about what impact the experimental injection could have upon fertility.

Medical advisers across the world are now suggesting that people will continue to wear masks and practice physical distancing, even after receiving their injection. The vaccines themselves, which are still technically experimental, do not purportto prevent asymptomatic COVID-19 infections or to last longer than one year.

In place of such untested and dangerous vaccines, the long established medications ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine have received much support from medics, with doctors saying ivermectin “basically obliterates transmission of this virus,” with “miraculous effectiveness.”

Meanwhile, hydroxychloroquine can reportedly reduce mortality of COVID patients “by 50 percent.” The Association of American Physicians & Surgeons explained that the COVID mortality rate “in countries that allow access to HCQ is only 1/10th the mortality rate in countries where there is interference with this medication, such as the United States.”

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The United Nations General Assembly, African Union, and International Court of Justice have all found that Great Britain’s forcible deportation of the Chagos Islanders a generation ago to make way for the US military base at Diego Garcia was unlawful and a serious violation of international law.  The islanders, known as Chagossians who are of mainly African heritage are prevented from returning by Apartheid laws which allow them only brief visits under military guard while US and UK military, contractors, yachtsmen and scientists are permitted to remain in and visit the disputed archipelago.

A charging submission was filed last October with the International Criminal Court alleging the London based administration of the British Indian Ocean Territory and its military representative at Diego Garcia, Commander Kay Burbridge RN, were engaged in the crime of Apartheid and should be arrested and brought to The Hague for trial.  The Court initially advised the Petitioners to seek justice in the national courts but to resubmit the petition if new information came to light.

The Chagossians now cite changed circumstances including the swearing in of self-described anti-Apartheid fighter Joseph Biden as US President and the rejection of their legal claims December 8, 2020 by the Trump administration as: “Not in the interests of the US government.” On January 28, 2021 yet another UN court, the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) ruled the UK was illegally occupying the Chagos islands and Diego Garcia.  Finally, the Chagossians point to a series of recent public statements made by the Mauritius prime minister, Pravind Jugnauth, threatening the United Kingdom with a state referral for crimes against humanity to the International Criminal Court .

According to the Amended Charging Submission the British administration has instituted laws that prevent the Chagossians from living in the Chagos Archipelago and they may visit only under military escort. The Chagossians despite having lived on the disputed islands for up to 8 generations have been stripped of property rights and citizenship.  The all white British Indian Ocean Territory Administration enforces these laws with the help of a Royal Navy contingent in the islands and the US military. In addition to the naval commander the Accused includes the British Indian Ocean Territory Commissioner, Deputy Commissioner, Administrator, and legal advisors.

The International Criminal Court remains under sanctions instituted by former President Trump and not yet lifted by President Biden.  President Trump found the ICC was a threat to US national security. The Chagossians’ lawyer, Dr. Jonathan Levy, stated the sanctions intimidated and bullied both the Chagossians and their legal team as well as International Criminal Court’s prosecutors who were placed on the specially sanctioned persons list along with narcotics kingpins and terrorists. The International court however has taken up a similar care involving the Rohingya people of Myanmar who were forcibly deported and denied the right to return to their homes.

According to the Chagossians’ lawyer, Dr, Jonathan Levy:

“The United Kingdom and United States are acting like international bullies. They demand adherence to human rights norms by others but then turn about and intimidate courts and commit racist acts in the name of national security.” And Dr. Levy added a message to the US president: “President Biden you say you are against racism, apartheid and support international law. Sir, we need action, not words; show the international community that the US once again will champion human rights, equality and anti-racism.  Remove the sanctions on the International Criminal Court and let them investigate the allegations of apartheid on Diego Garcia island.”

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One of the first documents signed by U.S. President Joe Biden immediately after his inauguration on January 15 was an executive order revoking the permit to build the Keystone XL pipeline. The Keystone project should have been the cornerstone of the Canadian economy. First proposed in 2005, it struggled with many bureaucratic hurdles in Canada and the U.S., and also faced fierce environmental resistance. According to the proposal, the Keystone XL is a 3,500km oil pipeline that is supposed to pump out 800,000 barrels of oil a day from the Canadian province of Alberta to U.S. refineries in the Gulf of Mexico, primarily in Texas. The project has the potential to create or support about 60,000 jobs – 42,000 in the U.S. and 17,000 in Canada.

The importance of the pipeline to the Canadian economy is seen by the country’s major banks and several pension funds having big shares in the venture. The Alberta government has already invested $1.5 billion on top of the $6 billion provided by loan guarantees.

It is no coincidence that in 2013, just before the beginning of Justin Trudeau’s Prime Ministership, he named Keystone “one of the most important infrastructure projects of our generation” at a meeting with oil business representatives. He also promised to fight for its implementation. Criticizing then-Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his vague stance in defense of the project, Trudeau told oil and gas tycoons that Canada “needs a government, not a cheerleader.” One can just imagine how much Biden’s decision would have angered his Canadian neighbors.

From the beginning, the Democrats opposed Keystone as it is in opposition to their Green New Deal. A 2015 decree by former President Barack Obama suspended the construction of an oil pipeline through American territory. One of the main lobbyists for this was Biden, who at the time was Vice President.

Democrats have always justified their position because of environmental concerns. However, the interests of party politics played a major role in Biden’s decision. The fact is that one of the main beneficiaries of the pipeline would have been a business empire created by the billionaire Koch brothers, who are major supporters of the Republican Party. By destroying the project, Obama and Biden deprived their political opponents of significant financial support. This motive is overlooked in U.S. media.

During his election campaign, Biden made no secret of his intention to kill Keystone XL by revoking a building permit signed by previous U.S. President Donald Trump in January 2017. The promise to ban the pipeline has been one of the cornerstones of Biden’s program since last spring. At the same time, Trudeau promised to strongly oppose any American government if the construction of the oil pipeline was terminated. This has certainly created tensions between the two North American countries.

Without much consultation and warning, Biden killed the project only five days after his inauguration. Trudeau, instead of offering the promised fierce resistance, is now forced to make conciliatory statements.

Another important promise by Biden was to improve relations with Washington’s closest allies in the aftermath of the Trump administration. As a presidential candidate, Biden condemned Trump’s approach and promised to restore friendly relations with partners, especially Canada. However, as his silent move to end the Keystone construction shows, the new U.S. president is no more interested in the political and economic interests of Washington’s partners than Trump was, especially since Biden ignored basic courtesy, even with a supposed ally.

That is what the now furious Premier of Alberta, Jason Kenney, is highlighting – Washington’s complete disregard for the interests of its partners. Kenney is calling for the federal government to take tough action and even impose economic sanctions against the U.S. His outrage is also shared by the premiers of other Canadian provinces. Biden has demonstrated to not only Canada, but the whole world, that he has an inability to negotiate or compromise.

If Washington treats its fellow Anglo neighbor and supposed ally so harshly, it gives indications to how Biden’s policies will be towards Russia and China. It is likely that Trump’s war against the Nord Stream-2 project will only intensify under Biden despite being contrary to the interests of Washington’s allies in Europe.

The president’s promise to abandon oil production and ban shale gas fracturing technologies demonstrates to Europe that they should not believe that the U.S. will replace Russian energy resources. This comes despite many assurances from Washington that so-called “freedom gas” will save Europeans from supposed Russian dependence. The example of Keystone XL clearly shows to Europeans that the U.S. is not a reliable partner, especially in issues related to energy.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

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***

Venezuelan authorities have reportedly dismantled a terrorist plan.

National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez held a press conference on Sunday and announced the arrest of Juan Gutierrez Aranguren, who was allegedly plotting to bomb the legislative palace in Caracas during a parliamentary session.

“We shall not rest until all those involved in [terror] attacks are captured,” Rodriguez stated, adding that Gutierrez was detained by security forces on the Venezuelan-Colombian border.

The former communications minister pointed the finger at opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez and Juan Guaido, accusing them of being “constantly” involved in subversive activities.

“Lopez and Guaido have been behind the training of military deserters, alliances with drug traffickers, recruiting criminals in Colombia for violent attacks in Venezuela,” he said.

Rodriguez went on to demand explanations from Spanish authorities for allegedly allowing Lopez to organize efforts to oust the Maduro government. The far right leader sought refuge in the Spanish embassy in Caracas after escaping house arrest in April 2019, and fled the country 18 months later.

One of the recent high profile coup attempts, in which Gutierrez was also a participant, was the failed paramilitary invasion code named “Operation Gedeon.”

In May 2020, a 60-strong expedition featuring Venezuelan deserting soldiers and two US mercenaries was neutralized by security forces. Two speed boats were intercepted when attempting to disembark, with dozens of arrests in subsequent days. According to Rodriguez, Gutierrez managed to escape arrest and continue his activities before being caught trying to cross back to Colombia.

In video testimony released on public television, the operative corroborated the leading role of the high-profile opposition figures. He added that he deserted from the Venezuelan armed forces heeding the call from self-proclaimed “Interim President” Juan Guaido.

Furthermore, Gutierrez testified that he was involved in training in one of three camps in northern Colombia under retired Venezuelan Major General Cliver Alcala, another key Gedeon figure. The Venezuelan government had publicly denounced the camps before multilateral organizations.

Gutierrez’s revelations came on the heels of testimony from another Operation Gedeon participant. Yacsy Alvarez Mirabal confessed to having worked as an interpreter for former US green beret Jordan Goudreau, the main organizer of the operation.

In a video released on social media, Alvarez stressed that the Colombian government and intelligence services were aware of the coup efforts being organized in Colombian territory. She specifically claimed that current President Ivan Duque and former President Alvaro Uribe were informed of the operation and pledged logistical support including landing strips and free border crossing.

In September, Colombian authorities arrested Alvarez and three other Venezuelan nationals allegedly involved in Operation Gedeon. They are being investigated for arms trafficking after Alcala’s men were arrested with a shipment in April 2020. The Venezuelan government has requested their extradition.

Operation Gedeon had a significant fallout amidst the Venezuelan opposition. Guaido attempted to distance himself from the operation and have his advisers shoulder the blame. However, his signature appears on a contract with Goudreau’s Silvercorp private contractor, which includes a deniability clause should the plot fail.

The Trump administration likewise denied any involvement in the paramilitary invasion attempt. Nevertheless, as part of a breach-of-contract lawsuit filed against Guaido adviser Juan Jose (“JJ”) Rendon, Goudreau claimed to have met White House officials who encouraged the efforts.

The green beret also stated that a meeting with Trump at the former president’s Mar-a-Lago resort was in the works but did not materialize.

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***

NATO is looking to the future. For this reason, Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg summoned students and young leaders of the Alliance countries via videoconference on February 4, proposing “new ideas for NATO 2030.” His initiative is part of the growing involvement with universities and schools, also with a competition on the theme: “What will be the greatest threats to peace and security in 2030 and how will NATO adapt to counter them?”

To carry out the theme, young people already have their textbook: “NATO 2030 / United for a New Era.” The report was presented by a group of ten experts appointed by the Secretary-General. Among these experts is Marta Dassù, who, after being a foreign policy advisor to Former Prime Minister D’Alema during the NATO war in Yugoslavia, held important positions in successive governments and was appointed by Former Prime Minister Renzi to the Finmeccanica board of directors (now Leonardo), the largest Italian war industry.

What is the “new era” that the experts group envisages? After defining NATO as “the most successful alliance in history”, that “put an end to two wars” (these wars against Yugoslavia and Libya were instead triggered by NATO), 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 ».

Reversing facts, the report claimed that, while NATO amicably extended its hand to Russia, Russia responded with “aggression in the Euro-Atlantic area” and, in agreements’ violation “brought about the end of the Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces “. Russia, the ten experts pointed out, is “the main threat facing NATO in this decade”.

At the same time – they argued – NATO is facing growing “security challenges posed by China”, whose economic activities and technologies may have “an impact on collective defense and military preparation in the area of Supreme Allied Commander’s responsibility in Europe (The Supreme Commander is always a US general appointed by the President of the United States).

After raising the alarm on these and other “threats”, that would also come from the South of the World, the report of the ten experts recommended “cementing the centrality of the transatlantic link”, that is, Europe’s link with the United States in the alliance under US command.

At the same time, he recommended “strengthening the political role of NATO”, underlining that “the Allies must strengthen the North Atlantic Council”, the main political body of the Alliance that meets at Defense and Foreign Ministers level and State and Government leaders. Since the North Atlantic Council takes its decisions, according to NATO rules, not by majority but always “unanimously and by mutual agreement”, it is basically in agreement with what was decided in Washington, the further strengthening of the North Atlantic Council means a further weakening of the European Parliaments, particularly the Italian Parliament, already deprived of real decision-making powers on foreign and military policy.

In this context, the report proposed to strengthen NATO forces in particular on the Eastern flank, providing them with “adequate nuclear military capabilities”, suitable for the situation created with the end of the Treaty on Intermediate Nuclear Forces (which was torn apart by the US). In other words, the ten experts asked the US to speed up the time to deploy in Europe not only the new B61-12 nuclear bombs, but also new medium-range nuclear missiles similar to the 1980s Euromissiles.

They particularly asked to “continue and revitalize nuclear sharing agreements”, which formally allowed non-nuclear countries, such as Italy, to get ready for the use of nuclear weapons under US command. Finally, the ten experts recalled that it is essential that all allies maintain their commitment, made in 2014, to increase their military spending to at least 2% of GDP by 2024, which means for Italy to increase it from 26 to 36 billion euros per year. This is the price to pay to enjoy what the report called “the benefits of being under the NATO umbrella”.

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

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***

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 (1). He did not provide evidence for his adventurous claim.

Two days earlier, the Federal Academy for Security Policy (BAKS) recommended to the German government in a working paper that “in extreme cases” it would support a military strike by the USA and/or Israel against Iran if early negotiations on the nuclear agreement with Iran did not bring a solution (2).

Are the Germans to be persuaded to send fathers, sons and daughters alongside the USA and Israel into a war of aggression with unforeseeable consequences for the whole of humanity? This contradicts Article 26, paragraph 1 of the German Basic Law and the “Nuremberg Principles”.

What is the position of the German parliament and government on this existential question? The German people have the right to know. The fathers of the German Basic Law were unanimous on this point: War shall never again emanate from German soil! This consensus was expressed in Article 26, Paragraph 1 of the constitution. Does it still hold?

Would it not be the historical responsibility of Germany and its government to use all means to dissuade the friendly governments of the USA and Israel from a war of aggression in violation of international law and to seek a negotiated solution – instead of collaborating in a war crime?

In 2008, the German Chancellor stated before the Israeli Knesset that Israel’s security was “Germany’s reason of state” and that this should not remain empty words in the hour of testing. The term “reason of state” is understood to mean the principle that the state has a right to assert its interests, even in violation of individual rights, if this is deemed absolutely necessary for the good of the state.

The majority of the German people will not consent to war participation. The German citizens alone should decide on this and any other war participation in a referendum. It is high time not to leave such serious decisions to hazards.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

(1) de.rt.com ‘ the-middle-east ‘ 112612-us-foreign-minister…

(2) de.rt.com ‘ the-middle-east ‘ 112472-baks-recommends-b…

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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***

This article was co-published with the American Prospect.

When expert witnesses appear before congressional committees, they must disclose certain details about their funding, including federal grants or contracts or money they’ve received from foreign governments. That applies to the expert and the institution they’re representing. These Truth in Testimony rules are intended to ensure that committee members and the general public are given a full picture of the financial interests behind witness testimonies. It is a federal crime to withhold information from the committees.

Earlier this month, the House of Representatives Committee on Rules strengthened the Truth in Testimony rule requiring witnesses offering testimony to disclose whether they are the fiduciary of any entity with a financial interest in the subject matter of the hearing, a level of disclosure of potential financial conflicts of interests that was not previously required. Witnesses will also need to disclose if entities they represent received grants or contracts from foreign sources. The new changes will offer greater accountability and insight into the financial interests behind expert witnesses at congressional hearings.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that transparency will win the day. Take, for example, the House Foreign Affairs Committee. An ideologically narrow group of think tanks, many of which refuse to reveal their funding sources, have dominated the witness table, raising uncertainty about how much transparency the new rules will bring about.

The new rules mean that those think tanks may have to further disclose federal grants and foreign funding if it’s related to the subject matter of hearings. But their opaque donor lists pose challenges for actual accountability and enforcement. Since the new rules require witnesses to self-identify potential conflicts of interest without offering a more comprehensive disclosure of their funding sources, members of Congress and the public are largely relying on the witnesses themselves to be the sole adjudicator of what constitutes a conflict of interest requiring disclosure.

“Hearings are opportunities to get answers for the American people—we need to know about foreign influence or any risk of self dealing with the witnesses called before Congress,” Rep. Katie Porter (D-Calif.) said in a press release. “The new rules will also give members of Congress the opportunity to raise questions about special interests in the course of hearings.”

A large number of those witnesses work for or are officers at Washington think tanks, and not enough is known or disclosed about how their financial interests influence testimony. A review of 622 nongovernmental witnesses appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee over the past two congressional sessions found that think tanks were one of the most common sources of expert testimony, accounting for over one-third, or 237, of the witnesses.

Congress and the general public have surprisingly little insight into who pays the salaries of experts affiliated with nonpartisan and nonprofit policy research institutions or who funds the institutions with which they are affiliated. Instead, we have to rely on the institutions’ voluntary disclosures on their websites or in the limited instances required on Truth in Testimony disclosures.

And these research institutions’ self-disclosures leave much to be desired. Of the 237 think tank–affiliated witnesses who spoke before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, under 30 percent of think tank–affiliated witnesses appeared on behalf of institutions that fully disclose their donors.

A small number of think tanks dominate the witness table, and they happen to be institutions that are particularly opaque about their funders. Four think tanks accounted for about one-third of all expert witnesses at the House Foreign Affairs Committee in the past two Congresses, and each of those institutions demands further scrutiny.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies led the pack, with its staff appearing 29 times before the committee since 2017.

CSIS’s relative transparency about its funding, at least in theory, should make the new Truth in Testimony rules relatively easy to enforce. It provides a comprehensive list of its funders for public review, revealing foreign government, defense contractors, and oil and gas related sources of funding.

But by putting the burden of disclosure on the expert witness, there is still too much wiggle room. For example, if a CSIS-affiliated witness testifies about a region from which CSIS received foreign funding, the witness might be expected to disclose that foreign funding in the Truth in Testimony disclosure. If a CSIS-affiliated witness failed to disclose that potential conflict of interest on their Truth in Testimony form, members of Congress and the general public have the necessary information to cross-reference CSIS’s publicly disclosed donor rolls for any discrepancies with the witness’s Truth in Testimony disclosures. But that level of disclosure is far from the norm for the other think tanks most frequently appearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

The other three think tanks most frequently invited to House Foreign Affairs Committee hearings provide incomplete, or no, information about their funding. They also promote narrow and militaristic U.S. foreign policies, including U.S.-led regime change in Iran, defending unconditional U.S. support for Israel, and supporting a hawkish U.S. strategy around the world.

The Heritage Foundation is a right-wing juggernaut that emerged as one of the most doggedly pro-Trump institutions over the past four years, playing a central role in staffing the administration. According to an investigation conducted in 2018, at least 66 Heritage employees and alumni had entered the administration. And they were extremely well represented before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Heritage experts testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee 12 times during the Republican-controlled 115th Congress and five times during the Democratic-controlled 116th Congress.

Heritage publishes a donor list but conceals the identity of certain donors, listing them as “anonymous,” including 20 who in 2019 donated up to a half-million dollars, and 13 other donors in 2018 who gave the organization up to a half-million.

Heritage did not respond to a request for comment about their selective donor disclosure.

All of this poses questions about their impartiality. Consider the group’s ties to foreign interests, with a particular interest in international law around autonomous weapons systems and the international mine ban treaty disclosed last year when it was revealed that between 2007 and 2015, Heritage received at least $5.8 million from the Hanwha Group, a South Korean conglomerate that produced land mines and a controversial autonomous weapons system. Heritage had not disclosed its funding from Hanwha when opposing international efforts to ban anti-personnel land mines, cluster munitions, and “killer robots” like those manufactured by Hanwha.

Experts from the staunchly pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank formed in 1985 with support from the pro-Israel lobbying powerhouse American Israel Public Affairs Committee, testified 16 times before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in recent years.

WINEP reveals no information about the donors who fund its $14.7 million annual budget. This does a disservice to the American public who rely on the Institute’s expertise in front of their representatives in the committee room.

“As an American interest think tank, The Washington Institute maintains a longstanding policy of accepting no donations from foreign governments, individuals, corporations, foundations or institutions,” said WINEP Executive Director Robert Satloff when asked about the group’s lack of transparency. “We rely on Americans to support our work.”

Finally, the Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a hawkish think tank that regularly advocates for U.S.-led military action against Iran, vigorously opposed the Obama administration’s efforts to negotiate limitations on Iran’s nuclear program, and participated in a now-shuttered State Department–funded program to attack American critics of the Trump administration’s foreign policy.

The group, whose original mission statement included “provid[ing] education to enhance Israel’s image in North America and the public’s understanding of issues affecting Israeli-Arab relations,” and whose 2003 website falsely stated, “We know Saddam Hussein is making weapons of mass destruction,” testified 12 times before the House Foreign Affairs Committee during the Republican-controlled 115th Congress and three times during the Democratic-controlled 116th Congress.

In 2017, FDD received funds from Trump fundraiser Elliot Broidy to host a conference on Qatar’s alleged ties to Islamic extremism. Broidy’s funds had originated from the United Arab Emirates, Qatar’s regional rival, a fact FDD officials say was not shared with them and goes against their policies. FDD’s revenue jumped from $12.2 million in 2018 to $32.5 million in 2019, only adding to the questions about its funding sources, since the organization provides no information about those sources.

FDD did not respond to a request for comment about its refusal to disclose sources of funding.

Experts say it will be difficult to diversify the voices that present expert testimony. Committee leaders have grown accustomed to hearing from the slickest and best-funded institutions in Washington.

But the lack of transparency from some of those institutions might be something that a single member of a committee could quickly resolve if they were so inclined.

“If I was a member of Congress,” said Ben Freeman of the Center for International Policy, “my first question to a think tank witness, under oath, might be to provide a list of their funders if their organization doesn’t publicly provide their donor list.”

Such a question, posed to witnesses affiliated with think tanks that choose not to disclose their funding sources, could be a first step in determining whether witnesses are violating federal law by omitting relevant disclosures from their Truth in Testimony disclosures.

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***

The US State Department dismissed an idea floated by Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, who suggested the EU could help coordinate the actions needed to be taken by the US and Iran to revive the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA.

When asked about Zarif’s offer, State Department spokesman Ned Price said there are “many steps” the US has to take before engaging “directly with Iran” and before the US is willing to “entertain any sort of proposal.”

Price restated the Biden administration’s demand for Iran to return to commitments it agreed to when the JCPOA was negotiated. Iran’s argument against this demand is that since the US violated the deal, it is on Washington to return to compliance.

Price also stressed the need for the administration to consult with US allies, partners, and Congress on Iran before going forward.

A US official speaking to Reuters on the condition of anonymity said Price’s comments should not be taken as a “rejection” of Zarif’s proposal. The official said the US has not “begun negotiating with Iran, or with anyone else, because our priority is to consult” with allies and partners.

The focus on consulting with other countries before even talking to Iran shows the Biden administration is in no hurry to revive the JCPOA and give Iran sanctions relief. Most regional US partners, like Israel and Saudi Arabia, are strongly opposed to the JCPOA.

European signatories to the deal are also signaling opposition to reviving the JCPOA as it was agreed to in 2015. French President Emmanuel Macron called for new, “strict” nuclear negotiations with Iran that include regional countries like Saudi Arabia, something Iran rejected.

Zarif offered the idea to coordinate a return to the JCPOA in an interview with CNN on Monday. He also said that the time for a possible return to the deal is “not unlimited,” a sign of Tehran’s frustration with the Biden administration’s failure to act.

As per a law passed by Iran’s parliament in the wake of the assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakrizadeh, if sanctions are not lifted by February 21st, IAEA inspections on Iran’s nuclear program will be slightly restricted.

“Iran has the strictest IAEA inspection mechanism anywhere in the world,” Zarif said. “We will be limiting that, but there is a very easy way of addressing it, and that is for the United States to come back into compliance before that date.”

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Dave DeCamp is the assistant news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

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***

A few days before the presidential elections in Ecuador, scheduled for February 7, there are still threats to the candidacy of Andrés Arauz, the favorite to win, and to the democratic electoral process itself. It is a dispute that faces numerous obstacles in the context of a systematic political persecution initiated by the government of Lenin Moreno.

With the greatest chance of victory according to all surveys, Arauz is presented by the “UNES”, a party coalition that represents the defenders of the so-called “Citizen Revolution” – a movement led by the former President Rafael Correa. Arauz has signaled that he will increase government spending in favor of social reforms and prioritize topics such as reducing poverty, increasing popular power, among other topics that marked Correa’s years in power. One of his campaign promises is to distribute a thousand dollars to about a million families as soon as he takes power, aiming to increase the population’s purchasing power and raise the country’s social indexes.

On the other hand, the candidate that appears in second place is Guillermo Lasso, a former banker, presented by the “CREO” party in alliance with the Christian Social Party. Contrary to all Arauz’s promises, Lasso defends liberal reforms and promises a continuation of Lenin Moreno’s legacy, with pro-market policies, being a candidate clearly not concerned with social issues and popular agendas.

In third place is Yaku Pérez, a candidate from the Pachakutik movement, who, despite his position, is a long way from the top two, and his victory is unlikely. His main promises are to ban the current mining policy and impose limits on concessions in oil and gas production.

According to Ecuadorian law, for a candidate to win in the first round, it is necessary to obtain more than 40% and 10 points of difference over the second candidate. Otherwise, the first two candidates will face each other again in a second round. Arauz, who in most polls is close to 40%, appears to be close to winning in the first round – and it is precisely around this that arise threats from his opponents.

Several obstacles have been imposed on Arauz since the beginning of his campaign. Allegations of irregularities and illegalities abound from his opponents, almost always without any reasoning. Indeed, Moreno’s legacy has been one of political persecution against his opponents, albeit always disguised as legalism. Censors have been imposed on the campaigns and it is forbidden to even pronounce the name of Rafael Correa. In addition, several candidacies, mainly for the legislative branch which will also have its elections this year, were vetoed by the simple fact of the candidates supporting Correa, which means that, even if Arauz becomes president of Ecuador, Moreno is managing to form a hostile institutional scenario to force the pro-Correa candidate to capitulate to the interests of the liberal right.

Moreno, who started as an ally of Correa and then helped to overthrow him, not only started a major national dismantling process through neoliberal reforms, but also initiated a major judicialization of Ecuadorian politics, creating a police and judicial apparatus to persecute his opponents and justify any form of oppression with a speech of “defending law”. This form of judicial dictatorship is a recent trend in different parts of the world and works perfectly to guarantee the dictatorial intentions of liberal politicians who still want to maintain the democratic and legalistic discourse publicly – a true democratic and legalistic authoritarianism. With this, attempts are made to extinguish all political opposition through judicial sanctions and reprisals. It was in this way that the Ecuadorian liberal right managed to eliminate its greatest opponents, arresting not only Correa but also several of his allies, such as his former vice president, Jorge Glas. The charges – which generally involve crimes of corruption – are always generic and have little factual basis, with several irregularities in the legal processes.

The registration of Arauz’s candidacy itself was complicated, having gone through several legal bureaucracies that would not normally occur. Furthermore, once the registration was obtained, Arauz suffered threats to have his candidacy canceled due to links with Correa. These threats are unlikely to stop any time soon. Even if he is elected, Arauz will be legally threatened by his opponents and forced to make decisions that he would not like to make.

Amid a scenario of a possible resurgence of the left, Moreno traveled to Washington in the last week of January. There, he met with several American politicians, as well as figures like Kristalina Georgieva, Director of the International Monetary Fund and Luis Almagro, Secretary General of the Organization of American States, among others. The real intentions behind these meetings are still obscure and raise suspicions among Moreno’s opponents in Ecuador about possible articulations involving international agents for a reversal in the electoral process – or agitations for a possible removal of Arauz in the first moments of his office, if elected.

Undoubtedly, electing Arauz will directly damage the American plans, as it will represent a return of the nationalist left, which defends the political and economic integration of the Latin American continent and condemns foreign interference in the region. Washington is interested in continuing Moreno’s legacy, now represented by Lasso, but it may not be strong enough to contain the popular will to elect Arauz. What can come of this is a great horizon of possibilities, including an overthrow of Arauz through some judicial maneuver, an attempt to co-opt him as they managed to do with Moreno, who was Correa’s ally before or even simply invalidate his candidacy before elections are held.

*

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Calling for an “American Ministry of Truth”. The US Media’s Dystopian “2021”

By Stephen Lendman, February 03 2021

Along with Big Brother mass surveillance and newspeak, Orwell’s Ministry of Truth was all about controlling the message, eliminating whatever conflicts with it, memory holes used for this purpose. The Times and other US major media operate this way now — a collective ministry of truth as described above.

Long-term Mask Use May Contribute to Advanced Stage Lung Cancer, Study Finds

By Phillip Schneider, February 03 2021

A recent study in the journal Cancer Discovery found that inhalation of harmful microbes can contribute to advanced stage lung cancer in adults. Long-term use of face masks may help breed these dangerous pathogens.

Implanted “Vaccine Package” ID: Germany’s Parliament Has Ratified GAVI’s Digital “Agenda ID2020”

By Peter Koenig, February 03 2021

Alarming News. In Germany the Parliament (Bundestag) ratified on 29 January 2021, the implementation of Agenda ID2020. This is a centralized general electronic data collection of every citizen to which every government agency, police – and possibly also the private sector would have access.

Sky News Acts Largely as a Platform for the UK Defence and Foreign Ministries, Research Finds

By Mark Curtis, February 03 2021

Declassified UK’s analysis of the written outputs of three of Sky News’ principal foreign affairs journalists has found that the media outlet acts largely to amplify the views of the British Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office, while rarely offering critical, independent analysis.

Examining the Ethics and Implications of Twitter’s Censorship Policy in India

By Andrew Korybko, February 03 2021

Twitter caused a stir by complying with the Indian government’s request to temporarily “withhold” access to dozens of accounts for users within the country in response to claims that they were “inciting violence” during the ongoing farmers’ protests.

JFK vs. Allen Dulles. Battleground Indonesia. A Review of Greg Poulgrain’s Book

By Edward Curtin, February 03 2021

The story he tells is one you will read nowhere else, especially in the way he links the assassination of President Kennedy to former CIA Director Allen Dulles and the engineering by the latter of one of the 20^th century’s most terrible mass murders.

Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network Demands Biden End War in Afghanistan

By Black Alliance for Peace, February 03 2021

In response to the Biden administration suggesting it will not complete the withdrawal of U.S. forces, per the Doha Agreement of February 2020, the Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network demands the U.S. end the war in Afghanistan.

Racial Inequality, Institutional Discrimination: The “Great Awokening” in Global and Class Context

By Prof. Charles McKelvey, February 03 2021

The Woke ideology has the support of the political establishment.  Politicians invoke its rhetoric; the media editorializes in its defense; and corporations promise to reform in accordance with its teachings.  There is a reason for this: The Woke ideology functions to channel popular anger and discontent in a manner that does not threaten elite interests.

Russia’s Demography Crisis

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, February 03 2021

According to official data cited last month, Russia’s population stands at 146.24 million as of Jan. 1, 2021, down from 146.75 million the previous year. Russia’s population could drop by more than 12 million by 2035, the national statistics office said in its annual forecast published on its website.

US Pressure on China; The Thai Connection

By Christopher Black, February 02 2021

The change of guard in the American White House has proved that nothing has changed from the Trump regime with respect to US foreign policy. President Biden and his party continue the American propaganda attacks on Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba and other nations that try to march to their own tune.

Glyphosate Endangers Wildlife, Too. Tell the EPA to Ban It.

By Zen Honeycutt, February 03 2021

The EPA wrongfully claims that glyphosate used on crops grown for human and animal food has no impact on endangered species. The public has until March 12 to submit comments asking the agency to ban or restrict the chemical.

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).

***

America’s Frontline Doctors (AFD) are in the vanguard of supporting medicine the way it should be practiced over politicized science.

At a time when Big Government in cahoots with Big Pharma and Big Media are hellbent for mass-vaxxing everyone everywhere with hazardous to health covid vaccines, AFD is actively involved in combatting their diabolical scheme with scientific truth-telling.

It provides “honest healthcare solutions” at a time of state-sponsored mass deception.

AFD: “The doctor-patient relationship is being threatened” today, notably in the West.

“(Q)uality patient care is under fire like never before.”

“Powerful interests are undermining the effective practice of medicine with politicized science and biased information.”

“Now more than ever, patients need access to independent, evidence-based information to make the best decisions for their healthcare.”

“Doctors must have the independence to care for their patients without interference from government, media and the medical establishment.”

AFD and likeminded medical professionals are on the frontlines of practicing medicine as it should be.

They reject politicized (voodoo) economic agendas “at the expense of science and quality healthcare solutions” — prioritizing the following:

Providing science-based facts about seasonal flu-renamed covid.

“Protecting physician independence from government overreach.”

Combatting “covid” with “science-based” practices that don’t compromise constitutional rights.

“Fighting medical cancel culture and media censorship.”

“Advancing healthcare policies that protect the physician-patient relationship.”

Treating “covid” with safe, effective, low-cost drugs known to work when used as directed.

Avoiding experimental, inadequately tested, hazardous to health “covid” vaccines that don’t protect and risk enormous harm.

Everyone is entitled to accurate information on how best to protect and preserve their health and well-being.

Government in cahoots with Pharma and establishment media long ago lost credibility.

Their enemies of ordinary people, exploiting them to benefit privileged interests at their expense.

AFD reject shutdowns, quarantines, and other practices not backed by scientific evidence.

They’re committed to maintain the sanctity of doctor-patient relationships — to benefit health by safe and effective practices that work and do no harm.

Emergency care physician Simone Gold MD founded AFD.

She was fired after appearing with other truth-telling physicians who explain what works in treating seasonal flu-renamed covid and what to avoid — namely toxic vaccines.

Last August, she tweeted the following:

“I was defamed by the media, censored by social media companies, terminated from employment, and viciously attacked, all for advocating for the right of physicians to prescribe what they believe is best for their patients.”

When used as directed, hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) combined with either azithromycin or doxycycline and zinc are highly effective in treating and curing “covid” — what government and Pharma in cahoots with establishment media want suppressed.

Doctors using this protocol — or ivermectin — understand their effectiveness and recommend them.

Dr. Stella Immanuel treated hundreds of “covid” infected patients with the above protocol, earlier saying:

“Any study that says hydroxychloroquine doesn’t work is fake science.”

“…I want them to show me how it doesn’t work.”

“How is it going to work for 350 patients for me, and they are all alive, and then somebody says it doesn’t work?”

“These so-called (establishment media promoted) studies (are) fake science.”

She, Gold, and AFD members debunked what they called a “massive disinformation campaign” against safe and effective HCQ in favor of hazardous to human health mass-vaxxing.

Immanuel had 100% success in treating 350 “covid” patients with the HCQ protocol.

She slammed politicians (and media) for trying to prevent doctors from being doctors, free to treat patients with medications known to work.

After going viral, truth-telling AFD video information was suppressed by You Tube, Facebook, Twitter and Google — to support hazardous to health mass-vaxxing.

AFD stressed the following:

People should never be pressured to comply with taking an experimental vaccine.

“This is becoming a very real danger.”

“The coercion can be implemented by government legislation or through policy directives by large private and public corporations, including airlines, employers, schools, and other institutions.”

“This type of assault on your medical privacy is invasive, aggressive, and unethical.”

The group supports a Vaccine Bill of Rights (VBOR), urging its adoption by all 50 US states.

It prohibits mandatory vaxxing for covid, vaccine passports, digital IDs, and other practices that compromise health, well-being, and fundamental rights of everyone.

Its principles state the following:

“No persons will be mandated, coerced, forced or pressured to take a COVID-19 vaccine.”

“No physician or nurse shall be asked by their employer to promote a COVID-19 vaccine.”

“All persons reserve the right, at all times, to determine what is in their own best medical interest without threat to their livelihood or freedom of movement.”

“All persons must be given access to independent information to help them determine what is in their own best medical interest, including the risk of death based upon age/condition from contracting COVID-19 naturally.”

“This information must include information from sources that are independent of a conflict of interest such as a government, political or commercial entity.”

“Such information can be included but cannot be the sole source of information.”

“The elderly are additionally entitled to a knowledgeable, independent advocate with medical training to help them determine their own medical interest.”

“Private businesses operating within the jurisdiction have no legal authority to require or mandate or coerce medication or experimental medication for any persons.”

The survival rate for seasonal flu-renamed covid is “99.7.”

The vast majority of individuals succumbing to the illness are elderly with weakened immune systems.

There’s no science-based justification for anyone anywhere to be vaxxed for “covid” when the HCQ protocol or ivermectin work safely and effectively in treating the illness.

Heavily promoted vaccines DO NOT protect and risk serious harm to health that for some is deadly.

Powerful — media supported — interests prioritize maximum profits over human health.

AFD members and likeminded medical professionals operate in polar opposite fashion — prioritizing health and well-being above all else.

Follow their advice to preserve and protect what’s too precious to lose.

*

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 Shutterstock

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

***

The Times never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity for truth-telling as it should be.

It’s a notion long ago abandoned in deference to providing press agent services for powerful interests.

At the same time, the Times finds new ways to disgrace itself.

Calling for a US Ministry of Truth headed by a “reality czar” sounds ominously like what Orwell described in his dystopian “1984” novel that’s no longer fiction, saying:

“The Ministry of Peace concerns itself with war, the Ministry of Truth with lies, the Ministry of Love with torture and the Ministry of Plenty with starvation.”

“These contradictions are not accidental, nor do they result from from ordinary hypocrisy.”

“They are deliberate exercises in doublethink.”

Along with Big Brother mass surveillance and newspeak, Orwell’s Ministry of Truth was all about controlling the message, eliminating whatever conflicts with it, memory holes used for this purpose.

The Times and other US major media operate this way now — a collective ministry of truth as described above.

Featuring the official narrative exclusively, alternative views are filtered out and suppressed, free and open expression banned in their reports.

In “1984,” unnwanted material went down memory holes to “be whirled away (in) enormous furnaces…devoured by the flames,” said Orwell, adding:

“(T)here were the directing brains who co-ordinated the whole effort and laid down the lines of policy which made it necessary that this fragment of the past should be preserved, that one falsified, and the other rubbed out of existence.”

In the US and West, no Orwell-style memory hole is needed, no furnaces, no ceremonial book-burnings.

Big Media in cahoots with diabolical government officials censor and eliminate truth-telling on what’s vital for everyone to know.

What Times fake news called a US “reality crisis” amounts to urging greater state-sponsored censorship than already.

What it called “the scourge of hoaxes, lies and delusions” are hard truths about US imperial wars, hazardous covid vaccines to be shunned, stolen Election 2020, unelected/cognitively impaired Biden unable to serve in any public capacity, the anti-Trump Jan. 6 Capitol Hill false flag, and other cutting-edge issues.

What the self-styled newspaper of record calls “misguided beliefs” are indisputable facts important for everyone to know.

A real “national reality crisis” exists because of Big Government in cahoots with Big Media – like the Times — serving privileged interests exclusively at the expense of most others.

It’s because of US police state totalitarian rule on a fast track toward full-blown tyranny.

It’s because the US no longer is open, free, and fair.

It’s because hardline government is the mortal enemy of ordinary people — their health, well-being, safety, and fundamental freedoms being eliminated in real time.

It’s because of US war OF terrorism, not on it, rages against ordinary people, wanting them exploited to serve privileged interests.

It’s because America is no longer safe and fit to live in for most of its people.

It’s because of the largely ignored greatest ever US Main Street Great Depression while wealth, power, and privileged interests never had things better.

It’s because media like the Times suppress what’s crucial for everyone to know.

What the Times called “violent extremism” is state-sponsored.

What it calls a “truth commission” reflects shades of “1984.”

What it calls “domestic terrorists” are FBI, CIA, DHS, local police, and other elements of oppression to cow ordinary people into submission to a diabolical higher power in Washington.

Truth-telling as it should be is polar opposite how the Times and other establishment media operate.

As a collective lying machine, truth-telling is their moral enemy, what they’re hellbent for eliminating in whatever form it shows up.

In today’s America, Big Brother mass surveillance, police state control, and ministry of truth Big Lies are part of the national fabric.

That’s the ugly reality suppressed by the Times and other Big Media.

The nation I grew up in long ago no longer exists.

Growing tyranny heading toward becoming full-blown replaced it.

That’s the ugly reality establishment media like the Times suppress — to their disgrace.

*

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/

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).

***

Many of the world’s most polluting companies are being handed a “get out of jail free” card by being invited to shape a scaled-up offsetting market, campaigners claim.

The Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets is due to publish its “roadmap for implementation” on Wednesday, four months after it was launched by former Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, who is now a UN Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance.

Carney’s group wants to hugely scale up the existing market, making it “large, transparent, verifiable and robust”. This, it claims, will help private corporations meet the UK’s net zero target by 2050, in line with Paris Agreement targets to limit the worst impacts of climate change by restricting global warming to 1.5C or “well below” 2C.

But critics have questioned whether the taskforce’s membership – which includes oil majors, banks and airlines – is best placed to shape the future of that market, given their problematic histories of delivering carbon offsetting projects.

‘Wild West’

The concept of “net zero” poses a significant challenge to private companies, 20 of which have contributed to a third of all global emissions.

Corporations often claim they are using offsets as a last resort, after decarbonisation and carbon capture and storage options have been exhausted. But critics say there is limited evidence that counter-balancing carbon dioxide emissions in this way actually works.

The practice of offsetting is itself controversial. Offsetting involves buying a carbon credit – one tonne of verified carbon dioxide equivalent – which removes, replaces or avoids the equivalent amount of carbon emitted into the atmosphere, usually by funding a carbon-saving project in the developing world.

Interest in the voluntary carbon market – which allows buyers to offset some of their greenhouse gas emissions – has correspondingly surged, as businesses look for ways to rapidly slash their overall carbon footprint. Latest figures from non-profit Forest Trends show corporate carbon-neutral pledges led to transactions of carbon credits surging to cover 104 million tonnes of carbon dioxide in 2019.

But the effectiveness of forest offsets traded through the UN’s existing REDD+ programme (the acronym to describe reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries) has plagued the existing voluntary carbon market, along with concerns over lack of regulation.

Carney has cited these concerns as a motivating factor for the taskforce, acknowledging that the current market is “opaque, cumbersome and fragementated”, with a recent Telegraph investigation calling it a “Wild West” of ineffective schemes.

Problematic pasts 

A number of green NGOs are involved in funding and overseeing the taskforce, but this hasn’t stopped it being accused of corporate capture, with companies with mixed records on offsetting, including oil majors such as Shell, BP and Total, to airlines like Easyjet and Etihad, and banking groups Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas, BlackRock and UBS, having a strong presence in the group.

Shell

The world’s seventh highest historic polluter has long bought credits from accredited REDD+ projects, predominantly from the Katingan Mentaya project in Indonesia, and the Cordillera Azul national park in Peru.

Both projects are designed to conserve carbon stocks in existing forest reserves, but their effectiveness has been highly contested. In 2019, a joint Dutch and Indonesian investigation into the Katingan Mentaya project highlighted an increase in forest fires and land conflict around the project area, concluding that proving the permanent avoidance of carbon emissions was nearly impossible. According to the article, international banking group and taskforce member BNP Paribas also purchased carbon credits from the project.

Another investigation by Danish journalists in December 2020 looked at the Cordillera Azul national park in Peru, quoting experts who also said deforestation had increased directly outside the REDD+ zone, and major forest fires had broken out inside the project area — a common criticism of REDD+ projects.

Shell has also been criticised for projects closer to home, after announcing a number of new offset projects as part of a $300 million investment in “natural climate solutions”. Last year it emerged that Scottish Government officials warned each other that partnering with Shell to fund forests for carbon offsetting could be seen as “greenwashing” – before ultimately accepting £5 million for the million-tree project.

That initiative feeds into Shell’s Drive Carbon Neutral programme, by creating 250,000 credits towards offsetting customer emissions. The scheme – now in the UK, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany and Denmark – has faced ongoing criticism, with experts asking whether it encourages, rather than prevents, a business-as-usual attitude among corporations and individuals.

Shell’s new nature-based unit has been undeterred by external criticism, recently acquiring Select Carbon, which works with landowners to improve the carbon yield of nine million hectares of land in Australia. It has even started selling its own nature-based credits. Last week airline Etihad – also a taskforce member – announced it was expanding its current offset programme to include Shell’s projects in the Katingan Mentaya, as well as the Cordillera Azul in Peru.

Defending its record on carbon offsetting, Shell told DeSmog: “Independent third-party verification companies evaluate and review the projects regularly to assure CO2 reductions are real … Shell only trades credits that have been assessed by independent third-party processes.”

BP

Fellow oil major BP has also been pursuing forest offsets for the past decade. In 2011 it paid $5 million into the World Bank’s Carbon Fund that it helped found, part of the UN’s deforestation prevention carbon trading scheme. At the time, BP said it wanted to “increase our understanding of the evolution of carbon markets and policy, as well as helping to catalyse the development of this important sector”.

However, campaigners accused BP of becoming involved in the Forest Carbon Partnership Facility (FCPF) to greenwash its image, a year after it was found responsible for the 5 million barrel oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. BP was the only energy company involved in the fund, and just the second non-governmental body, after conservation NGO The Nature Conservancy (TNC) joined in 2007. TNC, which has previously worked with Shell on its strategy for nature-based solutions, is also represented on Carney’s taskforce as a Consultation Group member.

FCPF was intended to “jump-start a forest carbon market”, but a report by NGO Fern described the partnership as “smoke and mirrors”, saying it had failed to achieve social and environmental improvements. A letter written by Rainforest Foundation UKand other NGOs to World Bank President Jim Yong Kim in 2017, a decade after the programme first launched, claimed the millions spent on administering the programme had not translated into saving trees.

The FCPF’s perceived lack of success did not stop BP from exploring other offset avenues. In 2019, the company invested $5 million into Finite Carbon, the largest US forest carbon offset developer, before becoming the largest shareholder in the business.

Like Shell, BP has developed its own offset programme, “Target Neutral”, allowing customers to offset emissions through funding forest management in Zambia and more efficient cookstoves in India. The initiative is also used to offset harmful greenhouse gases from Air BP, which claims to be the first aviation fuel provider to have achieved carbon neutral operations globally.

Oil majors have also been burnishing their climate credentials on a global stage. During COP25, the UN’s 2018 climate summit in Madrid, both BP and Shell were introduced as founding members of the new International Emissions Trading Association (IETA)’s advisory panel for its Markets for Natural Climate Solutions. Dozens of environmental and Indigenous activists walked out in protest over the involvement of oil companies and fears the scheme would discourage companies from making substantial emissions cuts.

Just this month, the Scottish Greens accused BP of “classic greenwash” after it paid £2 million to expand Scotland’s native woodlands. Friends of the Earth Scotland said the emissions the scheme would save were “trivial” compared to the company’s contribution to climate change, whilst campaign group Glasgow Calls Out Polluters said the contribution was a “paltry sum” that allowed the company to “pursue their climate-wrecking activities unimpeded”.

A BP spokesman told DeSmog: “We support the use of high quality carbon offsets or credits by companies, countries and society to achieve faster and lower cost pathways to achieving net zero and meeting the Paris goals.”

“We intend to reach our 2030 emissions reduction aims without relying on offsets – but they may help us to go beyond those aims, if we can.”

Easyjet

Airlines have helped fuel the trend for voluntary offsets, as operators respond to the Paris Agreement target of reaching net-zero emissions mid-century. Aviation made up around 2.4 percent of global fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions in 2018 – around the same as Germany – with emissions expected to triple by 2050 under current projections.

Taskforce member Easyjet was recently revealed as one of the 15 biggest polluters in the UK, but has marketed itself as a climate conscious airline which was the first to offset fuel used for all its customers’ flights. Fellow taskforce member Delta Airlines has also pledged to go “carbon neutral” with the help of offsets, and plans to spend $1 billion over a decade to achieve this.

According to a January 2021 Greenpeace report, BA’s operator International Airlines Group has said it will use forests to offset 30 million metric tons of CO2e per year by 2050. This, together with a similar pledge by Italian oil giant Eni, could exhaust up to 12 percent of the total budget that the IPCC says is available for sequestration in new forests.

Easyjet has been one of the many airlines to be hit by COVID-19 travel restrictions, as the sector continues to suffer during the pandemic. Last year, the low-cost airline faced a backlash after asking the UK government for a bailout weeks after paying £171 million in dividends to its shareholders, including £60 million to its billionaire founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou. Easyjet later secured a £600 million loan from the Bank of England’s emergency bailout scheme, but in May announced it would still be making 30 percent of its workforce redundant. Easyjet told DeSmog it worked with unions to complete the process, which resulted in 1100 crew taking voluntary reduncies.

Offsets go hand in hand with attempts to move to sustainable fuel, but sustainable aviation is still some way from taking off. Delta Airlines and Easyjet are among a growing number of airlines exploring low-carbon fuels, but Shell has just left the UK’s flagship programme — a joint venture with British Airways and Velocys to build a sustainable jet fuels plant in the UK.

A report by the International Council on Clean Transportation found that meeting Paris Agreement targets primarily through low-carbon fuels would be “beyond difficult”, pointing out that biofuels, often used as an alternative to fossil fuels, tend to be made from food crops associated with high land-use change emissions.

Responding to questions from DeSmog, Easyjet defended its involvement in the taskforce, saying:

“Whilst the voluntary carbon offset market is increasingly recognised as having major potential to contribute towards limiting global warming, it remains relatively small and so the Taskforce on Scaling Voluntary Carbon Markets is working to create a framework and mechanisms to stimulate greater rigour and investment for carbon offset projects.”

“We understand that offsetting can only be an interim solution while the zero-emissions technology we need is developed. We are fully committed to the UK Government and EU targets of net zero emissions by 2050 and believe that European aviation should aim to reach net zero earlier than this.”

BlackRock and others

As with airlines, carbon neutrality has become a growing mantra for banking groups. But the companies haven’t always put their money where their mouths are.

In December 2020, a Bloomberg report cast doubt on the integrity of forest offsets bought by taskforce member and the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock in Albany, New York. The article cites project documents that claimed no harvesting had taken place in Albany for nearly 20 years, seemingly contradicting the claims that large areas of the forests would be logged within a decade. BlackRock has been approached for a comment.

And this month, campaigners Reclaim Finance and Urgewald revealed that BlackRock still held $85 billion of shares in coal companies, despite a pledge to sell most of its fossil fuel shares.

BlackRock last year signalled a dramatic shift in financial strategy. In his annual letter to chief executives, CEO Laurence Fink said the climate crisis had brought the company “on the edge of a fundamental reshaping of finance”, calling on “every company, not just energy firms, to rethink their carbon footprints”.

But decarbonising its $7 trillion assets will not be easy, and it’s unclear how reliant BlackRock will be on offsets for its own operations and those of its investors. According to its last sustainability report in 2019, the company had offset 100 percent of its employees’ travel-related emissions since 2017, alongside other carbon-cutting strategies. The decarbonisation approach of BlackRock, which acquired another taskforce member Merrill Lynch in 2009, is likely to have a strong ripple effect in the financial sector.

Consultancy McKinsey & Company, which provides “knowledge and advisory support” to the taskforce, likewise has a chequered history on offsetting. A 2011 report by Greenpeace claimed that McKinsey’s REDD+ cost curve and baseline scenarios were being used to justify expansion of high-carbon industrial capacity in Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Guyana. McKinsey has been approached for a comment.

‘Lack of transparency’

Campaigners are concerned that the companies’ problematic past experiences of carbon sequestration and offsetting programmes mean some of the taskforce members are not best placed to make strong recommendations for an effective voluntary carbon market.

Gilles Dufrasne, Policy Officer at NGO Carbon Market Watch, says the key challenge for the taskforce is to “get their priorities straight”.

He told DeSmog:

“The key objective should be to drive more finance towards concrete mitigation projects that deliver emission reductions and benefit local people and the environment.”

“The taskforce places a lot of emphasis on increasing the volume of transactions in the market. I think we shouldn’t assume that more transactions necessarily translate into more emissions reductions.”

“There are still legitimate concerns about the integrity and transparency of voluntary markets. For example, some projects issue more credits than they actually reduced emissions, and there is a lack of information regarding who buys which credits and at what price. The taskforce should make sure that it is not about to scale up a non-functional system, and therefore needs to put more emphasis on transparency and quality,” he said.

Dufrasne added that he was particularly concerned over the concept of “core carbon contracts” in the consultation document, “which seem to be designed by and for the financial industry”, and could “make it difficult to track what the underlying climate projects really are”.

Responding to questions raised over the taskforce’s integrity, Chris Leeds, operating team member and Executive Director at Standard Chartered, told DeSmog:

“Carbon markets alone will not address the problem of climate change, however, for large emitters in hard to abate sectors investing in emissions abatement projects and new clean technology can be a key tool to reaching net-zero by 2050. The Taskforce’s aim is to create a transparent, robust voluntary carbon market to better channel needed investment into carbon reduction, avoidance or removal projects.”

He added:

“We are working to scale the market and demonstrate how carbon credits can be used legitimately and effectively in net-zero strategies, with the priority being for companies to reduce emissions in the first place.”

There are some supporters of big business’ involvement in the taskforce. Dr Jeremy Woods, a Reader in Sustainable Development at Imperial College London, said initiatives such as this were “hugely overdue, urgent and very much needed”.

“It needs to have core representation of big business as this is where virtually all the investment capital will come from to drive material change to the global value chains needed, and against the almost impossibly short timelines that are implicit to the climate crisis,” he said.

But Dr Doug Parr, chief scientist at Greenpeace UK, said the involvement of some of the companies in the taskforce “raises some huge red flags” and that their involvement could set a  “terrible example” to the rest of the world ahead of the annual UNclimate talks, COP26, which will be held in Glasgow in November.

DeSmog approached the government’s COP26 unit, which is run by the Cabinet Office, to ask how the taskforce’s blueprint is likely to feed into November’s summit. In response, a spokesman said the taskforce was “a private sector-led initiative, supported by Mark Carney, and independent of UK Government efforts as the hosts of COP26”.

Parr told DeSmog:

“The lack of transparency in many of these companies’ plans, and the failure of Carney’s taskforce to impose strict emission reduction requirements on them, suggests they are banking on offsetting as a get out of jail free card in tackling the climate emergency.”

“The failure of offset schemes in the past gives no confidence that Mark Carney’s taskforce can introduce robust rules to guarantee emissions cuts, whilst there’s nothing to make sure corporates still do the necessary heavy lifting on their own performance.”

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The Ministry of Public Health announced that the Cuban drug Itolizumab – developed by the Center for Molecular Immunology (CIM) – has shown positive results as an anti-inflammatory treatment in patients with COVID-19.

According to a study published on the Infomed website, patients infected with the SARS-COV2 virus can develop a very severe case of the illness, distinguished by the appearance of what is called “cytokine storm syndrome.”

Itolizumab, as a molecule capable of blocking the proliferation and activation of T-lymphocytes, and also behaves as an immunomodulator, has been shown to reduce the release of cytokines that produce inflammation.

In January, Cuban researchers at the CIM, the Victoria de Girón Institute of Basic and Preclinical Sciences, and the Manuel Piti Fajardo and Arnaldo Milián Castro Hospitals in the city of Santa Clara, presented findings from a study of the effectiveness of the medication in treatment of three patients with COVID-19 in serious or critical condition, in the international medical journal Immunotherapy.

The scientists reported that the administration of Itolizumab succeeded in reducing the concentrations of the cytokine IL-6 in all three cases, and two of the patients exhibited respiratory and radiological improvement allowing them to recover completely.

They concluded that this anti-inflammatory therapy, in addition to antiviral and anticoagulant medication, could reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with severe cases of COVID-19.

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The EPA wrongfully claims that glyphosate used on crops grown for human and animal food has no impact on endangered species. The public has until March 12 to submit comments asking the agency to ban or restrict the chemical.

Your actions, based on the following information, could alter the future of our planet.

Glyphosate herbicides are among the most widely used agrochemicals in the world. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), more than 300 million pounds are used in the U.S. each year — 280 million pounds of which are used directly on our food.

Crops such as soy, corn, sugar, wheat, beans, peas, alfalfa and oats make up just some of the crops used to feed livestock and humans that are contaminated with high levels of glyphosate.

Glyphosate has been found on thousands of samples of human food such as cereal, orange juice, eggs, and in pet food, tap water, breastmilk, children’s urine, streams, ocean water, and even in vaccines and rain.

A study by Paul J. Mills Ph.D., and his clinical research team at the University of California, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed a greater-than-1000% increase in the level of glyphosate in human bodies over the past 23 years.

Studies on glyphosate herbicides have proven either causal or direct connection to increased risks of multiple cancers, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, neurotoxicity, thyroid damage, autism symptoms, nonalcoholic liver disease, the disruption of gut bacteria which weakens the immune system and can lead to chronic illness, hormonal imbalance, depression, aggression and addiction. Glyphosate has also been linked to birth defects, miscarriages and endocrine disruption, which is linked to diabetes, obesity and other illnesses.

The federal EPA is currently accepting comments on whether or not to revoke the license for glyphosate, or restrict its use, based on the agency’s assessment of harm to endangered species.

The EPA’s initial report claims that the 280 million pounds of glyphosate used per year on agriculture have no impact on endangered species, and instead assigns all of the blame to the 20 million pounds used in landscaping. This is false.

The agricultural use of glyphosate also has a huge impact on endangered species. The drift, runoff into waterways and impact on the soil and wildlife surrounding agricultural land, which consists of 913 million acres in the U.S., is the primary source of harm to our environment. For some states, such as Iowa, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota and Nebraska, between 85-91% of the state is farmland, used primarily for conventional farming which involves the use of glyphosate. This means that many states have more land being sprayed with glyphosate than not, and the impact is detrimental for those states’ soil, water, air, wildlife, organic farming and human health.

One can only ascertain that if glyphosate is proving to cause harm to 93% of endangered species and 97% of their critical habitats, which are also our habitats, that if we do not act now, we humans and our pets will also soon be endangered species.

Make a direct comment to the EPA by March 12. Ask the agency to ban the use of glyphosate herbicides in the U.S. You may use any of the links to studies found on the Moms Across America data page and any of the following reasons in your comments:

1. Glyphosate is never used alone, therefore the impact of use, assessment and approval or denial of it’s license must include the full-formulation studies. Independent, long-term studies with blood analysis of the full formulation impact must be included.
2. Glyphosate herbicides have been found to be endocrine disruptors by many independent studies and studies have shown that the impact carries over to multiple generations.
3. More than 40 countries and hundreds of cities, school districts and counties have banned or severely restricted the use of glyphosate around the world. Discontinuing the use of glyphosate in farming, particularly as a desiccant, has been shown to improve the quality of the grains and the soil, and reduce contamination of the environment and residues in food consumed by humans and animals.
4. Glyphosate herbicides have been classified as a “probable” human carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. Cancer is often caused by endocrine disruption. Cancerous, life-threatening tumors have been found in alarming numbers on turtles, deer, fish, and numerous species.
5. Glyphosate herbicides have been found in streams, ocean water and even the rain, and by the EPA’s own acknowledgment, is highly toxic to aquatic life. Glyphosate herbicides harm 93% of endangered species and 97% of their critical habitats.

Continuing the use of glyphosate for any reason only increases the rate of losing our endangered species. It must be discontinued in the marketplace and in agricultural, landscaping, forestry and utility use.

We encourage you to personalize your message or the EPA will not count it as a unique comment. State in your words why it is important to you or your organization to ban the use of glyphosate in the U.S. for any reason.

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Zen Honeycutt is the Founding Director of Moms Across America, a non-profit National Coalition of Unstoppable Moms.

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Declassified UK’s analysis of the written outputs of three of Sky News’ principal foreign affairs journalists has found that the media outlet acts largely to amplify the views of the British Ministry of Defence and Foreign Office, while rarely offering critical, independent analysis.

A study by Declassified, covering 203 articles written by Deborah Haynes, Alistair Bunkall and Dominic Waghorn, has found that Sky routinely amplifies the views of the UK government in its military and foreign policies and provides almost no serious attempts to independently scrutinise or criticise them.

The research, which has analysed all articles by the three correspondents that could be found from November 2019 to November 2020, found that the primary focus of Sky’s critical reporting has overwhelmingly been countries presented by British officials as enemies of the UK – Russia, China and Iran – as well as the US under Donald Trump.

Two of the reporters, Haynes and Bunkall, offered no serious critical coverage of UK military or foreign policies or the human rights abuses committed by Britain’s close allies, such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel, which all receive substantial UK military and other support. Waghorn’s articles offered only very occasional critical coverage.

In Sky’s written outputs, British government officials and their claims are routinely quoted favourably, with little or no independent commentary, context, or qualifications provided by the journalists.

Declassified’s analysis does not cover the video outputs of these and other Sky journalists, nor all of its journalists reporting on foreign affairs, and therefore offers a partial picture of Sky’s foreign news reporting.

However, Haynes is Sky’s foreign affairs editor, Alistair Bunkall is its defence and security correspondent and Dominic Waghorn its diplomatic editor.

Deborah Haynes provides the most striking example of reporting favourable to the UK government. Of the 107 of her articles analysed in the research, Declassified found 39 with the words Russia, China, Iran or Belarus in the headline. No headlines could be found that mentioned UK-allied states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel or Bahrain.

Declassified found 670 mentions of the four UK rival states in Haynes’ articles and 25 for the four UK-allied states.

Haynes’ articles covering UK foreign policies were few in number but routinely tended to reinforce government messaging. Several articles were based on uncritical interviews or press conferences with figures such as the chief of the defence staff, the head of the domestic security service, MI5, the head of signals intelligence agency GCHQ, the head of UK Strategic Command, the head of the Royal Air Force, and the foreign secretary.

Some other articles are based on unidentified “sources” in the Ministry of Defence (MOD) or Whitehall. These pieces typically allow officials to put forward government positions, especially on alleged increasing threats to the UK posed by Russia, unfiltered by independent scrutiny.

Deborah Haynes (centre) speaks at an event on drone warfare in 2013. (Photo: Chatham House / Creative Commons 2.0)

Dr Justin Schlosberg, a media specialist at Birkbeck, University of London, said:

“This research provides yet another example of how, all too often, journalists at the biggest and most respected news brands tend to treat official sources with enormous deference – especially those from within the security state.

He added:

“This fundamental blind spot has had disastrous consequences in recent years – notably in skewing public attention away from inconvenient conflicts and issues, and allowing the UK government to broadly shape Sky’s foreign news agenda.”

Informing the public

Haynes’ articles often simply convey the view of the MOD to the public without distinguishing whether government messaging is correct or false, in effect adding to Whitehall’s public relations machinery.

For example, a series of articles written in April 2020, at the beginning of the coronavirus emergency, highlight the armed forces’ role in aiding the domestic response to the pandemic, which appear largely to be simply passing on information from the MOD, unfiltered by independent commentary.

Many of Haynes’ articles contain approving quotes and articulate positions supportive of the government’s military and foreign policies, especially on threats posed by Russia and China.

“Russian cyber spies are trying to steal research into coronavirus vaccines and treatments from Britain, the US and Canada, the three countries claimed on Thursday”, Haynes wrote in July 2020, in an article sourced to GCHQ.

In December 2019, Haynes wrote:

“Efforts by states such as Russia to break international rules, undermine democratic governments and exploit divisions in societies pose a far more insidious danger to the security that Britain and its allies have enjoyed since the end of the Second World War.”

Haynes made no similar statements that could be found about any threats posed to international security by the US or the UK.

In one of several articles on China, Haynes observed in June 2020:

“China is in the ascendancy while an international system of rules and institutions that underpin UK power and influence is under increased strain”.

Haynes conveys the view promoted by the establishment that NATO is a purely defensive alliance needing to contain an expansionist Russia. She wrote in June 2020, for example:

“NATO was established to defend against the former Soviet Union and is now actively pushing back against Russian activities”.

Russia has violated international law in several areas, notably in its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, and is believed to be behind attacks in the UK – such as the murder of former KGB officer Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006 and the attempted poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, southern England, in 2018.

However, Russia’s abuse of international rules is typical of all “great powers”, including the US and the UK which are also serial violators of international law and contributors to human rights abuses, unmentioned in any article by Haynes that could be found.

UK policies concerning its occupation of the Chagos Islands, its role in US drone wars, its covert military policies, the detention and torture of Julian Assange, its complicity in the torture of terror suspects in the “war on terror”, and mass surveillance techniques practised by GCHQ, are all instances of policies violating domestic or international law.

Our research could find no mentions of these policies in the articles reviewed. The focus of British journalists on official enemies rather than the UK itself suggests they are keener to contribute to political objectives than to hold their own authorities to account.

A freedom of information response from the MOD to Declassified indicates how much the military values Haynes’ reporting.

When Russian naval ships sailed through the English Channel in March 2020, MOD media officers noted approvingly that a Royal Navy press release had received: “Repeated broadcast on Sky News, featuring analysis from Deborah Haynes and breaking news ‘ticker’”.

An assessment of coverage of the the Russian Navy transits produced by the Royal Navy’s media team in March 2020. (Photo: Ministry of Defence via Declassified UK)

Rivalries

Haynes, who was previously defence editor at The Times and has worked at Sky since 2018, is an honorary member of the Pen & Sword Club, an invitation-only organisation created by Territorial Army press officers.

She is highly supportive of British military policy, her articles describing Britain’s “nuclear deterrent” as “vital to the UK’s national security”, for example.

In February 2020 she argued:

“Sources in Whitehall… said they are sceptical whether Mr Johnson and his top adviser, Dominic Cummings, will achieve the overhaul of spending priorities that is needed to achieve generational change to match the changing nature of war and keep up with rivals like Russia and China.”

Haynes’ adoption of the views of the Foreign Office is noticeable in her articles. In a piece on Afghanistan in March 2020, she claimed:

“The international community bowled in with laudable aims of creating a democratic government in Afghanistan and offering its war-weary … people the chance to enjoy a Western-style democracy and a country no longer reliant on funding from the opium trade.”

The claim paints a rosy view of Anglo-American goals in Afghanistan and ignores how Western countries have consistently allied with repressive regimes in the Middle East and South Asia – from Egypt to Sri Lanka –  before, during and after the invasion of Afghanistan.

Haynes also amplifies the establishment notion that the UK is a supporter of human rights in its foreign policy.

In an article in February 2020 on the subject of British fighters for Islamic State in Syria being required to come back to the UK to face justice, she wrote:

“There will be those who shrug their shoulders at the prospect of such a fate for British citizens accused of involvement in a murderous organisation that terrorised the world. But if Britain starts to compromise its democratic values of human rights and the rule of law because it is just too difficult, then terrorist groups like IS – which seek to undermine those principles – have won.”

Again, Haynes’s generalisation fails to account for how Britain’s Foreign Office routinely allies with repressive regimes, such as Saudi Arabia, to secure oil and arms deals at the expense of human rights or anti-corruption.

Haynes wrote in an article in June 2020 about Sir Simon McDonald, who was retiring as the permanent secretary to the Foreign Office:

“Sir Simon has enjoyed a hugely successful career during 38 years of diplomatic service”. It is not clear what definition of success was being used.

Haynes added in support of her claim:

“He [McDonald] has been posted around the world, including to Germany, Saudi Arabia, the US and Israel. Sir Simon was ambassador to Berlin from 2010 to 2015 and ambassador to Israel from 2003 to 2006.”

Haynes did not mention that throughout McDonald’s tenure at the top of the Foreign Office, Britain continued to, among other policies, arm and support Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, a conflict which turned the country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis with millions on the brink of famine.

Both Haynes and Alistair Bunkall covered the story emanating from US intelligence sources, which was also widely picked up in other traditional media, that Russia offered “bounties” in Afghanistan to Taliban-linked militias in order to kill British and other NATO forces. However, the veracity of the claim was unclear and was described as “uncorroborated” by a US intelligence official.

Despite a history of official sources providing false information, however, Sky reporters took at face value the word of the UK security establishment.

“Moscow dismissed the claims as ‘fake news’. But British and European security officials say the US intelligence is ‘credible’”, Haynes wrote.

Bunkall similarly assured readers:

“British security officials have confirmed to Sky News that the reports about the plot are true”.

Safe pair of hands

Declassified’s analysis found 64 articles by Sky’s defence correspondent Alistair Bunkall in the review period, many of which focused on Russia and coronavirus in the US. His brief at Sky is to cover “global security issues from conflict to counter-terrorism”.

Similar to Haynes, Bunkall’s articles largely provide a platform for the British military and security services, often uncritically carrying the views of officials such as the chief of the defence staff and reporting information largely from the MOD.

The security establishment appears to regard Bunkall as a safe recipient for its public relations work. In September 2020, for example, Bunkall was given “rare access” to the “army’s elite Pathfinder unit”, many of whose members also work in the Special Air Service (SAS), which was on a joint exercise in Ukraine to “practise covert insertion techniques”.

Such access tends to be given by officials to journalists who can be relied on to report government policies favourably.

Similarly, in November 2019, Bunkall was granted an interview with the head of MI6, Sir Alex Younger, billed as “the first time ever that a serving chief of MI6 has given a recorded interview”.

Bunkell did not provide independent commentary on, or examination of, MI6’s world role in the piece. Nor does he appear to have asked Younger any questions critical of MI6, such as the agency’s role in working alongside Islamist militias in Libya, one of whose members went on to kill 22 people at the Manchester Arena in 2017, or its role in illegal renditions of terror suspects and torture.

Younger was instead allowed to expound the view that the UK faced a “high point” of threats from Russia, China, Iran and terrorism.

Sky’s biography of Bunkall states:

“He has been given unprecedented access to some of the UK’s most secretive establishments: GCHQ, the Trident nuclear deterrent, the country’s highly secure air command bunker and the UK’s covert drone base in the Middle East”.

In an article in October 2020 entitled “Over in minutes: Special Boat Services’s ‘textbook’ raid shows why they have a fearsome reputation”, Bunkall described an operation by the navy’s special forces, the Special Boat Squadron (SBS), to board a supposedly hijacked ship off the coast of the Isle of Wight in southern England.

It was “another faultless operation”, Bunkall wrote. “The brave work of the SBS, for so long unfairly in the shadow of their Hereford cousins, the SAS … are building a fearsome global reputation”.

It was later reported that no hijacking took place and charges were dropped against the stowaways on board for lack of evidence there was any attempt to take control of the ship.

Despite Bunkell’s praise for Britain’s special forces, in 2019 the United Nations launched an investigation into claims that the SBS was fighting alongside child soldiers on covert operations in Yemen.

Bunkall’s commentary, like Haynes’, invariably supports and tends to echo concerns of the UK military, especially on the Russian threat. For example, Bunkall wrote in December 2019, on the 70th anniversary of the founding of NATO, that the organisation “is the longest, largest and most successful military alliance in history”.

He added in a second article on the subject:

“NATO is rightly proud of its 70-year history – it has achieved great things in that time and remains the diplomatic and military union around which our security is still built.”

No mention was made of, for example, the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 which nearly destroyed the country and contributed to Libya acting as a base for international terrorism.

Bunkall added:

“In recent years Russia has ruthlessly exposed western splits and if NATO members continue to drift in different directions then Moscow will fill the cracks.”

Again echoing British security officials, he also wrote:

“The world is a no less dangerous place today than it was during the Cold War but the threats we face are more complex, more nuanced and more diverse.”

The benevolent US

The third journalist analysed, Sky’s diplomatic editor Dominic Waghorn, is described by Sky as one its most experienced foreign correspondents, and mostly covered coronavirus and US politics in 32 articles found in the period under review. Several of these articles were strongly critical of President Trump.

At the same time, Waghorn’s praise for the US role in the world was often striking. He wrote in November 2020:

“America built the world we live in, it was the architect of the post-war world order, its institutions, and the rules and agreements that have made our lives safer and more prosperous than they would otherwise have been”.

The following month Waghorn was even more effusive in his claim of a benevolent US role in the world, writing:

“America led efforts to build the postwar world order, a system of democratic and international institutions designed to keep the world prosperous and safe.”

He made these claims, contrasting them with Trump’s presidency, despite well-documented US postwar policies to foment coups, overthrow democratic governments and support human rights-abusing regimes, violating many international laws.

Unlike his colleagues, however, Waghorn did mention in a handful of articles countries where UK government policies are highly controversial, especially in supporting dictatorships and human rights abuses.

In November 2019, Waghorn mentioned British support for the military regime of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt which had come to power after it “carried out a series of massacres, using military snipers to kill hundreds of protesters”, including Sky cameraman Mick Deane.

Waghorn added correctly: “Despite all this it continues to enjoy the support of the British government, both diplomatically and financially.” Such mentions of British support for Sisi have been unusual in the British media.

In a further article on Egypt in February 2020, however, Waghorn failed to mention UK support for the regime and excused British and Western support for the previous dictatorship under Hosni Mubarak. He wrote:

“Outside powers, including Britain, fell for Mubarak’s claim that only he stood in the way of his country collapsing in chaos and propped him up”.

He provided no evidence to support this claim as to why Mubarak received British support. The more likely reason is that Egypt offered favourable terms to British big business interests, such as to oil giant BP.

Waghorn also wrote what was largely a puff piece on the British-backed dictator of Oman, Sultan Qaboos, on his death in January 2020. He claimed Qaboos “used oil money to turn his desperately poor country into a rich stable oasis” and that his “five decades in power have transformed the living standards and welfare of his subjects”.

Waghorn qualified this rosy picture by stating:

“Critics say the stability and prosperity of Oman has come at a cost, the intolerance of dissent that comes with absolute rule.”

But there was no mention of the systematic repression meted out by the Sultan over those five decades or his ban on political parties, independent media and free speech.

Missing policies

When aspects of UK foreign or military policies are criticised in articles by Haynes or Bunkall, the focus is invariably on relatively minor, less controversial issues. For example, Haynes wrote two articles about a submarine commander losing his job after throwing a barbecue under coronavirus lockdown and a piece on whether NATO was too slow in responding to the pandemic.

Haynes lamented in one article “that Britain has fallen short in its role as a leading, influential, serious democracy on the world stage” – a  standard argument used by pro-establishment voices who seek an even greater British role in the world.

Similarly, Bunkall wrote critically on the UK government’s lack of representation at an international security conference in February 2020.

Haynes did mention in passing in one article: “The Ministry of Defence’s procurement practices have come under heavy and repeated criticism for waste, mismanagement and incompetence for decades.” But her strongest criticism of the British military that could be found was a long piece in May 2020 about sexism and harassment in the army.

In an article in September in 2020, Bunkall quoted defence secretary Ben Wallace mentioning Britain’s military presence in Oman and Bahrain, but he did not write about the nature of these regimes or why the British policy might be controversial.

Declassified found scant mention by the three journalists of Britain’s war in Yemen, which has raged for nearly six years. No article by Sky’s foreign affairs editor could be found covering the conflict. One article written by Bunkall came in July 2020 highlighting opposition to the UK’s decision to resume arms exports to Saudi Arabia.

Declassified also found one article by Waghorn on the Yemen war, in September 2020, which mentioned that Britain and the US have supplied the Saudis “with weapons and warplanes and insist they have the right to defend themselves”. It added that the air offensive “has led to enormous numbers of civilian casualties”.

Declassified has seen some reporting by Sky’s Alex Crawford on the impact of UK-backed air strikes in Yemen. It is not clear the extent to which Haynes, Bunkall or Waghorn have covered Yemen in their video reporting.

Opposition and protest

While Haynes has covered sympathetically opposition and protests against the repressive regimes in Belarus and Hong Kong, in line with Whitehall’s positions, no coverage by her could be found of similar crackdowns by UK-supported regimes in Bahrain or Egypt.

Haynes’ only coverage of Bahrain was when she was “given rare access to a patrol with the Bahrain navy” in the Gulf in February 2020. During this visit, a Bahraini naval officer “showed me the ship’s weapons”, Haynes wrote.

The article contained no mention of the nature of the repressive Bahraini regime and its extensive links to the British military and intelligence services. Her report was published at a time of mounting concern over Bahrain’s human rights record, after a court had upheld the death sentences of two political prisoners in January.

Haynes quotes foreign secretary Dominic Raab in at least 10 of her articles, according to our research, but no serious critical mentions or scrutiny of the government’s foreign policy could be found.

Haynes interviewed Raab in an exclusive interview in the Locarno suite of the Foreign Office in June 2020, basing her article on UK policy towards China. She quoted him as saying, “I think Britain still has an incredible role in the world as a force for good,” but did not noticeably ask him about British policy towards any of the Gulf regimes it supports, Egypt, Israel or the war in Yemen, for example.

In an article in December 2019, Haynes noted in passing that “Western powers, including the United States and Britain, supported the uprising against President Assad in 2011. But they are not key players any more.”

Haynes has not apparently mentioned in her reporting in the review period the years-long British covertoperation in Syria to overthrow the Assad regime.

Sky News, previously owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, is now owned by Comcast, a US-based media corporation. Comcast bought Sky plc in 2018 in a £29.7-billion takeover.

Deborah Haynes, Alistair Bunkall and Dominic Waghorn were approached for comment.

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Mark Curtis is the editor of Declassified UK, an investigative journalism organisation that covers the UK’s role in the world. James Broadway contributed to the research.

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

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

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From 1972 to 2010, at three church-related colleges and one public university, I was among the professors of sociology teaching concepts that provided the foundation for the current racial awakening in the United States.  In courses on Race and Ethnic Relations, I taught the concept of institutional discrimination, describing it as involving common institutional patterns that perpetuate racial inequality, even when the intention is not to do so; exemplified by the use of SAT scores in college admissions.  I told my students that it is racist to say or think that “Everyone can succeed in this society if they work hard enough,” but classifying the belief as a subtle form of racism by some individuals, rather than as an example of “systemic racism;” and I noted that social inequalities also are rooted in class factors.

I was formed in the early 1970s in the African-American intellectual tradition of black nationalism, which did not focus on white racism; but on the need for black empowerment and black consciousness to confront and transform global colonial and neocolonial structures, which have their particular manifestations in the United States.  In accordance with this teaching, I developed several courses that emphasized the colonial and neocolonial structures of the world-system and the anti-colonial and anti-imperialist movements of the Third World.  Unfortunately, these dimensions are rarely included in today’s racial awakening, even though they relate to the most profound aspects of the meaning of race in the modern world.

The reductionism of the racial awakening

I am saddened to observe that, in today’s racial awakening, the typical concepts of standard academic courses on race relations in the not-so-distant past have evolved to an overly racialized and inaccurate description of U.S. contemporary reality, while the most important dimensions of the meaning of race are not seen.  I have been so deeply disturbed with today’s racialized narrative and its taking of the U.S. left by storm, that I began to look for alternative sources of intellectual nourishment.  I have initiated extensive reading of articles in magazines of traditional conservatism (to be distinguished from neoconservatism), such as Chronicles and The American Conservative.  To my surprise, I have found that many of the articles were informed by extensive reading in history and literature, and they displayed considerable common-sense intelligence as well as a sense of humor.

I also found that one does not have to be formed in black nationalism to see the intellectual and political limitations of today’s racial awakening, which some have called the “Great Awokening,” a disparaging play on words that references the American religious revivals known as the “Great Awakening,” which in its second manifestation from the late eighteenth to the middle of the nineteenth century, was characterized by extreme emotionalism and hellfire-and-damnation preaching.  With respect to what some have called the “Woke Ideology,” I find myself in agreement with Zach Goldberg, doctoral candidate in Political Science at Georgia State University, cited in the pages of Chronicles.  Goldberg describes the ideology as a Manichean conceptualization that divides “a diverse, multiethnic society into oppressed and oppressor categories on the basis of skin color.”  He maintains that it is “a theory of racism that misrepresents facts about the world while stigmatizing any effort to criticize those facts as racist.”

The analytical weakness of the Woke ideology ought to be clear to historians and social scientists.  It downplays consistent societal efforts since the Civil Rights Law of 1964 and the Voting Rights Law of 1965 to eliminate racial discrimination, which have resulted in the removal of previously existing barriers in many institutions and areas of life, and which have created a new reality for the black middle class.  Some articles, for example, jump immediately from slavery or the Jim Crow segregationist era to the killing of George Floyd.  In general, an attempt is not made to place discussion of racism today in the context of a careful analysis of significant changes since the 1960s.

The Woke ideology bypasses the two most important prophetic voices of the African-American movement of the twentieth century, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, both of whom called for a direction fundamentally different from that implied by the Woke ideology. Malcolm, an advocate of self-help, emphasized the development of the black community through black control of its economic, political, and cultural institutions.  King, following the civil rights gains of 1964 and 1965, turned to the development of a multiracial alliance against poverty in the Poor People’s Campaign.

The limitations of the current racial awakening are illustrated by the 1619 Project of The New York Times Magazine.  The project lacks understanding of the political-economy of slavery, and therefore, it cannot explain how slavery in the Caribbean and the U.S. South contributed to the spectacular economic ascent of the nation, from which all Americans today benefit materially, including blacks and the advocates of the Woke ideology; its moralistic focus on slaveholders and slave traders of that time misses the central historical and economic point.  Moreover, the project does not see that conquest and exploitation are in no sense unique to Western Europeans or whites; and that conquest and exploitation have been a prevailing human tendency since the Agricultural Revolution, providing the foundation for great empires and civilizations.

In addition, the 1619 Project sets aside the anti-imperialist projection of the leftist governments and movements of the Third World, which for the past seventy years have declared the need for humanity to cast aside the historic human pattern of conquest and to forge an alternative to the European-centered capitalist world-economy, an alternative based on cooperation and mutually-beneficial trade.  The 1619 Project, therefore, does not formulate a national plan based on the appropriation of insights emerging from peoples of color beyond U.S. borders.

And the Woke ideology has destructive political consequences. Although it influences white liberals to some extent, it has the opposite effect on white moderates and conservatives.  It thus deepens divisions among the people and stokes racial polarization.

The power elite, defending its interests, promotes the racial awakening

The Woke ideology has the support of the political establishment.  Politicians invoke its rhetoric; the media editorializes in its defense; and corporations promise to reform in accordance with its teachings.  There is a reason for this: The Woke ideology functions to channel popular anger and discontent in a manner that does not threaten elite interests, which is especially important in the aftermath of the financial crisis of 2007-2008 and the Occupy movement.

As Jeff Groom writes in Chronicles, “The establishment’s race narrative has redirected the rage of Occupy Wall Street and saved the regime from a reckoning.”  He maintains that the Occupy movement, which “was generally devoid of any mention of race,” and which declared the corporate elite as the enemy of the 99%, has been transformed and redirected by corporations and the media, such that the whole left has been subsumed into the race narrative.

The leftist popular movement today, in the context of the pandemic-induced economic crisis, focuses not on economic injustices but on “racial oppression and injustice.” The central problem is not defined as “rule by the elites” but as “the enduring reign of white supremacy.”  Consistent with Groom’s analysis, Goldberg presents extensive empirical evidence indicating that the media played a central role in stimulating the racial awakening.

The power elite today confronts unprecedented threats to its privileged position.  The European-centered capitalist world-economy is unsustainable, as a result of it having reached and overextended the geographical and ecological limits of the earth.  The elite increasingly turns with desperation to imperialist wars of aggression, financial speculation, and Orwellian ideological manipulation, while Third World governments are increasingly united in their just call for an alternative, more democratic and sustainable world-system.  During the last 75 years, popular movements have been able to take political power in various nations, and some have developed sustainable alternative projects, such as China, Vietnam, Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia, (projects that U.S. intellectuals, of both the left and the right, ought to spend more time studying).

At the present time, the United States is vulnerable to the popular taking of power, inasmuch as it is a declining hegemonic power, experiencing intensified conflicts among its classes and interests.  Therefore, the U.S. power elite must devise strategies to channel popular rebellions, preventing them from becoming a unified project seeking control of the federal government.  Stoking racial and ethnic divisions among the people, through identity politics and the Woke ideology, is a logical course of action.

When we study revolutionary processes throughout the world, we find that the pre-revolutionary situation is characterized by chaotic and undirected rebellion, when a wide variety of idealist and contradictory ideas are in the air.  No leader is present to put forth an accurate interpretation of the nation’s history and its current problems and divisions, and to unify the people in support of a comprehensive set of intelligent proposals.  But then something happens to galvanize the rebellion to revolution, such as a disastrous war, an earthquake, or some other crisis.

In the case of Cuba, the galvanizing event was the attack on the Moncada military barracks by a group of 126 revolutionaries led by Fidel Castro.  The attack failed; but it aroused the nation.  The unfolding of events in the aftermath of the attack provided Fidel the opportunity to present a manifesto and a platform, calling the diverse sectors of the people, each called by name, to a unified struggle to overcome their common and particular problems, each analyzed accurately; as the entire nation watched, listened, and read.

The financial crisis of 2008 had all the ingredients of a galvanizing event.  The indifference of the power elite and the political establishment to the needs of the working and middle classes as well as to the long-term productive needs of the nation had been increasingly evident since 1980.  With the crisis of 2008, the reckless financial speculation of the corporate and financial elite now stood dramatically exposed.   The people rebelled, and the Occupy Movement came into being.  An accurate concept was formulated: the 99% against the 1% corporate elite.  And a few concrete proposals in defense of the people were put forth.

But unlike Moncada, leaders did not emerge to have presence on the national scene.  A manifesto interpreting the nation’s history and a platform with a comprehensive package of realistic and intelligent proposals were not disseminated.  In part, this was due to the lack of preparation for the historic moment by intellectuals and activists.  But perhaps, with more time, prepared leaders would have emerged.  And perhaps this possibility was eclipsed by an elite-supported emphasis on race, exploiting the divisions and confusions among the people.

What should be done?

I like what Goldberg says,

“Working to ensure that Americans of any background aren’t unjustly victimized by the police and have access to quality health care, schools, and affordable housing doesn’t require the promotion of a ‘race-consciousness’ that divides society into ‘oppressed’ and ‘privileged’ color categories. To the contrary, it requires that we de-emphasize these categories and unite in pursuit of common interests.”

In various essays written over the past several years, drawing upon study of victorious popular revolutions in various lands, I have argued that we need to form an alternative political party that would see the taking of political power, through democratic electoral means, as a long-term project, and that would focus in the near-term on the education of the people, through the dissemination of pamphlets and the organization of regular face-to-face discussion and study meetings; including a manifesto that interprets national and human history, and a platform that puts forth a comprehensive and realistic program of specific proposals.

It would form its interpretations and proposals on the basis of consciousness of the experiences of all of the peoples of the nation and the world.  It would call to participation peoples of all colors (including whites) and all workers (including union, non-union, and self-employed workers), intellectuals, professionals, businesspersons, homemakers, and farmers that that pertain to the 99%. It would explain the necessary role of the state in the economy and in the creation of conditions that ensure the protection of the social and economic rights and needs of the people.

And it would explain the need for an anti-imperialist foreign policy that respects the sovereignty of nations, as the only possible foundation for world peace.  It would sponsor extensive and respectful debate and discussion among the people with respect to complex and divisive issues, such as abortion, gender identity, sexuality, gun ownership, family, religion, and patriotism, seeking national consensus in regard to courses of action.

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Charles McKelvey is Professor Emeritus, Presbyterian College, Clinton, South Carolina.  He has published three books: The Evolution and Significance of the Cuban Revolution: The Light in the Darkness (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018); The African-American Movement:  From Pan-Africanism to the Rainbow Coalition (General Hall, 1994); and Beyond Ethnocentrism:  A Reconstruction of Marx’s Concept of Science (Greenwood Press, 1991).  In addition to contributing to Global Research, he has published articles on Cuba, on the characteristics of socialism, and on current conflicts and issues in the United States in Counterpunch.

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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Before I digress slightly, let me state from the outset that the book by Greg Poulgrain that I am about to review is extraordinary by any measure. The story he tells is one you will read nowhere else, especially in the way he links the assassination of President Kennedy to former CIA Director Allen Dulles and the engineering by the latter of one of the 20^th century’s most terrible mass murders.  It will make your hair stand on end and should be read by anyone who cares about historical truth.

About twelve years ago I taught a graduate school course to Massachusetts State Troopers and police officers from various cities and towns.  As part of the course material, I had created a segment on the history of the United States’ foreign policy, with particular emphasis on Indonesia.

No one in this class knew anything about Indonesia, not even where it was. These were intelligent, ambitious adults, eager to learn, all with college degrees. This was in the midst of the “war on terror” – i.e. war on Muslim countries – and the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency.  Almost all the class had voted for Obama and were aware they he had spent some part of his youth in this unknown country somewhere far away.

I mention this as a preface to this review of JFK vs. Dulles, because its subtitle is Battleground Indonesia, and my suspicion is that those students’ lack of knowledge about the intertwined history of Indonesia and the U.S. is as scanty today among the general public as it was for my students a dozen years ago.

This makes Greg Poulgrain’s remarkable book – JFK vs. Allen Dulles: Battleground Indonesia – even more important since it is a powerful antidote to such ignorance, and a reminder for those who have fallen, purposefully or not, into a state of historical amnesia that has erased the fact that the U.S. has committed systematic crimes that have resulted in the deaths of more than a million Indonesians and many more millions throughout the world over innumerable decades.

Such crimes against humanity have been hidden behind what the English playwright Harold Pinter in his 2005 Nobel Prize address called “a tapestry of lies.”  Of such massive crimes, he said:

But you wouldn’t know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened.

Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening.

It didn’t matter. It was of no interest.

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them.

And when one examines the true history of such atrocities, again and again one comes up against familiar names of the guilty who have never been prosecuted.  Criminals in high places whose crimes around the world from Vietnam to Chile to Cuba to Nicaragua to Argentina to Iraq to Libya to Syria, etc. have been – and continue to be – integral to American foreign policy as it serves the interests of its wealthy owners and their media mouthpieces.

In his brilliant new book on U.S./Indonesian history, Dr. Greg Poulgrain unweaves this tapestry of lies and sheds new light on the liars’ sordid deeds. He is an Australian expert on Indonesia whose work stretches back forty years, is a professor at University of the Sunshine Coast in Brisbane and has written four highly-researched book about Indonesia.

In JFK vs. Dulles, he exposes the intrigue behind the ruthless regime-change strategy in Indonesia of the longest-serving CIA director, Allen Dulles, and how it clashed with the policy of President John F. Kennedy, leading to JFK’s assassination, Indonesian regime change, and massive slaughter.

Poulgrain begins with this question:

Would Allen Dulles have resorted to assassinating the President of the United States to ensure that his ‘Indonesian strategy’ rather than Kennedy’s was achieved?

To which he answers: Yes.

But let me not get ahead of myself, for the long, intricate tale he tells is one a reviewer can only summarize, so filled is it with voluminous details.  So I will touch on a few salient points and encourage people to buy and read this important book.

Indonesia’s Strategic Importance

The strategic and economic importance of Indonesia cannot be exaggerated.  It is the world’s 4^th most populous country (275+ million), is located in a vital shipping lane adjacent to the South China Sea, has the world’s largest Muslim population, has vast mineral and oil deposits, and is home in West Papua to Grasberg, the world’s largest gold mine and the second largest copper mine, primarily owned by Freeport McMoRan of Phoenix, Arizona, whose past board members have included Henry Kissinger, John Hay Whitney, and Godfrey Rockefeller.

Long a battleground in the Cold War, Indonesia remains vitally important in the New Cold War and the pivot to Asia launched by the Obama administration against China and Russia, the same antagonists Allen Dulles strove to defeat through guile and violence while he engineered coups home and abroad. It is fundamentally important in the Pentagon’s Indo-Pacific strategy for what it euphemistically calls a “free and open Indo-Pacific.” While not front-page news in the U.S., these facts make Indonesia of great importance today and add to the gravity of Poulgrain’s historical account.

JFK

Two days before President John Kennedy was publicly executed by the US national security state led by the CIA on November 22, 1963, he had accepted an invitation from Indonesian President Sukarno to visit that country the following spring.  The aim of the visit was to end the conflict (Konfrontasi) between Indonesia and Malaysia and to continue Kennedy’s efforts to support post-colonial Indonesia with economic and developmental aid, not military.   It was part of his larger strategy of ending conflict throughout Southeast Asia and assisting the growth of democracy in newly liberated post-colonial countries worldwide.

He had forecast his position in a dramatic speech in 1957 when, as a Massachusetts Senator, he told the Senate that he supported the Algerian liberation movement and opposed colonial imperialism worldwide.  The speech caused an international uproar and Kennedy was harshly attacked by Eisenhower, Nixon, John Foster Dulles, and even liberals such as Adlai Stevenson.  But he was praised throughout the third world.

Poulgrain writes:

Kennedy was aiming for a seismic shift of Cold War alignment in Southeast Asia by bringing Indonesia ‘on side.’  As Bradley Simpson stated (in 2008), ‘One would never know from reading the voluminous recent literature on the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and Southeast Asia, for example, that until the mid-1960s most officials [in the US] still considered Indonesia of far greater importance than Vietnam or Laos.

Of course JFK never went to Indonesia in 1964, and his peaceful strategy to bring Indonesia to America’s side and to ease tensions in the Cold War was never realized, thanks to Allen Dulles.  And Kennedy’s proposed withdrawal from Vietnam, which was premised on success in Indonesia, was quickly reversed by Lyndon Johnson after JFK’s murder on November 22, 1963.  Soon both countries would experience mass slaughter engineered by Kennedy’s opponents in the CIA and Pentagon. Millions would die.

While the Indonesian mass slaughter of mainly poor rice farmers (members of the Communist Party – PKI) instigated by Allen Dulles began in October 1965, ten years later, starting in December 1975, the American installed Indonesian dictator Suharto, after meeting with Henry Kissinger and President Ford and receiving their approval, would slaughter hundreds of thousands East-Timorese with American-supplied weapons in a repeat of the slaughter of more than a million Indonesians in 1965 when the CIA engineered the coup d’état that toppled President Sukarno.  The American installed dictator Suharto would rule for thirty years of terror.  The CIA considers this operation one of its finest accomplishments.  It became known as “the Jakarta Method,” a model for future violent coups throughout Latin America and the world.

And in-between these U.S. engineered mass atrocities, came the bloody coup in Chile on September 11, 1973 and the ongoing colossal U.S. war crimes in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia.

Dulles’s Secret

What JFK didn’t know was that his plans for a peaceful resolution of the Indonesia situation and an easing of the Cold War were threatening a covert long-standing conspiracy engineered by Allen Dulles to effect regime change in Indonesia through bloody means and to exacerbate the Cold War by concealing from Kennedy the truth that there was a Sino-Soviet split.  Another primary goal behind this plan was to gain unimpeded access to the vast load of natural resources that Dulles had kept secret from Kennedy, who thought Indonesia was lacking in natural resources. But Dulles knew that if Kennedy, who was very popular in Indonesia, visited Sukarno, it would deal a death blow to his plan to oust Sukarno, install a CIA replacement (Suharto), exterminate alleged communists, and secure the archipelago for Rockefeller controlled oil and mining interests, for whom he had fronted  since the 1920s.

Reading Poulgrain’s masterful analysis, one can clearly see how much of modern history is a struggle for control of the underworld where lies the fuel that runs the megamachine – oil, minerals, gold, copper, etc.  Manifest ideological conflicts, while garnering headlines, often bury the secret of this subterranean devil’s game.

The Discovery of Gold

His murder mystery/detective story begins with a discovery that is then kept secret for many decades.  He writes:

In the alpine region of Netherlands New Guinea (so named under Dutch colonial rule – today, West Papua) in 1936, three Dutchmen discovered a mountainous outcrop of ore with high copper content and very high concentrations of gold.  When later analyzed in the Netherlands, the gold (in gram/ton) proved to be twice that of Witwatersrand in South Africa, then the world’s richest gold mine, but this information was not made public.

The geologist among the trio, Jean Jacques Dozy, worked for the Netherlands New Guinea Petroleum Company (NNGPM), ostensibly a Dutch-controlled company based in The Hague, but whose controlling interest actually lay in the hands of the Rockefeller family, as did the mining company, Freeport Sulphur (now Freeport McMoRan, one of whose Directors from 1988-95 was Henry Kissinger, Dulles’ and the Rockefeller’s close associate) that began mining operations there in 1966.

It was Allen Dulles, Paris-based lawyer in the employ of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, who in 1935 arranged the controlling interest in NNGPN for the Rockefellers.  And it was Dulles, among a select few others, who, because of various intervening events, including WW II, that made its exploitation impossible, kept the secret of the gold mine for almost three decades, even from President Kennedy, who had worked to return the island to Indonesian control. JFK “remained uninformed of the El Dorado, and once the remaining political hurdles were overcome, Freeport would have unimpeded access.” Those “political hurdles” – i.e. regime change – would take a while to effect.

The Need to Assassinate President Kennedy

But first JFK would have to be eliminated, for he had brokered Indonesian sovereignty over West Papua/West Irian for Sukarno from the Dutch who had ties to Freeport Sulphur.  Freeport was aghast at the potential loss of “El Dorado,” especially since they had recently had their world’s most advanced nickel refinery expropriated by Fidel Castro, who had named Che Guevara its new manager.  Freeport’s losses in Cuba made access to Indonesia even more important. Cuba and Indonesia thus were joined in the deadly game of chess between Dulles and Kennedy, and someone would have to lose.

While much has been written about Cuba, Kennedy, and Dulles, the Indonesian side of the story has been slighted. Poulgrain remedies this with an exhaustive and deeply researched exploration of these matters. He details the deviousness of the covert operations Dulles ran in Indonesia during the 1950s and 1960s.  He makes it clear that Kennedy was shocked by Dulles’s actions, yet never fully grasped the treacherous genius of it all, for Dulles was always “working two or three stages ahead of the present.”  Having armed and promoted a rebellion against Sukarno’s central government in 1958, Dulles made sure it would fail (shades of the Bay of Pigs to come) since a perceived failure served his long-term strategy.  To this very day, this faux 1958 Rebellion is depicted as a CIA failure by the media.  Yet from Dulles standpoint, it was a successful failure that served his long-term goals.

“This holds true,” Poulgrain has previously written, “only if the stated goal of the CIA was the same as the actual goal.  Even more than five decades later, media analysis of the goal of The Outer Island rebels is still portrayed as a secession, as covert US support for ‘rebels in the Outer Islands that wished to secede from the central government in Jakarta’.  The actual goal of Allen Dulles had more to do with achieving a centralized army command in such a way as to appear that the CIA backing for the rebels failed.”

Left to right: Allen Dulles, Richard Bissell, President Kennedy, John McCone. April 1962. Photo credit: CIA.GOV

Dulles’ the Devil

Dulles betrayed the rebels he armed and encouraged, just as he betrayed friend and foe alike during his long career.  The rebellion that he instigated and planned to fail was the first stage of a larger intelligence strategy that would come to fruition in 1965-6 with the ouster of Sukarno (after multiple unsuccessful assassination attempts) and the institution of a reign of terror that followed.  It was also when – 1966 – Freeport McMoRan began their massive mining in West Papua at Grasberg at an elevation of 14,000 feet in the Alpine region.  Dulles was nothing if not patient; he had been at this game since WW I.  Even after Kennedy fired him following the Bay of Pigs, his plans were executed, just as those who got in his way were.  Poulgrain makes a powerful case that Dulles was the mastermind of the murders of JFK, U.N. Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold (working with Kennedy for a peaceful solution in Indonesia and other places), and Congolese President Patrice Lumumba, the first president of a newly liberated Congo.

His focus is on why they needed to be assassinated (similar in this regard to James Douglass’s JFK and the Unspeakable), though with the exception of Kennedy (since the how is well-known and obvious), he also presents compelling evidence as to the how. Hammarskjold, in many ways Kennedy’s spiritual brother, was a particularly powerful obstacle to Dulles’s plans for Indonesia and colonial countries throughout the Third World. Like JFK, he was committed to independence for indigenous and colonial peoples everywhere and was trying to implement his Swedish-style ‘third way,’ proposing a form of ‘muscular pacifism’.

Poulgrain argues correctly that if the UN Secretary General succeeded in bringing even half these colonial countries to independence, he would have transformed the UN into a significant world power and created a body of nations so large as to be a counter-weight to those embroiled in the Cold War.

He draws on documents from the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and Chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu to show the connection between South Africa’s “Operation Celeste” and Dulles’s involvement in Hammarskjold’s murder in September 1961.  While it was reported at the time as an accidental plane crash, he quotes former President Harry Truman saying, “Dag Hammarskjold was on the point of getting something done when they killed him.  Notice that I said, ‘When they killed him’.”  Hammarskjold, like Kennedy, was intent on returning colonized countries to their indigenous inhabitants and making sure Papua was for Papuans, not Freeport McMoRan and imperial forces.

And Dulles sold his overt Indonesian strategy as being necessary to thwart a communist takeover in Indonesia. Cold War rhetoric, like “the war on terrorism” today, served as his cover.  In this he had the Joint Chiefs of Staff on his side; they considered Kennedy soft on communism, in Indonesia and Cuba and everywhere else. Dulles’s covert agenda was to serve the interests of his power elite patrons.

While contextually different from David Talbot’s portrayal of Dulles in The Devil’s Chessboard, Poulgrain’s portrait of Dulles within the frame of Indonesian history is equally condemnatory and nightmarish.  Both describe an evil genius ready to do anything to advance his agenda.

Dulles and George de Mohrenschildt

Poulgrain adds significantly to our understanding of JFK’s assassination and its aftermath by presenting new information about George de Mohrenschildt, Lee Harvey Oswald’s handler in Dallas.  Dulles had a long association with the de Mohrenschildt family, going back to 1920-21 when in Constantinople he negotiated with Baron Sergius Alexander von Mohrenschildt on behalf of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.  The Baron’s brother and business partner was George’s father.  Dulles’s law firm, Sullivan & Cromwell, was Standard Oil’s primary law firm. These negotiations on behalf of elite capitalist interests, in the shadow of the Russian Revolution, became the template for Dulles’s career: economic exploitation was inseparable from military concerns, the former concealed behind the anti-communist rhetoric of the latter.  An anti-red thread ran through Dulles’s career, except when the red was the blood of all those whom he considered expendable.  And the numbers are legion.  Their blood didn’t matter.

Standard Oil is the link that joins Dulles [who controlled the Warren Commission investigating the assassination of JFK] and de Mohrenschildt. This connection was kept from the Warren Commission despite Dulles’ prominent role and the importance of the testimony of de Mohrenschildt. Poulgrain argues convincingly that de Mohrenschildt worked in “oil intelligence” before his CIA involvement, and that oil intelligence was not only Dulles’s work when he first met George’s father, Sergius, in Baku, but that that “oil intelligence” is a redundancy. The CIA, after all, is a creation of Wall Street and their interests have always been joined. The Agency was not formed to provide intelligence to US Presidents; that was a convenient myth used to cover its real purpose which was to serve the interests of investment bankers and the power elite, or those I call The Umbrella People who control the U.S.

While working in 1941 for Humble Oil  (Prescott Bush was a major shareholder, Dulles was his lawyer, and Standard Oil had secretly bought Humble Oil sixteen years before), de Mohrenschildt was caught up in a scandal that involved Vichy (pro-Nazi) French intelligence in selling oil to Germany.  This was similar to the Dulles’s brothers and Standard Oil’s notorious business dealings with Germany.

It was an intricate web of the high cabal with Allen Dulles at the center.

In the midst of the scandal, de Mohrenschildt, suspected of being a Vichy French intelligence agent, “disappeared” for a while.  He later told the Warren Commission that he decided to take up oil drilling, without mentioning the name of Humble Oil that employed him again, this time as a roustabout.

“Just when George needed to ‘disappear’, Humble Oil was providing an oil exploration team to be subcontracted to NNGPM – the company Allen Dulles had set up five years earlier to work in Netherlands New Guinea.”  Poulgrain makes a powerful circumstantial evidence case (certain documents are still unavailable) that de Mohrenschildt, in order to avoid appearing in court, went incommunicado in Netherlands New Guinea in mid-1941 where he made a record oil discovery and received a $10,000 bonus from Humble Oil.

“Avoiding adverse publicity about his role in selling oil to Vichy France was the main priority; for George, a brief drilling adventure in remote Netherlands New Guinea would have been a timely and strategic exit.”  And who best to help him in this escape than Allen Dulles – indirectly, of course; for Dulles’s modus operandi was to maintain his “distance” from his contacts, often over many decades.

In other words, Dulles and de Mohrenschildt were intimately involved for a long time prior to JFK’s assassination. Poulgrain rightly claims that “the entire focus of the Kennedy investigation would have shifted had the [Warren] Commission become aware of the 40-year link between Allen Dulles and de Mohrenschildt.” Their relationship involved oil, spying, Indonesia, Nazi Germany, the Rockefellers, Cuba, Haiti, etc.  It was an international web of intrigue that involved a cast of characters stranger than fiction, a high cabal of the usual and unusual operatives.

Two unusual ones are worth mentioning: Michael Fomenko and Michael Rockefeller.  The eccentric Fomenko – aka “Tarzan” – is the Russian-Australian nephew of de Mohrenschildt’s wife, Jean Fomenko.  His arrest and deportation from Netherlands New Guinea in 1959, where he had travelled from Australia in a canoe, and his subsequent life, are fascinating and sad. It’s the stuff of a bizarre film. It seems he was one of those victims who had to be silenced because he knew a secret about George’s 1941 oil discovery that was not his to share. “In April 1964, at the same time George de Mohrenschildt was facing the Warren Commission – a time when any publicity regarding Sele 40 [George’s record oil discovery] could have changed history – it was decided that electro-convulsive therapy would be used on Michael Fomenko.” He was then imprisoned at the Ipswich Special Mental Hospital.

Equally interesting is the media myth surrounding the disappearance of Michael Rockefeller, Nelson’s son and heir to the Standard Oil fortune, who was allegedly eaten by cannibals in New Guinea in 1961. His tale became front-page news, “a media event closed off to any other explanation and the political implications of his disappearance became an ongoing tragedy for the Papuan people.”  To this very day, the West Papuan people, whose land was described by Standard Oil official Richard Archbold in 1938 as “Shangri-la,” are fighting for their independence.

The Sino-Soviet Split

While the gold in West Papua was very important to Allen Dulles, his larger goal was to keep the Cold War blazing by concealing the dispute between China and the Soviet Union from Kennedy while instigating the mass slaughter of “communists” that would lead to regime change in Indonesia, with Major-General Suharto, his ally, replacing President Sukarno. In this he was successful. Poulgrain says:

Not only did Dulles fail to brief Kennedy on the Sino-Soviet dispute early in the presidency, but he also remained silent about the rivalry between Moscow and Beijing to wield influence over the PKI or win its support.  In geographical terms, Beijing regarded Indonesia as its own backyard, and winning the support of the PKI would give Beijing an advantage in the Sino-Soviet dispute.  The numerical growth of the PKI was seen by Moscow and Beijing for its obvious political potential.  Dulles was also focused on the PKI, but his peculiar skill in political intelligence turned what seemed inevitable on its head.  The size of the party [the Indonesian Communist Party was the largest outside the Sino-Soviet bloc] became a factor he used to his advantage when formulating his wedge strategy – the greater the rivalry between Moscow and Beijing over the PKI, the more intense would be the recrimination once the PKI was eliminated.

The slaughter of more than a million poor farmers was a trifle to Dulles.

The September 30, 1965 Movement

In the early hours of October 1, 1965, a fake coup d’état was staged by the CIA’s man, Major-General Suharto.  It was announced that seven generals had been arrested and would be taken to President Sukarno “to explain the rumor that they were planning a military coup on October 5.” Suharto declared himself the head of the army. Someone was said to have killed the generals. In the afternoon, a radio announcement was made calling for the Sukarno government to be dismissed.  This became Suharto’s basis for blaming it on the communists and the so-called September 30 Movement, and he gave the order to kill the PKI leaders.  This started the massive bloodshed that would follow.

With one hand, Suharto crushed the Movement, accusing the PKI of being the ultimate instigator of an attempt to oust Sukarno, and with the other hand he feigned to protect the “father of the Indonesian revolution,” while actually stripping Sukarno of every vestige of political support.

When the generals’ bodies were recovered a few days after Oct 1, Suharto falsely claimed the PKI women had tortured and sexually mutilated them as part of some primitive sexual orgy.  This heinous perversion of power was the start of the Suharto era.  In total control of the media, he manipulated popular wrath to call for revenge.

If this confuses you, it should, because the twisted nature of this fabricated coup was actually part of a real coup in slow motion aimed at ousting Sukarno and replacing him with the CIA’s man Suharto.  This occurred in early 1967 after the mass slaughter of communists.  It was a regime change cheered on by the American mass media as a triumph over communist aggression.

New Evidence of U.S. Direct Involvement in the Slaughter

Poulgrain has spent forty years interviewing participants and researching this horrendous history. His detailed research is quite amazing. And it does take concentration to follow it all, as with the machinations of Dulles, Suharto, et al.

Some things, however, are straightforward.  For example, he documents how, during the height of the slaughter, two Americans – one man and one woman – were in Klaten (PKI headquarters in central Java) supervising the Indonesian army as they killed the PKI. These two would travel back and forth by helicopter from a ship of the U.S. 7^th Fleet that was off the coast of Java.  The plan was that the more communists killed, the greater would be the dispute between Moscow and Beijing, since they would accuse each other for the tragedy, which is exactly what they did.  This was the wedge that was mentioned in the Rockefeller Brothers Panel Report from the late 1950s in which Dulles and Henry Kissinger both participated.

The hatred drummed up against these poor members of the Communist Party was extraordinary in its depravity.  In addition to Suharto’s lies about communist women mutilating the generals’ bodies, a massive campaign of hatred was directed against these landless peasants who made up the bulk of the PKI.  False Cold War radio broadcasts from Singapore stirred up hostility toward them, declaring them atheists, etc.  Wealthy Muslim landowners – the 1 per cent – made outrageous charges to assist the army’s slaughter.  Poulgrain tells us:

Muhammadiyah preachers were broadcasting from mosques that all who joined the communist party must be killed, saying they are the ‘lowest order of infidel, the shedding of whose blood is comparable to killing a chicken.’

For those Americans especially, who think this history of long ago and far away does not touch them, its compelling analysis of how and why Allen Dulles and his military allies would want JFK dead since he was a threat to national security as they defined in it their paranoid anti-communist ideology might be an added impetus to read this very important book. Indonesia may be far away geographically, but it’s a small world.  Dulles and Kennedy had irreconcilable differences, and when Dulles was once asked in a radio interview what he would do to someone who threatened national security, he matter-of-factually said, “I’d kill him.”  The Joint Chiefs of Staff agreed.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say that the introduction to JFK vs. Dulles by Oliver Stone and the afterward by James DiEugenio are outstanding.  They add excellent context and clarity to a really great and important book.

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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/

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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Russia has demographic crisis. Notwithstanding official efforts to boost birth rates, reverse brain drain, use immigration policy over the past few years, Russia’s population still falls by half a million.

According to official data cited last month, Russia’s population stands at 146.24 million as of Jan. 1, 2021, down from 146.75 million the previous year. Russia’s population could drop by more than 12 million by 2035, the national statistics office said in its annual forecast published on its website.

The State Statistics Service (Rosstat) said that Russia experienced its highest natural population decline in 11 years.

Here are the three population scenarios that Rosstat predicted for the next 15 years. That, however, Russia’s natural population is expected to continue to decline — meaning deaths will continue to outnumber live births.

Optimistic scenario: 150.1 million. Natural population is expected to slow its contraction from nearly 250,000 next year to 21,300 in 2035. Migration is expected to grow from under 340,000 next year to more than 385,000 in 2035.

Baseline scenario: 142.9 million. Natural population is expected to decline by more than 350,000 next year and almost 400,000 in 2035. Migration is expected to drop slightly from almost 265,000 next year to around 264,000 in 2035.

Worst-case scenario: 134.2 million. Natural population is expected to contract by 484,400 next year and near 1 million people by 2035. Migration is expected to drop from almost 191,000 to under 16,000 arrivals in 2035.

All the figures were revised downward from 2018, when Rosstat forecast Russia’s population to grow to 153.2 million under an optimistic scenario, 144 million under a baseline scenario and 138.1 million under the worst-case scenario.

Besides, there are Russian Ministries that show concern and closely involved in discussing ways to implement measures to support population growth. For instance, the Health Ministry and the Economic Development Ministry.

Russia’s Health Ministry

Deputy Health Minister Evgeny Kamkin, back in October 2020 at the Territory of Care forum, said that “By the decree of the President of the Russian Federation on national goals and strategic development objectives for the period up to 2030, we have been given an ambitious but achievable task – increasing the life expectancy of Russians to 78 years by 2030. Increasing the share of older citizens of working age in the structure of the country’s population requires a timely restructuring of the entire health care system, with an emphasis on early detection of age-related diseases and risk factors for their development.”

The Demography National Project for 2019-2024 consists of five federal projects: Financial support for families with newborn children, Support for female employment, Older generation, Public health promotion and Sport as a norm of lifestyle.

The project’s key goals include: increase in life expectancy; decrease in mortality of the population over the working age; increase in birth rate; promotion of a healthy lifestyle. At present, relevant ministries and agencies are adjusting the indicators of the national project. The project was extended until 2030.

Economic Development Ministry

The Economic Development Ministry, as far back in August 2019, expected the population in Russia to grow by almost two million people in five years. This is according to the ministry’s basic macroeconomic forecast for 2019-2024, the outlook on demography took into account “the development of measures to support the birth rate.”

According to the document, the population would increase annually by 0.2-0.5 million people and would grow from 146.8 million people to 148.7 million people by 2024.

According to the forecast, the number of working-age population would also increase – from 82.0 million people to 85.3 million people. At the same time, the number of retired people would decrease from 37.3 million people to 35.6 million people.

Experts on Population Growth

Many Russian experts say population growth in any country can be ensured by either a natural increase (the difference between the number of births and deaths) or migration. That said, migration can become a demographic resource, but for this, Russia’s migration policy needs to be changed, Director of the Higher School of Economics’ Institute of Demography, Anatoly Vishnevsky, suggested.

Russia must have “special programmes focused on receiving migrants, and furnishing mechanisms for them to adapt and integrate, but Russia doesn’t have them,” he stressed. His proposal implies adopting one more measure for boosting the population, and to ensure a growing population as people makes up the wealth of a country. On the contrary, Russia has let the pace of migration slip through its fingers over the past decade. If we had a sound migration policy, then we could be considering migration from other countries,” suggested Anatoly Vishnevsky.

Putin on Population Growth

In his Presidential Address to the Federal Assembly delivered at the Manezh Central Exhibition Hall in January 2020, President Vladimir Putin said “There are nearly 147 million of us now. But we have entered a difficult, a very difficult demographic period. We are alarmed by the negative demographic forecasts. It is our historic duty to respond to this challenge. We must not only get out of this demographic trap, but ensure a sustainable natural population growth by 2025. The aggregate birth rate must be 1.7 in 2024.”

“Demography is a sector where universal or parochial solutions cannot be effective. Each step we take and each new law or government programme we adopt must be scrutinised from the viewpoint of our top national priority – the preservation and increase of Russia’s population,” he told the gathering.

Putin suggested building a long-term policy to support population growth, adding “it is our historic duty to respond to this challenge. We must not only get out of this demographic trap but ensure a sustainable natural population growth by 2025. Demography is a sector where universal or parochial solutions cannot be effective. Each step we take and each new law or government programme we adopt must be scrutinised from the viewpoint of our top national priority – preservation and increase of Russia’s population.”

The federal assembly includes members of the Federation Council, State Duma deputies, members of the Government, the heads of the Constitutional and Supreme courts, regional governors, speakers of regional legislatures, the heads of traditional religious denominations, public activists, the heads of regional civic chambers and the heads of major media outlets.

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

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

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In response to the Biden administration suggesting it will not complete the withdrawal of U.S. forces, per the Doha Agreement of February 2020, the Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network demands the U.S. end the war in Afghanistan.

The BAP Solidarity Network, comprised of non-African/Black people and organizations who support BAP’s anti-imperialist mission, released a petition today, calling on everyone committed to peace, human rights and common sense, to demand Biden re-start peace talks; immediately withdraw all U.S. forces, private contractors, and other mercenaries; close all U.S. bases; and respect the sovereignty of Afghanistan.

Nearly 20 years ago, the United States invaded the sovereign nation of Afghanistan, initiating decades of violence and occupation. To date, the war has resulted in the deaths of over 100,000 Afghan adults and children, leaving thousands more injured or permanently disabled.

“As usual, it is the people of the United States who are forced to fund these imperialist endeavors,” according to Danny Haiphong, co-coordinator of the BAP Solidarity Network. “The financial cost to U.S. citizens has, so far, edged over $1 trillion, much of it lost in a sink-hole of corruption, or spent enriching military contractors and the financial elite.”

After several months of negotiations, direct peace talks between the Taliban and the U.S.-installed Afghan government finally began this past September. The U.S. news media, Congress, the military-industrial complex, and the foreign-policy community immediately hit out in opposition against Trump’s brokered deal. Now, the Biden administration suggests it will not complete the withdrawal of U.S. forces, which the United States had agreed to when it and the Taliban signed the Doha Agreement in February 2020.

“It is time to stop the lies and for the Biden administration to end this bloody, trillion-dollar war,” says BAP Solidarity Network member Zach Kerner. “The U.S., the most violent country in the world, has been wreaking nothing but violence on the Afghan people for nearly 20 years. But now it is now claiming it cannot move forward on the peace process because of ‘violence.’”

Read the petition below. You may sign it here.

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Demand An End to War in Afghanistan

Nearly 20 years ago, the Bush administration and the U.S. ruling class invaded the sovereign nation of Afghanistan, initiating decades of violence and occupation of the Afghan people. To date, the U.S. empire and its Western allies are complicit in the deaths of over 100,000 Afghan adults and children, leaving thousands more injured or permanently disabled. As usual, it is the people of the United States who are forced to fund these imperialist endeavors: The financial cost to U.S. citizens has so far edged over $1 trillion, much of it lost in a sink-hole of corruption, or spent enriching military contractors and the financial elite (the debt for the war will take years to pay off).

Two decades of repeated U.S. bombing—nearly 50,000 bombs have been dropped on a country the size of Texas—have left Afghanistan with catastrophic levels of poverty, an economy in shambles, and health care workers struggling with the added burden of the pandemic. In 2019 alone, the United States dropped 7,423 bombs and missiles, the most since 2006 (when data became available).

Nearly 3 million Afghans refugees have fled their country to escape the violence, making Afghanistan one of the world’s biggest sources of refugees, and over 2 million Afghans have been internally displaced.

In February 2020, the Trump administration and the Taliban—without the U.S.-dominated Afghan government—signed a peace agreement that called for the scheduled withdrawal of U.S. and other foreign forces. The corporate media, foreign-policy community and other profiteers of the military-industrial complex swiftly criticized the talks. But within days of taking office, the Biden administration signaled the deal is off, citing the importance of supporting a “stable, sovereign, democratic, and secure future for Afghanistan.” That is the same language we hear whenever the United States conspires to overthrow a foreign leader who is hostile to U.S. capital, thereby presenting a threat to U.S. hegemony (see Iraq, Libya, Syria, Chile, Venezuela, to name a few).

The Black Alliance for Peace Solidarity Network, comprised of non-African/Black people and organizations who support BAP’s mission, condemns the continued war and occupation of Afghanistan, as we condemn the use of state violence and militarism against poor and working-class people of all nations. That is why demand the immediate withdrawal of all U.S. and NATO-backed forces from Afghanistan and from the region.

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The Corona “Pandemic” Timeline: What Happened in January – March 2020?

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, February 02 2021

Facts corroborated by official statements reveal that the Covid pandemic which served to justify the Lockdown is deceptive to say the least. This article (based on Chapter III of my E-Book) will focus on the Corona Timeline starting in January.

The Coronavirus Vaccine: The Real Danger is “Agenda ID2020”

By Peter Koenig, February 02 2021

WHO has most likely received orders from “above”, from those people who also manage Trump and the “leaders” (sic) of the EU, European Union. The final decision to go ahead NOW with COVID-19 pandemic, was taken in January 2020 at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos – behind very much closed doors.

Dangerous mRNA Vaccine: Is Mandatory US Covid Vaxxing Coming?

By Stephen Lendman, February 02 2021

The threat of mandatory covid vaxxing by federal, state, local authorities, and/or employers, businesses across the board, schools, and for access to public places should terrify everyone.

Video: Myanmar Crisis Explained… Towards a Regional Arc of Instability?

By Brian Berletic, February 02 2021

I explain why the US had been placing pressure on Aung San Suu Kyi in recent years and why the US is still going to support her and the vast network the US built up in Myanmar to propel her into power regardless.

History: ‘Who Ended the Holocaust?’ The Liberation of Auschwitz

By Martin Sieff, February 02 2021

The anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 and Holocaust Remembrance Day every year have been hijacked. They have become bizarre photographic negatives of the horrors they were meant to commemorate and manipulated to insult the millions of victims and the heroic warriors who gave their lives to end such horrors

Switzerland’s Dangerous Turn to the Far Right

By Franklin Frederick, February 02 2021

Experts from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights itself warned that this new legislation violates international human rights standards in the way that it expands the definition of terrorism, and would set a dangerous precedent for the suppression of political dissent worldwide.

Gamestop — And the Financial Game that Never Stops!

By Dr. Jack Rasmus, February 01 2021

This past week a video game company in trouble, Gamestop, became the center of media attention.  Day traders had driven up the company’s stock price by thousands of percent in just one day.

Video: The State of Our Currencies with Catherine Austin Fitts

By James Corbett and Catherine Austin Fitts, February 01 2021

With the global technocrats taking the world through the “Going Direct” Reset into the abyss of the End of Currency and the ultimate transhuman slave state, things could not be more dire. But, as Catherine Austin Fitts of Solari.com tells us, there are options on the table for taking things in a completely different direction and unlocking the incredible abundance of the planet.

Viral Inequality and the Farmers’ Struggle in India

By Colin Todhunter, February 01 2021

According to a new report by Oxfam, ‘The Inequality Virus’, the wealth of the world’s billionaires increased by $3.9tn (trillion) between 18 March and 31 December 2020.

The Destructive Plan Behind the Biden Russia Agenda

By F. William Engdahl, January 31 2021

The new Biden Administration has from day one made it clear it will adopt a hostile and aggressive policy against the Russian Federation of Vladimir Putin.

US ‘Stealing, Plundering’ Syrian Oil: Mark Taliano

By Mark Taliano and Press TV, February 02 2021

Author and political analyst Mark Taliano told Press TV on Saturday that the US had never been invited, nor ever will be invited into Syria, and military American forces occupation and killing of the men, women and children in the country constituted a war crime.

Psychology: Pretending There Is Nothing Wrong

By Rod Driver, February 02 2021

Author’s Introductory Note

Facts corroborated by official statements reveal that the Covid pandemic which served to justify the Lockdown is deceptive to say the least.

This article (based on Chapter III of my E-Book) will focus on the Corona Timeline starting in January.

These are some of the highlights:

1. A Covid Vaccine had already been envisaged several months prior to the “official” discovery of the virus in late December 2019. The Covid Vaccine initiative was discussed and debated at the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos on January 21-24, 2020.

2. On January 30, 2020, the WHO confirmed that there were 83 positive cases outside China including 5  in the US, 3 in Canada, 4 in France, 4 in Germany.

Based on these ridiculously low numbers the WHO launched a Worldwide public health emergency (PHEIC)

4. On the following day, January 31st, 2020, President Trump decided to suspend Air Travel with China. The five WHO “confirmed cases” in the US were sufficient to “justify” a far-reaching decision which triggered a crisis in international trade and air travel, which is still ongoing, not to mention the bankruptcies of the airlines and the tourist industry.

5. On February 20th, the WHO Director General Tedros held a press conference warning that a pandemic was imminent, intimating “that the chance to contain the coronavirus outbreak..[is] closing” …: “I believe the window of opportunity is still there, but that the window is narrowing.”

These shock and awe statements have no scientific basis. On February 20, 2020, the recorded number of covid positive cases was ridiculously low: confirmed cases outside China was 1073 out of population of 6.4 billion.

Tedros’ statements nonetheless served to trigger the 2020 Corona Financial Crash. The fear campaign went into high gear. The evidence suggests that the stock market crisis was engineered. There was no cause for alarm. (See Chapter IV for details)

6. On March 11, 2020 the WHO Director General officially declared a Worldwide  Pandemic at a time when the number of  confirmed cases outside China (6.4 billion population) was of the order of  44,279 and 1440 deaths (recorded by WHO for March 11, see table right).

Immediately following the March 11, 2020 WHO announcement, the fear campaign gained impetus. 193 member states of the United Nations were instructed to implement the lockdown and close down their economies as a means to resolving a Worldwide public health crisis.

We can distinguish and identify three important decisions (January 30-31, February 20, 2020, March 11, 2020 which served to set the stage of the ongoing corona crisis:

• January 30, 31, 2020: Worldwide public health Emergence declared by WHO (83 cases outside China)
• February 20th, 2020. WHO Warning that a pandemic is imminent, leading to stock market crash (1073 cases outside China)
• March 11, 2020, The Lockdown and the recommended Worldwide closure of economic activity as a means to resolving an alleged public health crisis.(44,279 cases outside China). At a time when the covid crisis in China was virtually over.

These ridiculously low numbers of estimated positive cases based on the PCR test do not under any circumstances justify the lockdown and closing down of economic activity.

In the wake of the March 11, 2020 Lockdown (supported by the fear campaign) the process of testing went into high gear.

There is now ample evidence that the estimates resulting from the PCR tests used to justify the “Second Wave” lockdown measures are flawed and invalid. (See Chapter II)

The following text entitled  The Corona Time Line is Chapter III of my E-book which consists of nine chapters. To access the full text of the E-book  click here 

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

Michel Chossudovsky, February 2, 2021

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THE CORONA TIMELINE

Text of Chapter II: To read the E-Book including a detailed analysis pertaining the economic and financial dimensions (Chapters IV, V and IX) click here:

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August 1, 2019:  Glaxo -Smith -Kline and Pfizer announce the establishment of a corporate partnership in Consumer Health Products including Vaccines.

September 19, 2019: The ID2020 Alliance held their Summit in New York, entitled “Rising to the Good ID Challenge”. The  focus was on the establishment of a vaccine with an embedded digital passport.

October 18, 2019. Event 201. The 201 Pandemic Simulation Exercise

The coronavirus was initially named 2019-nCoV by the WHO, the same name (with the exception of the placement of the date) as that adopted atthe October 18, 2019 201 Simulation exercise under the auspices of the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Health, Centre for Heath Security (an event sponsored by the Gates Foundation and World Economic Forum).(Event 201)

In October 2019, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security hosted a pandemic tabletop exercise called Event 201 with partners, the World Economic Forum and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. …  For the scenario, we modeled a fictional coronavirus pandemic, but we explicitly stated that it was not a prediction.

Instead, the exercise served to highlight preparedness and response challenges that would likely arise in a very severe pandemic. We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 outbreak will kill 65 million people.

Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.“We are not now predicting that the nCoV-2019 [which was also used as the name of the simulation] outbreak will kill 65 million people.

.Although our tabletop exercise included a mock novel coronavirus, the inputs we used for modeling the potential impact of that fictional virus are not similar to nCoV-2019.”

December 31, 2019: First cases of pneumonia detected and reported in Wuhan, Hubei Province. China.

January 1, 2020: Chinese health authorities close the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market after Western media reports that wild animals sold there may have been the source of the virus. This initial assessment was subsequently refuted by Chinese scientists.

January 7, 2020: Chinese authorities “identify a new type of virus” which was isolated  on 7 January.

January 11, 2020 – The Wuhan Municipal Health Commission announces the first death caused by the coronavirus.

January 22, 2020: WHO. Members of the WHO Emergency Committee “expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not”. The Committee meeting was reconvened on January 23, 2020, overlapping with the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos (January 21-24, 2020).

The meeting of the Emergency Committee convened by the WHO Director-General under the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) expressed divergent views on whether this event constitutes a PHEIC or not. At that time, the advice was that the event did not constitute a PHEIC, but the Committee members agreed on the urgency of the situation and suggested that the Committee should be reconvened in a matter of days to examine the situation further.

January 21-24, 2020: Consultations at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland under auspices of  the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) for development of a vaccine program. CEPI is a WEF-Gates partnership. With support from CEPI, Seattle based Moderna will manufacture an mRNA vaccine against 2019-nCoV, “The Vaccine Research Center (VRC) of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of NIH, collaborated with Moderna to design the vaccine.”

Note: The development of a 2019 nCoV vaccine was announced at Davos, 2 weeks after the January 7, 2020 announcement, and barely a  week prior to the official launching of the WHO’s Worldwide Public Health emergency on January 30.  The WEF-Gates-CEPI Vaccine Announcement precedes the WHO Public Health Emergency (PHEIC)

See WEF video 

Dominant financial interests, billionaire foundations and international financial institutions played a key role in launching the WHO Public Health Emergency (PHEIC).

In the week preceding this historic WHO decision. The PHEIC was the object of “consultations” at the World Economic Forum (WEF), Davos (January 21-24). The WHO Director General Dr. Tedros was present at Davos. Were these consultations instrumental in influencing the WHO’s historic decision on January 30th.

Was there a Conflict of Interest as defined by the WHO? The WHO’s largest donor is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which together with the WEF and CEPI had already announced in Davos the development of a Covid-19 vaccine prior to the historic January 30th launching of the PHEIC.

January 28, 2020:  The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed that the novela corona virus had been isolated.

The WHO Director General had the backing of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Big Pharma and the World Economic Forum (WEF). There are indications that the decision for the WHO to declare a Global Health Emergency was taken on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos (January 21-24) overlapping with the Geneva January 22 meeting of the Emergency Committee.

The  WHO’s Director Tedros was present at Davos 2020. At Davos, the Gates Foundation announced $10 billion commitment to vaccines over the next 10 years.

This pledge was made in Davos, Switzerland, barely a week prior to the WHO decision to launch the PHEIC.

January 30, 2020: The WHO’s Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC)

The Worldwide population outside China is of the order of 6.4 billion. On January 30, 2020 outside China there were:

83 cases in 18 countries, and only 7 of them had no history of travel in China. (see WHO, January 30, 2020).

On January 29, 2020, the day preceding the launching of the PHEI (recorded by the WHO), there were 5  cases in the US, 3 in Canada, 4 in France, 4 in Germany.

There was no “scientific basis” to justify the launching of a Worldwide public health emergency.

Screenshot of WHO table, January 29, 2020,

Those low numbers  (not mentioned by the media) did not prevent the launching of a Worldwide fear campaign.

January 31, 2020:  President Trump’s Decision to Suspend Air Travel with China

On the following day (January 31, 2020), Trump announced that he would deny entry to the US of both Chinese and foreign nationals “who have traveled in China in the last 14 days”. This immediately triggered a crisis in air travel,  transportation, US-China trade relations as well as freight and shipping transactions.

Whereas the WHO  “[did] not recommend any travel or trade restrictions” the five so-called “confirmed cases” in the US were sufficient to “justify” President Trump’s January 31st 2020 decision to suspend air travel to China while precipitating a hate campaign against ethnic Chinese throughout the Western World.

This historic January 31st decision paved the way towards the disruption of international commodity trade as well as Worldwide restrictions on air travel.

“Fake media” immediately went into high gear. China was held responsible for “spreading infection” Worldwide.

Early February 2020: the acronym of the coronavirus was changed from nCoV- 2019 (its name under the October Event 201 John Hopkins Simulation Exercise before it was identified in early January 2020) to SARS-nCoV-2. Covid-19 indicates the disease triggered by SARS-CoV-2

February 20-21, 2020. Worldwide Covid Data Outside China: The Diamond Princess Cruise Ship 

While China reported a total of 75,567 cases of COVID-19, (February 20) the confirmed cases outside China were abysmally low and the statistics based in large part on the the PCR test used to confirm the “Worldwide spread of the virus” were questionable to say the least. Moreover, out of the 75,567 cases in China, a large percentage had recovered. And recovery figures were not acknowledged by the media.

On the day of 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.

On February 20th, 57.9 % of the Worldwide Covid-19 “confirmed cases” were from the Diamond Princess, hardly representative of  a Worldwide “statistical trend”.The official story is as follows:

• A Hong Kong based passenger who had disembarked from the Diamond Princess in Hong Kong on January 25 developed pneumonia and was tested positive for the novela coronavirus on January 30.
• He was reported to have travelled on January 10, to Shenzhen on mainland China (which borders on Hong Kong’s new territories).
• The Diamond Princess arrived at Yokohama on February 3. A quarantine was imposed on the cruiser See NCBI study.
• Many passengers fell sick due to the confinement on the boat.
• All the passengers and crew on the Diamond Princess undertook the PCR test.
• The number of confirmed cases increased to 691 on February 23.

Scan Source: NCBI Study

Read carefully: From the standpoint of assessing Worldwide statistical trends, the data doesn’t stand up. Without the Diamond Princess data, the so-called confirmed cases worldwide outside China on February 20th 2020 were of the order of 452, out of a population of 6.4 billion. 

Examine the WHO Graph below. The blue indicates the confirmed cases on the Diamond Princess (international conveyance) (which arrived in Yokohama on February 3, 2020), many of whom were sick, confined to their rooms for more than two weeks (quarantine imposed by Japan). All passengers and crew took the RT-PCR test (which does not detect or identify Covid-19).

Needless to say, this so-called data was instrumental in spearheading the fear campaign and the collapse of financial markets in the course of the month of February. (see section below)

February 20th, 2020: At a press conference on Thursday the 20th of February afternoon (CET Time) in a briefing in Geneva, the WHO Director General. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that he was

February 28, 2020: A  WHO vaccination campaign was announced by WHO Director General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus  

More than 20 vaccines are in development globally, and several therapeutics are in clinical trials. We expect the first results in a few weeks.

The campaign to develop vaccines was initiated prior to decision of the WHO to launch a Global Public Health emergency. It was first announced at the WEF meeting at Davos (21-24 January) by CEPI.

Early March: China: More than 50% of the infected patients recovered and were discharged from the hospitals.

A total of 49,856 patients have recovered from COVID-19 and were discharged from hospitals in China. (WHO).  What this means is that the total number of  “confirmed infected cases” in China was 30,448. (Namely 80,304 minus 49,856 = 30,448  (80,304 is the total number on confirmed cases in China (WHO data, March 3, 2020). These developments concerning “recovery” are not reported by the Western media.

March 5, WHO Director General confirms that outside China there are 2055 cases reported in 33 countries. Around 80% of those cases continue to come from just three countries (South Korea, Iran, Italy).

March 7: USA: The number of “confirmed cases” (infected and recovered) in the United States in early March is of the order of 430, rising to about 600 (March 8). Rapid rise in the course of March.

Compare that to the figures pertaining to the Influenza B Virus: The CDC estimated for 2019-2020 “at least 15 million virus flu illnesses… 140,000 hospitalizations and 8,200 deaths. (The Hill)

March 7:  China: The Pandemic is Almost Over

Reported new cases in China fall to double digit. 99 cases recorded on March 7.  All of the new cases outside Hubei province are categorized as  “imported infections”(from foreign countries). The reliability of the data remains to be established:

99 newly confirmed cases including 74 in Hubei Province, … The new cases included 24 imported infections — 17 in Gansu Province, three in Beijing, three in Shanghai and one in Guangdong Province.

“We don’t know whether this vaccine will induce an immune response, or whether it will be safe.That’s why we’re doing a trial,” Jackson stressed. “It’s not at the stage where it would be possible or prudent to give it to the general population.” (AP, March 16, 2020)

Second Wave Announcements and Press reports Canada and the US. Early to Mid-June

November, December:  Ongoing, Partial Lockdown, Social Distancing and Social Gathering measures taken by Britain, France, Germany, Canada. Introduction of Covid Vaccine

To read the E-Book including a detailed analysis pertaining the economic and financial dimensions (Chapters IV, V and IX) click here:

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

A NATO está a olhar para o futuro.* Por isso, é que o Secretário Geral, Jens Stoltenberg, apelou aos estudantes e jovens líderes dos países da Aliança para proporem “novas ideias para a NATO 2030”, em 4 de Fevereiro, numa videoconferência.

A iniciativa faz parte do envolvimento crescente das universidades e das escolas, também com um concurso sobre o tema: “Quais serão as maiores ameaças à paz e à segurança em 2030 e como terá a NATO de se adaptar para as combater?

Para levar a cabo o tema, os jovens já têm o manual: “NATO 2030/Unidos para uma Nova Era”, o relatório apresentado ao grupo de dez peritos nomeados pelo Secretário Geral. Entre eles está Marta Dassù que, depois de ter sido conselheira de política externa do Primeiro Ministro, Massimo D’Alema, durante a guerra da NATO contra a Jugoslávia, ocupou cargos importantes em governos sucessivos e foi nomeada pelo Primeiro Ministro, Matteo Renzi, para a direcção da Finmeccanica (agora Leonardo), a maior indústria de defesa italiana.

Qual é a “nova era” que o grupo de peritos prevê?

Depois de ter definido a NATO como “a aliança mais bem sucedida da História”, que “pôs fim a duas guerras” (as que ocorreram  contra a Jugoslávia e contra a Líbia, que a NATO iniciou), o relatório traça um quadro de um mundo caracterizado por “Estados autoritários que procuram expandir o seu poder e influência”, colocando aos aliados da NATO “um desafio sistémico em todos os domínios da segurança e da economia”.

Distorcendo os factos, o relatório argumenta que, enquanto a NATO estendeu uma mão amiga à Rússia, a mesma respondeu com “a agressão na zona Euro-Atlântica” e, ao violar os acordos, “provocou o fim do Tratado das Forças Nucleares Intermédias”. A Rússia, sublinham os dez peritos, é “a principal ameaça que a NATO tem de enfrentar nesta década”. Ao mesmo tempo – reiteram – a NATO enfrenta os crescentes “desafios de segurança colocados pela China”, cujas actividades económicas e tecnologias podem ter “um impacto na defesa colectiva e na preparação militar na área da responsabilidade do Comandante Supremo Aliado na Europa” (que é sempre um general USA nomeado pelo Presidente dos Estados Unidos).

Depois de ter lançado o alarme sobre estas e outras “ameaças”, que também viriam do Sul do mundo, o relatório dos dez peritos recomenda “cimentar a centralidade da ligação transatlântica”, ou seja, a ligação da Europa com os Estados Unidos, na aliança sob o comando USA.

Ao mesmo tempo, recomenda o “reforço do papel político da NATO”, sublinhando que “os Aliados devem reforçar o Conselho do Atlântico Norte”, o principal órgão político da Aliança que se reúne ao nível de Ministros da Defesa e dos Negócios Estrangeiros e à competência de Chefes de Estado e do Governo.

Uma vez que, de acordo com as regras da NATO, toma as suas decisões não de acordo com a maioria, mas sempre “por unanimidade e de comum acordo”, ou seja, basicamente, de acordo com o que é decidido em Washington, o maior reforço do Conselho do Atlântico Norte significa um maior enfraquecimento dos parlamentos europeus, em particular do Parlamento italiano, que já se encontram privados dos verdadeiros poderes de decisão sobre política externa e militar.

Neste âmbito, o relatório propõe reforçar as forças da NATO, em particular no flanco oriental, dotando-as de “capacidades militares nucleares adequadas”, adaptadas à situação criada pelo fim do Tratado das Forças Nucleares Intermédias (revogado pelos EUA). Por outras palavras, os dez peritos pedem aos EUA para acelerarem a instalação na Europa, não só das novas bombas nucleares B61-12, mas também de novos mísseis nucleares de alcance  médio, semelhantes aos mísseis europeus dos anos oitenta. Pedem em particular para “prosseguir e revitalizar os acordos de partilha nuclear”, que permitem aos países formalmente não nucleares, como a Itália, preparar-se para o uso de armas nucleares sob o comando dos EUA.

Por fim, os dez peritos recordam que é essencial que os aliados mantenham o compromisso, assumido em 2014, de aumentar a sua despesa militar até 2024, pelo menos para 2% do PIB, o que significa para a Itália que a sua despesa passará de 26 para 36 biliões de euros por ano. Este é o preço a pagar para usufruir o que o relatório define como “os benefícios de estar sob o guarda-chuva da NATO”.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Verso il 2030, è Nato il futuro

Il manifesto, 02 febbraio 2021

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

*Trocadilho do  particípio passado do verbo IT ‘nascere’ com a designação da aliança militar mais poderosa do mundo

A Fotografia (Nexium Defence Cloud © Thales)

A NATO Selecciona Thales para Fornecer a Sua Primeira Nuvem de Defesa para as Forças Armadas

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210125005006/en/  

“Thales orgulha-se de estar a contribuir para a transformação digital das forças armadas, fornecendo esta primeira solução de nuvem de defesa táctica, certificada e destacável. Estamos gratos à NATO por renovar a sua confiança na nossa perícia em sistemas de informação e comunicação seguros e interoperáveis”. Marc Darmon, Vice Presidente Executivo, Secure Communications and Information Systems, Thales.

Sobre Thales

Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) é um líder global de alta tecnologia que investe em inovações digitais e de “tecnologia profunda” – conectividade, grandes dados, inteligência artística-social, segurança cibernética e tecnologia quântica – para construir um futuro em que todos possamos confiar, o que é vital para o desenvolvimento das nossas sociedades. A empresa fornece soluções, serviços e produtos que ajudam os seus clientes – empresas, organizações e estados – nos mercados da defesa, aeronáutica, Espaço, transporte e identidade digital e de segurança a cumprir as suas missões críticas, colocando o ser humano no centro do processo de tomada de decisão.

Com 83.000 empregados em 68 países, a Thales gerou vendas de 19 biliões de euros em 2019 (numa base que incluiu a Gemalto durante 12 meses).

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).

***

Which is the more reasonable approach a society might take in the outbreak of epidemic:

To quarantine the sick, and take reasonable precautions to stop those who are identified as vulnerable from contracting the illness.

To attempt to “control the virus” by preventing millions of healthy people from having contact with other healthy people.

To any society prior to 2020, it would have been obvious that the first approach is not only logical and proportionate, but the one least likely to have other unintended and highly destructive consequences. However, to my continued astonishment, many in our society not only believe that the answer is the second, but they somehow believe it to be based on established science.

Now I understand that many who support Lockdown will object to my characterisation of their position. They will say that it is deliberately misleading, since it talks about healthy people, and does not mention the sick. Such objections founder, however, on this undeniable fact: Lockdowns are, by their nature, an entirely untargeted and indiscriminate approach to a health issue, and the prohibiting by law of millions of healthy people from having contact with other healthy people is a feature, not a bug of a policy that was untried and untested before it was first implemented by the Chinese Communist Party in January last year, then copied by many Governments around the world thereafter.

For some reason, many Lockdownists seem to think that the onus is on Lockdown opponents to disprove their position. But as Dr Malcolm Kendrick points out in his excellent piece – Does Lockdown Work or Not, this is the opposite of how things are supposed to work:

“The starting point, for any scientific hypothesis, is for the proponents to disprove the null hypothesis. Demanding that those who believe something may not work, to prove that it doesn’t, is to turn the scientific method upside down. You can never prove a negative.”

Even so, he goes on to point out that most of the countries with the highest deaths per million are those which had fairly stringent Lockdowns, and therefore the data so far most certainly does not show that Lockdowns are effective, even on their own terms. Of course, Covidian Logic always has an answer to this, which is that these Lockdowns weren’t real Lockdowns. They were too little, too late, too soft, too lenient, too short, too small, too purple or something like that! But they can never be wrong. Low death rates show they work. High death rates show they would have worked if only people hadn’t been bad.

But the main point I wish to make about them is that they are not something that has been proposed, studied or trialled before, but are an entirely new practice, foisted upon the world for the first time in 2020. Which means what? It means that they are an experiment in real time. It means that our society (along with many others) has for the last year, and continues to be for the foreseeable future, subject to an experiment. In fact, the largest psychological, social and experiment ever conducted.

When I use this sort of language, it tends to meet the following mocking response: “So are you saying it’s all a mass conspiracy? Who’s the puppet-master then?” But this just misses the point. It does not need some Dark Lord sitting over all of it in order to be an experiment, although it has to be said that the likes of Professor Schwab do seem keen on putting themselves forward as pretty good candidates. No, it simply is by definition a psychological, social and economic experiment by the very nature of the fact that the mass quarantining and mass masking of millions of people, which cannot fail to change the psychology, society and economy, are untried, untested methods, based merely on hypothesis, and not on hard data. In fact, the data is still coming in from this enormous experiment, but as Dr Kendrick says, it doesn’t actually look good for the hypothesis:

“…I would conclude that the observational studies had – thus far – failed to disprove the null hypothesis. In fact, the evidence up to this point could suggest that lockdowns may actually increase the death rate. In short, I would look for another idea.”

But the psychological, social and economic experimentation are by no means the end of it. We have now moved on to the medical experimentation, by which I mean the giving of so-called “vaccines” to millions of people (so-called because they don’t actually stop people getting the virus, and it is not yet known whether they prevent transmission).

Incredibly, if you look at the Pfizer BioNTech SE Clinical Study Trial on the US National Library of Medicine Clinical Trials database, you will notice something very odd, which is that the Estimated Study Completion Date is on January 31^st 2023. This is:

“the date on which the last participant in a clinical study was examined or received an intervention/treatment to collect final data for the primary outcome measures, secondary outcome measures, and adverse events.”

In other words, the medium to long-term side effects of this product cannot possibly be known, because the study is still ongoing. The long and short of it, as Professor Sucharit Bhakdi points out in this excellent interview (watch it soon before the YouTube Gatekeepers scrub it) is this: every single person now getting these jabs is effectively an unwitting test subject in the largest medical experiment ever carried out, having been asked to give their consent to receive a product injected into their bodies without being properly informed as to the status of the product.

Simply put, neither those administering these jabs nor those receiving them can have any idea of the potential medium to long-term consequences of these things, because the companies producing them have not completed the studies on them. And no, it is not the mark of an anti-vaxxer to be deeply concerned about this (I am not); it is just the mark of having one’s critical faculties in working order and of caring about what is being done to people – it’s called Loving Your Neighbour as Yourself.

In summary, both Lockdowns and the “vaccines” are essentially a mass experiment on humanity. The mid to long-term consequences of both are entirely unknown. Future generations will marvel at how the authorities were able to do this, but they will marvel even more at how millions of people acquiesced without much thought. None of this can possibly bode well. We need to humble ourselves and take a long hard look at what we are doing, or allowing to be done to us, as a matter of the utmost urgency.

*

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***

Anti-government protests under the pretext of the detention of the notorious Russian opposition leader Navalny took place in various cities across the country.

They were characterized by underwhelming attendance, claims of grandeur and awkward attempts at spreading violence. Protests were immediately endorsed by the Washington establishment. Notably, the United States Embassy in Moscow published detailed times and locations of unsanctioned rallies. Some Western leaders have made direct calls for an escalation of violence.

The entire situation resembled a staged performance that took place just days after the US President Joe Biden was inaugurated. The Russian scare narrative has already been pushed by the US Democrats and the US MSM for a long time. It is expected that the new Administration policy regarding Moscow will become even more hawkish. The detention of Alexey Navalny will be simply used as a justification for further aggressive actions against Russia. It fits perfectly with the Washington concept of cultivating an image of an unpredictable and irreconcilable foreign enemy to American values and democracy in general.

It is quite evident that Alexey Navalny, his sponsors, teammates and supporters were fully aware that he would get arrested when he returned to Russia. This could have been entirely avoided if he simply returned a bit earlier. He would thus meet the terms of his suspended sentence over the corruption and bribery in Russia. But then there would be no reason to protest.

Navalny even published a dramatic address saying that he had no desire to kill himself, to avoid any potential scenarios and being used as a sacrifice for the greater neo-liberal good.

As the hubs of the neo-liberal agenda in Russia, Moscow and Saint Petersburg hosted the largest protests. Protests in other regions were much smaller. However, there were even those protesting in extreme temperatures, showing that there is a motivated and unrelenting core.

The protest attendance, against the entire population of the cities, however, pales and shows an unimpressive turnout.

Reports of attendance vary, with some claiming at least 40,000 gathered in Moscow, with the authorities putting the number at merely 4,000. Others claimed that the numbers somewhere in the middle.

In Saint Petersburg, Kommersant reported that there was an attendance of about 5,000.

Other cities with a significant protest presence include Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Vladivostok and Nizhny Novgorod.

The Russian branch of the BBC said that protests took place in 122 towns and cities across the country.

It appears that there was little friction among the general population. A notable part of protesters were likely paid. The core consisted of various unemployed idlers, young city hipsters, liberals and different minorities. A significant presence was seen from youths and minors, who were subjected to a large-scale social media campaign.

Many videos were released claiming police violence. Every video showed the same situation – an individual rushing towards police and attempting to assault the officers, and then getting detained in return.

There were no casualties, however, not from the side of the authorities, nor from the protesters. Evident attempts at causing casualties, by involving minors and youths, were obviously made, but they failed.

Fake news also became the integral part of this anti-government campaign. They were mostly dedicated to alleged killings and incredible numbers of arrests by the authorities. These messages were actively endorsed by mainstream social media, including the Chinese-operated TikTok. While Washington, which prefers to see the Russian statehood destroyed, Beijing is also not averse to use the situation for getting additional leverage on the Kremlin to strengthen its own position in joint projects. As a result, the narrative is being constructed as a “political persecution”.

The side shouting “witch hunt” the most, is the United States, whose administration referred to half of its population of Trump supporters as “domestic terrorists”, and “fascists” for not supporting the establishment of the neo-liberal agenda.

Despite the lack of success in the protests, this was simply a dress rehearsal. It is used to pave the way for a large-scale campaign to undermine Russia’s stability and compromise its statehood.

It seems that the ramping up of the destabilization attempts is scheduled for September 2021, – the period of the Russian general election that will include the next legislative election and the election of 11 governors. The liberal opposition has already proven that it is ready to even sacrifice children in order to achieve the ambitions of its sponsors. If the Russian government does not employ preventive measures, these people will easily find large support from Russia’s geopolitical opponents. Next time staged anti-government protests can ‘accidentally coincide’ with industrial disasters, cyberattacks, and even terrorist attacks.

*

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La Nato guarda al futuro. Per questo il Segretario generale Jens Stoltenberg ha convocato, il 4 febbraio in videoconferenza, studenti e giovani leader dei paesi dell’Alleanza perché propongano «nuove idee per la Nato 2030».

L’iniziativa rientra nel crescente coinvolgimento di università e scuole, anche con un concorso sul tema: «Quali saranno le maggiori minacce alla pace e alla sicurezza nel 2030 e come la Nato dovrà adattarsi per contrastarle?».

Per svolgere il tema i giovani hanno già il libro di testo: «Nato 2030 / United for a New Era», il rapporto presentato dal gruppo di dieci esperti nominato dal Segretario generale. Tra questi Marta Dassù che,  dopo essere stata consigliera di politica estera del premier Massimo D’Alema durante la guerra Nato alla Jugoslavia, ha ricoperto importanti incarichi nei successivi governi ed è stata nominata dal premier Matteo Renzi nel consiglio di amministrazione di Finmeccanica (oggi Leonardo), la maggiore industria bellica italiana.

Qual è la «nuova era» che prospetta il gruppo di esperti?

Dopo aver definito la Nato «l’alleanza di maggiore successo nella storia», che ha «posto fine a due guerre» (quelle contro la Jugoslavia e la Libia che invece è stata la Nato a scatenare), il rapporto traccia il quadro di un mondo caratterizzato da «Stati autoritari che cercano di espandere la loro potenza e influenza», ponendo agli Alleati Nato «una sfida sistemica in tutti i campi della sicurezza e dell’economia».

Capovolgendo i fatti, il rapporto sostiene che, mentre la Nato ha teso amichevolmente la mano alla Russia, questa ha risposto con «l’aggressione nell’area Euro-Atlantica» e, violando gli accordi, ha «provocato la fine del Trattato sulle forze nucleari intermedie». La Russia, sottolineano i dieci esperti, è «la principale minaccia che ha di fronte la Nato in questo decennio». Allo stesso tempo – sostengono – la Nato ha di fronte crescenti «sfide alla sicurezza poste dalla Cina», le cui attività economiche e tecnologie possono avere «un impatto sulla difesa collettiva e la preparazione militare nell’area di responsabilità del Comandante Supremo Alleato in Europa» (che è sempre un generale Usa nominato dal Presidente degli Stati uniti).

Dopo aver lanciato l’allarme su queste e altre «minacce», che verrebbero anche dal Sud del mondo, il rapporto dei dieci esperti raccomanda di «cementare la centralità del legame transatlantico», ossia il legame dell’Europa con gli Stati uniti nell’alleanza sotto comando Usa.

Raccomanda allo stesso tempo di «rafforzare il ruolo politico della Nato», sottolineando che «gli Alleati devono rafforzare il Consiglio Nord Atlantico», il principale organo politico dell’Alleanza che si riunisce a livello dei ministri della Difesa e deli Esteri e a quello dei capi di stato e di governo.

Poiché secondo le norme Nato esso prende le sue decisioni non a maggioranza ma sempre «all’unanimità e di comune accordo», ossia fondamentalmente d’accordo con quanto deciso a Washington, l’ulteriore rafforzamento del Consiglio Nord Atlantico significa un ulteriore indebolimento dei parlamenti europei, in particolare di quello italiano, già oggi privati di reali poteri decisionali su politica estera e militare.

In tale quadro, il rapporto propone di potenziare le forze Nato in particolare sul fianco orientale, dotandole di «adeguate capacità militari nucleari», adatte alla situazione creatasi con la fine del Trattato sulle forze nucleari intermedie (stracciato dagli Usa). In altre parole, i dieci esperti chiedono agli Usa di accelerare i tempi per schierare in Europa non solo le nuove bombe nucleari B61-12, ma anche nuovi missili nucleari a medio raggio analoghi agli euromissili degli anni Ottanta. Chiedono in particolare di «proseguire e rivitalizzare gli accordi di condivisione nucleare», che permettono a paesi formalmente non-nucleari, come l’Italia, di prepararsi all’uso di armi nucleari sotto comando Usa.

I dieci esperti ricordano, infine, che è indispensabile che tutti gli alleati mantengano l’impegno, preso nel 2014, di aumentare entro il 2024 la propria spesa militare almeno al 2% del pil, il che significa per l’Italia portarla da 26 a 36 miliardi di euro annui. È questo il prezzo da pagare per godere di quelli che il rapporto definisce  «i benefici derivanti dall’essere sotto l’ombrello Nato».

Manlio Dinucci

Immagine

La NATO sceglie Thales per fornire la sua prima nuvola di difesa per le forze armate

Foto : (Nexium Defence Cloud © Thales)

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210125005006/en/   

“Thales è orgogliosa di contribuire alla trasformazione digitale delle forze armate fornendo questa prima soluzione cloud per la difesa tattica, implementabile e certificata. Siamo grati alla NATO per aver rinnovato la loro fiducia nella nostra esperienza in sistemi di informazione e comunicazione sicuri e interoperabili”. Marc Darmon, vicepresidente esecutivo, comunicazioni sicure e sistemi di informazione, Thales.

Informazioni su Thales

Thales (Euronext Paris: HO) è un leader globale dell’alta tecnologia che investe in innovazioni digitali e “deep tech” – connettività, big data, intelligenza artificiale, cybersecurity e tecnologia quantistica – per costruire un futuro di cui tutti possiamo fidarci, che è vitale per lo sviluppo delle nostre società. L’azienda fornisce soluzioni, servizi e prodotti che aiutano i suoi clienti – aziende, organizzazioni e stati – nei mercati della sicurezza, dell’aeronautica, dello spazio, dei trasporti e dell’identità digitale a compiere le loro missioni critiche, mettendo l’uomo al centro del processo decisionale.

Con 83.000 dipendenti in 68 paesi, Thales ha generato un fatturato di 19 miliardi di euro nel 2019 (su una base che include Gemalto su 12 mesi).

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).

***

Anyone who persists in believing that the United States is not Israel’s poodle should pay attention to the comedy that is playing out right now. Joe Biden was president for less than a week when the Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu government announced that he would soon be receiving a possibly unwelcome visitor in the form of the Israeli foreign intelligence service Mossad’s chief Yossi Cohen, who will be flying to Washington in February to explain the correct policy when dealing with Iran.

And lest there be any confusion on the issue, the Israel Defense Force chief of staff Lieutenant General Aviv Kochavi also announced that any Biden attempt to mend fences with the Islamic Republic will have to meet certain conditions or Israel will exercise other options. He said “In light of this fundamental analysis, I have instructed the Israel Defense Forces to prepare a number of operational plans, in addition to those already in place. It will be up to the political leadership, of course, to decide on implementation but these plans need to be on the table.” Another government minister clarified that the options would include “an attack” on Iran, though there has been no indication whether or not Israel would possibly contemplate deploying its tactical nuclear weapons to prevent retaliation by Iranian forces.

There is no limit to Israeli hubris. A leading Rabbi in Israel is predicting that as the United States is in decline it is up to the Jewish state to take over the role of “guiding civilization forward.” And that kind of thinking shapes how Israel treats the United States with condescension, acting as if it is the knowledgeable elder statesman whose guidance must be respected. In this case the Zionist solution to the Iran problem will by design be unpalatable for the government in Tehran if it intends to remain sovereign. For Israel the correct policy for dealing with Iran is to effectively disarm it and make it impossible to establish any sphere of influence in the countries adjacent to it, to include Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. That would be to concede Israeli dominance over the entire region and if the Iranians do not play ball the next step would be to convince the United States to attack it on some pretext, possibly to include an Israeli “false flag” to start the process going.

The Times of Israel sums up the Israeli official position as

“…Iran must halt the enriching of uranium; stop producing advanced centrifuges; cease supporting terror groups, foremost Lebanon’s Hezbollah; end its military presence in Iraq, Syria and Yemen; stop terror activity against Israeli targets overseas; and grant full access to the IAEA on all aspects of its nuclear program.”

Completing the disarming of Iran would also include requiring Tehran to abandon its ballistic missile program.

The irony is, of course, that it is Israel that has a secret nuclear arsenal that it created by stealing uranium and triggers from the United States and it is also the leading regional supporter of terrorist groups, to include al-Qaeda and ISIS. Iran’s presence in Syria is due to its lending assistance to the Damascus government’s resistance to the insurgencies supported by Israel and the United States. And Iran has not targeted Israeli citizens and groups overseas, but Israel and the U.S. have assassinated Iranian officials while also bombing both government and civilian targets in Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. And all of the kinetics occur in a context where Israel continues its illegal occupation of Palestine and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people replete with both war crimes and crimes against humanity. Iran is also a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Israel is not, so who is the rogue state?

Biden will likely fold like a cheap suit when confronted by the force majeure of Cohen. The new American president has assembled a national security team for dealing with the Middle East that is nearly all Jewish and all Zionist, an affliction that he himself claims to suffer from. The Biden nominee for secretary of state Tony Blinken said at a confirmation hearing last week that the new administration would “consult with Israel” before any possible return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal and he also made clear that there would be additional conditions for Iran. It was an odd comment for a government official who is supposed to support American interests, but it was predictably what Congress wanted to hear. As Iran has already indicated that it is unwilling to abandon its defenses and its role in the region, the Biden proposal will be a non-starter in any case, though Israel will be prepared to apply its own veto if anything undertaken by the State Department moves beyond the talking stage.

Currently there is credible speculation that Israeli intelligence has been able to compromise most if not all of the U.S. government’s information systems as well as those of major corporations. As the Jewish state is the most active in spying against the United States, that should surprise no one. For Israel to interfere in U.S. politics or government blatantly is not exactly new, though it is rare to have anyone in the mainstream media or in government say anything about. That is because Israel’s ability to wage war against critics is second to none, having at its back nearly unlimited financial resources and easy access to the media as well as active supporters from among the nearly six hundred Jewish organizations that exist in the United States.

Indeed, Israel has been involved in American politics frequently, one might even argue incessantly, even if it is predictably never held accountable. To cite only one well known example, it has been suggested that Russiagate was really Israelgate based on what actually took place shortly after the 2016 election. The contact with Russia was set up by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who was at the time seeking to kill an anti-Israeli vote in the United Nations. He sought to do so by lobbying Donald Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner on the matter shortly after the 2016 election. Netanyahu was particularly close to the Kushner family, having on at least one occasion slept overnight at their mansion in Manhattan.

Prompted by Netanyahu, Kushner dutifully contacted Trump National Security Advisor-designate Michael Flynn and asked him to privately call Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak to lobby Moscow to vote against the bill. There were two phone calls but Kislyak refused to cooperate. It should be noted that while all of this was taking place Barack Obama was still president and his intention to abstain on a vote on Israel’s illegal settlements is what provoked Netanyahu to act, so Netanyahu-Kushner-Flynn were subverting their own elected government and were definitely in the wrong. Flynn was subsequently thrown under the bus by his Jewish friends without any mention in the media of the Israeli role, thereby becoming the first casualty of “Russiagate.” He was subsequently forced to resign from his post in disgrace in February 2017.

The whole issue of the U.S.-Israel relationship constitutes one of the most formidable “red lines” in American politics as part of its power comes from the fact that the media and political classes pretend that it does not even exist. Israel’s power was poisonous enough prior to the election of Donald Trump, but Trump, “advised” by a gaggle of orthodox Jews, dramatically shifted the playing field to favor Israel in ways that will define the relationship for years to come. Biden’s team is little better and the president will be taking his orders from Jerusalem and saluting as long as he stays in the White House. Will it lead to a totally unnecessary and unwinnable war with Iran? That is what Israel demands above all, and Israel always gets what it wants.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

Philip M. Giraldi is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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***

Today in the West, real history continues to be suppressed and denied. 

The anniversary of the Liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 1945 and Holocaust Remembrance Day every year have been hijacked. They have become bizarre photographic negatives of the horrors they were meant to commemorate and manipulated to insult the millions of victims and the heroic warriors who gave their lives to end such horrors

For who ended the Holocaust? Who actually liberated and shut down every one of the six great Nazi industrialized extermination camp killing centers of death at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Sobibor, Chelmno, Treblinka and Belzec? Why the Soviet Red Army did of course.

They did not just stroll into camps at the end of the war where the cowardly Nazi SS ubermenschen had just fled for their lives to forever after fearfully claim they were “just following orders.” No. From October 1944 when astonished and revolted Red Army soldiers and officers first uncovered the horrors of Majdanek in central Poland to the fierce battle that still cost many lives in the freeing of Auschwitz-Birkenau itself on January 27, 1945, the war was still raging, the Nazi war machine was still fiercely functioning and previous innocent blood had to paid for every yard that was freed.

Yet today, and for many years now, we have entered a world of the Great Moral Inversion. The thousands of precious lives that the extraordinarily dedicated medical staff of Marshal Ivan Konev’s First Ukrainian Front of the Red Army saved at Auschwitz alone are forgotten. Western intellectuals now proclaim a contemptible moral equivalence between those who died fighting to rescue and save, and those who killed them and all the genocide victims.

The scale of this moral inversion – this contemptible behavior that the great Sigmund Freud – whose own sisters and their families died in the Holocaust – identified as “projection,” becomes more huge and disgusting every year. We now know that in addition to the six million Jewish victims of the Nazi genocide, at least 20 million innocent Russian civilians were deliberately exterminated too in 200 smaller camps across the occupied East set up and run for that very purpose. Where are the ceremonies and heartfelt tears in the West for them?

The very commander of the heroic unit that liberated Auschwitz, the 1085th ‘Tarnopol’ Rifle Regiment of Major General Petr Zubov’s 322nd Division, was of Ukrainian Jewish origin himself, Lieutenant Colonel Anatoly Shapiro lived to the age of 92 and eventually died on Long Island in the United States. To the end of his days, he was proud of his lifetime service in the Red Army: He spent the last years of his life combatting the Big Lie of Holocaust denial by neo-Nazis.

By contrast, today in the West, while hypocritical empty crocodile tears are wept over the Nazis’ victims, real history continues to be suppressed, denied and buried beneath mountains of lies. And not coincidentally, new Nazi slugs arise from the garbage piles from Ukraine to Washington. Starting with the 2014 US and European Union-backed coup that murderously toppled the democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych led to the open, defiant emergence of open neo-Nazi militias and forces that continue to weld disproportionate power in Ukraine, backed by the US government to this day.

New US President Joe Biden has already approved the appointment of one of the open architects and champions of the infamous coup, neocon Victoria Nuland, then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, as the new Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs – the position that basically tells Secretary of State Antony Blinken what to think. From Kiev to Moscow, Nuland has been remembered unforgettably as “The Cookie Lady” who openly handed out sweet treats on the streets of Kiev to encourage the rioters who were waging revolution and war on their democratically elected government.

But what goes around comes around. Blowback of course is now happening all across the United States. The mob that blundered into the US Capitol, more by luck and permission than by deliberate armed force, on January 6 was mixed with individuals who were idealistic and admirable as well as contemptible clowns. Several white supremacists among them were proudly photographed in Camp Auschwitz T-shirts. One can only imagine how such vile slugs would scream in terror if confronted with any of Marshal Konev’s brave real warriors.

The 2014 coup is now called with masterly irony in Wikipedia “The Revolution of Dignity.” That is a Big Lie even Josef Goebbels would have envied.

Scores of millions of decent, suffering working class Americans who have been crucified on the crazed policies of global liberalism, open borders and hard drugs on demand for the past half century are now being slandered and conflated with a handful of jerks and agent provocateurs. The new fascism across the West justifies itself by suppressing traditional freedoms and speech by sticking on the Innocent, labels taken from the Guilty.

According to Lev Golinkin, writing on the New York Forward news web site, well over a thousand statues to Nazi war criminals have been erected from the United States to Ukraine over the past 20 years.

“Wherever you see statues of Nazi collaborators, you’ll also find thousands of torch-carrying men, rallying, organizing, drawing inspiration for action by celebrating collaborators of the past,” Golinkin writes.

In Ukraine, where 25 percent of the Jews killed in the Holocaust died: “In 2016, a major Kyiv boulevard was renamed after [Nazi collaborator Stepan] Bandera. The renaming is particularly obscene since the street leads to Babi Yar, the ravine where Nazis, aided by Ukrainian collaborators, exterminated 33,771 Jews in two days, in one of the largest single massacres of the Holocaust,” Golinkin continued.

Yet of course, the Biden administration has made clear it is preparing to send even more lethal weapons to arm the ferociously Russian-hating regime which perpetrates such despicable measures.

This obscene farce unfolds now every year, but it is not even a constant: It is getting worse than ever at an exponentially accelerating rate of intensity. One now has to turn to calculus to grasp it.

It is surely more than an ordinary coincidence that on Holocaust Memorial Day this year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists announced its latest setting of its fearful Doomsday Clock assessing the possible imminence of nuclear war.

The experts who set the clock clearly welcomed Joe Biden replacing Donald Trump as US president, a predictable liberal bigotry. Yet they remained clear-eyed enough, scientific enough to recognize and publicly acknowledge that this would be no improvement at all. The setting of the symbolic clock remains at only 100 seconds to midnight, the closest setting to nuclear war in its 74 year history.

It should have been moved much closer – perhaps to only 75 seconds to catastrophe: For the intensifying phenomena on Western Holocaust denial and projection: The obsession with backing real live 21st century Nazis in Ukraine against the descendants of the very people who died to save the world from them, is now clearly linked to the blowback of emerging white supremacy and leftist anti-Russian conspiracy theories alike in the United States.

Stupid and wicked policies pursued across Eastern Europe have driven US policymakers literally mad – or perhaps just even more insane – and that mania has poisoned and destroyed the fading embers of democratic due process and fair play in the United States itself. The two theaters of madness generating more wickedness are inextricably linked. They cannot be separated.

To truly be a great president and bring the peace at home he claims to cherish, President Biden needs to end at last the disastrous policies in Ukraine and elsewhere that he supported as vice president under Barack Obama. But that would be a new idea – and the new president appears to be incapable of ever accepting such things. Then the obscenity of Holocaust Remembrance Hypocrisy will continue – until its madness brings Destruction upon all.

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During his 24 years as a senior foreign correspondent for The Washington Times and United Press International, Martin Sieff reported from more than 70 nations and covered 12 wars. He has specialized in US and global economic issues.

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The Department of Homeland Security issued on Wednesday a nationwide terror alert lasting until April 30. The alert warns of potential terrorist attacks from Americans who are “ideologically motivated” and have “objections to the exercise of government authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives.”

The language used in this alert suggests that millions of Americans are potential terrorists. Second Amendment supporting, antiwar, anti-tax, anti-politics, anti-militarization, pro-life, and anti-Federal Reserve activists certainly have “objections to the exercise of government authority.” They are certainly viewed by the political class and its handmaidens in big tech and the mainstream media as ideological extremists. Anyone who gets his news from sources other than mainstream media or big tech, or who uses certain “unapproved” social media platforms, is considered to have had his grievances “fueled by false narratives.” For something to be considered a false narrative, it need only contradict the “official” narrative.

The “domestic terrorist” alert is the latest sign that activities on January 6 on Capitol Hill, like the attacks of September 11, 2001, are being used to advance a long-standing anti-liberty agenda. Legislation expanding the federal government’s authority to use its surveillance and other unconstitutional powers against “domestic terrorists” is likely to soon be considered by Congress. Just as the PATRIOT Act was written years before 2001, this legislation was written long before January 6. The bill’s proponents are simply taking advantage of the hysteria following the so-called insurrection to push the bill onto the congressional agenda.

Former CIA Director John Brennan recently singled out libertarians as among the people the government should go after. This is not the first time libertarians have been smeared. In 2009, a federally-funded fusion center identified people who supported my presidential campaign, my Campaign for Liberty, or certain Libertarian and Constitution parties candidates as potentially violent extremists.

The idea that libertarianism creates terrorists is absurd. Libertarians support the non-aggression principle, so they reject using force to advance their political goals. They rely instead on peaceful persuasion.

Libertarianism is being attacked because it does not support just reforming a few government policies. Instead, it presents a formidable intellectual challenge to the entire welfare-warfare state.

The ultimate goal of those pushing for a crackdown on “domestic terrorism” is to make people unwilling to even consider “radical” ideas — to make people so afraid of certain ideas that they refuse to even give those ideas a fair hearing.

Progressives who are tempted to support what is being promoted as a crackdown on right-wing violence should consider the history of government harassment of progressive movements and leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr. What do they think a future right-wing authoritarian would do if given power to go after “ideological extremists”?

All Americans who cherish the Bill of Rights should come together to stop this latest crackdown on liberty. My Campaign for Liberty will be mobilizing Americans to stop passage of any domestic terrorism legislation, while my Institute for Peace and Prosperity and my Liberty Report will provide Americas with the most up-to-date information about the continuing attempts to smear those who speak the truth about government lies.

(You can watch the Ron Paul Liberty Report live on YouTube Monday-Friday at noon, eastern time.)

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The United States has occupied certain parts of Syrian territory and is stealing and plundering the war-torn country’s national resources, says a political analyst.

Author and political analyst Mark Taliano told Press TV on Saturday that the US had never been invited, nor ever will be invited into Syria, and military American forces occupation and killing of the men, women and children in the country constituted a war crime.

The Canada-based analyst pointed out that the US military had absolutely no legitimacy and legal basis to justify its occupation of Syrian territory.

Taliano pointed out the US forces were “not guarding the oil. They are stealing the oil, looting, plundering. These are war crimes.”

He said that even the al-Qaeda and Daesh were both creations of the US government to push ahead with its imperialistic agenda.

Taliano said both the Republicans and Democrats, who portray themselves to the public as being progressive, were accomplices in this crime and guilty in this regard, adding that the US military was in Syria to “support terrorism and plunder and loot, and destroy the country. That’s what imperialists do.”

Democratic President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Pentagon’s Middle East Desk Dana Stroul had said that the US military “owns” the resource-rich north eastern territory in Syria

Taliano pointed out that the American politicians, who portray themselves to the American public as progressives opposed to the US pursuance of imperialistic crimes across the globe, were delusional.

“Any progressive person who votes for this kind of supreme high criminality is not progressive,” he noted. He said it was high time that Americans break the chains and shackles of delusion and liberate themselves from further ignorance and slavery.

Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

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In 2011, Obama/Biden announced their Asia pivot to advance America’s military in a part of the world where it doesn’t belong.

What’s gone on for the last decade continues under Biden/Harris.

It’s all about seeking to weaken, contain, and isolate China — aiming to undermine the nation politically, economically, industrially, technologically and militarily.

A similar strategy is used against Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and other nations on the US target list for regime change.

The ultimate aim is wanting them transformed into pro-Western vassal states, their sovereignty lost to a higher power in Washington.

The policy consistently fails, yet continues unabated, how the scourge of US imperialism operates — notably by waging endless wars by hot and other means on invented enemies.

No real ones exist so they have to be invented.

The longstanding strategy is contributing to Washington’s decline, yet persists anyway.

After being confirmed as Biden/Harris war secretary, Lloyd Austin spoke to Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, and his counterparts in Japan, South Korea, Australia and India.

Biden’s double represents him publicly because the real Joe Biden is too cognitively impaired to conduct affairs of state — a disturbing situation suppressed by establishment media, supporting the ruse.

Remarks below largely refer to Biden’s double, not the hollow shell of what remains of the measure of the man in his current state.

“Biden” and Japanese Prime Minister Suga reportedly discussed Washington’s unwavering commitment to the defense of Japan under Article 5 of their mutual security treaty — at a time when neither the US or Japan face real threats, just invented ones, mainly nonbelligerent China threatening no one.

Austin reportedly told his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh that the US remains committed to the US-India Major Defense Partnership.

US engagement with other nations is all about confronting China and other nations free from its control.

According to international relations expert Li Haidong:

“Biden is trying to woo US partners in the Indo-Pacific region by sending goodwill signals.”

“Those signals carried a clear message that joining hands with partners in this region to counter China will still be a major goal of Biden’s Indo-Pacific policy.”

Biden/Harris are likely to continue Trump’s anti-China agenda — couched in different rhetoric, objectives similar.

Li added that “(t)he core of the US’ Indo-Pacific strategy is to kick off an all-round strategic competition with China. We should have a clear picture of it.”

According to China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhou Lijian:

“The US-Japan security treaty is a product of the Cold War.”

“It should not jeopardize the interests of a third party, nor should it put regional peace and stability in risk.”

International affairs expert Wang Yiwei believes that Japan, India, and other Indo-Pacific countries are leery about Washington’s regional aims, adding:

They prioritize their own interests that often differ from Washington’s, notably on relations with China — a valued trade partner too important to lose.

They also understand that US relations with other countries prioritize its own interests that often differ sharply from allied nations it seeks to co-opt in furthering them.

They understand chaotic conditions in Washington in the run-up to and aftermath of last November’s election.

They also know that “US meddling is destroying regions such as the Middle East,” Wang explained, adding:

“(T)hey are cautious about siding with the US (in) an all-round confrontation with China. Regional stability matters to all of them.”

Britain, France, Germany, and other European countries value normal trade and investment relations with China — so differ with Washington on these issues.

Before taking office, dark forces controlling Biden/Harris signaled continued US toughness on China.

According to a European Council on Foreign Relations report on EU and UK relations with China, these countries are neutral toward hardline US policies toward Beijing.

About one-third of European countries are leery about trusting the US going forward because of Trump’s geopolitical agenda.

The Sino/European investment deal shows uncertainty about US leadership longterm because of China’s growing economic power.

Blinken reportedly told his Philippines counterpart Teodoro Locsin that the US defense treaty with the island state includes the South China Sea.

Policies of Biden/Harris will likely continue Obama/Biden’s Asia pivot.

Politico reported that the new US regime in charge “wants to avoid another quagmire in the Middle East” so intend to focus heavily on the Indo-Pacific.

Reported architect of Obama/Biden’s Asia pivot Kurt Campbell was appointed head of Biden/Harris’ Indo-Pacific affairs.

He prioritizes great power competition with China and Russia.

On Friday, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said the US must be “prepared to act (and) impose costs on China on issues relating to Taiwan, Hong Kong, and phony charges of what Pompeo falsely called “genocide” in Xinjiang against its Muslim population.

The new US regime prioritizes countering China, Russia, Iran, and other nations on its target list for regime change.

Hawks dominate Biden/Harris’ geopolitical team.

They’ll likely continue dirty business as usual on the word stage — at the expense of peace, stability and cooperative relations with other nations.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

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***

Myanmar’s military has seized power, detained Aung San Suu Kyi and has begun rounding up members of her National League for Democracy political party. 

I explain how the US has spent decades building ASSK’s political network and installing her into power and how US-backed groups – including those in Thailand – are already mobilizing to undermine not only Myanmar’s political stability – but also that of the entire region.

For a much more in-depth explanation, please view the video below.

I explain why the US had been placing pressure on Aung San Suu Kyi in recent years and why the US is still going to support her and the vast network the US built up in Myanmar to propel her into power regardless.

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This article was originally published on Land Destroyer.

Brian Berletic, formally known under the pen name “Tony Cartalucci” is a geopolitical researcher, writer, and video producer (YouTube here and BitChute here) based in Bangkok, Thailand. He is a regular contributor to New Eastern Outlook and more recently, 21st Century Wire. You can support his work via Patreon here. 

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“The Bolsonaro government has a clear policy for dismantling national environmental policies. It is delegitimizing the federal environmental bodies and its employees, sacking competent staff and appointing ill-prepared people to head departments and ‘flexibilizing’ the regulations that form an important part of environmental policies in every country. He is destroying all this,” Suely Araújo told Mongabay. She is a senior specialist in public policies at Observatório do Clima, a network of Brazilian NGOs working on climate change issues.

What the dismantling of the country’s environmental agencies and policies looks like in practice has been described in detail in a new report, published 22 January by Observatório do Clima. It maps out how the Bolsonaro government has systematically slashed the budget for environmental monitoring and firefighting — reduced by 9.8% in 2020, then by another 27.4% in 2021. The cuts are so sweeping they make it impossible for the nation’s environmental agencies to carry out their work effectively, according to the report.

Critics point out that, if the government was truly committed to environmental protection, these cuts would make no sense at all. Another proof: even as Brazil’s deforestation soars under Bolsonaro (with an increase of 34% in the last two years) federal agencies’ capacity to punish criminals has steeply declined due to chronic funding shortages. The number of fines imposed for illegal deforestation and damage to vegetation, instead of rising with increased criminal activity, has fallen steeply by 42% from August 2019 to July 2020, according to figures supplied by the government’s environment agency, IBAMA.

A side-by-side comparison of rising annual deforestation in square kilometers and the plummeting number of forest-related environmental crimes charged in Brazil from 2014 to 2020. Image by Thais Borges / data by INPE (deforestation) and IBAMA (crimes).

Far from trying to stem deforestation, Observatório do Clima believes the government has a very different goal.

“It is opting not to have environmental policies, to have paralysis,” said Araújo. “The resources going to the Ministry of the Environment and bodies linked to it are so small that reducing them won’t make much difference to the country’s account. When you cut yet further resources that are already insufficient, your goal is to mess things up. It is sabotage. We must remember that, as well as the unacceptably low 2021 budget allocation, the government has refused money from the [internationally supplied] Amazon Fund since January 2019.”

The government’s intention of dismantling environment protections isn’t only apparent in its drastic budget cuts, says the report. The administration has also pushed deregulation and rule changes rapidly, in an “infra-legal” way; that is, moving outside legal processes. Nearly 600 important regulatory changes have been implemented to date with nothing more than a presidential signature.

These key alterations include the “flexibilization” of controls over suspicious Amazon timber exports; attempts to permit oil exploration in sensitive areas, as for example when it endeavored to open up the Abrolhos archipelago, the most diverse marine region in the South Atlantic, to oil exploration; the cramming of military officers into environmental bodies; and the proposed merging of ICM-Bio (the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation which administers the nation’s protected areas), with IBAMA.

The approach to the government’s wholesale environmental deregulation, says the report, was revealed by Brazilian Environment Minister Ricardo Salles at a meeting of state government ministers on 22 April 2020, which was videotaped. The government tried to prevent the video being made public, but its release was forced by a ruling on 22 May by judge Celso de Mello, who heads the Federal Supreme Court (STF).

Using a phrase during the meeting that has since become famous across Brazil, Salles urged the state governors to take advantage of the mainstream media’s hyper-focus on the COVID-19 pandemic in order to get to work “passando a boiada” (pushing through the cattle). That’s a ranching term originally referring to the rounding up of cattle to quickly get them across a river — a phrase which Observatório do Clima used as the title to its report. Salles was explicit in his meaning: “There’s an enormous list of things we can simplify in all the ministries that have a regulatory role. We don’t need Congress,” he said.

An IBAMA agent on an illegal deforestation raid inside Jamanxim National Forest in Pará state, Brazil, previous to Jair Bolsonaro’s rise to power in January 2019. The Bolsonaro administration has largely defunded IBAMA, greatly diminishing its capacity to make such raids. Jamanxim today is seeing an extraordinary rate of illegal deforestation. Image courtesy of IBAMA.

Mongabay contacted Brazil’s Environment Ministry for a comment on the allegations made in the report. As of the time the article went to press, the ministry had not replied.

But, says the report, Bolsonaro’s policies face pushback in Congress, the judiciary and civil society. The government ended 2020 facing four high-impact lawsuits which are going before the Federal Supreme Court (STF), addressing attempts to dismantle environmental policies. Earlier, the STF imposed defeats on the administration by requiring explicit policies to better protect Indigenous peoples and force it to supply emergency help to combat COVID-19 outbreaks in Indigenous territories.

The dismantling of environmental policies has also been clearly aimed at traditional communities, including Indigenous peoples. But there are other ways in which indigenous peoples have been deliberately targeted by the Bolsonaro government.

The Observatório do Clima gives several examples: Normative Ruling no.9, issued by the indigenous agency, FUNAI, permits private landowners to claim land in Indigenous territories, provided the Indigenous land hasn’t been fully demarcated; and Draft Law 191/2020, regulates economic activities, such as mining and logging, and the construction of hydroelectric dams within Indigenous territories. Add to that Bolsonaro’s diatribes against Indigenous people in which he encourages invasions of Indigenous land, invasions which, according to the Catholic Church’s Indigenous Council CIMI, increased 135% in 2019.

Cacique (chief) Raoni Metuktire, head of the Kayapo Indigenous people. Photo credit: European Committee of the Regions on Visualhunt / CC BY-NC-SA

International Criminal Court asked to investigate

Faced with Bolsonaro’s gutting of federal environmental agencies and protections and his anti-Indigenous policies, two Brazilian Indigenous caciques — Chief Raoni Metuktire, head of the Kayapo people, and Chief Almir Surui, leader of the Surui group — have asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague to investigate President Bolsonaro for “crimes against humanity.” The charges are wide-ranging, with Bolsonaro being accused of deaths, extermination of Indigenous people, forced migration, slavery, and for carrying out anti-environmental policies.

One of the caciques, Raoni Metuktire, aged about 90, said last year:

“Ï have seen many presidents come and go, but none spoke so badly of Indigenous people or threatened us and the forest like this one. Since he [Bolsonaro] became president, he has been the worst for us.”

This is not the first time that charges have been brought against Bolsonaro at the ICC. Three attempts have been made to charge him with “crimes against humanity” because of negligence in his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Each time the Brazilian government has refused to comment. Mongabay contacted the presidency for comment with respect to the caciques’ charges and, as of the time this article went to press, had not received a reply.

A Paris-based lawyer, William Bourdon, is acting on behalf of the Indigenous leaders in the case. He told Mongabay that the ICC has a “subsidiary jurisdiction” to that of national courts and can only get involved when the latter refuse to prosecute or are unable to. Bourdon explained: “In this case, the principle of subsidiarity [jurisdiction] is satisfied because the Brazilian judicial authorities refuse to prosecute and… are also unable to do so.” He said that Bolsonaro would likely be charged with “crimes against humanity perpetuated in the broader context of environment crime.” In other words, he added, if the case goes forward, Bolsonaro will likely be charged with “ecocide.”

In coming months, ICC Chief Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda will need to determine whether or not there are sufficient grounds for an investigation of Bolsonaro. There is no deadline for a decision, but Bourdon told Mongabay that it is a matter of great urgency. “Bolsonaro wants to destroy these Indigenous communities. We have a collective duty to protect them.”

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Featured image: Illegal mining, deforestation and stream destruction within the Yanomami Indigenous Reserve in northern Brazil. The Bolsonaro government has yet to successfully curb this invasion by more than 20,000 illegal miners. Image by Chico Batata / Greenpeace.

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The New York Times explained how the government poured $18.5 billion into experimental, fast-tracked vaccines, leaving doctors with “woefully few” drugs to treat the sick. But the author neglected to explain why that happened.

On Jan. 30, the New York Times published an article, “How the Search for COVID-19 treatments Faltered While Vaccines Sped Ahead.” The article bemoaned the fact that “nearly a year into the coronavirus pandemic, as thousands of patients are dying every day in the United States and widespread vaccination is still months away, doctors have precious few drugs to fight the virus.”

According to the Times:

“The government poured $18.5 billion into vaccines, a strategy that resulted in at least five effective products at record-shattering speed. But its investment in drugs was far smaller, about $8.2 billion, most of which went to just a few candidates, such as monoclonal antibodies. Studies of other drugs were poorly organized.

“The result was that many promising drugs that could stop the disease early, called antivirals, were neglected. Their trials have stalled, either because researchers couldn’t find enough funding or enough patients to participate.”

The article also pointed out that in many cases, “researchers have been left on their own to set up trials without the backing of the federal government or pharmaceutical companies.”

The Times article was informative, but it failed to answer the most basic and important question: Why did this happen?

The answer to that question is fairly simple. And the situation we find ourselves in now was as preventable as it was predictable.

As far back as March 2020, Children’s Health Defense was well aware of the direction our federal agencies were headed. That’s when we ran this short video and accompanying article posing this question: “How should America respond to the coronavirus pandemic? With therapeutic drugs or a vaccine?”

In our article, published March 27, we cited a March 16 MSNBC interview conducted by Rachel Maddow with Dr. Ian Lipkin, director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia School of Public Health. In the interview, Lipkin acknowledged that our national priorities for tackling the pandemic were being driven by a desire to create new patents and in turn, new profits.

Lipkin told Maddow:

“We are not investing as much in tried and true classical sort of methods, repurposing drugs and strategies that have already been shown to work. Most of our investment is in things which are sexy, new and patentable.”

Indeed, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in partnership with Moderna, began developing a new vaccine before a single COVID case had appeared in the U.S.

The first batch of the Moderna vaccine was completed within 42 days of the company obtaining genetic information on the coronavirus.

NIAID, which operates under the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and is directed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, is a joint patent holder with Moderna on its COVID vaccine. Through royalties, Fauci’s agency and employees stand to profit immensely.

The NIH Office of Technology Transfer FY 2014 annual report explains how royalties collected on product sales, primarily drugs and biologics, accounted for 84% of the $138 million in royalties collected by NIH in 2014. The three best-selling products utilizing technology licensed from NIH that year were a novel protease inhibitor for the treatment of HIV-1, Merck’s Gardasil vaccine and AstraZeneca’s Synagis, a monoclonal antibody for the treatment of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) in infants.

In December 2020, the U.S Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved Moderna and PfizerCOVID vaccines for emergency use in the U.S. The secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services then made the official emergency use declarations for the Moderna and Pfizervaccines.

The FDA’s emergency use approval paved the way for the NIAID and Fauci to start cashing in on the vaccines.

So, back to the New York Times article and the point it makes — that the government poured $18.5 billion into COVID vaccines, but only about $8.2 billion in to therapeutics — and our question: Why?

The answer lies in FDA regulations for approving a drug, including a COVID vaccine, for emergency use. Section 564 §360bbb-3 of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act states that the FDA commissioner may allow unapproved medical products or unapproved uses of approved medical products to be used in an emergency to diagnose, treat, or prevent serious or life-threatening diseases only when “there is no adequate, approved, and available alternative to the product for diagnosing, preventing, or treating such disease or condition.”

In other words, if non-vaccine therapeutics for COVID, such as vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc or the inexpensive treatment protocol developed by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance had been approved as viable treatments for COVID, the experimental mRNA Moderna and Pfizer vaccines wouldn’t have been eligible for Emergency Use Authorization by the FDA.

Instead, Moderna and Pfizer would have been required to go through the normal licensing procedure for vaccines, including more extensive safety testing. That would have taken longer, and perhaps led to safety concerns that might have kept them from ever being approved. Either scenario would have cut into profits for NIAID and the vaccine makers and jeopardized millions of dollars in royalties.

As we wrote in March 2020:

“In light of the immunity from liability guaranteed by the PREP (Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness) Act during declared emergencies, fast-tracked vaccines are a sweetheart deal for both biopharma and government. A safer and common-sense approach would direct resources toward examining the merits of existing therapeutics that can be put to immediate use. The government must not allow Big Pharma and biotech companies to cash in on this catastrophe with speculative, patentable vaccines at the expense of the therapeutics needed to save lives now.”

Unfortunately, the fast-tracked vaccine ship has sailed, and we are now just beginning to see the consequences of the government’s decision to put all of its eggs in the vaccine basket in the form of thousands of vaccine injury reports, including possible hundreds of deaths since Jan. 22.

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Less than one week after advising Americans that wearing two or even three masks would be ‘more effective’ against the spread of coronavirus, Dr Fauci has done a complete 180 (again) and admitted that there is no data to suggest it will make any difference.

After Fauci made the comments last week, the media began to push the idea that two masks wasn’t enough, and that people need to wear three, or even four masks.

However, during an interview at the weekend, Fauci completely contradicted his own comments from the previous week.

Fauci on double masking:

“There’s no data that indicates that that is going to make a difference” pic.twitter.com/ptVivQfuwt

— Eli Klein (@TheEliKlein) January 31, 2021

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, given that Fauci has flip-flopped continuously on masks, having originally said that “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask,” and that they are little more than symbolic.

Later, Fauci fully embraced the masks and stated that they ‘need to stay on’ until everyone is vaccinated.

As we previously highlighted, it went from wearing a mask to now wearing two masks being the best way virtue signal.

Why concern yourself with trivial matters such as breathing when the wearing of multiple face coverings is so effective in delivering social media clout?

Don’t let the fact that there is no evidence masks do anything get in the way of that dopamine hit.

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The threat of mandatory covid vaxxing by federal, state, local authorities, and/or employers, businesses across the board, schools, and for access to public places should terrify everyone.

As explained earlier, all vaccines contain hazardous to health toxins and should be avoided.

Covid vaccines already showed they’re extremely dangerous because of their fast-tracked development, inadequate testing, experimental technology, and numerous adverse events from vaxxing, including deaths.

High risks to health will be best understood after the fact when it’s too late to undo likely widespread harm to countless numbers of vaxxed people.

Because of the hazards posed by covid vaccines and their inadequate testing, they’re unapproved by the FDA — yet are being used anyway under so-called emergency conditions that don’t exist.

They’re invented, not real, to push mass-vaxxing with what demands mass rejection to protect health and well-being.

FDA guidelines for use of Pfizer and Moderna covid vaccines explain their unapproved status, stating:

“There is no US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved vaccine to prevent COVID-19.”

Pfizer and Moderna [mRNA] covid vaccines are “unapproved,” adding:

These vaccines “may not protect everyone…The duration of (alleged) protection against COVID-19 is currently unknown.”

FDA acknowledged potential side effects include “pain, tenderness and swelling of the lymph nodes in the same arm of the injection, swelling (hardness), redness, fatigue, headache, muscle pain, joint pain, chills, nausea and vomiting, fever, (and at times)  severe allergic reaction.”

The latter includes “difficulty breathing, swelling of your face and throat, a fast heartbeat, a bad rash all over your body, dizziness, weakness,” and possible anaphylactic shock that risks death.

Omitted by the FDA are potential longer-term threats that include major illnesses like cancer, diabetes, autism, and heart disease.

Vaccines don’t protect as claimed. When used as directed, they risk serious harm to health and well-being — why avoiding them is crucial.

The FDA, HHS, CDC, and other US public health agencies protect Pharma, not ordinary Americans, from harm when using vaccines and other drugs that are potentially hazardous to health.

Many noted doctors and scientists warned against use of covid vaccines because of potentially hazardous side effects.

Mandatory covid vaxxing if ordered in the US will breach the Nuremberg Code, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), and other international laws.

A previous article explained that US workers can be let go by employers for refusing to be vaxxed — with exceptions for religious and medical reasons, not easily gotten at times.

It’s largely an issue for individual states and local communities to set standards.

Along with federal authorities, state and local ones most often favor monied interests over the public welfare.

Promoting mass-vaxxing for covid is intense, potential harm to health ignored.

While federal, state and local authorities can mandate vaxxing, Children’s Health Defense president Mary Holland and vaccine rights attorney Greg Glaser explained the following:

Pfizer and Moderna covid vaccines are OK’d for emergency use only.

“Under 21 U.S.C. § 360bbb-3, “authorization (of) medical products for use in emergencies,” cannot be mandatory because what’s OK’d under these conditions hasn’t received FDA approval.

Holland and Glaser further explained that federal emergency authorization use “trumps state (and local communities’) law.”

According to the FDA:

The agency “believes that the terms and conditions of an EUA issued under section 564 preempt state or local law, both legislative requirements and common-law duties, that impose different or additional requirements on the medical product for which the EUA was issued in the context of the emergency declared under section 564.”

“In an emergency, it is critical that the conditions that are part of the EUA or an order or waiver issued pursuant to section 564A — those that FDA has determined to be necessary or appropriate to protect the public health—be strictly followed, and that no additional conditions be imposed.”

In August 2020, CDC executive secretary of its Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices Dr. Amanda Cohn said the following:

“(U)nder an Emergency Use Authorization, an EUA, vaccines are not allowed to be mandatory.”

“So, early in this vaccination phase, individuals will have to be consented and they won’t be able to be mandated.”

“A private party, such as an employer, school or hospital, cannot circumvent the EUA law.”

“Nowhere in the (FDA’s) fact sheet does it specify that a person may be fired from their employment, denied education, disciplined or otherwise discriminated against for refusal” to be vaxxed against covid.

The FDA Fact Sheet for the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine (and Moderna’s) states:

“It is your choice to receive or not receive” vaxxing for covid.

“Should you decide not to receive it, it will not change your standard medical care.”

“(P)eople cannot lose healthcare coverage for refusal,” Holland and Glaser explained — nor be punished in other ways.

If private businesses or other entities go another way, they’ll be subject of civil liability actions against their practices, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Key is that what’s legally the case now may change ahead.

At some point, one or more covid vaccines are likely to receive FDA approval.

If and when it happens, federal, state, and local communities can legally mandate covid vaxxing for access to public places.

Employers, schools, and other entities will be free to act in similar fashion.

If mass-vaxxing for covid is mandated ahead, the potential for widespread harm to health will be enormous.

Mass-action will be vital, aided by competent legal help, to protect what’s too precious to lose.

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Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

VISIT MY WEBSITE: stephenlendman.org (Home – Stephen Lendman). Contact at [email protected].

My two Wall Street books are timely reading:

“How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion, and Class War”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/how-wall-street-fleeces-america/

“Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity”

https://www.claritypress.com/product/banker-occupation-waging-financial-war-on-humanity/

Featured image is by Renzo Velez / POGO

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***

On 25 September 2020, the Swiss Parliament passed a revision of the federal anti-terrorism law. This new law provoked many protests, some quite vehement, including the launch of a national referendum.

One of the main instruments of direct democracy as practised in Switzerland, the people’s referendum allows the citizenry to vote to approve or nullify laws voted by Parliament. To organize such a vote, 50,000 valid signatures are required (from an overall population of 8.6 million) accompanied by each signatory’s legal address, subsequently certified by the relevant authorities. Owing to the pandemic, the collection of signatures has been done mainly on-line, and the result seems to have already exceeded double the required number.

This popular reaction to the new legislation is very welcome because, according to the website of those who launched the referendum (https://detentions-arbitraires-non.ch/), the new law would abolish the presumption of innocence: “The measures provided for in the law are not to be ordered by a court, but by the police on the basis of mere suspicion (no evidence needed). This violates the European Convention on Human Rights” to which Switzerland is a party.

The website points out further violations of the European Convention:

“One can be placed under house arrest for up to nine months without evidence, on mere suspicion. This would make us the first and only Western country to have such arbitrary deprivation of liberty. The only exception: the USA with its camps in Guantanamo.”

Even more disturbing, the new law violates the Convention on the Rights of the Child, for its measures allow the imposition of compulsory registration and a ban on minors 12 years and up leaving the country, as well as house arrest from the age of 15. The protection of minors is thus seriously undermined.

Fifty law professors from Switzerland have communicated their concerns to the federal government (the Federal Council): see this.

And experts from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights itself warned that this new legislation violates international human rights standards in the way that it expands the definition of terrorism, and would set a dangerous precedent for the suppression of political dissent worldwide.

The experts were particularly alarmed that the bill’s new definition of ‘terrorist activity’ no longer requires the prospect of any crime at all. On the contrary, it may encompass even lawful acts aimed at influencing or modifying the constitutional order, such as legitimate activities of journalists, civil society and political activists.

The experts also warned against sections of the bill that would give the federal police extensive authority to designate “potential terrorists” and to decide on preventive measures against them without meaningful judicial oversight.

Under the guise of the ‘fight against terrorism’, many governments seek to suppress any legitimate criticism of the neoliberal economic model. Thus, laws supposedly created to ‘defend democracy’ are actually instruments in defence of a particular economic order: neoliberalism. What is new in this Swiss legislation is the possibility of criminalisation of young people from the age of 12 (!), as mentioned above.

The obvious target of such criminalisation is the climate movement. An increasing number of young people have taken to the streets in various parts of the world with clear and forceful criticism of the lack of effective action by governments in relation to the seriousness of global warming, drawing attention above all to the contradiction between neoliberal capitalism and environmental preservation. This movement has grown exponentially in Switzerland, becoming a political force to be reckoned with.

In September 2018, for example, the largest demonstration ever recorded in the history of the city of Bern occurred: some 100,000 people, mostly young, took to the streets in protest. This movement had a decisive effect on the parliamentary elections that followed in October, leading the Green Party to obtain the largest vote in its history.

On 21 September 2020, the young activists occupied Bern’s Federal Square, in front of the Parliament building. This action produced a considerable stir the international media, and messages of support to the activists came from various parts of the world, including from the Landless Movement (MST) and several parliamentarians from Brazil. (See this)

The occupation, which was totally peaceful, was shut down by the police and triggered reactions that were not without overtones of outright hysteria from many members of parliament and a major part of the Swiss media, all of whom condemned the activists’ ‘illegal’ action. Some parliamentarians even asked the intelligence service to investigate the young people. More recently, another Swiss parliamentarian compared the occupation to the invasion of the U.S. Capitol by far-right demonstrators!

Under the new law, most of the young people involved in the occupation could be accused of ‘terrorism’ – and punished accordingly. Thus, fighting for the future of the planet has become a ‘crime’ to be punished by the state!

But how was it possible that legislation allowing the criminalisation of children from the age of 12 as ‘terrorists’ was proposed and approved by the parliament of a country as democratic and enlightened as Switzerland?

Such legislation has long been the dream of the extreme right in Brazil, which has fought fiercely for the possibility of criminalising both social movements and young people. Bolsonaro and his supporters would love to enact similar legislation in Brazil and will probably try to follow this Swiss example.

The political forces in Switzerland behind this law have a long history, which is also partly the history of the construction of the neo-liberal order itself.  In an important book, The Road from Mont Pélerin, a collection of essays by several authors on the history of neo-liberalism, Dieter Plehwe wrote in the ‘Introduction’:

The transnational dimension of the local/national history of neoliberalism has been particularly strong in the U.K. and the United States. Switzerland also deserves recognition as a particular transnational neoliberal space because of the hospitality of Swiss neoliberal intellectuals and institutions to Austrian, German, and Italian refugee neoliberals. It was certainly not mere coincidence that the Mont Pélerin Society was founded in this country: only Switzerland provided neoliberal intellectuals the intellectual and institutional space and financial backing needed to organize an international conference of and for neoliberals right after World War II. Until the end of the 1950s, it remained easier for neoliberals to congregate in Switzerland than anywhere else: four of the ten Mont Pélerin Society meetings between 1947 and 1960 took place in Switzerland. It took more than ten years after the war for a meeting to be held in the United States.

Those political and economic forces that made Switzerland so receptive to neoliberal ideology by providing neoliberals the intellectual and institutional space and the financial backing, ahead of any other country, are still very active and are the driving proponents of the new law.

In another essay in The Road from Mont Pélerin Keith Tribe wrote:

What distinguishes neoliberalism from classic liberalism is the inversion of the relationship between politics and economics. Arguments for liberty become economic rather than political, identifying the impersonality of market forces as the chief means for securing popular welfare and personal liberty.

Thus, any criticism of neoliberalism becomes criticism of freedom itself, and should be punished by the State as ‘terrorism’.

And in the same book, Rob van Horn and Philip Mirovsky observed that ‘neoliberalism is first and foremost a theory of how to engineer the state in order to guarantee the success of the market and its most important participants, modern corporations.’

Many of these large corporations have been the target of the climate movement’s most incisive criticism, causing much damage to their corporate public image. It is not surprising, then, that the market’s ‘most important participants’ are behind the drafting of specific legislation to control these ‘abuses’.

That such an anti-terror law has been passed by the Swiss parliament reveals the power of neoliberal ideology within this country and the ability of large corporations to influence governments and legislation even in a recognized democracy such as Switzerland.  At a time when neoliberalism is failing all over the world, a reaction from the neoliberal establishment is to be expected, for neoliberalism can be sustained only by lying, by force or by a combination of the two. But the neo-liberal lie can no longer hoodwink the world’s peoples, for the failure is too visible, too eloquent. Neoliberalism, for its own survival, is left with the use of violence and repression, by all possible means, including legal ones.

Switzerland’s humanitarian and democratic tradition is now in the hands of its young activists. The climate movement has the potential to transcend borders and generations, to unite the North and South of the planet in a common struggle for our mother Earth against those who exploit it. But the combined reaction of economic and state power can be overwhelming, and laws like these clearly show the risks and dangers to which these young people are exposed. It is up to each of us now to support this struggle with the creativity, affection and joy that the preservation of life deserves.

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The administration of former US President Donald Trump, escalated tensions with Beijing to the highest level in recent history in all aspects: economy, technology and military. Global security depends on a stable relationship between the two superpowers. Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse reached out to China expert, Jeff J. Brown for some answers to pertinent questions. 

Jeff J. Brown is author of The China Trilogy ,blogs and podcasts at China Rising Radio Sinoland, is the producer of China Tech News Flash! , and is a co-founder and the curator of the Bioweapon Truth Commission Global Online Library . His forthcoming book, Faster than a Speeding Bullet – the Chinese People’s Unstoppable Socialist Dream for Global Leadership into the 22nd Century, will be released in 2021. He can be reached at [email protected].

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Steven Sahiounie (SS):  The former US President Trump’s administration escalated the tension between Beijing and Washington to the highest level. The biggest loser in the US-China trade war was the United States.

Do you think the new Biden administration will repair the US-China relationship, or will it maintain the escalation of tensions?

Jeff Brown (JB):  I don’t see a lot of change, simply because before Trump, the last US president who acted “presidential” got his brains blown out in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas in 1963. This has been a problem since 1833, when the gangster banksters tried to assassinate US President Andrew Jackson, for closing down their private US central bank, which was printing the people’s money, at interest. We can see with Trump that if you stand up to the oligarchic elite, they will kill you or destroy you.

Trump was no more bellicose or anti-Chinese than every US president/government since 1921, when the Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded, and especially since Mao & Company beat Japan and the West, with the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In fact, the USA and China nearly went to war a number of times in the 1950s-1960s.

Trump simply used the tools at his disposal that the deep state could not manipulate: tariffs, sanctions and embargoes focused on high tech, military, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang and his powerful bully pulpit.

I’m not even sure how much the US lost or gained, since the West’s Big Lie Propaganda Machine (BLPM) spewed anti-Trump projectile vomit from before he even got elected, still do, while censoring any data or news that was and is to his benefit, as reported here.

SS:  The former US administration supported Taiwan in the China-Taiwan dispute. Do you perceive US President Biden as being a fair broker between the two sides?

JB:  Honestly, I don’t think so, except possibly for some cosmetic PR moves.

Chiang Kai-Shek, his fascist KMT and the US military got whipped by Mao Zedong and the Red Army by 1949, running with their tails between their legs to Taiwan. Since then, every US administration has used this renegade China province to try to harass and overthrow the CPC. Arms have continued to pour into the island, preferential trade policies passed and the tacit threat that Uncle Sam will join Taiwan if attacked by the Mainland, have not changed. After Nixon’s overtures to China in 1972, the US mostly adhered to the One-China policy, which they could afford to do, since the West was still far and away much more economically and militarily powerful than the PRC.

But times have changed. Communist-socialist China’s (PPP- purchasing power parity) economy surpassed the US’ in 2014 and is like an unstoppable 600kph maglev train; China Tech is racing past the West at the speed of light and President Xi Jinping has put the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), with its air force, navy, rocket, strategic, armed police and reserve forces on par with, and in a number of cases, outstripping Uncle Sam’s capabilities.

The West’s oligarchic deep state cannon only knows how to shoot in one direction: destroy all peoples and their countries that are not controlled and exploited by them. So, these efforts vis-à-vis China will continue, including pushing the Taiwan issue.

SS:  The former Trump administration perceived the China-Russia growing relationship as a threat. In your opinion, will the Biden administration continue this perception of the strong relationship as a threat to US interests?

JB:  To understand China versus the West, we have to go back in history. Every US administration has worked overtime to keep USSR/Russia and the PRC divided, which they were able to do in 1960, helping orchestrate the Sino-Soviet split. It lasted until Vladimir Putin became Russian president in 2000.

One can only imagine how world history would have been much better for the global 99%, without that cataclysmic, 40-year geopolitical divorce. I think both current leaderships in China and Russia realize that the Sino-Soviet split only served the interests of NATO and they are not going to repeat that tragic mistake, which cascaded disastrously throughout Asia – Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, etc. – to the West’s benefit.

Now, with wise and visionary leadership in both 21st century Moscow and Beijing, Eurangloland has not been able pit these two Asian giants against each other a second time, while working furiously to destroy them individually. On the contrary, global multipolar forces are moving in the opposite direction. With the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), BRICS/BRICS Bank, Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), not to mention the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), it’s more and more difficult for the West’s deep state to impose its will in Asia, like it has so successfully done for much of the last 500 years of colonialism and imperialism.

SS:  The west continues to use the Uyghurs as political pressure upon Beijing. If the west continues to use the Uyghurs as a threat to China, what would be China’s possible response?

JB:  Britain was using Xinjiang (where most of China’s Uyghurs live) and Tibet early in the 20th century, to limit Russia’s influence and possible expansion into its empire, especially India, so this is not new. After the West working furiously to use Tibet and Taiwan to overthrow the CPC, starting in the 1950s, Hong Kong after 1997 and the South China Sea in the 2000s, all ongoing, it was only a matter of time before NATO would use its vast network of global proxy armies, posing as “true religion Islamisists”, to try to subvert China and its 25 million Muslim citizens.

Like the Western oligarchs’ tsunami of endless false flags and psychological warfare, the BLPM can brainwash most of the world’s people to believe absolutely anything they want promote, no matter how preposterous. Perception becomes mass induced delusions of “reality”, even though it is total fiction.

Based on experience, I know the truth. I have traveled throughout China’s Muslim regions and met many people. My family and I lived in a Muslim neighborhood in Beijing for four years. I have also written much about Islam in China.

Biden’s UN Ambassador nominee, Linda Thomas-Greenfield has declared she is anxious to declare Xinjiang and its Muslims as victims of Sino-genocide, so nothing will change.

Baba Beijing, China’s leadership will do what I do: keep telling the truth and fighting the good fight against the West’s relentless and very efficacious global BLPM.

SS:  Late in 2020, the world saw the tension between Beijing and New Delhi escalate from a political level to a military confrontation with losses on both sides.  In your opinion, did the former US administration’s support of the Indian position contribute to the confrontation on the ground? Additionally, what is your take on the future of China-India relations?

JB:  Like every other US administration since the Russian Revolution of 1917, or as Dr. Joan Roelofs likes to say, Since the beginning of the Cold War in 1848, with the publication of the Communist Manifesto.  Western empire continues to work tirelessly to create alliances and ententes to destroy its many anti-global capitalist enemies. Trump’s “Quad”, which joins the US with India, Australia and Japan, is just one more of endless permutations throughout colonial-imperial history.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi started out in 2014 supporting the aforementioned Asian institutions. He is also a Hindu Nationalist; this segment of India’s population is generally rabidly Sinophobic. It may help explain why for the last couple of years, he has moved to stoke these sentiments in-country, to maintain popularity, while imposing more and more neoliberal policies, which are making a poor population even poorer.

In 2019, Modi pushed Hindu nationalism in the Sino-Paki-Indian tinderbox of Jammu-Kashmir-Jammu, so may have gotten some Western behind-the-scenes quid pro quo on all this. Or, like countless others, he could have simply succumbed to the imperial toolbox: bribery, blackmail and extortion. In any case, ongoing border tensions and banning China Tech (Huawei, ZTE, WeChat, TikTok, etc.) all keeps suffering Indian minds off the fact that neighbor China has completely outclassed them socio-economically, developmentally and geopolitically for the last 70 years.

While heavily censored, downplayed or misrepresented in the BLPM, India is currently dealing with human history’s largest popular protests, as hundreds of millions of citizens are on the march against Modi’s impoverishing, neoliberal policies. My Indian friends say they are organized for the long haul and are being financed by popular support.

Whether this may push India away from the Quad and back towards Asia is hard to say. Just this week, Modi’s Foreign Minister gave a surprising policy speech, which laid out cooperation with China, including three mutuals and eight propositions.  It is highly unlikely that this was done without Modi’s approval.

We can speculate two ways. First, India is going back to the grand Asian project, with China and Russia. Or, Modi & Company are trying to leverage the Quad for more concessions, especially as a shot across the bow of the new Biden administration.

We’ll know more in the months to come, as India’s inspiring protests continue to rage on.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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***

The conflict in Syria does not seem to be nearing its end despite the diplomatic efforts to find a solution for it. Every participant in the standoff is undertaking actions to pursue their interests, and many of them evidently are in conflict with one another.

Israel and its never-ending fight against the ‘Iranian threat’, as usual, appears to be in the middle of it.

On January 31st, along the separation line of the Golan Heights, a Syrian Arab Army (SAA) post was attacked by unknown gunmen. They came from the Israeli-occupied side, and a loud explosion followed. No casualties were reported, and it is possible that Israel was behind it, since the IDF has done raids such as these in the past, including twice in 2020. According to pro-militant sources, the IDF operation was carried out to deter purported Iranian forces in the area.

Israeli media reported that several months ago that in Damascus itself, an unnamed “Western Intelligence Agency” carried out a raid the headquarters of Iran’s Quds Force Unit 840. While the report remains questionable, at minimum, it can be considered as a direct threat to Tehran and Damascus.

In Northeast Syria, a severe conflict appears to be in the making, as US President Joe Biden seems to want an extremely negative outward scenario in order to reverse the limited involvement approach of Donald Trump.  Soon, MSM may get a new ‘war for democracy’ to cover, so, the population can focus less on what is transpiring inside the US.

The US-supported Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) appear to be the prime candidates to lead the situation towards critical mass. Hillary Clinton, and her daughter Chelsea are already moving with propaganda preparations: a Kurdish soap opera, focused on the lives and struggle of Kurdish women who fought not only against ISIS, but also fought for their liberty and their rights.

The Kurdish “freedom fighters” also fight against Turkey and reject a political settlement with Damascus.

Still, the SDF is now emboldened, it has support from the US, and little else in the region, except the poison hand of “friendship” from Israel. If all hell breaks loose, however, it is dubious whether or not Tel Aviv would come running to help.

This, however, does not stop the Kurdish leadership from employing harsh approaches to suppress local discontent with its anti-Syrian approaches. Just recently in Al-Hasakah, a pro-government protest was democratically put down by live fire and killings by the SDF’s “freedom fighters”.

It is an open secret the SDF-controlled area is in fact run by the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK) “shadow government” and the SDF itself is full of PKK members, including the SDF commander in chief himself. This creates conditions for a continuous fight against the Turkish forces, and provides additional motivation for the SDF rejection of a political settlement with the Damascus government.

The Kurdish leaders are happy to receive weapons and funds from the US in exchange for loyalty to the project of the dismantling of the Syrian state.

Emboldened by the supposed support from the US, and the recent large deployments that have been carried out, the SDF and co. have recently become more active in their attempts to hinder the interests of Damascus, Russia and Iran.

The SDF’s mismanagement of the situation is further evidenced by the permanent tensions with Arab locals in the controlled areas and the deep humanitarian problems in SDF-run camps for displaced persons, including those affiliated with ISIS members. There are about 27,000 children in the SDF-run Al-Hol camp, where families of ISIS members and supporters are held. ISIS activity has seen an incredible increase in 2021, and the terrorist group would be more than content with “adopting” these young recruits.

With the new administration in Washington, the wind is blowing towards an incredibly violent scenario. The resumption of the ‘active’ policies to ‘deter’ Russia, Iran and the ‘Assad regime’ by playing the Kurdish card creates conditions for a further destabilization of Syria’s northeast. In some scenarios, the situation could swiftly descend into complete chaos.

To avoid this scenario, Kurdish leadership needs to remember that they are short on allies in the region and adapt a more constructive approach towards a political settlement with Damascus. Otherwise it is “highly likely” that dark clouds are soon to come on the horizon and the SDF card will once again become a small coin in the Big Middle Eastern Game.

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***

“One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”(1)

In 2011 there was a devastating nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima Nuclear Power plant in Japan. An “investigation” concluded that:

“its fundamental causes are to be found in the ingrained conventions of Japanese culture, our reflexive obedience, our reluctance to question authority, our devotion to sticking with the programme”.(2)

However, there is nothing specifically Japanese about these attitudes. A similar mindset explains many of the issues discussed in other posts. This post is the first of two giving some insights into why we behave as we do. Why do powerful people in governments and corporations commit so many crimes? Why do people tolerate a government that commits war crimes? Why do people turn a blind eye when large corporations repeatedly carry out unethical activities? Why is it we are so easily misled?

Do We Want To Know The Truth? Denial and Self-deception

Stanley Cohen wrote a book entitled ‘States of Denial’, which looked at why whole populations allow their governments to commit atrocities. He described a mindset which was ‘simultaneously knowing and not-knowing’. We partially know something, but we do not want to discover the rest, due to a fear of discovering something troubling.(3) The human brain is capable of great insights and independent thought, but we have conditioned ourselves not to ask too many difficult questions, because we are afraid of the answers. We are vaguely aware that we choose not to look at the facts, without really understanding what it is we are evading.

This is usually called ‘wilful blindness’ or ‘denial’. It covers a huge range of phenomena, from governments committing atrocities, and companies behaving unethically, to individuals trying to convince themselves that their partners are not having affairs. If we commit or witness harmful practices, we try to deceive ourselves into believing that they were reasonable. We come up with justifications, we use euphemisms to avoid accurate descriptions, and we ignore the consequences.(4) This form of self-deception allows individuals, organisations and even whole countries to deny knowledge of things that make them uncomfortable.

Numerous government and corporate employees who have participated in unethical behaviour have admitted afterwards that they knew their actions were wrong, but managed to convince themselves that the normal rules did not apply. Most people in Britain and the US, including journalists, have some understanding that the destruction of Iraq and Libya are monstrous crimes, but they are so uncomfortable admitting this that they delude themselves into believing it is not true.

Brainwashing – We are lied to every day

The more people are exposed to an idea, the more they are likely to accept it. If we hear the same information from the media over and over again, we come to believe it must be true. If we are also surrounded by friends, family and colleagues repeating the same perspective, because they have also been bombarded by the same misleading information from the media, then it becomes harder and harder to say it is not true.

Convincing people to believe distorted versions of events is a form of brainwashing. Every soldier in history who has killed people in another country has been brainwashed to some extent. They are led to believe that shooting people, dropping bombs on them or burying them alive beneath a tank is reasonable, even if the people being killed are trying to surrender. Ordinary people who support these policies have also been brainwashed to accept these policies. This is connected to another aspect of psychology known as dehumanisation – the ability to see others as less than human.(5) This plays an important part in enabling governments to get away with war crimes overseas, because the people being slaughtered, such as Muslims in the Middle East, are different from us.

Confirmation Bias and a ‘Framework of Understanding’

Psychologists have recognised that our beliefs are an important part of how we see ourselves. We prefer to receive information that confirms our existing views or beliefs, because it makes us feel good about ourselves. Psychologists use the term ‘cognitive dissonance’ to describe a situation where people feel uncomfortable because they are presented with evidence that contradicts their existing beliefs. We try to find ways to deal with this discomfort, either by ignoring the information, or by using faulty logic to justify our existing beliefs. This is known as ‘confirmation bias’,(6) and is often divided into three main areas.

Firstly, biased search is where we actively seek out information that supports our existing views. Most newspaper readers will be aware that they choose a newspaper where the writers express similar views to their own.

Secondly, biased interpretation is where we interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting our existing position. We also find reasons to dismiss evidence that contradicts our beliefs, by convincing ourselves that the source was unreliable.

Finally, biased memory is where we remember information that supports our existing beliefs, and forget information that contradicts them. Over time, most people forget the detail of what they have learned. They create a framework of understanding, or a framework of knowledge. This is like a general overview of how we see the world. If new information is consistent with this framework, it fits into the framework easily, reinforces the framework, and might be remembered. If new information does not fit easily into the framework then we don’t know what to do with it, so it will tend to be dismissed and quickly forgotten.

Affection for beliefs seems to be similar to affection for people. Recent research has shown that some parts of the brain are de-activated when thinking about people we love. In particular, some of the areas responsible for critical thinking. The same appears to be true when thinking about beliefs.(7) Our brain treats differently any information that might challenge our beliefs. The effect seems to be stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs. This is particularly the case where people believe in a powerful ideology, or a big idea, such as ‘markets’. We are mostly unaware of how deeply these big ideas affect the way we think. Confirmation bias can lead to a situation where people will continue to believe something, even when it is strongly contradicted by the evidence.(8)

Ideas seem ‘normal’ if lots of other people share them – even if they’re wrong

If a minority of people hold an unusual view, such as ‘the world is coming to end’, they seem weird to the majority. But when ideas are widely shared they seem less weird, and may even come to seem normal. This was evident during the run-up to the financial crisis in 2008. Belief in ‘the markets’ had become ever more reinforced, with few people openly questioning them. Most people, including supposed experts, chose to overlook the well-established downsides of financial deregulation, such as catastrophic crashes.

This is partly because people’s beliefs tend to develop over time. Whilst these beliefs are being formed, they can be changed, but once they have become established it becomes more difficult to change them. In particular, if someone has stated their opinion, they feel that changing their opinion appears weak.(9) Eventually they feel they have too much to lose, and it becomes almost impossible to change their views. If a journalist has made a living openly supporting invasions of other countries, it is very difficult for them to admit that they have been supporting the worst crimes of this century.

This is particularly relevant to the belief that the people we have elected to run our country are reasonable people with good intentions. We want to believe that they are not insane, war-mongering sociopaths, so we come up with all manner of explanations for their crimes. If they kill two million people in Iraq, we convince ourselves that their explanation, that they were worried about WMD, or terrorism, or human rights, must be correct. Even though, deep down, we know these are lies.

Destructive Obedience – Causing Harm by Following Orders

Some famous experiments have focussed on the role of obedience to authority. The best known of these were initially performed by Stanley Milgram in 1963.(10) These studies examined why individuals obey authorities even when the task is morally repugnant, when there is no reward for doing so, and where there is no punishment for disobedience. In the experiment people were told to give severe electric shocks to other people. The studies found that many people will obey those orders. Variations of the experiments have been performed around the world, to see if the results are true in other countries. Whilst the details sometimes vary, the general principle that many people will do terrible things when following orders appears to be true.(11)

Similar studies have been tried in the real world, where nurses were observed to see if they would administer lethal doses of drugs on the order of a doctor. Again, perhaps surprisingly, very few questioned the instruction.(12) Non-experimental real world evidence of these effects is widespread. It is thought that a quarter of plane crashes are caused by ‘destructive obedience’(13) and there is a famous incident of battleships crashing because no one questioned their orders.(14)

This obedience without question creates repeated problems in many industries. Safety failings due to cost cutting are a common problem, even where people know that the cuts would create danger. This creates a situation where ethics, legality and safety become irrelevant due to orders from bosses. Numerous oil leaks and gas explosions, such as the Texas City oil refinery or the Deepwater Horizon oil rig, have occurred because of cost-savings and cutting corners on safety standards.(15)

Conformity and The Disappearance of Ethics

Conformity is where people try to fit in with those around them, to conform.(16) The most well-known experiments in this area were carried out by Solomon Asch in 1951.(17) Subjects were placed in groups that had to do simple tasks, such as counting the number of chimes of a bell. Unknown to the subject, all other members of the group were ‘in’ on the experiment, and had been instructed to state the wrong number of chimes. Overwhelmingly, subjects agreed with the rest of the group, rather than stating the correct number. It turns out that under social pressure most of us would rather be wrong than alone. Independence of mind can lead to a sense of isolation, and affect our self-esteem, so we try to protect ourselves by fitting-in with the group.(18) This type of research has been consistently repeated. One of the most interesting findings is that some participants have no sense of having conformed – it is completely subconscious.(19)

Conformity may explain a number of phenomena that have been observed. In particular, researchers have noted groupthink, where the desire for harmony within a group overrides an honest discussion of alternatives. People are reluctant to suggest dissenting opinions because of their desire to conform. Attitude polarisation is where groups of like-minded thinkers tend to develop even more extreme views. It seems highly likely that both of these are at work when groups of politicians pursue extremist foreign policies such as war. Leaders appoint like-minded thinkers as advisors, and people with challenging opinions tend to be excluded from decisionmaking.

Real-world evidence of conformity also suggests that individual ethical standards decrease in groups. Young medical students are unlikely to blow the whistle if they see something unethical. However, research indicates that they are even less likely to blow the whistle after 3 years of medical and ethics training.(20) Doctors are reluctant to challenge their colleagues, even where evidence of incompetence leading to death is clear.(21) Many people involved in financial activities in the boom years prior to the global financial crisis of 2007 have explained that there was no clear sense of moral norms. If everyone around you is being rewarded for doing crooked deals, what is normal? If companies are spending lots of money lobbying politicians to change laws, this makes them believe that laws do not have to be taken seriously, they are merely obstacles to be circumvented.(22)

Obedience and Conformity are a dangerous combination

In many workplaces, both obedience and conformity are present. Staff obey their superiors, but they also want to conform to fit in with their colleagues. In practice, standing up against consensus is difficult for numerous reasons.(23) Most obviously, many of the systems that we currently have in place provide no encouragement or tangible rewards for bucking the system or challenging decisions. In fact, just the opposite is true. Questioning your colleagues, and particularly your superiors, can have a negative impact on your job, your reputation, your career prospects and your financial rewards.

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This article was first posted at medium.com/elephantsintheroom

Rod Driver is a part-time academic who is particularly interested in de-bunking modern-day US and British propaganda. This is the twentieth in a series entitled Elephants In The Room, which attempts to provide a beginners guide to understanding what’s really going on in relation to war, terrorism, economics and poverty, without the nonsense in the mainstream media.

Notes 

1) Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1995 

2) Justin McCurry, ‘Japanese cultural traits ‘at heart of Fukushima disaster’’, Guardian, 5 July 2012, at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jul/05/japanese-cultural-traits-fukushima-disaster 

3) Stanley Cohen, States of Denial, 2001, pp. 24 – 33

4) Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness: Why we ignore the obvious at our peril, 2011, pp.258-259

5) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dehumanization

6) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

7) Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness: Why we ignore the obvious at our peril, 2011, pp. 45-46

8) Lee Ross and Craig Anderson, ‘Judgement under uncertainty: Heuristics and biases’, 1974, Science 185 (4157): 1124-31

9) Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness: Why we ignore the obvious at our peril, 2011, 316

10) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Milgram

11) Brian Resnick, ‘The Stanford prison experiment was massively influential. We just learned it was a fraud’, Vox, 13 June 2018, at https://www.vox.com/2018/6/13/17449118/stanford-prison-experiment-fraud-psychology-replication

12) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofling_hospital_experiment

C.K.Hofling et al, ‘An experimental study in nurse-physician relationships’, Journal of nervous and mental disease, 143(2): 171-80, at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/5957275/

13) Eugen Tarnow, ‘Self-destructive obedience in the airplane cockpit and the concept of obedience optimisation’, in Thomas Blass (ed.) Obedience to Authority: Current perspectives on the Milgram paradigm, 2000, at https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/self-destructive-obedience-airplane-cockpit-concept-obedience-optimization-eugen-tarnow/e/10.4324/9781410602022-11 

14) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Victoria_(1887)

15) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_City_Refinery_explosion

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill

16) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conformity

17) Asch, S.E., ‘Opinions and Social Pressure’, Scientific American, 1955, 193(5) pp.3-5

18) Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness: Why we ignore the obvious at our peril, 2011, p.296

19) G. Berns et al, ‘Neurobiological correlates of Social Conformity and Independence During mental Rotation’, Journal of Biological Psychiatry, no.58, pp.245-253

20) J. Goldie et al, ‘Students attitudes and potential behaviour with regard to whistle blowing as they pass through a modern medical curriculum’, Medical Education, 37, pp.368-375, at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12654122/

21) ‘Learning from Bristol: Report of the Public Inquiry into children’s heart surgery at the Bristol Royal Infirmary 1984-1995’ (also known as The Kennedy Report), July 2001, at http://www.wales.nhs.uk/sites3/documents/441/The%20Kennedy%20Report.pdf 

22) Margaret Heffernan, Wilful Blindness: Why we ignore the obvious at our peril, 2011, 202

23) Stanley Cohen, States of Denial: Knowing about atrocities and suffering, 2001, p.19

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***

On January 28, Women Deliver and Focus 2030 released the first-of-its-kind multi-country public opinion survey, carried out in 17 countries spanning six continents, which captures the attitudes and expectations for major actions to address gender equality during COVID-19. The data reveal that an overwhelming majority of respondents want their governments to do more to promote gender equality.

The survey comes at a time when the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has deepened the imbalanced economic opportunities for men and women and shown the discrimination and abuse that women face in the workplace and at home. The results of the survey serves to make visible the urgency of gender issues and hold governments accountable to address the discrimination against women.

The new multi-country survey finds overwhelming majority of citizens want their governments to act now to accelerate progress on gender equality.

• A new survey covering 17 countries on six continents – representing half the world’s population – reveals that a majority of respondents want their governments to devote more resources and attention to supporting gender equality.
• The first survey of its kind since the outbreak of COVID-19, the new poll shows that the pandemic has taken a disproportionate toll on women compared to men, in terms of both mental health and household obligations.
• The survey offers a roadmap for actions that the public most wants to see, spotlighting where leaders’ and decision-makers’ focus and investments can have the most striking impact.

The first-of-its-kind international survey finds that the global public overwhelmingly supports gender equality, and a resounding majority is ready for their governments and business leaders to take action to bridge the gender divide.

At the same time, women and girls around the world are suffering the worst impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, which has disproportionately affected their mental and physical health, as well as their economic prospects.

The vast majority of respondents – 80% on average across the 17 surveyed countries – said gender equality is a priority to them personally, and 65% said their government should do more to promote gender equality in their country.

The global public perception survey, released in a new report by Women Deliver and Focus 2030, includes 17 countries across six continents whose inhabitants represent half the world’s population.

The results come two months before the Generation Equality Forum, a civil society – centered, global gathering for gender equality convened by UN Women and co-hosted by the governments of Mexico and France. There, leaders in government, the private sector, and civil society will have a critical opportunity to commit to bold, specific actions on gender equality issues.

The forum will galvanize political action and secure financial commitments for the period of 2021-2026 on measures to advance women’s rights and opportunities around the world.

Sixty-one percent of respondents urged their governments to use this forum as an opportunity to increase funding for gender equality initiatives. “2021 promises to be a milestone year for accelerating global progress on gender equality.

The Generation Equality Forum will call on governments, corporation, civil society and people of all ages and backgrounds around the world to step up with bold commitments to make gender equality a reality,” said Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women.

“At such a critical moment it is invigorating to see that global public opinion is not only behind us, but pushing us to do more. The world is affirming that gender equality cannot wait. We can and we must achieve it in our generation, and it must be intersectional and intergenerational.”

Despite 25 years of progress since the landmark World Conference on Women in Beijing, no country has fully met its commitments to gender equality. More than half of the world’s girls and women – as many as 2.1 billion people – live in countries that are not on track to reach key gender equality-related targets by 2030.

“We’ve made a lot of progress on gender equality over the last 25 years, but there’s so much work left to do. Now, with COVID-19, just as women are assuming an outsized role in responding to the pandemic in their communities and at home, they are also experiencing enormous added burden, and we could see the consequences of that strain playing out for years to come,” said Divya Mathew, Senior Manager, Policy and Advocacy at Women Deliver.

“This survey shows us where the world has fallen short, but it also delivers the encouraging news that the vast majority of women and men around the world expect their leaders to take action to advance gender equality.”

Fielded in July and August of 2020, the survey offers a comprehensive picture of public experience and perception across six major gender equality issues, in addition to insights on how the COVID-19 pandemic had affected respondents’ lives, livelihoods, and emotional health.

It also asked participants about their personal experiences with gender discrimination, their attitudes about sexist practices, and their beliefs about the causes of gender discrimination.

Key findings on these questions include:

• The global public supports the need for women to play a role in all aspects of the pandemic response, with 82% of survey respondents on average saying they believe women should be involved in the response at all levels. However, facts bear witness to another situation: although women make up 70% of frontline workers, they currently make up only 24% of COVID-19 response committees. To address these realities, a gender lens must be applied to COVID-19 response and recovery plans.
• COVID-19 has had a significant impact on women (ages 18-44), who are more likely to report both increased household burdens and greater emotional stress. In 13 of the 17 countries surveyed, women report experiencing more emotional stress and mental health challenges compared to men during the pandemic.
• Young people, especially young women, have the highest expectations of their governments to advance gender equality. Three in four young women (aged 18 to 24), across all 17 countries, call on their government to increase funding for equality in their country on the occasion of the Gender Equality Forum, compared to two in three respondents on average.
• 57% of women on average reported experiencing some form of gender-based discrimination in their lifetimes, with the highest rates of discrimination reported in middle-income countries like Kenya (83%), India (81%) and South Africa (72%).
• Overall, the top priority for improving gender equality is ending gender-based violence, including online harassment, sexual assault, forced and child marriage, and female genital mutilation. This was selected as first choice by 32% of respondents on average across the 17 countries.
• In the United States, self-identified Black or African American respondents are less likely to say that gender equality has improved over the last 25 years, in comparison to respondents who self-identify as white. This trend was not observed, to such a large extent, in any other country including countries with a documented history of racial discrimination, such as South Africa. The public’s support for gender equality cuts across generations, political leanings, and socioeconomic groups.

While women are stronger supporters of most gender equality issues than men, a great majority of men also support gender equality. Young people under the age of 25, women in particular, are especially likely to hold their governments accountable for advancing gender equality initiatives.

The survey asked respondents for their opinions on six major gender equality issues, all of which the public resoundingly expects governments to address:

• Violence against women
• Women’s economic justice and rights
• Women’s movements and leadership
• Sexual and reproductive health and rights
• Women and climate change
• Technology for gender equality

Despite the widespread support for greater gender equality, persistent discriminatory attitudes towards women continue to hinder progress towards ending domestic violence and closing the gender pay gap. At the current rate of progress, it will take another century to achieve professional, political, and economic equality between women and men worldwide.

Against this backdrop, the survey offers a roadmap for actions that the public most wants to see, spotlighting where leaders’ and decision-makers’ focus and investments can have the most striking impact.

“The onus is on the world’s decision-makers to respond to the most pressing needs of girls and women and deliver real progress toward gender equality,” said Fabrice Ferrier, Director of Focus 2030. “Beyond that, women must have a seat at the tables where decisions about their lives and wellbeing are made. Especially during the COVID-19 pandemic, lawmakers have a duty to match their words with action on gender equality, and value the insights and leadership that women bring. Decision-makers should remember that their constituents are watching – and have very high expectations.”

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***

The state’s largest newspaper company has filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against Google and Facebook alleging the tech giants have monopolized the digital advertising market.

The complaint was filed January 29 by HD Media Company LLC against Google and Facebook in federal court in Huntington.

HD Media claims Google has such a monopoly on the digital advertising market that it has secured a “supracompetitive share” of the company’s advertising revenues, affecting the company’s ability to effectively monetize its content. HD Media also says Google and Facebook are violating antitrust laws with a secret agreement codenamed “Jedi Blue” to manipulate online auctions.

“We invite every other newspaper in America to join this cause,” Doug Reynolds, HD Media managing partner, said in a statement. “We are fighting not only for the future of the press but also the preservation of our democracy.”

HD Media owns The (Huntington) Herald-Dispatch, the Charleston Gazette-Mail and several smaller newspapers.

“HD Media, and other newspapers across the country, compete for revenue in the digital advertising market,” the complaint states. “Google monopolizes the market to such extent that it threatens the extinction of local newspapers across the country.

“There is no longer a competitive market in which newspapers can fairly compete for online advertising revenue.”

It says Google has vertically integrated itself, through hundreds of mergers and acquisitions, to enable dominion over all sellers, buyers, and middlemen in the marketplace.

“It (Google) has absorbed the market internally and consumed most of the revenue,” the complaint states. “Google’s unlawful anticompetitive conduct is directly stripping newspapers across the country, including plaintiff, of their primary revenue source.

“The freedom of the press is not at stake; the press itself is at stake.”

The complaint also explains how “Jedi Blue” allegedly works.

“Google and Facebook, archrivals in the digital advertising market, conspired to further their worldwide dominance of the digital advertising market in a secret agreement,” the complaint explains. “The two archrivals, who are sometimes referenced as operating a duopoly in the market, unlawfully conspired to manipulate online auctions which generate digital advertising revenue.

“Facebook and Google agreed to avoid competing with another in September 2018. The quid-pro-quo was as follows—Facebook would largely forego its foray into header bidding and would instead bid through Google’s ad server. In exchange, Google agreed to give Facebook preferential treatment in its auctions.”

HD Media says this agreement “closed a growing threat to Google’s primacy and has since further cemented its stranglehold on the marketplace.”

“These actions are illegal and directly caused newspapers across the country, including the plaintiff, enormous financial harm in the form of loss of revenue sources,” the complaint alleges. “This is a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act which declares “every … conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several states” to be illegal.”

HD Media says the harm to it was intentional and intended.

“The harm is of a type that Congress sought to redress in providing a private remedy for violations of the antitrust laws,” the complaint claims. “The loss of revenue streams can be directly tied to the antitrust conduct of the defendants.

“Plaintiff is a direct victim of the alleged antitrust injury as a competitor in the digital advertising market. Damages can be quantified and apportioned among those directly and indirectly harmed.”

Since 2000, almost 1,800 newspapers have closed. More than 60 percent (more than 30,000) of newspaper jobs have been lost since 1990. Since 2006, newspaper ad revenue has fallen from $49 billion annually to $16.5 billion in 2017.

HD Media seeks an order declaring the actions of Google and Facebook violate the law and to have the defendants and their affiliate companies from adopting or following any practice, plan, program or device having a similar purpose or effect. It also seeks treble (triple actual compensatory) damages, punitive damages, pre- and post-judgment interest, court costs, attorney fees, expenses and other relief.

HD Media is being represented by Paul T. Farrell Jr. and Michael J. Fuller Jr. of Farrell & Fuller PLLC in San Juan, Puerto Rico; John C. Herman and Serina M. Vash of Herman Jones in Atlanta; Paul J. Geller and Stuart A. Davidson of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd in Boca Raton, Florida; David W. Mitchell and Steven M. Jodlowski of Robbins Geller Rudman & Dowd in San Diego; and Robert P. Fitzsimmons and Clayton J. Fitzsimmons of Fitzsimmons Law Firm in Wheeling.

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The aggressive US policy on the Black Sea continues. The presence of destroyers by American armed forces in the Russian Coast is notorious and causes discomfort among Russians due to the proximity of the region to their national territory. In a context of strong foreign presence, any military exercise or test of weapons that the Russian armed forces carry out in the region – which would be absolutely normal, considering that it is the Russian border – immediately becomes a focus of international tensions and threats. However, Moscow will not give up its strategies for simply accepting the American presence.

The Russian fleet recently conducted a simulated naval combat in the Black Sea, where two American destroyers remain. Despite being a common and routine exercise of the naval forces of any country, the situation generated a great concern in international society due to the proximity between Russian vessels and American destroyers. Clearly, in this case, Russia is just performing common maneuvers in its area of influence and the “atypical” factor would be the American presence.

The Russian exercise was a simulation of a naval combat situation, focused on the detection of enemies and neutralization by means of electronic warfare. The first phase of operations has been completed, but at a later time, new tests with the same objective will be carried out. One of the reasons why tensions increased in the region was also the fact that the Russian exercises were carried out at a time almost simultaneous with American exercises. At the end of January, a major NATO air-naval operation was carried out in the Black Sea, with the participation of the American destroyers currently allocated in the region (USS Porter and USS Donald Cook).

It has long been clear that Washington intends to encircle Russia by the seas. The presence of American ships along the Russian coast is a clear proof that there is a project to monitor and patrol Russian activities in its own zone of influence. American presence is particularly strong in the north and southeast of the coast and means a clear attempt by Washington to demonstrate strength, trying to attest its ability to monitor Russian naval activities.

In addition to the fact that Washington is maintaining combat ships in a region under the influence of a potential enemy power, a factor of great concern is the war capabilities of these American ships. The American destroyers that are currently allocated on the Russian coast stand out for being equipped with about 90 cruise missiles with a range of about 3,000 kilometers. Together, the capacity of these ships can cover almost the entire Russian territory, including Moscow. In other words, the American presence on the Russian coast has reached intolerable levels of provocation and affront to national sovereignty.

This policy is not by chance. Washington fears the advanced process of the declining of its naval hegemony, so it begins to focus on strategic points with specific tactics, which seek to inhibit its enemies – not to confront them directly. Under the “Russian threat” speech, the US and NATO place ships and conduct war tests on the Russian coast because they are aware that, in truth, there is no Russian threat or war plan on the part of Moscow, which means that the Russians will avoid as much as possible to respond to provocations with equivalent force. It is all about an attempt to contain military activities so that the Russian coastal zone remains vulnerable to NATO’s presence.

In response, Moscow’s strategy is simply to maintain its common routine of tests and exercises – which is enough for Washington to further elevate the thesis of a “Russian threat”.

The scenario does not tend to improve in the near future. With Biden, American foreign policy will become even more aggressive and the new president is likely to invest heavily in the recovery of American naval dominance – which is an important step to recover the global hegemonic status. We will probably have a future of many conflicts in the Russian coastal region – perhaps not direct confrontations, but increasingly strong and frequent tests, generating constant tensions and concerns.

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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.

This article was originally published on November 8.

Dear Chancellor Dr. Merkel,

We, the signatories, are doctors from all areas of healthcare, who have been serving people in practices and clinics for decades. During this time, we have witnessed more than one seasonal infection in Germany, most of them with far more severe conditions and significantly more deaths than since January 2020 from COVID infectious diseases. Together we serve approx. 70.000 people.

The circumstances of the coronavirus wave in the FRG have been perceived differently than the media and the ongoing warnings of politics, which were unjustified in fact, presented to the public for months. Predictions of individual advisory virologists with millions of seriously ill and hundreds of thousands of deaths in Germany have not been true in any way.

In the practices, hardly any infected patients were infected and if, then with normal, mostly mild progressions of virus flu. The hospitals have been more empty than ever before. There was no overload of ICU. Doctors, doctors and nurses were skillful in short-term work. Initially, we found the wave of the virus running towards us to be threatening and were able to understand the infection protection measures. However, there are months of secured evidence and facts that this wave of the virus is only slightly more intense than an ordinary seasonal flu and must be considered much more harmless than, for example, influenza infection in 2017/2018 with 27.000 deaths in Germany. According to the data situation, there hasn’t been a threat to the German population from Covid-19 for months.

This must be the reason to return to normal life in Germany – a life without restrictions, fear and infection hysteria.

We’re increasingly seeing older people with depression, young children and adolescents with severe anxiety and behavioral disorders, people with severe conditions who could have been cured in timely treatment. We notice disruptions in interpersonal cooperation, hysteria and aggression caused by fear of infection, there are more and more vigilations and denunciations of ′′ positive swab victims ′′ – all this leads to an unprecedented tension and division of the population. The development of additional severe chronic diseases is foreseeable. These diseases with their severe consequences are expected to far outweigh the possible Covid-19 damage in the FRG.The signatories therefore call on those responsible for health care and politics to discharge their responsibilities for the people of our country and immediately avert this threatening development. We demand an immediate revision of the available data by an independent panel of experts from all relevant specialized groups and a prompt implementation of the resulting consequences for the people of our country.We demand that ineffective and possibly even harmful anti-infection measures be stopped immediately and that mass testing is meaningful (e.g. Currently, 1,1 million tests / week, of which 99,3 % negative, cost per week: EUR 82,5 million) to be audited by a panel of independent experts.

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Tortilla con Sal: We came to ask about the problem of so-called invasions of indigenous lands, so perhaps you could tell us a little bit about the reality, perhaps bit about the historical context and what the reality is now?

Rose Cunningham Kain: I think in today’s world, there are so many ways to distort history. There are so many ways to make up stories to believe that sometimes one is amazed at the stories that people tell about one’s life. I think they are very disrespectful in that sense. Indeed, in the Río Coco communities, we have had about six communities that have had serious difficulties with people who have invaded indigenous lands.

Indigenous lands and remediation

All these invasions began in the 1990s when the government presided by Doña Violeta assigned some lands to ex-combatants, also violating the indigenous rights over indigenous people’s lands. Back then she gave some locations so that indigenous people could subsist who had been in the conflict and many of them returned without a serious process of social reinsertion. “Take your machete, your waterproof boots, and three sheets of zinc and demobilize”. There was no serious social reinsertion process. Therefore, these indigenous people started selling land to non-indigenous people. And that’s where all the invasions began… that process began.

But, please note that the dimension of the problem is not the one that is depicted. In other words, as if there was chaos here, as if there was a great conflict here. We have different indigenous territories. In this municipality there are seven indigenous territories and I am president of one of those indigenous territories. In one indigenous territory, the people have been protecting their lands through a model of forest rangers. Forest rangers have been taking care of all the part that corresponds to them as a territory. And that is the Li Lani model.

There is another territory called Li Aubra. So they have their own groups of forest rangers that protect the area. Li Lani is made up of 27 communities. They protect their area and they do not have any type of conflict to date with non-indigenous people. They have not had any invasion of non-indigenous people on their lands. Their methodology has been working. Then we have the other methodology, the other model, which is the Li Aubra model. Li Aubra is the middle part of the river basin. This model has been developed by the indigenous leaders of 18 communities that have initiated a process with their territorial government of talks with non-indigenous people.

TcS: Is that what is meant by remediation?

Rose: The first remediation we should talk about is remediation via the social reinsertion of the people. In law, remediation has to do with seeing that the territory of the indigenous peoples does not have any type of conflict due to properties overlapping that might exist there. But in the context of our whole history of struggle for rights as indigenous peoples, we have had historical legal achievements that have not been seen in the overall indigenous movement, at least in Latin America, namely to have a law of indigenous peoples’ property… that empowers us for the use, enjoyment and enjoyment of our resources.

So, the presence of non-indigenous people in our lands logically creates tension for us because it means that these non-indigenous people are occupying our lands, they are occupying our resources. For this situation, the territorial government of Li Aubra initiated a couple of years ago contact with the non-indigenous people and dialogues, talks. We have been observing the meetings that are held between indigenous and non-indigenous people. Indigenous people meet in their communities and build consensus on whether or not they want to expel them, whether or not they want to lease to them, whether or not they want to live or not to live with them. And then, they get together. There are some mining properties, some mines where there are non-indigenous people, and they have managed to go and make agreements with them in situ.

At this point, the Li Aubra model is a model in which the indigenous families have already been building consensus to discuss with non-indigenous people the legality of their presence on indigenous peoples’ lands. And there you have to respect the self-determination of the people and our government does that. It is a door, a window that has been opened to us to be able to exercise our rights. So, some of the communities, in this territory what we want to do is agree a lease, and the law permits that.

In other communities they have said that what we need is to change. To change is for the the non indigenous settlers to go back, to expel them, to remove them. And they continue talking, they continue dialoguing, no consensus is built in a single assembly… in the framework of the indigenous peoples. We always leave for tomorrow another little bit more and we go on talking and going deeper in the effort to reach a consensus. Because that is precisely why it is a consensus. So one of the… one of our basic practices is to build consensus with sincere dialogue and in good faith.

The other model is the model of the territory of Wangki Twi Tasba Raya where you just came from, which is pure forest, beautiful, the pine trees, right? That landscape, the people love their landscape, they love their trees, they love their water, their resources. There the model that is being developed is the judicial model. It is to be able to capture invaders on indigenous lands and put them through a legal process where they come to trial and currently they already have seven people who have been convicted for buying or selling indigenous lands. This is another type of process that is being carried out in this other territory.

This territory of Wangki Maya, which also belongs to this municipality, is a territory free of invaders. It is free of invaders. In Waspam we could say that we have a territory, the Wangki Awala Kupia territory, which is part of Waspam municipality, here where you are currently. It is a territory where we have a harmonious coexistence. Because we have indigenous Miskito and we always say to the non-indigenous, the mestizos of the Pacific, that we call them hispanes, Spaniards. Now we call them indigenous too, it’s just that they lost their identity along their way in life.

But, here in Waspam we are practicing coexistence with those who have come to settle in Waspam. So in this municipality we have different models of relations with non-indigenous peoples, with non-indigenous settlers. At this moment in the context of the hurricane, we have also had news of agricultural losses these non-indigenous people have suffered too. And as the mayor’s office we have to listen to them because they are Nicaraguan citizens. They have human rights. They are human too.

What is true is that we always call on them to reach agreement with the indigenous peoples. Either they leave or they come to an agreement with the owners of the land. The last violent activity must have been in about 2013/14. We have not had violent activities in this part of our territory. Here we have seen meetings where people speak their minds. We have documented meetings that have taken place in the mountains between non-indigenous settlers and indigenous settlers where 17 communities, leaders of 17 communities, come together and walk to meet at a certain point.

The NGOs, Lottie Cunningham

I think that, like this person, there are many who take advantage of the poverty and conflict of others. That is not and never has been the spirit of the creation of non-governmental organizations. For me, non-governmental organizations should not want to profit from poverty or people’s conflicts. And when I say poverty, it’s not that we are poor. We have been impoverished by the same people who have funded the people who say that we live in conflict. Yes, because we have our wealth. And we have the capacity to make decisions about our wealth because that is what the law allows us to do, and this law is a law that we are executing from every point of view.

We are… there are some organizations that you can see here in the shelters, in this emergency mobilization to protect us against hurricanes, organizations that are working together with the State, that believe in the State because they have seen how it works. But there are other organizations that have even reached out to people sheltering against these winds and hurricanes to talk to them suggesting “Isn’t it true that the government doesn’t feed you? Isn’t it true that things are very  bad? That kind of harmful, corrupt, underhand manipulation, and those are the same people who then say that we are in conflict.

We have had conflicts. We have had problems. But we have been overcoming all that and trying with the people of the communities to reach our full potential as indigenous peoples. Exercising and living in the exercise of our rights. So, it is a pity that there are Miskitos who found an easy life through those who finance evil. A pity also that they some even say sometimes they are Christians. And that is an issue. Let’s not go into that issue but yes, they go to mass, they take communion and they put on their Sunday best but they are incapable of having compassion for their indigenous brothers and sisters who are trying to get ahead.

It is a big lie and we have not had that kind of conflict for many years. We are building peace. Peace is not just words. Peace is a process. And the social reinsertion after the eighties, when the counterrevolution was also financed from the north, that peace process that led us to Autonomy, we continue to weave it, we continue to build it, and we continue to strengthen it. And today, after 33 years of Autonomy, we feel, and I in particular feel very proud to see how our community leaders are able to give you an interview and tell you the reality. And they know where the bad is and where the good is.

Cattle

TcS: Specifically in relation to cattle, can you give us a profile of how cattle are managed here in the municipality of Waspam?

Rose: The cattle in the municipality of Waspam, the cattle among us indigenous people, I remember my father, who is no longer alive, who used to name each one of the cows. Our cattle were cattle we kept like a piggy bank, like our own bank, so cattle that perhaps we might slaughter maybe would for a wake. Or if we had to send our son to school, or at Christmas time. Cattle here has been like pets in other countries. And little by little we have been making a shift to having more cattle. But here there has been no certification process to permit meat exports. That is not true.

The people here supply the local market and, as often as not with some difficulty, we manage to find someone who wants to butcher their cattle for the local market. Of course, in the last few years we have been encouraging people to improve their cattle stock, so that IPSA can do its work teaching us how to improve our cattle rearing. But we keep animals on a very small scale. So this report saying that settlers are killing us for land to raise cattle on is not true either. That is not true. Not one cattle rancher has died here, not one Miskito involved in any kind of cattle related killing. It’s a Disney World story, maybe, a Mickey Mouse story, who knows. But itt is not a real story of this municipality Waspam or any of these municipalities where there are indigenous peoples.

Because we love our cattle very much still . I am sure that when you go down the road you will find cattle there walking among the people and that very harmonious relationship between all of us whether we have cattle or not. In fact, cattle are wandering around, in many cases without being fenced off, without a place to keep them, and occasionally we even joke among ourselves because in some cases our people don’t like to milk our cows. It is our culture. It is a different way of thinking about cattle raising.

TcS: I understand that because of the communal management of cattle, the IPSA system, which is based on farmsteads, on the registration of individual farms, cannot operate because there are no farms as such.

Rose: There aren’t. There aren’t. And cattle roam free. The cattle roam free. Among the communities we receive here at the mayor’s office, many communities ask us as a priority for wire, barbed wire, to be able to put a wire fence so the community’s cattle cannot enter the area where they are cultivating agriculture for self-consumption. But these the cattle of all the people in the community all mixed together and these are not the farms they are talking about.

So, I think their reports have failed really because first they talked about mining, that mining… here we are not going to deny it, on the river there are people who work in artisanal mining and they pan maybe in banana leaves and sometimes in sieves. And they are careful because there’s been been awareness raising on the issue. But it is not that the case that there’s an extractive industry here that’s contaminating. So, that lie didn’t work and now they coming with the lies about cattle and the lies about the settlers. And it’s all untrue just so that those who like weird stories can believe and fall for those stories and pay out money. That’s the whole story.

So, in any case, I would say that when in the United States or in any part of the world it is said that indigenous people are killed here in order to promote cattle ranching and that beef from cattle equals indigenous people’s blood, that is one of those stories. It is one of those stories. They are inventing and living off stories about indigenous peoples. And in the whole world of the indigenous peoples’ movement, we deplore, we condemn this type of accusation involving the indigenous peoples.

From Nicaragua or from any part of the world we are always going to find nefarious people who want to invent this type of story in order to benefit themselves. And they do not really work from the cosmogony vision of our indigenous peoples, respecting our lives, our human rights. Respecting our history, our culture, our dignity. They play with the dignity of indigenous peoples and one feels sorry those who take seriously the people who want to promote that story.

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