Global Research

Global Research Editor’s Note

This article was published on November 29, 2020.

“Dark Winter” was mentioned by Joe Biden in the course of the election campaign. 

 According to Michael Snyder in this incisive and carefully researched article “Joe Biden specifically warned us about a “dark winter” during the final presidential debate in October… that the U.S. was “about to go into a dark winter.”

Biden stated in the immediate wake of the November elections: “There is a need for bold action to fight this pandemic…”, “We’re still facing a very dark winter.”

Will this “Very Dark Winter” mentioned incessantly by Joe Biden during the election campaign be addressed in the course of the first 2-3 months of the Biden-Harris administration? 

On the day preceding his inauguration, Biden intimated that “he would take office amid a “dark winter,” and the outlook is only getting bleaker”. Does this not suggest a political scenario (coupled with a renewed fear campaign) of an epidemic “spiralling out of control”. 

In his acceptance speech, Biden referred to a “winter of peril and possibility”, intimating that the Virus (rather than government policy makers) should be held responsible for mass poverty, unemployment and bankruptcy.

“A once-in-a-century virus silently stalks the country”.

“It’s taken as many lives in one year as America lost in all of World War Two. Millions of jobs have been lost. Hundreds of thousands of businesses closed.”

And immediately upon assuming office, the Biden White House announced drastic Covid policy measures including a “100 Days Masking Challenge” “to reduce the spread of the virus”.

An executive order created “a COVID-19 response coordinator, who will be tasked with coordinating the government’s response to the pandemic, including the vaccine rollout, and who will report directly to Biden.”

Michel Chossudovsky, GR Editor, January 21, 2021

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Could it be possible that the phrase “dark winter”  has some sort of deeper meaning that most of us are not meant to understand?  We have heard that phrase over and over again in recent weeks, and usually it has been used in discussions regarding the current state of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

But it also turns out that “Dark Winter” was also a code name for a high level simulation that was conducted back in 2001.  That simulation envisioned a scenario in which a widespread smallpox attack was unleashed inside the United States.  As you will see below, the simulation was “designed to spiral out of control”, and the hypothetical consequences were absolutely disastrous.

The reason why this is a concern is because so many of these “simulations” and “exercises” end up mirroring real life events that happen at a later date.

For example, most of you have probably heard about Event 201 by now.  On October 18th, 2019 a group of prominent individuals gathered in New York City to simulate what would happen during a worldwide coronavirus pandemic…

Event 201 simulates an outbreak of a novel zoonotic coronavirus transmitted from bats to pigs to people that eventually becomes efficiently transmissible from person to person, leading to a severe pandemic. The pathogen and the disease it causes are modeled largely on SARS, but it is more transmissible in the community setting by people with mild symptoms.

Of course COVID-19 started spreading in China just a few weeks later.

We have seen this same pattern happen so many times, and now we are being told over and over again that a “dark winter” is ahead.

For example, Joe Biden specifically warned us about a “dark winter” during the final presidential debate in October…

Joe Biden warned at Thursday night’s presidential debate that the U.S. was “about to go into a dark winter,” echoing the concerns of public health experts who caution about increased daily Covid-19 case counts converging with the annual flu season.

“We’re about to go into a dark winter. A dark winter,” Biden said. “And he has no clear plan, and there’s no prospect that there’s going to be a vaccine available for the majority of the American people before the middle of next year.”

It is interesting to note that he repeated the phrase twice.

It is almost as if he was determined to make sure that he said it correctly.

And then he started using the phrase over and over again on the campaign trail and he kept using it even after the voting was over.

For example, here is an instance where he used the phrase on the Monday after the election…

Joe Biden on Monday warned that a “very dark winter” is approaching as the U.S. coronavirus case count nears 10 million.

“There is a need for bold action to fight this pandemic,” Biden said in Delaware. “We’re still facing a very dark winter.”

I never thought too much about his use of that phrase, but could it be possible that it is actually some sort of a code word or signal?

We do know that it was a code word for a high level exercise that was held in 2001.  The following comes from Wikipedia…

Operation Dark Winter was the code name for a senior-level bio-terrorist attack simulation conducted on June 22–23, 2001. It was designed to carry out a mock version of a covert and widespread smallpox attack on the United States. Tara O’Toole and Thomas Inglesby of the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies (CCBS) / Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and Randy Larsen and Mark DeMier of Analytic Services were the principal designers, authors, and controllers of the Dark Winter project.

It is interesting to note that smallpox is a highly infectious disease that involves sores appearing on the skin.

For those that have read my latest book, you already understand why that detail is so important to me.

And as I already mentioned above, this exercise was specifically designed “to spiral out of control”…

Dark Winter’s simulated scenario involved an initial localized smallpox attack on Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, with additional smallpox attack cases in Georgia and Pennsylvania. The simulation was then designed to spiral out of control. This would create a contingency in which the National Security Council struggles to determine both the origin of the attack as well as deal with containing the spreading virus. By not being able to keep pace with the disease’s rate of spread, a new catastrophic contingency emerges in which massive civilian casualties would overwhelm America’s emergency response capabilities.

Could it be possible that Biden and others are using the phrase “dark winter” to signal that something is about to spiral out of control?

I don’t know.  I am just asking the question.

In Operation Dark Winter, the spread of smallpox also resulted in a “massive loss of civilian life”…

The disastrous contingencies that would result in the massive loss of civilian life were used to exploit the weaknesses of the U.S. health care infrastructure and its inability to handle such a threat. The contingencies were also meant to address the widespread panic that would emerge and which would result in mass social breakdown and mob violence. Exploits would also include the many difficulties that the media would face when providing American citizens with the necessary information regarding safety procedures. Discussing the outcome of Dark Winter, Bryan Walsh noted “The timing–just a few months before the 9/11 attack–was eerily prescient, as if the organizers had foreseen how the threat of terrorism, including bioterrorism, would come to consume the U.S. government and public in the years to come.”

So let me try to summarize what we have learned.

Operation Dark Winter envisioned a scenario in which a highly infectious disease that causes sores on the skin spirals out of control and causes a “massive loss of civilian life”.

And suddenly Joe Biden and other elitists have begun repeating this phrase over and over again as we head into 2021.

Be sure to bookmark this page so that you can refer back to it later.

Reality is often stranger than fiction, and the table has been set for some really, really strange things to happen.

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Michael Snyder’s brand new book entitled “Lost Prophecies Of The Future Of America” is now available on Amazon.com.  In addition to his new book, he has written four others that are available on Amazon.com including The Beginning Of The End, Get Prepared Now, and Living A Life That Really Matters. He has published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News which are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe.

Featured image is from TheFreeThoughtProject

Post-9/11, war on dissent in the US raged.

In 2010, the ACLU said “freedom is under fire in the US.”

“There is a pall over our fire. (There are) attempts to squelch dissent.”

“A chilling message has gone out across America: Dissent if you must, but proceed at your own risk.”

Post-9/11, (AG John Ashcroft) “used his bully pulpit to shut down dissent and debate.”

It’s ongoing in Washington. Legitimate protesters are considered enemies of the state.

Divergence from the official narrative is at risk of being criminalized.

During Obama/Biden’s tenure, the Center for Constitutional Rights said the following:

“The growing threat to the right to dissent has been demonstrated in the US government’s efforts to silence speech, and criminalize and target peaceful movements,”

adding:

“These efforts are becoming more aggressive, emboldened further by the Supreme Court’s increasingly conservative decisions, for instance regarding material support in the form of humanitarian aid to so-called terrorist organizations.”

Diverging from the official narrative increasingly is considered a threat to national security.

Speech, media and academic freedoms are threatened — censorship the new abnormal.

Supreme Court Justice William Brennan long ago stressed:

“(I)f there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.”

Justice Thurgood Marshall once said: “(A)bove all else, the First Amendment means that government has no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.”

Separately he said:

“If the First Amendment means anything, it means that a State has no business telling a man, sitting alone in his own house, what books he may read or what films he may watch. Our whole constitutional heritage rebels at the thought of giving government the power to control men’s minds.”

In 2017/18/and 19 congressional sessions, the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act was introduced but not passed by both houses of Congress.

Ahead of Wednesday’s transition of power in Washington — Biden/Harris to replace Trump — Dem Senator Richard Durbin said he’ll reintroduce the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act.

Durbin is using the January 6 anti-Trump Capitol Hill false flag as a pretext to more greatly assault free expression and other freedoms in the US than already.

“After the attack on the Capitol, I hope that Congress can finally come together and do something to address (the) threat” of domestic terrorism, he said.

Notably since the 9/11 mother of all false flags, invented domestic terrorism has been used as a pretext for waging war on a free and open society — totalitarianism replacing it.

According to Durbin, legislation he’ll introduce calls for establishing government offices at the DOJ, FBI and DHS — on the phony pretext of preventing future incidents like what happened on January 6.

“It would require these offices to regularly assess the domestic terrorism threat,” he said.

If enacted into law, it’ll be another nail in the coffin of disappearing freedoms in the US — by targeting  for elimination what free and open societies hold dear.

When dissent is redefined as terrorism, censorship becomes the new abnormal, along with totalitarian rule.

Biden falsely blamed pro-Trump elements for what happened on January 6, calling them domestic terrorists and insurrectionists — a gross perversion of reality.

What happened on Capitol Hill was all-about slamming Trump for what he had nothing to do with.

It was to push the envelope for denying him a run for a second term in 2024.

It was to permanently smear him for invented reasons, ignoring justifiable ones.

It was to ease Biden/Harris’ transition to power, enabling them and a Dem-controlled Congress to more greatly wage war on fundamental freedoms.

Earlier I called the Capitol Hill incident America’s Reichstag fire. What followed in its wake needs no elaboration.

Will history repeat in similar form? Will what’s inconceivable become reality?

In response to earlier congressional introduction of the Domestic Terrorism Prevention Act, the ACLU said the following:

Enactment of the legislation risks more greatly “undermin(ing) and violat(ing) equal protection, due process, and First Amendment rights.”

It’ll “double down on an already flawed domestic terrorism framework” that’s been used to crack down on invented domestic threats.

“This bill codifies authorities and actions of national security and counterterrorism components of the (DOJ and DHS), authorizing domestic terrorism units or offices to monitor, investigate, and prosecute incidents of (alleged) domestic terrorism” — that’s likely to be invented, not real.

“These kinds of government abuses are not new, and they are ongoing.”

They’ve been around throughout the republic’s history.

Hardening them over time is especially worrisome.

At risk is eliminating free and open expression, along with other fundamental freedoms that are too precious to lose.

Proposed legislation authorizes the  FBI’s Counterterrorism Division to more aggressively investigate alleged domestic terrorism — ignoring agency abuses of civil liberties since established in 1908 under J. Edgar Hoover.

The ACLU stressed that the proposed legislation “would not only entrench a system that lacks meaningful oversight, transparency, and legitimate standards, but also (will) codif(y) a framework that is used to target and discriminate against the very communities Congress (pretends) to protect.”

The measure is a further assault on a free and open society — already threatened by other police state laws.

If enacted into law, it’ll hasten the arrival of tyranny instead of all-out efforts to prevent it.

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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 Occidental Observer

We are at the crossroads of one of the most serious crises in World history. We are living history, yet our understanding of the sequence of events since January 2020 has been blurred.

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

We bring to the attention of GR readers this outstanding documentary entitled the New Normal which investigates the corona crisis, as well as it’s aftermath.

A “The Fourth Industrial Revolution” under the World Economic Forum’s ” Great Reset has been put forth. What are the consequences for the World’s 7.8 billion people. 

(M. Ch. GR Editor)

Watch the video below.

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Donald Trump has used his four years as US president to demonstrate his deep commitment to the Zionist state of Israel. He has striven to enable Israel to take control of occupied Palestine with an iron grip, and given it the upper hand in the region. No other US president has given Israel as much as Trump: none dared to recognise Jerusalem as the unified capital of the colonial state; none dared to move the US Embassy to the holy city; none dared to acknowledge Israel’s annexation of the occupied Syrian Golan Heights; none dared to give legitimacy to Israel’s settlements on occupied land; and none dared to accept Israeli annexation, including Benjamin Netanyahu‘s plans to impose sovereignty on the occupied Jordan Valley. For good measure Trump also stopped US donations to the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in an effort to annul the whole refugee issue.

Trump’s most recent gift to the Israelis was the so-called Abraham Accords. Under his patronage, the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco normalised relations with Israel last year.

His parting gift to the occupation state, however, is the integration of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) alongside Arab troops within US Central Command (CENCOM), which has a base at Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar. (image below)

This is something Israel has been waiting and hoping for. From this we can deduce that Gulf reconciliation between Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain on one side, and Qatar on the other, was achieved on direct orders from the Trump White House.

American Jewish organisations have been pressing Washington to include the IDF in CENTCOM in order to link Israeli national security to America’s, but previous administrations have always refused this, given the sensitivity between the Arab countries and the occupation state.

The latest decision seems a bit academic, however, given that the IDF has had a strong presence at the heart of US military decision-making for a number of years, and the fact that America’s wars in the Middle East, especially in Iraq, have been fought in defence of the occupation state and to maintain its hegemony.

This was actually confirmed after the second Gulf War, when General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of the US Central Command between 1988 and 1991, proudly told Israeli leaders that he had destroyed the Iraqi army on their behalf in Operation Desert Storm.

The Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), the members of which include former US and Israeli military leaders, has finally succeeded in pressuring Trump to make this dangerous decision. It will allow the occupation state to officially and effectively participate under the umbrella of CENTCOM in any military operation alongside Arab forces.

Before this move, Israel was within the scope of the US leadership in Europe but not the Middle East, to avoid any problems about coordination between Israel and Arab troops. With the exception of Egypt and Jordan, no Arab countries had peace treaties with Israel. That has all changed.

The Trump administration has thus put the other Arab countries on the spot as they are facing a fait accompli of having to coordinate military activities with Israel. This affects Saudi Arabia and Kuwait in particular, as they already coordinate militarily with the US forces based in their countries which are subject to the authority of CENCOM. Qatar too, of course, which hosts the command structure, under General Frank Mackenzie. With Israel now also under CENCOM, Arab countries will be under more pressure to accept normalisation after the occupation state has basically become a protector of them and their regimes.

The US Central Command is the most powerful military force in the Middle East. It was established in 1983 to enhance American capabilities in confronting the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and in light of the escalation of the Iran-Iraq war. This imposed US domination over the Middle East. Having achieved its target in that respect, the new target became Islam.

Under the banner of the so-called “war on terror”, sparking a low level third world war, CENTCOM became responsible for managing it, with operations in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and the Gulf. It has specific strategic goals set by the Pentagon, as it supervises coordination with the countries that “host” — not that they have much choice — US forces operating from military bases in the Gulf. Strategies drawn up include all Arab armies in the Middle East, as well as Afghanistan and Pakistan, in addition to the security mission against Iran. Adding Israel to these forces makes it an active element in US military operations in the Middle East.

This necessarily means coordination, planning and military cooperation between the occupation army and the Arab armies; they are now arms of the same body, as we will see in any war in the region, with Iran for example; or another crisis in Gaza against which war will be waged under the pretext of fighting “terrorism”. What will the Arab position be in such scenarios if their forces are allied with Israel? Who will they stand with?

This “Arab-Israeli NATO” is supported by the US and I predicted that it would happen in the wake of the Abraham Accords, because political, economic and cultural normalisation falls short unless it is crowned with military normalisation. The latter is the whole point of these normalisation deals, which were pushed through solely to serve the interests of the Zionist entity.

Arab issues are now surrounded completely by America, all within the broader project known as the deal of the century. General Frank MacKenzie can go anywhere in the region without being controlled or monitored, and can collect intelligence about any and all Arab countries. Of course, this will be shared with Israel, which will expose Arab security even more in the next phase of the colonial re-conquest of the Middle East. Indeed, what we call Arab national security may disappear from the political lexicon, becoming “Israel-Arab national security” instead.

“The easing of tensions between Israel and its Arab neighbours subsequent to the Abraham Accords has provided a strategic opportunity for the United States to align key partners against shared threats in the Middle East,” said the Pentagon. According to JINSA, placing Israel within CENCOM was delayed due to the hostility of the Arab countries towards the state. “But the agreements opened the doors to achieve a strategic goal that was not possible [before].”

Indeed, this military normalisation would not have happened had it not been for the deals struck last year which dealt a blow to the notion of Arab unity; there will be catastrophic consequences. Nevertheless, the ordinary people are optimistic that they will be able to overcome this latest disaster that the dictatorial regimes have created. The regimes may be Zionist, but their people are not.

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Dr Amira Abo el-Fetouh is an Egyptian political columnist.

Featured image: US President Donald Trump speaking at an AIPAC conference, Washington DC, 21 March 2016 [Lorie Shaull/Flickr]

You look at what they call ‘The Industrialized world’ and you can get a feel for how they run their democracies. Canada, France, New Zealand, Australia, South Korea and Scotland, to name a few, all have at least FIVE viable political parties. Germany and Italy have SIX. The UK has SEVEN. Japan and Sweden have EIGHT. Norway has NINE. Turkey has TEN. Switzerland has TWELVE. The Netherlands and Poland have THIRTEEN. Spain tops the list with FOURTEEN. Now, we know that in most of those nations there are one or two, perhaps three or four prominent parties. Yet, in many instances coalitions are needed to run their governments. Not so in the good ole USA.

Historically, many times in our nation there have been popular third party movements. What happened in most cases? Duh, the empire, through its powerful leverage using this Two Party system, has either Co-opted third parties by overwhelming them by outspending them severely, or using the controlled media to disenfranchise them in the eyes of the ‘Sucker Public’.

Recently, we have seen how the Sanders’ Democratic Socialist campaign was vilified by both the Republican and Democratic run news stations as being ‘Far Left wing radicals and Marxists’. If you wish to scare the ‘Sucker Public’ just label someone as a Marxist AKA Communist. This has been successfully done for as long as this writer can remember.

What the movers and shakers of this empire want is a Compliant Voter/Citizen.

The Chinese restaurant joke still resonates well: Just choose from Column A or Column B… either way you LOSE… with no ice cream dessert!

Thus, the Two Party/One Party scam has allowed our republic to move more and more to the Right politically. If Richard Nixon was a politician today he would be labeled as a ‘Moderate Republican’.. or perhaps even a Democrat!

They labeled Bill and Hillary Clinton as Marxists, ditto with Obama, and now his chosen successor Biden. Today, Senator Lindsay Graham warned of the Biden administration coming in as having a ‘Far Left wing agenda’. Did Graham see how many Neo Liberal appointees Biden has named?

The ‘War Hawks’ will fill the halls of our Capitol!

We won’t see any Medicare for All under Biden.

We won’t see large corporate America being taxed along with the super rich.

No Universal Basic Income to save hundreds of millions of us.

Just a few band-aids to stop some of the bleeding.

Why, he won’t even institute Sanders’ idea of a $2000 per person stimulus check (one time only by the way). He plans to deduct the $600 we already got from that total.

If we had a viable multi party system here in the ‘Land of the Free’ perhaps there would be more adjustments. Instead, we stay with this phony Two Party/One Party fantasyland. Sure, they joined together to get rid of the craziness of Trump.

Imagine if there was more than just the Chinese menu, Trump may have never been elected in the first place… or Biden now.

If there was a viable Libertarian Party, along with ditto for a Green Party, or Socialist Party, the obscene military spending (accounting for 50% of our federal taxes) would have never been allowed to surge to such high numbers. Same for those nearly 1000 overseas military bases our taxes throw down the rabbit hole.

We would still have major problems inside of this empire. As the Jack Nicholson character said in the film ‘ One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ after he failed to win a bet by lifting the stone water fountain: “At least I tried. That’s more than I can say for you guys!”

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Philip A Farruggio is a contributing editor for The Greanville Post. He is also frequently posted on Global Research, Nation of Change, Countercurrents.org, and Off Guardian sites. He is the son and grandson of Brooklyn NYC longshoremen and a graduate of Brooklyn College, class of 1974. Since the 2000 election debacle Philip has written over 400 columns on the Military Industrial Empire and other facets of life in an upside down America. He is also host of the ‘It’s the Empire… Stupid‘ radio show, co produced by Chuck Gregory. Philip can be reached at [email protected].

On the eve of incoming US President Joe Biden’s inauguration, as if in celebration of his “success”, quite a few things coincided in the Middle East, most of them to America’s detriment.

These include: the anniversary of the killing of Iranian Brigadier General Qassem Soleimani, the new killing of top nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, and a ramping up of Israeli airstrikes on Iranian targets in Syria.

As a result, the American Forces in the Middle East appear to be fresh out of luck in the first weeks of 2021. A series of misadventures has befallen US soldiers in Syria and Iraq.

On January 19^th, a US AH-64 Apache attack helicopter allegedly crashed in the northeastern Syrian province of Hasakah.

It reportedly crashed inside the US base at the al-Jabsa oil field near the city of al-Shaddadi. There is no information on any casualties as yet, but there were likewise initially none when Iranian ballistic missiles hit the US al-Asad base in Iraq back in January 2020.

On January 9^th, disaster had struck in the central and southern regions of Iraq as 3 US convoys were reportedly hit by IEDs. These attacks were an unsurprising adverse effect of the standoff between the US-led coalition and the Iranian-aligned Axis of Resistance in the Middle East.

Days later a series of explosions hit positions of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) southwest of Baghdad. The PMU are aligned with Iran, a major force in the fight against terrorism and a part of the Iraqi Armed Forces.

This attack was attributed to Israel and the United States, but Washington vehemently denied playing any part in it.

The U.S. encountered all of these misfortunes while Iran was carrying out a brand-new military drill, by the name of Eqtedar 99, which is taking place on the southeastern Makran coast, just after two American B-52 strategic bombers flew close to the region.

In an interesting spin, Tehran claimed this close fly-by as a sign that Washington is fearful of Iran’s “defensive might”. The bombers, which are capable of dropping nuclear gravity bombs, were deemed “void of operational value” by Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces Major General Mohammad Baqeri.

Even on Donald Trump’s last day in office, on January 19^th, the Middle East is still on the brink of a devastating escalation with every side attempting to forward its agenda and damage that of its adversaries.

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Sweden’s growing ties with NATO over the past half-dozen years make many observers wonder whether the Nordic country will soon join the transatlantic bloc, but it actually doesn’t even have to do so formally since it’s already a de facto member considering its close security cooperation with it, which means that Sweden is still a security threat to Russia despite not crossing Moscow’s red line of officially joining NATO.

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A recent Reuters investigation may indicate that “Q Anon” was in fact an FBI cyber psyop.

The “Q Anon” phenomenon has generally been regarded as a hoax or prank, originated by online message board users in late October 2017, that got out of control. The “Q Anon” persona was preceded by similar personae, including “FBI anon”, “CIA anon” and “White House insider anon”.

“Q Anon” originally called himself “Q clearance patriot”. Former CIA counterintelligence operative Kevin M. Shipp explained that an actual “Q clearance leaker” – i.e. someone possessing the highest security clearance at the US Department of Energy, required to access top secret nuclear weapons information – would have been identified and removed within days.

However, in November 2020 Reuters reported that the very first social media accounts to promote the “Q Anon” persona were seemingly “linked to Russia” and even “backed by the Russian government”. For instance, the very first Twitter account to ever use the term “Q Anon” on social media had previously “retweeted obscure Russian officials”, according to Reuters.

These alleged “Russian social media accounts”, posing as accounts of American patriots, were in contact with politically conservative US YouTubers and drew their attention to the “Q Anon” persona. This is how, in early November 2017, the “Q Anon” movement took off.

But given the recent revelations by British investigator David J. Blake – who for the first time was able to conclusively show, at the technical level, that the “Russian hacking” operation was a cyber psyop run by the FBI and FBI cyber security contractor CrowdStrike – the Reuters report may in fact indicate that “Q Anon” was neither a hoax nor “Russian”, but another FBI psychological cyber operation.

Of note, US cyber intelligence firm New Knowledge, founded by former NSA and DARPA employees and tasked by the US Senate Intelligence Committee, in 2018, with investigating alleged “Russian social media operations” relating to the 2016 US presidential election, was itself caught faking a “Russian social media botnet” in order to influence the 2017 Alabama senate race.

If the “Q Anon” persona – similar to the Guccifer2.0 “Russian hacker” persona played by an FBI cyber security contractor – was indeed an FBI psychological operation, its goal may have been to take control of, discredit and ultimately derail the supporter base of US President Trump. In this case, the “Q Anon” movement may have been a modern version of the original FBI COINTELPRO program.

Postscript

Contrary to some media claims, the person or people behind the “Q Anon” persona have never been identified. Some media speculated that James Watkins, the owner of the 8chan/8kun message board, on which “Q” was posting his messages, might be “Q” or might be linked to “Q”, but Watkins denied this. In September 2020, the owner of QMap, a website aggregating “Q” messages, was identified as a Citigroup employee, but again no actual link to “Q” could be established.

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Featured image is from SPR

Four years ago on January 20, Trump vowed to transfer power from Washington “and give it back to you, the people (sic).”

Saying while privileged Americans prospered, ordinary ones struggled to get by.

“That all changes starting right here and right now because this moment is your moment. It belongs to you (sic),” he said, adding:

“The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer (sic).”

“The American carnage stops right here and stops right now…The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans (sic).”

We know how Trump’s mass deception turned out.

Time and again, political candidates promise one thing, then deliver something entirely difference if elected, notably in the US.

Government of, by, and for all Americans equitably is pure fantasy.

Like most of his predecessors, Trump served privileged interests exclusively at the expense of ordinary people he was indifferent toward.

Will that all change right here, right now under Biden/Harris?

Will the sun henceforth rise in the West and set in the East?

Dissembling is what politicians do. It goes with the territory, especially in the West, the US most of all.

It’s why they can never be trusted. Rare exceptions prove the rule.

Biden built a near-half century political career on a foundation of Big Lies and mass deception.

They’ll surely continue as long as he remains in office.

Believing otherwise is naive and wishful thinking.

What almost never happens in the US surely isn’t what’s coming ahead. Expect the opposite.

Prepare to be betrayed because it’s baked in the cake.

Once a servant of privileged interests and his own exclusively over the general welfare, always one.

Biden is a longstanding “deep state” tool — controlled by higher powers.

That’s what he’s always been all about. The same goes for Harris over a shorter duration.

Otherwise they wouldn’t have been chosen to replace Trump.

They’re reliable, controllable, and vitually certain to make an already bad situation worse on their watch for ordinary people at home and abroad.

That’s the only change I expect ahead — a dark chapter in US history growing darker, dystopia on their watch to deepen.

Harris is president in waiting, a hardline former prosecutor to take over when cognitively impaired Biden can no longer fake it even in sound bites.

He long ago abandoned public addresses, a lookalike double making them for him — including his inaugural address.

Roots of tyranny already exist in the mythical land of the free and home of the brave.

Follow their further sprouting ahead as dark forces controlling Biden/Harris likely snuff out what remains of a free and open society to solidify unchallenged deep state control.

Biden’s tenure began by mandating harmful-to-health face masks that don’t protect in federal buildings and on its lands by executive order.

It “call(s) on governors, public health officials, mayors, business leaders and others to implement masking, physical distancing, and other measures to control Covid-19,” according to the new regime’s seasonal flu (renamed covid) czar Jeff Zients.

Will the above be mandated ahead nationwide — followed perhaps by mandated vaxxing with what risks great harm or worse when taken as directed?

Will the above and mandated vaccine passports for access to public places become part of the new abnormal?

Will dissent against unacceptable Biden/Harris regime policies be criminalized as domestic terrorism?

Will we be cowed into submission to US dark forces for our own good?

Will war on humanity at home and abroad harden under selected, not elected, Biden/Harris — an illegitimate duo now empowered?

What Will Happen to US-Russia Relations?

After attending their inauguration with the capital under unprecedented lockdown and militarization, Russia’s envoy to Washington Anatoly Antonov said the following:

“I would like to believe that a new chapter in the development of the (US) begins today and, of course, that a new chapter in the development of Russian-American relations begins as well,”

Adding, After monitoring Wednesday’s events and public remarks on US television, “I can’t say that we found a lot of positive in the speeches” made by elements of the new Biden administration.

Antonov, other Russian officials, and their counterparts in other nations free from US control know that chances for improved relations between their countries and Washington is virtually nil.

The new adminstration’s geopolitical agenda is sure to be uncompromisingly hardline against all nations unwilling to sacrifice their sovereign rights to a higher power in Washington.

On Tuesday, Russia’s lower house State Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin acknowledged reality in police state America, saying the following:

“Those who participated in unauthorized political actions everywhere were anointed by Washington as fighters for freedom and democracy.”

“When the same thing happen(s) in the (US), (they’re) labelled…domestic terrorists who face 15-20 years in prison.”

“(They’ll) be real political prisoners. Let’s call a spade a spade.”

That’s part of how the US operates at home and abroad — a take no prisoners approach to governing.

Biden/Harris replaced Trump by coup d’etat, likely to enhance swamp rule that’s festered and hardened for decades — the American way’s ugly face.

No government of, by, and for everyone ever existed from inception, no democracy other than a fantasy version wrapped in the American flag to foster the illusion of what doesn’t exist and never did.

The US is run by deep state militarists, corporatists, and other tyrannical elements for their own self-interest at the expense of ordinary people everywhere — to be exploited, not served.

Biden/Harris were chosen to front for the dirty system at a time of imperial USA’s deepening decline en route to history’s dustbin where it belongs.

They’re beholden to dark forces controlling them.

Will martial law be declared ahead on the phony pretext of foreign threats and domestic terrorism to counter?

Will what remains of a free and open society be replaced by full-blown totalitarian rule, enforced by police state harshness?

Make no mistake. Biden/Harris and members of their regime are enemies of ordinary people, hostile to their interests, wanting them exploited, not served.

Along with likely escalated foreign aggression against one or more invented enemies, homeland despotism will likely harden on their watch for our own good we’ll likely be told.

With history in mind in my lifetime since Franklin Roosevelt goaded imperial Japan to attack the US, knew Pearl Harbor was coming but failed to warn its commander to give him the war he wanted, America has been on a downward trajectory toward full-blown despotism.

JFK, RFK and MLK were eliminated for standing in the way of what US dark forces have been pursuing for generations.

Trump was an aberration so had to be denied a second term, brazen fraud the vehicle to elevate Biden/Harris to power.

Big Media-proliferated mind manipulation promotes the official narrative by suppressing hard truths.

Public mind control convinces most people to go along with what harms their health, welfare, safety, and a nation unfit to live  in.

A permanent war on humanity rages at home and abroad, Biden/Harris appointed the latest maestros of misery over ordinary Americans.

Their diabolical mission is hidden behind smiling faces, a facade that’s part of mass deception.

They’ll preside over affairs of state extrajudicially like most of their predecessors.

Wreckage they inherited may be shattered beyond repair before passing the baton to what’s likely to be full-blown tyranny under whoever succeeds them — based on what’s been happening post-9/11, greatly escalated last year.

Russian State Duma Speaker Volodin got it right saying:

A nation “which lectures the whole world about the standards of democracy” denies it to its own people and tolerates it nowhere else.

That’s the agenda Biden/Harris inherited, charged with serving the interests of dark forces controlling them.

Forewarned is forearmed. The only solution is popular revolution.

The alternative is ruler/serf USA ahead.

It’s baked in the cake without all-out resistance to reject what no one should accept.

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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 The White House Facebook

Washington’s 40-year offensive policy of North Korean regime change has gone nowhere.

Bill Clinton created a chance of peace with North Korea in 1994 and he blew it.

George W. Bush accepted the 2005 agreement for peace, then, he threw it away.

Donald Trump had the golden chance for peace at 2018 Hanoi Summit, but he lost the chance.

Barack Obama has made North Korea a Nuclear State.

Joe Biden, 46th president of the U.S. has quasi impossible mission of saving America from the murderous corona-virus, the torn economy and, above all, the deeply divided society. The virus will go away and the economy will be eventually recovered. But, the task of unifying the society is something else. The divide of the American society is essentially due to poor management of the 150-year old racial relations and disorderly neo-liberal economic growth and there is no guarantee that the Biden will be able to unify the country. One thing sure is that Biden should give priority to the solution of internal racial problem instead of trying to change regimes of other countries including North Korea.

Biden will eventually have to do something about North Korean problems. It is hoped that he will not spend eight years of “strategic patience” which was the North Korean policy of his former boss, Barack Obama. I presume that Biden’s perception of North Korean problems is based on the views of American media, think tanks, academia and politicians. Their perception of North Korean issues is based on the 70-year old mistrust and hatred toward North Korea. What these views are saying is that the failure of Washington’s North Korea policy is attributable to the dishonesty and unreliability of North Korea. Unfortunately, as long as Biden relies on these views, his North Korea policy will fail just like his predecessors’ policies have failed.

In this paper, I am presenting alterative view which is, I believe, more objective and more useful for the solution of North Koreans problems. I may add that my view is shared by most of the liberal minded North Korean affaires experts in South Korea including former Ministers of Unification of Korea.

Image on the right: President Donald J. Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, walk together to their one-on-one bilateral meeting, Tuesday, June 12, 2018, at the Capella Hotel in Singapore. (Official White House Photo by Stephanie Chasez)

In this paper, I am asking two questions. What has been the nature of Washington’s North Korea policy for last 40 years? Was it a failure or a success?

The primary objective of Washington’s North Korea policy has been the: regime change and the denuclearization of North Korea. One may add that China containment policy and the sales of military equipment were its objective as well, although they were not officially recognized objectives.

Policy of Regime Change has failed 

The change of North Korean regime has been the core of Washington’s North Korea policy. This policy is based on West’s negative perception – even demonization – of North Korean regime of Juchéism. In the eyes of the media, think tanks and politicians of the West, Juchéism is a dangerous ideology which, if spread, can pollute the Western value of democracy.

Washington’s strategy of regime change is built up on two tactics: total war or/and internal revolt. The total war was planned several times since as early as 1950. The U.S. had an idea of attacking North Korea with nuclear weapon during the Korean War (1950-1953). In 1992, Bill Clinton was going to bomb North Korea. In 1968, after the capture by Pyongyang of the USS Pueblo, a spy ship, Washington was going to attack North Korea. In 2017, Trump was ready to invade North Korea

But, none of these plans was carried out because of the huge human casualties. According to John Bolton, one of the most ardent supporter of the war mentioned that within 30 minute of the war, several millions of citizens of Seoul city will be sacrificed, apart from the deaths of American troops and their families.

The alternative option taken by Washington along with the conservative forces in South Korea was to provoke internal revolts, topple the Juché government and establish a democratic regime.

To provoke the internal revolt against the North Korean government, the U.S. and its allies have used several tactics.

First, the tactic used was the creation of fear so that the people would blame the government for its failure of assuring citizens’ security. This has been done for decades by U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises. According to the people who have lived in North Korea, these military exercises were so extensive, so violent and so intense that that the North Koreans people became utterly frightened and even terrorized. This tactic was a failure. The North Koreans have endured without complaining against the government. On the contrary, they rather blamed the U.S. and its allies.

Second, the U.S. and its allies have been relying on anti-Juché propaganda through radio, TV, seminars with North Korean refugees and even the air-born propaganda balloons. The propaganda was designed to show the superiority of democracy of South Korea over Juchéism of North Korea. This approach has failed primarily, because North Koreans had contempt for the South Korean regime for its corruption, its being vassal regime of Washington and its being pro-Japan. North Koreans knew that South Korea was richer than North Korea, but they seemed to think that the North Korean government looked after the ordinary citizens far better than the conservative South Korean counterparts.

Third, Washington and the conservative South Korean government have been trying to isolate Pyongyang from the international community through diplomatic pressure and economic aid, but this tactic has not produced the expected results. North Korea has diplomatic relations with 164 countries, although the number of embassies abroad is much smaller.

Fourth, Washington has been imposing on North Korea endless sanctions against the North. Washington and the conservative government of South Korea thought that these sanctions would lead to the massive complaints against the government, but this has not happened in North Korea for the simple reason that the people had been used to it on the one hand and, on the other, North Korea enforced self sufficiency and increasingly used the underground trade with China and other neighbouring countries to get daily necessities and even oil.

Despite all these harsh tactics deployed by the U.S. and its allies, the citizens of North Korea have not revolted and the Juchéism has survived.

This can be explained by two additional factors. On the one hand, Juchésim has evolved from militarism (Sun-gun) to double priority of military force and economic development (Byun-jin) and now, to economic development. In other words, Juchéism has been evolving from the military-oriented system to people’s welfare-oriented system.

On the other hand, we must know the cultural impact of the leader-people relation embodied in the Juchéism. The ideology of Juché is highly inspired by Confucianism in which the people regard the head of state as father and obey. In the West, one wonders how the Kim’s family has been able to maintain the power for 70 years. Given the harsh living conditions, the North Koreans could have risen up and try to topple the government. But this has not happened, because the government-people relation is not necessarily one of ruler-ruled coercive relations but rather one of ruler’s paternalistic care-people’s gratitude. However, as the North Korean society becomes more open and globalized, such Confucian relations will have to go through changes. And, the regime will become more open and more globally acceptable regime.

Policy of Denuclearization has gone no where

Politicians and bureaucrats in Washington have been trying to convince the world that Washington’s North Korea policy of denuclearization is the best assurance of peace on the Korean peninsula. In fact, the U.S. had good opportunities to achieve the objective of denuclearization. But, unfortunately, Washington blew all these opportunities.

The first opportunity was the Framework Agreement of October 21, 1994 by virtue of which North Korea would stop all nuclear program in return of the construction of two civil use light water nuclear reactors and provision of oil. But this was cancelled because of the non-implementation of the Agreement by Washington and Seoul. One of the reasons of the non-implementation of the Agreement was the death of Kim Il-sung in July 1994. Washington hoped that Kim-il-sung’s death would provoke popular revolt and topple the government.

But there was no popular revolt and the regime was still there. This meant that Washington and Seoul had to implement the Agreement. But, neither South Korea nor the U.S. wanted the implementation of the Agreement. So, Washington and Seoul were looking for events which could justify the non-implementation of the Agreement, Well, North Korea provided an event.

On August 31, 1998, Kim Jong-il, successor of Kim Il-sung made a test of Missile Taepodong-1 to show the dissatisfaction with the non-implementation of the Agreement. This gave Washington the justification for scraping the Agreement. And, in 2002, the Agreement just disappeared into thin air, when George W. Bush declared that North Korea was a part of ” Axis of Evil”.

The second was the 2005-Agreement which was produced as a result of the 6-Party Talks. George W. Bush blew the chance of denuclearization. North Korea was quite disappointed with Washington’s hesitation to implement the 1944-Agreement and, in December of 2002, Pyongyang announced that it would reactivate the Yongbyon nuclear facilities. This obviously alarmed the Bush government and in 2003, the 6-party Talk began under the presidency of China. The member countries included the two Koreas, Japan, Russia and the U.S.

On August 9, 2003, the first meeting of the 6-Party Talk took place. The talk was difficult because of Pyongyang’s uranium enriching program which North Korea denied, while The U.S. suspected. In order to put pressure on Pyongyang, the U.S. froze 25 million USD deposited by North Korea in a bank (Banco Delta Asia) in Macao.

Nevertheless, on September 19, 2005, a joint statement was announced. In this Statement, North Korea pledged to abandon nuclear program and respect the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) Safe Guards rules as well as its return to NPT (Non-proliferation Treaty) in exchange of non-aggression of the U.S. However, there was no positive sign of realization of the Statement. Then, in order to speed up the process and to show its potential nuclear capacity, Pyongyang undertook the first nuclear test on October 9, 2006.

The 6-Party Talk continued until 2007. In 2007 the group announced the Action Plan of the 2005 Statement. In this plan North Korea would go further by promising no export of nuclear products, while the U.S. would provide 900,000 tons of oil. Moreover, North Korea will be removed from the list of terrorism sponsor countries.

Then February 2008, the anti-Pyongyang conservative party of Lee Byong-bak took over the power in South Korea and the 6-PartyTalk mechanism disappeared. Nevertheless, Washington could, if it wanted, implement the 2005 Joint Statement despite the Lee Myong-bak’s anti- North Korea policy.

Barack Obama who succeeded George W. Bush could continue the 6-Party talk, but he failed. He could try to improve the bilateral relations, but he did not. Rather, he spent 8-year of “Strategic Patience”, which has led to 3 nuclear tests out of 6 nuclear tests ever undertaken by Pyongyang and 83 missile tests representing 57% of all missile tests undertaken by North Korea. In this way Obama made North Korea a de facto Nuclear State and a missile super power.

The third was Trump’s engagement policy designed to bring peace to the Korean peninsula. But, he had to deal with North Korea which was deeply disappointed by the 8-year “strategic patience”. When Donald Trump took over the power on January 20, 2017, Pyongyang was in a difficult situation because of Obama’s North Korea policy of doing nothing. But it had a high hope for Trump’s more positive policy of peace dialogue and engagement. But, nothing happened. To show its disappointment, North Korea tested on July 4, 2017 the ICBM, Hwasung-14 with a range of 8,500 KM and undertook test of hydrogen bomb on September 3, 2017. Trump reacted violently and threatened Pyongyang with “fury and fire”.

Here, we can see that Americans felt insecure. And, Trump felt the need for engagement with Kim Jong-un. But, having no experience in managing international crisis, Trump relied on Moon Jae-in, president of South Korea, for the engagement and the Singapore Summit took place on June 12, 2018 leading to joint statement on some basic guiding principles of the bilateral engagement. But the real test took place in Hanoi on February 27-28, 2019, which was sabotaged by hardliners in Washington. It was just too bad. Remember this. Kim Jong-un went to Hanoi by train taking three days travel to Hanoi. He did this to show his sincerity of solving the nuclear crisis. It was a golden opportunity to find the solution. But Trump blew it.

Image below: U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster during September briefing on North Korea. (White House)

What emerges from these episodes is the pattern of Washington’s North Korean denuclearization policy. The pattern may be summarized:

American nuclear threat→North Korean deterrent reactions (missile tests or nuclear tests)→fear in the U.S.→Washington-Pyongyang Peace Agreement→restoration of calm in the U.S.→Cancellation of the agreement

Let us apply this pattern to what happened to the 1994 Framework Agreement.

• Prior to the 1994 Framework Agreement, North Korea was threatened by possible nuclear attack by the U.S. The Soviet Union’s collapse in 1989 meant for Pyongyang the end of Soviet protection against American nuclear attack and North Korea felt the need for nuclear development for defensive purpose.
• In 1992, Pyongyang withdrew from NPT, which alarmed Washington. Bill Clinton planed military intervention-most likely nuclear attack.
• Owing to the Jimmy Carter’s mediation, Washington and Pyongyang signed the 1994 Agreement.
• Calm was restored in the U.S.
• The U.S. and its allies looked for an excuse for cancelling the Agreement. In 1998, North Korea launched missile to complain the delay of the Agreement implementation.
• And, in 2002, George W. Bush made North Korea as a part of the “Axis of Evil”. In this way, the 1994 Agreement has gone with the political wind.

Now let us look at the end of 2005 Joint Statement.

• Having lost the chance of peace through the 1994 Agreement, North Korea needed to put pressure on the U.S. Pyongyang said that it could reactivate the Yongbyon nuclear facilities.
• Being alarmed, Washington persuaded China, in 2003, to organize the 6-Party Talk.
• On September 19, 2005, the 6-Party Talk signed the Joint Statement in which North Korea would stop all nuclear programmes in return of non aggression of the U.S.
• North Korea being fed up with the non-fulfillment of the joint Statement, undertook the first nuclear test on October 9, 2006
• In 2007, the 6-Party-Talk tried to continue its dialogue and the Action Plan was announced.
• Calm was restored in the U.S.
• George W. Bush put North Korea back on the list of terrorism-sponsor country. The 2005-Agreement disappeared with no trace.

Now, let us see the episode of the 2019 Hanoi Summit

• For 8 years (2009-2017), Barack Obama relied on “Strategic Patience” to solve the North Korean nuclear crisis. But he did nothing to undertake dialogue with Pyongyang
• North Korea was hoping that Donald Trump would open the door for bilateral peace dialogue in vain.
• Being disappointed, North Korea launched in July 2017 the ICBM Hwasung-14 which can reach Alaska. And on September 3, Kim Jong-un tested hydrogen bomb. So, Americans felt insecure.
• Trump was alarmed
• Through productive mediation of Moon Jae-in, Donald Trump met Kim Jong-un three times. The Hanoi Summit has given the golden chance for the solution of the North Korean nuclear crisis. But Trump let the chance to fly away.

When we see the 40-year experience of the American North Korea policy, we are made to wonders if Washington really desires denuclearization. If Washington really wanted denuclearization, it has had three occasions for denuclearization, but it has let them to go away. Why? Does Washington really want denuclearization of North Korea? But, what it has shown so far make us doubt its sincerity for denuclearization.

What has happened makes us to believe that Washington does not really want North Korean denuclearization. What has taken place makes us to think that Washington prefers a nuclear North Korea and resulting tension which justifies the presence of U.S. military in South Korea for the China containment policy and which assures the lucrative market of American military equipment in Korea and Japan.

To sum up, the general evaluation of Washington’s 40-year North Korea policy is very negative. It has failed in changing Juchéism. The denuclearization policy has gone nowhere. The regime Juchéism is still there intact. The number of nuclear bombs may be increasing.

If there is anything which the U.S. has accomplished, it is the expansion of market of American military equipment and the enhancement of China containment. It is hoped that Biden will come up with North Korea policy that aims at real denuclearization, the lasting peace in Korea and in the region.

It is hoped that Biden will not repeat what his predecessor have done. His policy should be based on mutual trust and respect and find solution through dialogue and negotiation.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the East-Asia Observatory (OAE) of the Research Center for Integration and Globalization (CEIM), Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM).

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

Featured image is from Shutterstock

The UK government has established a journalism project to ‘influence’ Venezuela’s ‘media agenda’ while a Foreign Office-funded foundation is spending £750,000 on a secretive ‘democracy-promotion’ programme in the country, as Britain appears to deepen efforts to remove the Maduro government.

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As Venezuela’s political crisis continues, the UK government has initiated a new project promoting investigative journalism in Latin America which furtively covers Venezuela.

The project, launched last summer and intended to “influence” the media agenda in the country, follows a long history of the British government using journalism as an influencing tool. It raises suspicions that it aims to help remove the leftist government of Venezuela president Nicolás Maduro.

In a separate programme, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy (WFD), a majority UK-government funded organisation, has spent over £750,000 to “strengthen democracy” in Venezuela since 2016, according to documents obtained by Declassified.

The WFD’s programmes in the country are shrouded in secrecy due to apparent concerns about the security of its staff, although its country representative advertises his affiliation to the organisation online.

The British government controversially recognises Venezuelan opposition figure Juan Guaidó as president and is running a number of anti-government programmes in the country using the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF) which supports projects designed “to tackle instability and to prevent conflicts that threaten UK interests”.

The aim of the fund’s new journalism project is stated to be the creation of a “new platform that strengthens media organisation [sic] throughout the region and provides journalists with a platform in which they can collaborate and build regional stories”.

Programme literature notes that successful applicants should display “a capacity to link into – and ultimately influence – local and national media agendas”.

But they are warned that “the British government — and its resourcing of the project — should not be expressly referred or linked to the individual outputs of the project (i.e. individual articles, events etc).”

Run by the British embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, the call for applications noted that successful bids would start in August 2020. There has been no public update since, although the Foreign Office told Declassified there had been delays due to the coronavirus pandemic.

On the public advert, applicants are advised to budget up to £250,000 for their projects, but the Foreign Office told Declassified: “it is not currently possible to confirm what budget will be available for this project.”

Declassified’s repeated questions about the project to its two coordinators in Bogotá went unanswered. However, a Foreign Office spokesperson told Declassified:

“It is inaccurate to conflate this call for bids with the UK position on Venezuela, which has not changed. We want to see a democratic transition with free and fair elections take place in Venezuela.”

The CSSF put out a public call in June last year for applications from journalists seeking to cover crime and corruption in Colombia, Peru and Panama, adding there was the “potential to cover linked events in other neighbouring countries”. The word Venezuela did not appear.

However, CSSF documentation published three days before the advert outlined the same programme with the addition of Venezuela in its title. The furtive inclusion of the country appears to reflect Foreign Office reticence to publicise its increased involvement in Venezuela.

The summary of another CSSF programme, again in Colombia for the year ending March 2020, includes the recommendation to “engage” Foreign Office officials “about options to develop CSSF programmes in Venezuela”.

A September 2019 job advert for a CSSF programme manager in Lima, Peru, notes that the successful applicant will work “with colleagues in Colombia, Panama and, potentially, Venezuela”. 

Declassified recently revealed that the CSSF has spent £450,000 setting up an anti-government coalition in Venezuela, again by furtively adding the project to an existing programme focused on Colombia and beginning in 2019.

Journalism as information war

The UK government has long used the media to undermine foreign leaders and political movements it perceives as a threat to British business interests.

Declassified recently revealed that a secretive Cold War propaganda unit, named the Information Research Department (IRD), tried to prevent Chilean socialist Salvador Allende from winning presidential elections in 1964 and 1970.

Declassified files also reveal that during the Brazilian dictatorship of 1964-1985, the IRD “assiduously cultivated” one of Brazil’s leading left-wing publishers, Samuel Wainer.

Though the unit was shut down in 1977, Britain has continued to sponsor journalistic ventures in Latin America. In response to a freedom of information request, the Foreign Office revealed that, between January 2016 and September 2018, it funded Venezuelan news outlet Fundación Efecto Cocuyo, as well as the Instituto Radiofónico Fe y Alegría and Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de la Prensa.

While receiving funds from the British government, Efecto Cocuyo teamed up with two British organisations — Bellingcat and Forensic Architecture — to “call for more evidence” regarding the killing of Óscar Pérez at the hands of Venezuelan police. Pérez, a police officer, had hijacked a police helicopter and, on 27 June 2017, used it to attack a number of government buildings in central Caracas.

In July 2019, Efecto Cocuyo’s editor, Luz Mely Reyes, spoke at the UK government’s “Global Conference for Media Freedom” event in London. Then foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt, addressing the conference, said Reyes “has defied the Maduro regime by co-founding an independent news website, Efecto Cocuyo”, without mentioning the website’s links to the British government.

London’s support for media projects in Venezuela appears to mirror that of the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED). According to its accounts, the NED has funded “freedom of information” projects in Venezuela aimed at fostering a “greater understanding of the spillover effects of Venezuelan corruption and criminal activity” by working with “investigative journalists and partner organisations”.

A 2017 NED project, with a budget of over $60,000, aims to “increase transparency and accountability in the Venezuelan government procurement processes. And to foster collaboration with journalists across the region”.

Media freedom group, Reporters Without Borders, which is also funded by the NED, notes: “Venezuela’s president since 2013, Nicolás Maduro persists in trying to silence independent media outlets and keep news coverage under constant control.”

It adds: “The climate for journalists has been extremely tense since the onset of a political and economic crisis in 2016, and is exacerbated by Maduro’s frequent references to ‘media warfare’ in an attempt to discredit national and international media criticism of his administration.”

Venezuelan journalist Luz Mely Reyes speaks at the UK government’s Global Conference for Media Freedom alongside Jeremy Hunt, then UK foreign secretary, London, 10 July 2019. (Photo: Twitter / Press Gazette)

The embassy in Bogotá

One of the two Foreign Office points of contact for the project at the British embassy in Bogotá is Claudia Castilla, a Colombian national who was a UK government-funded Chevening Scholar in London from 2017-18.

Castilla appears to be a strong supporter of the Venezuelan opposition, writing in February 2014 “I think I fell in love with Leopoldo López”, referring to a leading opposition figure. At the time US-educated López was promoting street protests in a strategy known as “The Exit”, after Maduro won presidential elections in April 2013.

From 2014-15, Castilla worked as a research assistant for the Colombian chapter of Transparency International, where she “formulated public policy recommendations”. Declassified recently revealed the UK government funded Transparency International’s Venezuelan chapter to set up an “anti-corruption” coalition in the country.

From 2012 to 2013, Castilla worked for the Cerrejón Foundation, the charitable arm of the controversial Cerrejón coal mine in Colombia which is run by three London-listed mining multinationals. For the latter period of her employment, Castilla was the foundation’s “social control advisor”.

‘Democracy promotion’

Documents obtained by Declassified also show that the Westminster Foundation for Democracy — Britain’s “democracy promotion” arm — has been running expensive programmes in Venezuela.

The WFD claims to be “the most effective organisation sharing the UK democratic experience”, but its operations are shrouded in secrecy.

Venezuela hosts the WFD’s only full-scale programme and permanent office in Latin America as part of a project which began in 2016. Since then the WFD has spent £760,680, according to figures obtained by Declassified.

The largest outlay was £248,725 in 2017-2018, as the EU announced a sanctions regime against Venezuela and British officials intensified calls for “different people at the helm” of the Venezuelan government.

Alan Duncan, then minister of state for the Americas, said in 2018: “Maduro’s double crime is that his destruction of the economy has been followed by the systemic undermining of democracy.” He added: “The revival of the oil industry [in Venezuela] will be an essential element in any recovery, and I can imagine that British companies like Shell and BP, will want to be part of it.”

Last year, the WFD spent £113,193 on its Venezuela operations, while Declassified understands a bid for funding of just over £27,500 for next year is awaiting approval. The WFD has two full-time staff in Venezuela.

In December, UN human rights experts found that “since November 2020 Venezuela has systematically stigmatised and persecuted civil society organisations, dissenting voices and human rights defenders”.

The WFD has no similar programmes in UK government-allied dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia, Oman, Bahrain, or the United Arab Emirates.

The Foundation told Declassified: “WFD works to strengthen democracy around the world. We are funded by the UK as well as other governments (including Canada, Germany, Norway and Switzerland) and international organisations (such as the United Nations Development Programme) and are operationally independent.”

But the vast majority of the WFD’s funding comes from the British government. In the year to March 2020, it provided £11.4-million to the Foundation, while all other sources of income added up to £1.5-million.

The WFD said that in Venezuela it works “with a range of MPs, National Assembly staff, civil society, and academics” but it refused to disclose to Declassified information about who those partners are. It said this was “to avoid endangering the physical health or safety of those partners”.

However, the WFD’s country representative in Venezuela advertises his position on his public Linkedin page, and his email and phone number are available through WFD job adverts.

As its Venezuela programme began in 2016, the WFD published an article on the independent news site openDemocracy in association with Daniel Fermín, a Venezuelan researcher.

The article asked: “Can Venezuela’s president [Nicolás Maduro] be unseated peacefully?”. In the following two years, openDemocracy was awarded $99,661 (£74,131) by the US analogue of the WFD, the National Endowment for Democracy.

According to a 2018 WFD posting for a job in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas, its country representative is expected to work with the British embassy and must “contribute to development of future business opportunities in Venezuela”.

When asked why it focused on Venezuela, the foundation told Declassified: “WFD programmes have been active in other countries across Latin America. We stand ready to launch new programmes and country offices when the opportunity arises.”

Neutrality 

The WFD says that it “works on a cross-party basis” in Venezuela, “seeking to engage all sides of the political divide while supporting democratic institutions in the country”.

In January 2019, shortly after Guaidó proclaimed himself president, the WFD’s country representative wrote that “last years elections [sic] were a sham and therefore Maduro is an usurper”.

The next month — after trucks of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) attempted to enter Venezuelan territory — he said: “Non-intervention cannot be an absolute principle that doesn’t consider other factors”.

On 30 April, when Guaidó launched an armed coup attempt in Caracas, the WFD’s representative announced that Guaidó’s actions were “not an assault on democracy but the other way round”. Elsewhere, he has described Chavismo — referring to former president Hugo Chávez — as a “plague”.

UK parliamentarians overseeing WFD’s operations have also disparaged the Venezuelan government. Conservative MP Richard Graham, the chair of WFD’s board of governors for the duration of its Venezuela project, said in December 2019 that “Islington Corbynsistas [sic] don’t get that extreme left ideas never work, whether in 2019 Venezuela or 80s Liverpool”.

The WFD’s board is appointed by the UK foreign secretary and is modelled on the NED, which has beendescribed by the Washington Post as the “sugar daddy of overt [US] operations”. Since Chávez’s election in 1998, the NED has been the guiding hand behind a number of efforts to overthrow the government in Venezuela.

While the NED’s operations abroad have received some independent scrutiny, the WFD – has largely operated under media silence.

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Matt Kennard is head of investigations at Declassified UK.

John McEvoy is an independent journalist who has written for International History Review, The Canary, Tribune Magazine, Jacobin, Revista Forum, and Brasil Wire.

Featured image: UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab meets Juan Guaidó, recognised by Britain as Venezuela’s ‘interim president’, in London, 21 January 2020. (Photo: UK government)

In the wake of the January 6 insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have us believe that the United States and Israel have a common enemy.

Pelosi implies that the American insurrectionists whose ideologies are rooted in racism, xenophobia and supremacy represent a threat to both the US and Israel — i.e., she believes antisemitism threatens the well-being and sanctity of the apartheid Jewish state, just as its existence among the ranks of the insurrectionists threatens American democracy.

That’s a big lie. What helped create Israel is the antisemitic motivations of British politicians. What poses a threat to Israel is anti-Zionism not antisemitism.(See: How Anti-Semitism Helped Create Israel: At a desperate moment in World War I, British elites appealed to what they saw as the monolithic, all-powerful forces of “international Jewry” to turn the tide of the conflict — and promised them Palestine.)

Israel fights its domestic anti-Zionist threat by, among other things, reining in human rights groups such as B’Tselem when they tell the truth about the nature of the state as an apartheid state. For example, Israel’s education minister has banned B’Tselem from lecturing at schools because its mission of ensuring “human rights, democracy, liberty and equality to all people, both Palestinian and Israeli, living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea” is antithetical to the Zionist creed.

Worth noting is that “so far neither the New York Times or Washington Post have reported on the B’Tselem report.”

For both Israel and the United States, the security threat today is deeply rooted in their histories and how they came to be. One difference is that supremacist, discriminatory and apartheid ideology is today enshrined in Israel’s Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People (the equivalent of a constitution), but thankfully not in the American Constitution any longer. (Although slavery is never mentioned in the Constitution, there are 11 clauses that allude to its existence.The 13th amendment abolished slavery and involuntary servitude in 1865; the 14th amendment of 1868 granted citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to former slaves; the 15th amendment, ratified in 1870, extended the right to vote to Black males, etc.)

To understand the parallel between the two settler-colonial states better, read the following words [min 18:33] by Distinguished Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University Eddie S. Glaude Jr. about the United States, while transposing specific references (in bold):

We’ve been having this conversation for a number of years. We saw it in real time over this last election [the Palestinian intifadas] when we think back on American [Israeli] history, we know that what is challenged, what has been the contradiction, what has been the serpent wrapped around the legs of the table upon which the constitution [Israel’s basic law] was signed, the declaration of independence was crafted, was this belief that white [Jewish] people matter more than others [certainly Palestinian Arabs], this ideology of whiteness [Jewishness] … we think about every moment of crisis that challenged the basic precepts of democracy [colonization and apartheid] it has been in defense of this belief that this country ought to remain a white [Jewish] nation.

In both Israel and the United States, as their respective histories indicate, the underlying cause of injustice is supremacy or, in other words, hate, intolerance and a sense of entitlement by one group of people over another. (See: ‘Yes, we’re racists. We believe in racism’: Embracing racism, rabbis at pre-army yeshiva laud Hitler, urge enslaving Arabs)

Today, the situation is much worse in Israel than it is in the United States. The US continues to lie about Israel while at the same time being more honest about itself than it has been for decades. So, whereas the news media and politicians are finally trying to reattach people to reality and facts, especially the fact that the majority of all terrorist plots and attacks (57% of 893) from 1994 to 2020 were perpetrated by right wing terrorists, they continue to lie about the apartheid nature of the Israeli state.

In connection with Israel, the big lie is two-fold. One has to do with its vaunted claim as the “only democracy in the Middle East,” when in fact it is an apartheid state (see: This is apartheid: The Israeli regime promotes and perpetuates Jewish supremacy between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River).

The second big lie has to do with what Tony Blinken, Joe Biden’s choice for secretary of state, calls “the Jewish homeland,” which in fact is a denial of Palestinian centuries-long history in their homeland and an embrace of the Zionist concept of Jewish nationalism. (See: Palestine: A Four Thousand Year History by Nur Masalha, in which the Palestinian historian clearly shows that Palestine is grounded in a distinctive Palestinian culture that long predates the Old Testament narrative of Israelite conquest, a history where Jews, Christians, Muslims and others lived together peacefully. Israel continues to ignore and erase this history in the interests of a modern invention rooted in ancient myths.)

For a refutation of Jewish nationalism, see The Invention of the Jewish People by Shlomo Sand, which, according to a 2009 review, is “a definitive and learned polemic against this idea [the Zionist idea of Jewish nationalism] which has caused so much terror in our world today.”

Trump’s racist acts/speech are being denounced — from his Muslim Ban to his “good on both sides” in Charlottesville, to his outrageous remarks about Mexican immigrants or his “China virus” taunts, to his refusal to condemn white supremacy and the Proud Boys by saying “stand back and stand by,” etc., etc.

However, what continues appallingly to be listed on Trump’s positive side of the ledger, without question or irony, includes this: the move of the American embassy in Israel to occupied and annexed Jerusalem and “renewed peace in the Middle East,” which has no Palestinian support and was recognized early on as being all “about shoring up Trump’s slumping electoral campaign and improving Netanyahu’s battered image in Israel [rather] than bringing peace to the Middle East.”

Writing in Newsweek on the day before Trump’s departure from D.C., Yishai Fleisher, International Spokesman, Jewish illegal “settlement” of Hebron, praises the disgraced Republican leader for attacking “calcified anti-Israel lies and instead [telling] the plain truth — and by doing so, lift[ing] the Jewish state’s international standing many-fold.” Trump’s inversion of reality about Israel is as effective as his big lie about the American election. But now that he is toppled, the U.S. fights supremacy at home but continues to defend supremacy in Israel.

To my mind, the most positive aspect of Trump’s legacy in the United States is the change we are now observing in the national discourse, i.e., bringing to the fore that which commentators have been describing as “hiding in plain sight” — the white supremacist history and character of this nation. Because of that slow and painful shift in discourse since the Black Lives Matter protests began over George Floyd’s murder at the hands of a white policeman on May 25, 2020, we have all become better educated.

For example, I now know (and I didn’t before) about the Tulsa Race Massacre (also known as the Tulsa Race Riot), which occurred over 18 hours on May 31-June 1, 1921, when a white mob attacked black residents, homes and businesses; I know (and I didn’t before) that when racist laws in Oregon were put on the ballot for repeal in 2002, 30% of electors voted against the repeal.

The big question is whether, even with such facts in the foreground, the Biden administration can “pivot” or roll back the setbacks to its pluralistic aspirations that are now in high relief. With millions still supporting Trump, the words of Martin Luther King Jr. below, slightly paraphrased (originally, they were about Vietnam and the Vietnamese people), still ring true:

The world now demands a maturity of America that we may not be able to achieve. It demands that we admit that we have been wrong from the beginning of our adventure in Vietnam [America], that we have been detrimental to the life of… [many peoples]. The situation is one in which we must be ready to turn sharply from our present ways.

America is talking about what the January 6 insurrection represents: the entrenchment of white supremacy and racism in American society at the highest levels.

It is not talking honestly about its closest ally, about what Israel’s dispossession of Palestinians represents. US politicians on both sides of the aisle lie about it every chance they get. US Secretary of State Pompeo’s declaration that the Israel boycott (BDS movement) is anti-Jewish, for example.

U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib had this to say on Democracy Now!:

It is so critically important that we call it [Israel’s racism] out. Our country continues to enable that country and enable Netanyahu, who continues to spew anti-Arab rhetoric that allows violence towards Palestinians to continue in a way that is so inhumane and doesn’t follow international human rights.

Bringing anguish to millions of Palestinians, the United States continues to support the fascist violence and aggression to which Israel resorts so as to continue to exist and expand as an apartheid Zionist Jewish state on Palestinian land.

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Rima Najjar is a Palestinian whose father’s side of the family comes from the forcibly depopulated village of Lifta on the western outskirts of Jerusalem and whose mother’s side of the family is from Ijzim, south of Haifa. She is an activist, researcher and retired professor of English literature, Al-Quds University, occupied West Bank. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: The Israeli and American flags displayed on the walls of the Old City in Jerusalem (Photo: Yonatan Sindel)

“Very few of the common people realize that the political and legal systems have been corrupted by decades of corporate lobbying”(1)

Until recently, the terms Public Relations (PR) and lobbying were used slightly differently. Lobbying means direct communications with policy-makers. PR is more general and refers to all communications. The US introduced regulations to restrict the activities of lobbyists, so lobbyists tried to get around these regulations by labelling their activities as PR. There is now considerable overlap between the two activities. This post discusses activities that have traditionally been known as lobbying.

Political Corruption – It’s Not A Bribe If You Call It A ‘Donation’ 

The term corruption conjures up images of brown envelopes stuffed full of used notes being passed furtively under a table as a bribe. However, this is just one type of corruption. In Britain, Europe and the US, the corruption that really matters is built into the system, in the forms of donations, favours and influence. (This is sometimes called collusive corruption, where politicians and business people collude with each other). Big corporations are happy to spend a few million dollars/euros/pounds on political ‘donations’ if they get back billions in extra profits due to laws and regulations biased in their favor,(2) or from existing laws being weakened. In any other context we would call this bribery.

Politics in the US is expensive. Many US businesses now make large bribes to both of the major US political parties.(3) The main method is known as a ‘fundraiser’. This is an event where corporations pay large sums to politicians using a lobbyist as an intermediary. The politicians know where the money has come from, and they know who expects favourable legislation in return.(4) US politicians are therefore dependent on their most successful lobbyists, and their wealthiest supporters. The evidence overwhelmingly indicates that money and wealth influence policy.(5) One former insider said of their work:

“the more money you have, the more your voice is heard …It was an endless cycle of money trading hands for votes…every fundraiser is a legal bribe”(6)

America is effectively a business-run society. A good example would be the insurance and drug companies, who make big profits from the existing US healthcare system. Companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year bribing politicians to avoid changes that would decrease their profits.(7) President Obama introduced some changes, but the final legislation was so watered down that the US healthcare system is still nowhere near the type of National Health Service that is commonplace elsewhere. Some of the changes will actually increase the profits of the health insurance companies.(8) The donations in Britain are smaller than in the US, but they have been effective in distorting Britain’s economy so that it benefits the rich at the expense of everyone else. European health services, including Britain’s, are slowly and steadily being privatised.(9) This is not about making the health service better or more efficient. It is to enable corporations to extract profits.

Lobbying is a Huge Industry 

The exact scale of lobbying is unknown. It has been a multi-billion dollar industry in the US for many years, where the official expenditure on lobbying is $7 billion per year, but there is a great deal of secret lobbying, so the estimated total is believed to be closer to $14 billion. More recently, lobbying in Brussels to manipulate European legislation has reached a similar scale.(10) It was estimated in 2017 that there were 25,000 lobbyists in Brussels. Britain has the third biggest lobbying industry in the world, estimated at £2 billion each year.(11) However, lobbying in Britain is even more secretive than in the US, so whilst many examples of lobbying have been well-documented, we do not have a clear picture of everything that goes on.

To make their lobbying even more effective, companies in an industry will get together to form organisations, such as the European Banking Federation, to lobby on their behalf. There are more than 1,000 of these in Brussels. Even larger groups, such as Business Europe, will represent a wide range of businesses. These groups are well-funded and influential. Due to their expertise they will initiate discussions about legislation, and even draft first proposals for new laws or regulations. The bank, Citigroup, wrote US legislation in 2014 to ensure that banks could be bailed out following a future financial crisis. Key politicians who supported the bill received large contributions from financial companies.(12)

David vs Goliath 

In theory, other groups, such as consumer groups, unions, environmentalists and non-government organisations (NGOs) are also able to lobby, but their spending and influence add up to a small fraction of corporate lobbying. One researcher concluded that “For every $1 spent by public interest groups and unions…corporations spent $34.”(13) A US analysis in 2010 found that the financial companies alone employed 5 lobbyists for each member of congress.(14) In some industries, such as banking, there is no organised opposition to the corporate lobby.(15)

The nature of lobbying can also be quite personal, involving long-term social and working relationships, lunches, dinners, and job opportunities for relatives and friends. Billionaires, such as Richard Branson, can invite Prime Ministers to holiday on their private island. Rupert Murdoch, owner of multiple media outlets in many countries, was able to have personal meetings with US President Trump, various Prime Ministers, and their closest advisors. This type of meeting is considered mutually beneficial to both parties.  NGOs and other groups do not generally have these close connections. Corporate lobbyists spend more money, employ more people, with more contacts and better insider knowledge, have better access to policymakers and better information. This undermines democracy, and creates governments that work well for the rich and powerful, but not for everyone else.(16)

Echo Chambers 

Lobbying strategies are more successful if information appears to come from several, apparently independent, sources. Therefore lobbyists use many of the same strategies as PR consultants, such as the media, think tanks and academics, as echo chambers to reinforce their message. This is important because companies are not trusted as honest sources of information. Their relationship with the media can be quite complex. Lobbyists actively recruit former journalists because of their political contacts. Lobbyists feed stories to the press, but they also try to stop negative stories appearing.(17) They are sometimes able to persuade journalists to drop a story, either by offering an alternative story, or by threatening to cut access to their clients in future. This works because journalists get so many stories from lobbyists, so loss of access would have serious consequences for them. If all else fails lobbyists will threaten legal action. This has been very effective, particularly in the UK.

Lobbying services are also offered by think tanks, lawyers, management consultants and accountants. This creates serious conflicts of interest, as accountancy firms and consultants often advise governments on regulations, but then advise clients on how to get around those same regulations. This has been particularly clear in the banking sector, where accountants operate lucrative businesses advising their wealthiest clients on activities such as setting up layers of subsidiaries and holding companies, so that they can hide their assets overseas in tax havens, or game the system so that their profits appear in the lowest tax jurisdiction.(18)

Revolving Doors and Conflicts of Interest 

The issue of ‘revolving doors’, where people move from jobs in government to jobs in big business, and vice versa, was mentioned in an earlier post about the weapons industry. The problem is extremely widespread and affects the most important business sectors in Britain, Europe and the US. When former business-people go to work with the government, they will see the world from the perspective of big business, irrespective of the downsides to the rest of society. In Britain this is most clear in the Health Service, where former staff of the biggest US Healthcare companies have been gradually re-structuring the National Health Service (NHS), and privatizing parts of it, so that shareholders can extract wealth from it. (This will be discussed in detail in a later post about the NHS).

The problem is also important when people move in the opposite direction, from government to business. For example, lots of British politicians involved in decisions about the privatisation of the healthcare system have gone on to take well-paid jobs with private companies who benefitted from those decisions. A conflict of interest refers to a situation where a person is making decisions about an issue, but gains personally from those decisions. In the UK in 2008 there were 30 former government ministers (who were still politicians) who had jobs with corporations.(19) A later study in 2010 showed there were over 140 members of the House of Lords with financial connections to healthcare companies.(20) Their main role is to help the business manipulate government, by utilizing their contacts, or exploiting their knowledge of weaknesses in existing legislation.

A growing trend is for policymakers to join lobbying companies, and vice versa. Lobbyists actively headhunt government employees who have been involved in writing legislation. In the US, “about half of retiring senators and a third of retiring House members register as lobbyists.”(21) The average salary is approximately 10 times as much as in their government job. The same happens in Europe, where banking regulators go on to earn big salaries working as bank lobbyists, and former lobbyists get appointed to senior roles with organisations that are supposed to regulate particular industries(22). In 2019 the chief lobbyist for Santander Bank, Jose Manuel Campa, became the new head of the European Banking Authority. It is therefore unlikely that banks will be properly regulated in the near future.

The Most Powerful Lobbying Organisation in the World is the US Government 

There is an additional layer of lobbying which is extremely important, but almost never discussed openly by the mainstream media. Individual governments lobby other governments and organisations. This is notable in finance, where the British government lobbied hard to avoid stricter financial regulation by Europe following the 2008 financial crisis. In a later post we will talk about political and regulatory capture (this is sometimes called ideological capture), where politicians see the world from the point of view of big companies. Politicians lobby for regulations that will be profitable for companies, but might have serious consequences for citizens.(23)

The US government uses a combination of threats and bribes to achieve its goals all over the world. It lobbies at the UN to create support for its illegal wars; it lobbies other governments so that its tobacco companies can be allowed to sell and advertise their cigarettes abroad; it uses its diplomats and trade negotiators to arrange deals that benefit its exporters. Government lobbying is just as secretive as corporate lobbying, involving backroom deals, and promises of aid and loans in exchange for votes. Many countries try to do the same, but the scale of the US’s economic threats and bribes, backed up by its willingness to impose sanctions and overthrow governments using its military, means that it is usually able to get its way, irrespective of the downsides for people in other countries. This creates huge advantages for US companies.

Transparency Is Important, But It Won’t Change Anything By Itself 

One of the big problems with lobbying is that most of it is secret. Greater transparency might help, but is probably only a small part of any future solution. Many people have argued for information about what executives are paid. We now have a fairly good idea of executive pay, but it has not led to serious change.

From 2005-2010 there was an annual award known as the Worst EU Lobby Award, where people voted for the worst corporate offenders, and the worst conflicts of interest by politicians who are helping to manipulate laws on behalf of corporations. In 2005, the fake grassroots organisation, C4C (Campaign for Creativity) lobbied for stronger patents. In 2006 the oil company ExxonMobil won for paying millions of dollars in order to fund 39 groups of climate skeptics. This gave the impression that climate change skeptics come from respectable sources, when many of them are paid to write corporate propaganda.(24) In 2007 BMW, Daimler and Porsche won for lobbying against carbon dioxide (CO2) reductions. In 2008 agrofuel (crops used as fuel) lobbyists tried to claim that they are sustainable, when they are not. In 2010, Goldman Sachs and the derivatives lobby group ISDA lobbied to protect their most complex financial products, despite the dangers they create, and the energy company, npower, claimed it was green while trying to keep coal powerplants open. Whilst these awards irritated people in business and the lobbying industry, they did not receive mainstream media coverage, so few people were aware of them, and they had little effect in changing anything.

Various ideas have been discussed to make lobbying more transparent, but none of the measures attempted so far has teeth. Lobbyists don’t want their activities to be out in the open, and governments like having secret connections with the wealthiest parts of society. The EU and UK have what are known as transparency registers to monitor lobbyists, but they are ineffective. The UK register has been described as “completely unfit for purpose”.(25) At the same time, corporate lobbyists keep working behind the scenes to actually decrease transparency.(26) Transparency by itself is not enough. It is just a starting point. The whole concept of corporate lobbying needs to be challenged much more seriously.

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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 sixteenth 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) This quote is attributed to a writer named Steven Magee, but I have been unable to find the original source. 

2) Bill Allison and Sarah Hakins, ‘Fixed Fortunes: Biggest Corporate Political Interests spend billions, get trillions’, Sunlight Foundation, 17 Nov 2014, at https://sunlightfoundation.com/2014/11/17/fixed-fortunes-biggest-corporate-political-interests-spend-billions-get-trillions/

3) Laura McCamy, ‘Companies donate millions to political causes to have a say in government – here are 10 that have given the most in 2018’, 13 Oct 2018, at https://www.businessinsider.com/companies-are-influencing-politics-by-donating-millions-to-politicians-2018-9?r=US&IR=T

4) RepresentUs, ‘5 Crazy Facts About Lobbyists’, 11 Feb 2016, at https://represent.us/action/5-facts-lobbyists/

5) Martin Gilens and Benjamin Page, ‘Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups and Average Citizens’, Perspectives on Politics, Sep 2014, Vol.12, No. 3, at https://scholar.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/mgilens/files/gilens_and_page_2014_-testing_theories_of_american_politics.doc.pdf 

6) Jimmy Williams, ‘I was a lobbyists for more than 6 years. I quit. I couldn’t take it any more’, Vox, 29 June 2017, at https://www.vox.com/first-person/2017/6/29/15886936/political-lobbying-lobbyist-big-money-politics 

7) ‘Sector Profile: Health’, at https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/sectors/summary?id=H

8) John Nichols, ‘Kucinich’s Health Reform Dissents Merit Consideration’, The Nation, 9 March 2010, at http://www.thenation.com/blog/kucinichs-health-reform-dissents-merit-consideration 

9) Rachel Tansey, ‘The creeping privatization of healthcare: Problematic EU policies and the corporate lobby push’, 2 June 2017, at https://corporateeurope.org/en/power-lobbies/2017/06/creeping-privatisation-healthcare

10) Lobbying Database at, http://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/

11) Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell, A quiet word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain, 2014, p.8

12) Mansur, Gidfar, ‘There’s Something Absolutely Insane Happening In The House Right Now’, bulletin.represent.us, 29 Oct 2103, at https://bulletin.represent.us/theres-something-absolutely-insane-happening-house-right-now/

13) https://www.vox.com/2016/1/15/10775788/revolving-door-lobbying

14) The Center for Public Integrity, 21 May 2010, updated 19 May 2014, at https://publicintegrity.org/politics/five-lobbyists-for-each-member-of-congress-on-financial-reforms/

15) Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell, A quiet word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain, 2014

16) Sarah Clarke, ‘Inequality is spiraling because our democracy is broken’, 16 May 2019, at https://leftfootforward.org/2019/05/inequality-is-spiraling-because-our-democracy-is-broken/ 

17) Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell, A quiet word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain, 2014

18) Rachel Tansey, ‘Accounting for Influence: how the big four are embedded in EU policy-making on tax avoidance’, Corporate Europe Observatory, July 2018, at https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/tax-avoidance-industry-lobby-low-res.pdf

19) ‘Pressure To Reveal ex-Ministers’ Outside Pay’, Financial Times, Wed, Mar 26

20) Tamasin Cave and Andy Rowell, A quiet word: Lobbying, Crony Capitalism and Broken Politics in Britain, 2014, p.34

21) Lee Drutman, ‘About half of retiring senators and a third of retiring House members register as lobbyists’, Vox, 15 Jan 2016, at https://www.vox.com/2016/1/15/10775788/revolving-door-lobbying 

22) Duncan Lindo, 22 Feb 2019, ‘Still going round in circles: The revolving door between banks and their regulators’, Finance Watch, 22 Feb 2019, at https://www.finance-watch.org/still-going-round-in-circles-the-revolving-door-problem-between-banks-and-their-regulators/

23) Vicky Cann and Belen Belanya, ‘Captured States: When EU governments are a channel for corporate interests’, Corporate Europe Observatory, Feb 2019, at https://corporateeurope.org/sites/default/files/ceo-captured-states-final_0.pdf

24) Corporate Europe Observatory, ‘A bird’s eye view on 15 years CEO’, 2 May 2012, at https://corporateeurope.org/en/power-lobbies/2012/05/bird-eye-view-15-years-ceo

25) Tamasin Cave, ‘Theresa May’s chance to shine a light on lobbying’, Spinwatch, 2 Sep 2016, at http://spinwatch.org/index.php/issues/lobbying/item/5893-theresa-may-s-chance-to-shine-a-light-on-lobbying 

26) Jonathan Cook, Capitalism is double-billing us: We pay from our wallets only for our future to be stolen from us’, 25 Oct 2020, at https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-10-25/capitalism-double-billing/

In 1565, Pieter Bruegel the Elder created The Massacre of the Innocents, a provocative masterpiece of religious art. The painting reworks a biblical narrative about King Herod’s order to slaughter all newborn boys in Bethlehem for fear that a messiah had been born there. Bruegel’s painting situates the atrocity in a contemporary setting, a sixteenth-century Flemish village under attack by heavily armed soldiers. 

Depicting multiple episodes of gruesome brutality, Bruegel conveys the terror and grief inflicted on trapped villagers who cannot protect their children. Uncomfortable with the images of child slaughter, the Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II, after acquiring the painting, ordered another reworking. The slaughtered babies were painted over with images such as bundles of food or small animals, making the scene appear to be one of plunder rather than massacre.

Were Bruegel’s anti-war theme updated to convey images of child slaughter today, a remote Yemeni village could be the focus. Soldiers performing the slaughter wouldn’t arrive on horseback. Today, they often are Saudi pilots trained to fly U.S.-made warplanes over civilian locales and then launch laser-guided missiles (sold by Raytheon, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin), to disembowel, decapitate, maim, or kill anyone in the path of the blast and exploding shards.

For more than five years, Yemenis have faced famines while enduring a naval blockade and routine aerial bombardment. The United Nations estimates the war has already caused 233,000 deaths, including 131,000 deaths from such indirect causes as lack of food, health services, and infrastructure.

Systematic destruction of farms, fisheries, roads, sewage and sanitation plants, and health-care facilities has wrought further suffering. Yemen is resource-rich, but famine continues to stalk the country, the United Nations reports. Two-thirds of Yemenis are hungry and fully half do not know when they will eat next. Twenty-five percent of the population suffers from moderate to severe malnutrition. That includes more than two million children.

Equipped with U.S.-manufactured Littoral Combat Ships, the Saudis have been able to blockade air and sea ports that are vital to feeding the most populated part of Yemen—the northern area, where 80 percent of the population lives. This area is controlled by Ansar Allah (also known as the “Houthi”). The tactics being used to unseat the Houthis severely punish vulnerable people—those who are impoverished, displaced, hungry, and stricken with diseases. Many are children who should never be held accountable for political deeds.

Yemeni children are not “starving children.” They are children being starved by warring parties whose blockades and bomb attacks have decimated the country. The United States is supplying devastating weaponry and diplomatic support to the Saudi-led coalition, while additionally launching its own “selective” aerial attacks against suspected terrorists and all the civilians in those suspects’ vicinity.

Meanwhile, the United States, like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, has cut back on its contributions to humanitarian relief. This severely affects the coping capacity of international donors.

For several months at the end of 2020, the United States threatened to designate Ansar Allah as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization.” Even the threat of doing so began affecting uncertain trade negotiations, causing prices of desperately needed goods to rise.

Five CEOs of major international humanitarian groups jointly wrote to U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on November 16, urging him not to make this designation. Numerous organizations with extensive experience working in Yemen described the catastrophic effects such a designation would have on delivery of desperately needed humanitarian relief.

Nevertheless, Pompeo announced, late in the day on Sunday, January 10, his intent to go ahead with the designation.

Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, termed this terrorist designation a “death sentence” for thousands of Yemenis. “Ninety percent of Yemen’s food is imported,” he noted, “and even humanitarian waivers will not allow commercial imports, essentially cutting off food for the entire country.”

U.S. leaders and much of the mainstream media responded vigorously to the shocking insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, and the tragic loss of multiple lives as it occurred; it is difficult to understand why the Trump Administration’s ongoing massacre of the innocents in Yemen has failed to generate outrage and deep sorrow.

On January 13, journalist Iona Craig noted that the process of delisting a “Foreign Terrorist Organization”—removing it from the government’s list—has never been achieved within a timeframe of less than two years. If the designation goes through, it could take two years to reverse the terrifying cascade of ongoing consequences.

The Biden Administration should immediately pursue a reversal. This war began the last time Biden was in office. It must end now; two years is time Yemen doesn’t have.

Sanctions and blockades are devastating warfare, cruelly leveraging hunger and possible famine as a tool of war. Leading up to the 2003 “Shock and Awe” invasion of Iraq, U.S. insistence on comprehensive economic sanctions primarily punished Iraq’s most vulnerable people, especially the children. Hundreds of thousands of children died tortuous deaths, bereft of medicines and adequate health care.

Throughout those years, successive U.S. administrations, with a mainly cooperative media, created the impression that they were only trying to punish Saddam Hussein. But the message they sent to governing bodies throughout the world was unmistakable: If you do not subordinate your country to serve our national interest, we will crush your children.

Yemen hadn’t always gotten this message. When the United States sought United Nations’ approval for its 1991 war against Iraq, Yemen was occupying a temporary seat on the U.N. Security Council. It surprisingly voted then against the wishes of the United States, whose wars of choice around the Middle East were slowly accelerating.

“That will be the most expensive ‘No’ vote you will ever cast,” was the U.S. ambassador’s chilling response to Yemen.

Today, children in Yemen are being starved by monarchs and presidents colluding to control land and resources.

“The Houthis, who control a large part of their nation, are no threat whatsoever to the United States or to American citizens,” declares James North, writing for Mondoweiss. “Pompeo is making the declaration because the Houthis are backed by Iran, and Trump’s allies in Saudi Arabia and Israel want this declaration as part of their aggressive campaign against Iran.”

Children are not terrorists. But a massacre of the innocents is terror. As of January 19, 268 organizations have signed a statement demanding an end to the war on Yemen. On January 25, “The World Says No to War Against Yemen” actions will be held worldwide.

It was of another painting of Bruegel’s, The Fall of Icarus, that the poet W.H. Auden wrote:

About suffering they were never wrong,

The old Masters: how well they understood

Its human position: how it takes place

While someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;

. . . How everything turns away

Quite leisurely from the disaster.

This painting concerned the death of one child. In Yemen, the United States—through its regional allies—could end up killing many hundreds of thousands more. Yemen’s children cannot protect themselves; in the most dire cases of severe acute malnourishment, they are too weak even to cry.

We must not turn away. We must decry the terrible war and blockade. Doing so might help spare the lives of at least some of Yemen’s children. The opportunity to resist this massacre of the innocents rests with us.

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Kathy Kelly has worked for nearly half a century to end military and economic wars. At times, her activism has led her to war zones and prisons. She can be reached at: [email protected].

Featured image is from Yemen Press

The Cuba Solidarity Campaign adds its voice to the worldwide condemnation of the outgoing Trump administration’s listing of Cuba as a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’.

Trump’s move is designed to hinder the incoming Biden administration from reprising the Obama era’s rapprochement with Havana. Obama’s decision to formally remove Cuba from the terrorism list in 2015 was an important step that led to the restoration of diplomatic relations later that year.

Returning Cuba to the list is a unilateral measure that has been widely condemned and ridiculed. It is further evidence, if any is needed, of how sections of the right-wing in the US bully those who oppose its neo-liberal policies.

The move panders to the powerful, far-right anti-Cuba groups in Florida, who wield significant power within the Republican Party and form part of Trump’s core support.

Richard Burgon MP said it was “a disgraceful decision made for cynical political objectives and based upon lies. Obama rightly removed Cuba from this classification and I hope that Joe Biden does so too, and swiftly.”

There are already so many sanctions in place, tightened further by Trump, that the terrorism listing is unlikely to have significant or immediate effects. However it will entrench the sanctions policy, adding weight to the threats against international companies wishing to trade with Cuba, and it will make it more difficult for the incoming US administration to move towards an alternative policy of rapprochement and engagement with the island.

The US announcement is discredited, dishonest and comes from a morally bankrupt administration. Cuba is not in any way ‘a state sponsor of terrorism’. The opposite is true: Cuba is a state victim of terrorism. Since 1959, over 3,000 Cubans have lost their lives to terrorist acts, most of which have emanated from the US. These include numerous early acts of aggression and sabotage following the 1959 Revolution, peaking in the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1976 killing 73 people, and the hotel bombings in Havana in the 1990s designed to destroy the growing Cuban tourist industry.

The only terrorist aggression involving Cuba is coordinated, sponsored and perpetrated from the territory of the US, whose government is complicit and responsible for these atrocities.

We call on the incoming Biden administration to reverse this outrageous decision, and for good people across the world to join the campaign for an end to the US’s illegal blockade. Countries need to be able to engage and cooperate with each other in a spirit of mutual respect and understanding. At this time of worldwide pandemic, friendship across frontiers is surely the only way forward.

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Vehicles move slowly a few metres down the crowded main street of Aizarya, a Palestinian suburb east of Jerusalem, before stopping again.

Islam Rabea, a 23-year-old minibus driver, pulls on the handbrake and begins musing again.

“This town is more crowded than a can of tuna fish,” he says. “There’s one entrance, which is also the only exit, and I drive people to it back and forth all day.”

Aizarya’s only route to the outside world is to the east via an Israeli-built road, facing the entrance of Maale Adumim, the largest illegal Israeli settlement in the occupied West Bank, built almost entirely on lands belonging to the Palestinian town.

To the west is Abu Dis, another Jerusalem suburb flanked by Israel’s separation wall, which forces all Abu Dis’s traffic to pass through Aizarya and exit east.

Last week, however, the Israeli government approved a project that would build extensive new sections of its separation wall around Aizarya’s north and east, severing it from the Israeli road and direct route to Jerusalem it has enjoyed for centuries, which now would be only accessible to Israeli settlers.

Israel’s government has allocated 14m shekels ($4.3m) for the project, according to Israeli NGO Peace Now.

Aizarya wouldn’t be totally cut off by the scheme. A new entrance to the town and Abu Dis would be erected to the north. That would move traffic towards Ramallah, away from the settlers’ view, and sever it from Jerusalem, the city that Aizarya has always been a satellite of.

“It wouldn’t change much for me, as a minibus driver. I’d still have to drive through this crowded cage to the new way out. But it would cut the town off completely from Jerusalem,” Rabea says.

‘Greater Jerusalem’ and Israeli annexation

This is not merely a traffic issue.

By funnelling Aizarya’s people away from Jerusalem and running the separation wall along the edge of the town, the suburb would be further cut off from the surrounding lands that Palestinian residents for centuries have worked and lived on.

The more would see Aizarya’s lands not already settled on by Israel as “effectively annexed”, according to its mayor, Issam Faroun, who says that his town would be “stripped of its lands – to the bone”.

In order to raise its geopolitical influence, Russia has been making efforts identifying mega infrastructure projects such as nuclear power and energy, natural resources exploration and talks consistently about increasing trade with Africa. On the other hand, Russia primarily needs to work on a coordinated mechanism for financing these corporate policy initiatives and further push for increased trade with Africa.

On November 23, a videoconference organized by Federation Council of Russia, Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Russia and Business Russia Association, focused partly on identifying funding sources for exports, concretizing proposals for increasing exports to Africa and looking at facilitating amendments to the Russian legislation if required to promote exports to the African market.

Senator Igor Morozov, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Economic Policy, and newly elected Chairman of the Coordinating Committee on Economic Cooperation with Africa, noted during the meeting that in conditions of pressure from sanctions, it has become necessary to find new markets, new partners and allies for Russia.

“This predetermines the return of Russia back to Africa, makes this direction a high priority both from the point of geopolitical influence and in the sphere of trade and economic context.”

“It is important for us to expand and improve competitive government support instruments for business. It is obvious that over the thirty years when Russia left Africa, China, India, the USA, and the European Union have significantly increased their investment opportunities there in the region,” Morozov stressed.

With a renewed growing interest in the African market, Russians are feverishly looking for establishing effective ways of entry into the huge continental market. As result, Senator Igor Morozov unreservedly suggested creating a new structure within the Russian Export Center – an investment fund. He explained thus:

“Such a fund could evaluate and accumulate concessions as a tangible asset for the Russian raw materials and innovation business.”

The Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States was created on the initiative of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of the Russian Federation and Vnesheconombank with support from the Federation Council and the State Duma of the Federal Assembly of the Russian Federation. It has had support from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Economy and Trade, the Ministry of Natural Resources, as well as the Ministry of Higher Education and Science.

During a restructuring meeting with the Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States, President of the Russian Chamber of Chamber and Industry, Sergei Katyrin, said

“the primary task now to accelerate Russia’s economic return to African continent, from which we practically left in the 90s and now it is very difficult to increase our economic presence there in Africa.”

According to Katyrin, Russia’s economic presence in Africa today is significantly inferior in comparison to the positions of leading Western countries and BRICS partners.

“It’s time to overcome this yawning gap. Today, we face a difficult task to ensure the activities of Russian entrepreneurship on the African continent in the new conditions, taking into account all the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.”

Katyrin stressed the necessity to resolve financial mechanism for business and for infrastructural projects.

“We need a state financial mechanism to support the work of Russian business in Africa otherwise it will be very difficult to break through the fierce competition of Western companies with such support. We need to focus on those areas where you can definitely count on success,” he told the meeting.

With the participation of representatives of business and expert circles, this committee’s primary task is to consolidate the efforts of business, government and public structures of Russia, facilitate the intensification of economic activities in Africa. It has the responsibility for adopting a more pragmatic approach to business, for deepening and broadening existing economic collaborations and for the establishment of direct mutually beneficial contacts between entrepreneurs and companies from Russia and African countries.

During this October meeting, the participants discussed various issues and acknowledged that the committee has achieved little since its establishment. The meeting identified factors that have hindered its expected achievements and overall performance since 2009. Admittedly, a quick assessment for over one decade (2010 to 2020) has shown very little impact and tangible results.

The committee’s document listed more than 150 Russian companies as members, most of them hardly seen participating in business events in order to get acquainted with investment opportunities in Africa.

Notwithstanding the setbacks down these years, Russians are still full of optimism. Completely a new team was put in place during the meeting hosted by the Russian Business Chamber. Russian Senator Igor Morozov was elected as the new Chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Economic Cooperation with African States.

Over the years, experts have reiterated that Russia’s exports to Africa could be possible only after the country’s industrial based experiences a more qualitative change and argued the benefits for introducing tariff preferences for trade with African partners.

“The situation in Russian-African foreign trade will change for the better, if Russian industry undergoes technological modernization, the state provides Russian businessmen systematic and meaningful support, and small and medium businesses receive wider access to foreign economic cooperation with Africa,” Professor Alexey Vasileyev, former director of the Institute for African Studies (IAS) under the Russian Academy of Sciences.

As a reputable institute established during the Soviet era, it has played a considerable part in the development of African studies in the Russian Federation. For over 25 years, Professor Vasileyev directed the Institute for African Studies. His research interests extend beyond the Middle East. For instance, he carried out analysis of socio-economic problems of Africa, including Sub-Saharan Africa. He has many books and monographs including the one titled Africa: The Stepchild of Globalization and Africa, the Challenges of the 21st Century.

Professor Vasileyev, now the Chair for African and Arab Studies at the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (since 2013), and Special Representative of Russian President for Relations with African leaders (2006–2011), pointed out that the level and scope of Russian economic cooperation with Africa has doubled in recent years, “but unfortunately Russian-African cooperation is not in the top five of the foreign players in Africa.”

Speaking particularly about trade, the professor noted that not all African countries have signed agreements with Russia, for example, on the abolition of double taxation. He urged African countries to make trade choices that are in their best economic interests and further suggested that Russia should also consider the issue of removal of tariff and non-tariff restrictions on economic relations.

In order to increase trade, Russia has to improve its manufacturing base and Africa has to standardize its export products to compete in external markets. Russia has only few manufactured goods that could successfully compete with Western-made products in Africa. Interestingly, there are few Russian traders in Africa and African exporters are not trading in Russia’s market, in both cases, due to multiple reasons including inadequate knowledge of trade procedures, rules and regulations as well as the existing market conditions, he said.

He believes that it is also necessary to create, for example, free trade areas.

“But before creating them, we need information. And here, I am ready to reproach the Russian side, providing little or inadequate information to Africans about their capabilities, and on the other hand, reproach the African side, because when our business comes to Africa, they should know where they go, why and what they will get as a result,” Professor Vasileyev explicitly added.

The United States, European Union members, Asia countries such as China, India and Japan, have provided funds to support companies ready to carry out projects in various sectors in African countries. Some have publicly committed funds, including concessionary loans, for Africa.

For example, during the last Ministerial Conference of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), Chinese President Xi Jinping said

“China will expand cooperation in investment and financing to support sustainable development in Africa. China provided US$60 billion of credit line to African countries to assist them in developing infrastructure, agriculture, manufacturing and small and medium-sized enterprises.”

It fully understands Africa’s needs and its willingness to open the door to cooperation in the field of scientific and technological innovation on an encouraging basis. The method for financing the building of infrastructure is relatively simple. In general, governments obtain preferential loans from the Export-Import Bank of China or the China Development Bank, with the hiring of Chinese building contractors.

The Chinese policy banking system allows leading Chinese state-owned enterprises to operate effectively in Africa, with the majority of these active in infrastructure and construction in Africa. China has always been committed to achieving win-win cooperation and joint development with Africa. Russia could consider the Chinese model of financing various infrastructure and construction projects in Africa.

Official proposals for all kinds of support for trade and investment has been on the spotlight down the years. In May 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wrote in one of his articles:

“we attach special significance to deepening our trade and investment cooperation with the African States. Russia provides African countries with extensive preferences in trade.”

Lavrov wrote:

“At the same time, it is evident that the significant potential of our economic cooperation is far from being exhausted and much remains to be done so that Russian and African partners know more about each other’s capacities and needs. The creation of a mechanism for the provision of public support to business interaction between Russian companies and the African continent is on the agenda.”

After the first Russia-Africa Summit in the Black Sea city, Russia Sochi in October 2019, Russia and Africa have resolved to move from mere intentions to concrete actions in raising the current bilateral trade and investment to appreciably higher levels in the coming years.

“There is a lot of interesting and demanding work ahead, and perhaps, there is a need to pay attention to the experience of China, which provides its enterprises with state guarantees and subsidies, thus ensuring the ability of companies to work on a systematic and long-term basis,” Foreign Minister Lavrov explicitly said.

According to Lavrov, the Russian Foreign Ministry would continue to provide all-round support for initiatives aimed at strengthening relations between Russia and Africa.

“Our African friends have spoken up for closer interaction with Russia and would welcome our companies on their markets. But much depends on the reciprocity of Russian businesses and their readiness to show initiative and ingenuity, as well as to offer quality goods and services,” he stressed.

Amid these years of Western and European sanctions, Moscow has been looking for both allies and an opportunity to boost growth in trade and investment. Currently, Russia’s trade with Africa is less than half that of France with the continent and 10 times less than that of China. Asian countries are doing brisk business with Africa. According to UNCTAD’s World Investment Report 2020, the top five investors in the African continent are Netherlands, France, the United Kingdom, the United States and China.

In 2018, Russia’s trade with African countries grew more than 17 per cent and exceeded $20 billion. At the Sochi summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin said he would like to bring the figure $20 billion, over the next few years at least, to $40 billion.

In practical reality, from January 2021 marks the start of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), gives an additional signal for foreign players to take advantage of this new opportunity in Africa. As trumpeted, the AfCFTA has a lot more on offer besides the fact that it creates a single market of 1.3 billion people.

That said however, Russia, of course, has its own approach towards Africa. It pressurizes no foreign countries neither it has to compete with them, as it has its own pace for working with Africa. With the same optimism towards to taking emerging challenges and opportunities in Africa, Russia has to show financial commitment especially now when the joint declaration from the first historic Summit held in October 2019 ultimately seeks a new dynamism in the existing Russia-Africa relations.

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

Early in the pandemic, “trust the science!” could actually be used in a debate without attracting derisive laughter. But as the flip-flops, mistakes and, yes, lies have accumulated, a consensus seems to be forming that the health care authorities are no more trustworthy than the people running Congress or the Fed.

For proof, let’s start with vitamin D, which sure seems to lessen the severity of coronavirus infections. As the chart below illustrates (couldn’t find the source, but google “covid vitamin D” and you’ll find lots of studies that track with this data), people with higher levels of vitamin D in their bloodstream tend to experience covid-19 as a non-event while people low levels found the infection life-threatening.

There are obvious questions about causality here, so calling vitamin D a “cure” is going way too far. But if it has even a marginal effect – and the data suggest considerably more — a rational government would, you’d think, be handing out vitamin D like Halloween candy. In fact, since we’re mandating/prohibiting all kinds of other behaviors, we might expect vitamin D consumption to be required along with masks and social distancing.

Even covid-czar Anthony Fauci recently said:

“If you are deficient in vitamin D, that does have an impact on your susceptibility to infection. So I would not mind recommending — and I do it myself — taking vitamin D supplements.”

So why aren’t family-sized bottles of vitamin D arriving in the mail from the CDC? A cynic might wonder if the fact that Big Pharma doesn’t make much money from cheap, widely available supplements plays a role in the government’s apparent lack of interest.

Now about those lockdowns. Tom Woods has been producing charts that appear to show virtually no difference in virus outcomes between US states with aggressive lockdown policies and those without. California, for instance, has shuttered most of its small businesses and imposed widespread curfews, while Florida hasn’t. Here’s the result:

As for the rest of the world – where they’re supposedly doing better than the US – the pattern of zero correlation between lockdowns and virus spread seems to be holding. France imposed a full national lockdown in March – after which the virus spiked. Then they added mask mandates (indoor and outdoor), with fines attached. And daily new cases soared.

Then of course there’s the lying. Dr. Fauci first claimed that masks don’t help – when he believed they did help — because he feared mask shortages for health care workers. He also admits to changing the official line on herd immunity according to what he thinks we’re ready to hear.

And, in what sounds more like incompetence than dishonesty, he’s apparently been answering the question “when will life go back to normal?” with whatever pops into his head at the time. In early 2020, it was the coming Autumn. In July, it was “a year or so.” More recently it’s “well into 2021.”

But the biggest and by far the most outrageous reason for this growing mistrust has to be the World Health Organization which, well, read for yourself:

WHO official urges world leaders to stop using lockdowns as primary virus control method

The World Health Organization’s special envoy on COVID-19 urged world leaders this week to stop “using lockdowns as your primary control method.”

“We in the World Health Organization do not advocate lockdowns as the primary means of control of this virus,” Dr. David Nabarro said to The Spectator’s Andrew Neil. “The only time we believe a lockdown is justified is to buy you time to reorganize, regroup, rebalance your resources, protect your health workers who are exhausted, but by and large, we’d rather not do it.”

Nabarro went on to point out several of the negative consequences lockdowns have caused across the world, including devastating tourism industries and increased hunger and poverty.

“Just look at what’s happened to the tourism industry in the Caribbean, for example, or in the Pacific because people aren’t taking their holidays,” he said. “Look what’s happened to smallholder farmers all over the world. … Look what’s happening to poverty levels. It seems that we may well have a doubling of world poverty by next year. We may well have at least a doubling of child malnutrition.”

In the United States, lockdowns have been tied to increased thoughts of suicide from children, a surge in drug overdoses, an uptick in domestic violence, and a study conducted in May concluded that stress and anxiety from lockdowns could destroy seven times the years of life that lockdowns potentially save.

The health care establishment could have saved a lot of time — and embarrassment — by just asking regular people about this stuff.  But then they would have made a lot less money.

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Will the COVID-19 vaccine become mandatory? That’s a question many are asking these days and, by the looks of it, the answer may well be yes — although as I’ll explain later, I suspect the harms of the vaccine will become so apparent that it’ll kill such efforts before they become widespread.

In a January 1, 2021, Newsweek interview,¹ Dr. Anthony Fauci said he was “sure” some institutions and businesses will require employees to be vaccinated, and that it’s “quite possible” the vaccine will be required for overseas travel.

When asked about the possibility of mandating the vaccine on a local level, such as for children attending school, he stated that “Everything will be on the table for discussion.” That said, he pointed out that since “we almost never mandate things federally” — with regard to health — he doesn’t believe a national vaccine mandate will be enacted.

In related news² December 21, 2020, presidential candidate Joe Biden rolled up his sleeve to get publicly inoculated against COVID-19, stating that the vaccine was “nothing to worry about.” He’s also gone on record saying he will push for a 100-day mask mandate in federal buildings if he wins the presidency.³

Can Experimental Vaccines Be Mandated?

While many vaccines are required by state or local law, the thing that sets the COVID-19 vaccine apart from all others is the fact that it is still an experimental vaccine. While Moderna and Pfizer have been granted emergency use authorization for their respective vaccine candidates, they still haven’t even completed Stage 3 clinical trials yet.

The mRNA technology used in these vaccines is also experimental, and the sheer speed at which the vaccines have been developed and tested precludes us from knowing much about their side effects, especially in the long term.

As of December 18, 2020, the adverse event rate in the U.S. was 2.79%.⁴ This means your risk of harm from the vaccine is far greater than your risk of dying from COVID-19, which has an overall noninstitutionalized infection fatality rate of just 0.26%.⁵ Among those under the age of 40, the infection fatality rate is a mere 0.01%.⁶

If an experimental vaccine were to be mandated, it would set a frightening precedent and pave the way for all sorts of nonconsensual medical experimentation on the general public, going forward.

In a December 29, 2020, article⁷ in JAMA, the authors discuss the legal possibility of mandating COVID-19 vaccines, stating that “SARS-CoV-2 vaccines hold promise to control the pandemic and help restore normal social and economic life.”

However, this is questionable, considering the fact that the effectiveness of the vaccines is only measured by their ability to lessen moderate to severe COVID-19 symptoms such as cough and headache. Presumably, this would lower the risk of hospitalization and death for vaccinated individuals.

However, as explained in “How COVID-19 Vaccine Trials Are Rigged,” the vaccines were not evaluated for their ability to actually prevent infection and transmission of the virus. And, if the vaccine cannot reduce infection, hospitalizations or deaths, then it cannot create the vaccine-acquired herd immunity required to end the pandemic.

What’s more, in a November 26, 2020, BMJ article,⁸ Peter Doshi, associate editor of The BMJ, points out that while Pfizer claims its vaccine is 95% effective, this is the relative risk reduction. The absolute risk reduction is actually less than 1%. He also stresses that severe side effects appear commonplace:

“Moderna’s press release states that 9% experienced grade 3 myalgia and 10% grade 3 fatigue; Pfizer’s statement reported 3.8% experienced grade 3 fatigue and 2% grade 3 headache. Grade 3 adverse events are considered severe, defined as preventing daily activity. Mild and moderate severity reactions are bound to be far more common.”

New York Considers Forced Vaccination Bill

None of these open questions is stopping the New York Senate from considering a forced vaccination bill (A416⁹). As reported by constitutional attorney KrisAnne Hall:¹⁰

“January 6 New York Assemblymen will be asked to vote on a bill that will authorize the Governor and/or health officials to seize custody of New Yorkers, imprison, and force vaccinate them without due process.

This bill is not only a threat to the Constitution of New York, the people of New York, but also everyone in America if you consider the way certain legislation can spread throughout America in the age ‘crisis’ …

If passed this legislation will place in the hands of the Governor, or his designated agent, the full and autonomous authority to ‘order’ the ‘removal’ and ‘detention’ of every person the Governor or his ‘delegee’ determines ‘may pose’ a ‘significant and imminent threat to public health’ …

Once some health department worker thinks a New Yorker is a carrier or contact to a carrier, that person will be seized and held without hearing, trial, due process, or bond for a period of time to be determined by the health department.”

As noted by Hall, this bill violates the U.S. Constitution in several different ways. For starters, it eliminates your right to due process before forcing you into the custody of health officials, as well as your right to trial “as required by Article I sec 1 and Article VI Sec 18a of the New York Constitution.”

It also “arbitrarily reduces the well-established standard of strict scrutiny required for the infringement of these fundamental rights to the lesser standard of ‘clear and convincing evidence’ which will be determined solely by the Governor or some worker in the New York Health Department.” This, in turn, violates the constitutional principle of separation of powers.

Thirdly, “A-416 is a bold violation of Article 1 sec 5 and Article 1 sec 12 of the New York Constitution” as it would deprive you of your “inherent rights to due process related to a search and seizure” of your property and/or your body.

“New Yorkers cannot allow that to happen. Everyone in New York needs to contact their Senator and Assemblyman and DEMAND they vote no on A-416. Everyone in America needs to contact their State and demand that such legislation never be drafted,” Hall writes.¹¹

In her blog post, Hall includes sample letter and phone scripts you can use when contacting your representatives.

Blackmailing the Public to Force Vaccine Uptake

Getting back to the JAMA article¹² discussing the legal possibility of mandating COVID-19 vaccines, the authors point out that mandating a vaccine while it’s still under an emergency use approval is “legally and ethically problematic.”

“Vaccine mandates are unjustified because an EUA requires less safety and efficacy data than full Biologics License Application (BLA) approval. Individuals would also likely distrust vaccine mandates under emergency use, viewing it as ongoing medical research,” the article states.

Once the vaccine is fully licensed, however, vaccine mandates “could be imposed in multiple sectors,” according to the authors. Still, they point out that “Given the rarity of adult mandates, states are unlikely to enact mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations for the adult population, especially in the absence of long-term safety data.”

Private companies, on the other hand, can require vaccination as a condition of employment, and according to a Yale CEO survey, 71% of company executives supported the implementation of COVID-19 vaccine mandates in the workplace.¹³

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has already ruled that businesses can compel their employees to get vaccinated, and that they may fire those who refuse. Employers must, however, allow for medical exemptions and “offer reasonable accommodations based on religion or disability.”¹⁴

Schools may also end up requiring COVID-19 vaccination for students, faculty and staff, and it seems likely the vaccine may simply be added to the ACIP-recommended list of childhood vaccinations. Most troubling, however, is the proposal to require vaccination as a condition of service. According to the JAMA article:¹⁵

“It is foreseeable that businesses in certain high-risk settings could require proof of vaccination as a condition of service, such as in long-distance travel (plane, rail, bus), restaurants, and entertainment (sports, movies, theater).

While states might be constitutionally barred from requiring vaccines to participate in religious worship, it is conceivable that some churches, synagogues, or mosques might consider such conditions for congregants. Local or state governments could also require vaccination as a condition of service.”

To be clear, even if state and federal governments don’t mandate the vaccine, by barring unvaccinated people from traveling, participating in social events and even entering into government buildings, they are essentially mandating it. Unvaccinated people would become second-class citizens that aren’t permitted to work, travel, conduct business or engage socially. What kind of life is that?

Yet this is precisely what we may be facing. As noted by the JAMA authors, “If scientific and logistical challenges can be overcome, linking vaccinations as a condition of providing service could be an effective incentive for vaccination.” They really should call it what it is: blackmail.

Many Front-Line Workers Refuse COVID-19 Vaccine

Distribution of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines began at the end of December 2020. In the U.S., most states have elected to begin distribution among front-line health care workers and in senior care facilities. However, despite media fanfare, many health care workers are leery of the vaccine.

According to news reports, about half of all front-line workers in Riverside County, California, have refused the vaccine,¹⁶ as have 60% of nursing home staff in Ohio,¹⁷ 40% of staff at Chicago’s Loretto Hospital¹⁸ and 40% of LA’s front-line workers.¹⁹ Similar rates of vaccine refusal are being reported in several European countries.²⁰

Interestingly, a survey by the National Association of Health Care Assistants revealed a whopping 72% of certified nursing assistants plan to refuse the vaccine,²¹ as are 55% of firefighters in New York, according to a December 2020 poll by the Uniformed Firefighters Association.²² The reason for this widespread hesitation is as understandable as it is justifiable. As noted in the Western Journal:²³

“Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, any skepticism about the virulence of the virus or wisdom of draconian shutdowns was met with the mantra ‘follow the science’ to stifle any serious debate.

All along the way, however, officials did anything but as they imposed useless mask mandates, allowed Black Lives Matter protests despite closing businesses and imposing social distancing on everyone else, and even expressed skepticism about any vaccine simply because it was developed at the behest of President Donald Trump.

But worst of all, officials undermined science by suggesting that vaccination distribution begin based on race rather than in the nursing home populations that were actually ravaged by the virus.

In short, governments and the medical community killed any credibility they had at the beginning of the pandemic with their repeated hypocrisy and mixed messages. It’s no wonder these workers are reluctant to follow them now and are instead relying on their gut instincts to mistrust the untested vaccine and COVID-19 agenda.”

Side Effects and Deaths Are Stacking Up

The fact that high rates of side effects and sudden deaths are already being reported will hardly improve matters in coming weeks and months. For example, January 4, 2021, RT reported²⁴ that health authorities in Portugal were “on alert” after the sudden death of a 41-year-old pediatric surgery assistant who had been in good health. She was found dead in her bed just two days after being inoculated with Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

December 30, 2020, the Daily Star reported²⁵ the death of an elderly resident in Lucerne, Switzerland, five days after receiving the Pfizer vaccine. The man had previously “reacted negatively” to the seasonal influenza vaccine. According to the report, he suffered from dementia but was otherwise in good health.

December 26, 2020, a Boston doctor with severe shellfish allergy suffered a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction to the Moderna vaccine. As reported by RT:²⁶

“Within minutes, Sadrzadeh’s tongue and throat began to tingle and go numb, a reaction that he associated with his shellfish allergy. Even more concerning, his blood pressure then dipped so low that it wasn’t even detectable with a monitor. Luckily, the doctor had brought his own EpiPen, which he administered on himself before hospital staff rushed him to the emergency room …

‘I feel that if I did not have my EpiPen with me, I would be intubated right now, because it was that severe,’ he said, adding that it was the worst allergic reaction he had experienced since he was 11 years old. The physician said he now recommends that people with allergies receive the vaccine in a hospital setting, instead of getting it from a clinic or local provider …

The concerning case is the first of its kind to be linked to the Moderna jab. Officials with the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating at least six cases of severe allergic reactions occurring in people who took the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.”

A December 21, 2020, article²⁷ in The Defender reported the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating a series of allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine. Aside from the Boston doctor, other reports of allergic reactions, including anaphylactic shock, include four health care workers in Illinois and three health care workers in Alaska.²⁸ Cases of anaphylaxis also emerged within days of the rollout of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines in the U.K.²⁹

Thousands Injured in Mere Days

According to the CDC,³⁰ by December 18, 2020, 112,807 Americans had received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine. Of those, 3,150 suffered one or more “health impact events,” defined as being “unable to perform normal daily activities, unable to work, required care from doctor or health care professional.”

That’s 2.79%. Extrapolated to the total U.S. population of 328.2 million, we can then expect 9,156,780 Americans to be injured by the vaccine if every single man, woman and child is vaccinated. Is this really reasonable for a virus that has an average survival rate of 99.74%?³¹

In the end, I suspect and predict that widespread mandates for COVID-19 vaccination will not take place. I believe there will simply be too many injuries and deaths from the first and second rounds of vaccinations, and that will destroy any and all vaccine mandate arguments.

Allergy Alert

Many suspect polyethylene glycol (PEG), found in both Pfizer’s and Moderna’s vaccines, might be the culprit causing allergic reactions and anaphylaxis. According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., “studies show that 1 in 7 Americans may unknowingly be at risk of experiencing an allergic reaction to PEG.”³²

Kennedy believes “everyone should be screened for anti-PEG antibodies before getting the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines,” adding that “It is unconscionable that, instead, the FDA and CDC are encouraging people to go ahead and risk a life-threatening anaphylactic reaction and just assume that someone will be on hand to save them.”³³

It’s worth noting that the CDC has updated its vaccine guidance in response to reports of allergic reactions to the Pfizer vaccine, stating that:³⁴

“If you have had a severe allergic reaction to any ingredient in an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, you should not get either of the currently available mRNA COVID-19 vaccines. If you had a severe allergic reaction after getting the first dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, CDC recommends that you should not get the second dose.

CDC has also learned of reports that some people have experienced non-severe allergic reactions within 4 hours after getting vaccinated (known as immediate allergic reactions), such as hives, swelling, and wheezing (respiratory distress).

If you have had an immediate allergic reaction — even if it was not severe — to any ingredient in an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, CDC recommends that you should not get either of the currently available mRNA COVID-19 vaccines.

If you had an immediate allergic reaction after getting the first dose of an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, you should not get the second dose … People who are allergic to PEG or polysorbate should not get an mRNA COVID-19 vaccine.”

COVID-19 Outbreaks Occurring Among Vaccinated

Yet another interesting problem that has arisen is that many newly vaccinated individuals are suddenly testing positive for COVID-19. In a San Jose, California, hospital, 51 employees tested positive within 10 days of vaccination, although it’s unclear whether all of them had actually received the vaccine.³⁵

One died from COVID-19 complications. Interestingly, the outbreak is being blamed on an employee who showed up wearing an inflatable Christmas costume. The same pattern has been reported elsewhere.

For example, in Israel, 21 residents of a retirement home tested positive for the virus after receiving the vaccine.³⁶ Authorities pointed out that since two doses are required to provide protection against SARS-CoV-2, you can still catch it after the first dose. The same argument was made in the San Jose hospital case.

A doctor in Philadelphia also tested positive after taking the vaccine,³⁷ as did a nurse in San Diego.³⁸In each case, health authorities have insisted that it’s not the vaccine causing the problem but, rather, the fact that the shot needs time to work.

Overall, there’s plenty of reason to be cautious and delay COVID-19 vaccination as long as possible. As mentioned earlier, I believe that, in time, the harms will become apparent enough that any talk about mandating these vaccines will simply evaporate.

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Notes

¹ Newsweek January 1, 2021

² NBC News December 21, 2020

³ 9 News Australia December 4, 2020

^4, 29, 30 CDC.gov Anaphylaxis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccine receipt (PDF)

^5, 6, 31 Annals of Internal Medicine September 2, 2020 DOI: 10.7326/M20-5352

^{7, 12, 13, 14, 15} JAMA December 29, 2020 DOI: 10.1001/jama.2020.26553

⁸ The BMJ Opinion November 26, 2020

⁹ New York Senate Assembly Bill A416

^10, 11 KrisAnneHall.com

^16, 17 NBC News December 31, 2020

¹⁸ NPR January 1, 2021

¹⁹ Newsweek December 31, 2020

²⁰ Zerohedge December 27, 2020

^21, 23 Western Journal January 4, 2021

²² NBC New York December 6, 2020

²⁴ RT January 4, 2021

²⁵ Daily Star December 30, 2020

²⁶ RT December 26, 2020

^{27, 28, 32, 33} The Defender December 21, 2020

³⁴ CDC.gov COVID-19

³⁵ ABC 7 News January 5, 2021

³⁶ The Jerusalem Post January 3, 2021

³⁷ NBC Philadelphia December 31, 2020

³⁸ Kiro7 News December 30, 2020

Featured image is from Health Impact News

Cuban blood left its stamp on the conscience of the world after the Angolan Wars of 1975-1988.  Corporate politicians are united in their desire for us to ignore this reality.

Fed up with foreign wars, Portuguese officers overthrew Prime Minister Marcello Caetano on April 25, 1974.  Many former colonies had the opportunity to define their own future.

Angola had been the richest of Portuguese colonies, with major production in coffee, diamonds, iron ore and oil.  Of the former colonies, it had the largest white population, which numbered 320,000 of about 6.4 million.  When 90% of its white population fled in 1974, Angola lost most of its skilled labor.

Three groups juggled for power.  The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), headed by Agostinho Neto was the only progressive alternative.  The National Front for the Liberation of Angola (NFLA), led by Holden Roberto, gained support from Zaire’s right-wing Joseph Mobutu, a conspirator in the assassination of Patrice Lumumba.  Jonas Savimbi, who ran the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), worked hand-in-hand with South Africa’s apartheid regime.

Portugal told South Africa to remove its troops from Angola, which it did by October, 1974.  Recently defeated in Viet Nam, the US felt unable to send troops.  Encouraged by the Ford administration South Africa returned to Angola within a year.

Meanwhile, Fidel Castro’s representatives met with Neto along with the head of MPLA’s recently organized militia, the Popular Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA).  Not eager to intervene, Cuba declined to give financial support.

The South African invasion began October 14 when many of its white troops pretended to be UNITA forces by darkening their faces with “Black Is Beautiful” camouflage cream.  By November, Fidel knew that without help the Angolan capital would fall to apartheid forces and he approved military assistance.  The small number of Cubans who arrived were critical in stopping the South African drive to Angola’s capital, Luanda.

Intense hostility between UNITA and the FNLA resulted in the latter being crushed by early 1976, simplifying the conflict to battles between the MPLA and UNITA, with their allies.  Cuban troops reached the southern border with Namibia, completely pushing out the forces of apartheid.

Multiple factors propelled Cuba’s entry.  The 1959 revolution was so intensely opposed by the US that it became clear that the best defense of Cuba would be an offense.  A campaign in Africa would be less likely to provoke a direct confrontation, largely because most Americans did not see Africa as part of their backyard.  A huge number of Cubans are of African descent and revolutionaries saw anti-racism as core to their politics.  Fidel referred to the anti-apartheid struggle as “the most beautiful cause.”

The second phase of war 

Since the fighting seemed to decrease, the number of Cuban soldiers in Angola dropped from 36,000 in April 1976 to under 24,000 within a year.  However, when France and Belgium sent troops to Zaire, Cuba halted its troop withdrawal.

Throughout the Angolan conflict, South Africa and the US ignored international law and acted as if it was perfectly natural for South Africa to dominate Namibia.  After South African planes massacred Namibian refuges at the Cassinga camp in Angola in May 1975 US President Jimmy Carter brushed it aside and quipped that “we hope it’s all over.”

Memories of that massacre stayed in the mind of a 12 year old girl, Sophia Ndeitungo: “The first Cubans I ever saw were the soldiers who came” to rescue them.  Most Cubans were white, so she “…thought they were South Africans.  Later, we understood that not all whites are bad.”  Sophia was relocated to Cuba’s Isle of Youth to study.  She graduated from Havana’s medical school, married another Cassingan refugee, returned to Namibia, and became head of its armed forces medical services in 2007.  For thousands of black Africans, Cubans were the only white people who showed them any kindness.

Exuberant over the 1980 US election of Ronald Reagan, South Africa stepped up its raids in Angola, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Botswana.  In August 1981 South Africa poured 4000 to 5000 troops into southern Angola with tanks and air support.  It expanded tactics to include poisoning wells, killing livestock and destroying food distribution and communications.  It was in this context that Cuba began sending 9000 troops back to Angola during August 1983.

Savimbi: Ally of US and South Africa 

Throughout the Carter administration and the early Reagan years, the US increased its flow of weapons to UNITA.  As early as 1974 UNITA’s leader Savimbi had established contacts with the Portuguese dictatorship and promised South Africa that he would help them build an anti-communist bloc.  Savimbi spoke fluent English, oozed self-confidence, cleverly manipulated his audience, knew just what Americans wanted to hear, and was “without scruple.”  In other words, his combination of qualities was a perfect fit for a CIA front man.

Savimbi consolidated his local power by executing village opponents as “sorcerers.”  He had total control and did not tolerate dissent.  By 1980, in addition to ridding UNITA of those who challenged him, Savimbi had “…the wives and children of the dissenters burned alive in public displays to teach the others.”

Special Forces Colonel Jan Breytenbach saw Savimbi as a “manipulator extraordinaire … As a political leader, he was very good.  I would compare him to Hitler.”  This comparison to Hitler was not a slighting of Savimbi – it was a compliment, as multiple top South African politicians had been members of pro-Nazi groups.

Among those who overlooked Savimbi’s campaigns of mass destruction was President Jimmy Carter, who took time out of his schedule of human rights advocacy to arrange the flow of secret US dollars to UNITA.  In 1985 Steve Weissman summed up attitudes that spanned both parties:  “We wanted to hurt Cuba, and we wanted to help people who wanted to hurt Cuba.  When Savimbi said that he was ‘fighting for freedom against Cuba’ – this was his trump card.  It was impossible to counter it. Savimbi had one redeeming quality: he killed Cubans.”

South African attitudes toward Savimbi fit into its broader perspective of utter contempt for blacks.  Deaths of whites were followed by announcements from the army and newspaper obituaries in the press.  Deaths of black soldiers were not broadcast either by their military superiors or by the press at home.

South African views mirrored those of US politicians.  A 1971 amendment to the US sanctions bill by former KKK member and Democrat Senator Harry F. Byrd (VA) exempted chrome, thereby pulling all teeth from consequences to the white minority government of Rhodesia.  A much-publicized July 1986 speech by Reagan lavished praise on South African whites who he said gave great opportunity to blacks.

Conflicts between allies

Considerable discord between allies arose from the marriage of necessity between Cuba and the Soviet Union.  Cuba’s strategy had been for it to confront the better armed and trained South African forces and for Angola’s FAPLA to counter internal enemies in guerrilla warfare.  The Soviets believed that FAPLA should develop a conventional army with tanks and heavy weapons to fight South Africa.

But Angolan troops had virtually no formal education.  Officers might have reached the second, third or fourth grade, but the army’s rank and file typically had never been to school and were unable to master sophisticated weapons provided by the Soviets.

While Cuba advocated FAPLA’s concentrating on UNITA, it simultaneously cautioned that the Angolan military should have Cuban backup whenever venturing into territory largely surrounded by UNITA and South African troops.  President Neto died in September 1979 and his successor, José Eduardo dos Santos, was often lured by Soviet visions of having a conventional army strong enough to overcome both opposition forces.

Throughout the conflict, the Soviets acted as if the primary weapons of war were logistical plans, tanks and weapons, while for Cuba the maps of war were drawn from the hearts and minds of those who used these weapons.  Cuba understood that the Angolan front was part of a broad campaign against racist domination across southern Africa.

By March 1976, Cuba’s initial victory over South Africa let loose a “tidal wave” against white racist rule as blacks became joyfully aware that apartheid forces were vulnerable.  In September 1977 Steve Biko died in police custody and within a month the government had banned 18 organizations and the most important black newspaper.  In September 1984 a new South African constitution bestowed political participation upon “coloreds” and Indians while denying the same rights to blacks.  Black townships in the industrial centers of the country exploded.  Massive demonstrations, strikes, school walkouts and boycotts of white owned stores spread like wildfire.  Soon funerals for victims of state repression were added to the events.

The ceremony for awarding the Noble Peace Prize to Bishop Desmond Tutu drew a huge rally.  Open opposition to apartheid mushroomed hand-in-hand with intensification of the war in Angola.  By 1987 the South African demonstrations were so large that thousands of white solders were assisting police within its borders.

Soviets were generally aloof from those they came to protect.  Africans themselves noticed how quickly Cuban soldiers, doctors, and others stationed near them melded into their society.  One recruit remembered that “The Cubans ate what we ate, slept in tents like us, lived as we did.’”  Physician Oscar Mena described his work in Angola as a “beautiful experience.”  Soviets in Angola seemed to think of it more as a job.  Battlefields reflected the cultural chasm – Soviet advisers stood on the sidelines of fighting while Cubans always joined in combat.

Dancing barefoot on a razor’s edge

In 1985 the Soviets persuaded Angola to attack UNITA’s stronghold in Mavinga, despite dire warnings from Havana that they would have to go through an area controlled by UNITA and create a supply line that it could not possibly defend.  It met with a disastrous defeat.  The same tragedy was repeated in 1987.

Afterwards, South Africa’s General Geldenhuys boasted of its victory to the press, which sparked intense global repudiation since that country had claimed non-involvement in Angola.  Was the time now ripe for Cuba to launch an all-out attack on South Africa’s forces?  This decision had Fidel dancing on a razor’s edge.

The most delicate balancing act was with the Soviet Union.  Without its financial aid, Cuba could not carry out the war.  Without its donation of military supplies, Angola’s FAPLA would be unable to fight.  But its repeated bungling of strategic decisions threatened every aspect of the war.

No less sensitive was Angola, which seemed mired in corruption.  Yet, the MPLA government was vastly superior to whatever Savimbi would usher in.  A victory in Angola would strike a mortal blow into the heart of apartheid; but, Cuba could not go forward without approval from Luanda.

Cuba had saved its most powerful weapons for self-protection in the event of a US invasion.  As Cubans drew weary of a decade and a half of sacrifice, Fidel and Raúl knew that being too cautious might mean missing an opportunity that would never repeat itself.  However, moving too quickly could cause a defeat that would demoralize and exhaust the Cuban troops, doctors, and people at home.

They also knew that thousands of white soldiers became unavailable for service in Angola because they were needed in South Africa to suppress dissent.  Reagan’s embroilment in the Iran-Contra scandal left the US unable to go on an attack.

Cuba’s leaders agreed that the hour had arrived to send vastly more troops and arms to Angola, including its best planes, its best pilots and its most sophisticated weapons.  In March 1988 FAPLA and Cuba defended the town of Cuito Cuanavale as it was attacked by South African and UNITA troops.  Enough Cuban planes and pilots had arrived for them to score a victory in the air.  At the same time Angolan troops drove back the ground attack.  South African troops were demoralized as it signaled the beginning of the end.  Nelson Mandela observed that this key battle “destroyed the myth of the invincibility of the white oppressor.”

Despite the clear defeat of apartheid forces, US diplomats continued to tell their Soviet counterparts that South Africa would not leave Angola until all Cuban troops were gone.  Fidel told the Soviet negotiator to “… ask the Americans why has the army of the superior race been unable to take Cuito, which is defended by blacks and mulattoes from Angola and the Caribbean?”

Cuban negotiator Risquet politely told them “The South Africans must understand that they will not win at this table what they have failed to win on the battlefield.”  Knowing that a full invasion of Angola would be rebuffed internationally, result in thousands of casualties, and potentially leave the country unable to defend itself from internal black rebellion, South African politicians gave the nod to its commanders to leave.  Its troops were withdrawn from Angola by August 30, 1988.

In Angolan elections dos Santos of the MPLA defeated Savimbi (49.8% to 40.1%).  In April 1990 South African president Frederick de Klerk legalized the African National Congress and South African Communist Party as he freed Nelson Mandela, who was elected to head the country in April 1994.

Many of the parallels between the US in Viet Nam and Cuba in Angola were striking and both foreign interventions had a profound effect on public consciousness.  Yet, Cuba was defending an actual country from invasion while the division of Viet Nam into “North” and “South” was a figment of the imaginations of French and Americans, which is to say that no foreign invasion occurred.  It was no coincidence that Cuba treated Angola as a sovereign state (despite many differences) while US politicians had as much respect for Vietnamese as a puppeteer has for his many toys.

No one appreciated the political reality more than South Africans who opened Freedom Park in Pretoria in 2007.  Its Wall of Names includes 2103 Cubans who lost their lives in the Angolan war.  Cuba is the only foreign country represented on the Wall.

Note.  This article is based on the following: information documented in Piero Gleijeses’ Visions of Freedom: Havana, Washington, Pretoria, and the Struggle for Southern Africa, 1976-1991 (2013); interviews by Hedelberto López Blanch which appear in his book Historias Secretas de Médicos Cubanos (2005); interviews by the author reported in his book Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution (2020); and interviews by Candace Wolf in her unpublished paper, The Zen of Healing (2013).  A version of this article appeared in openDemocracy.

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Don Fitz ([email protected]) is on the Editorial Board of Green Social Thought.  He was the 2016 candidate of the Missouri Green Party for Governor.  His book on Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution has been available since June 2020 and has citations for all quotations in this article.

With over 800 million people, rural India is arguably the most interesting and complex place on the planet but is plagued by farmer suicides, child malnourishment, growing unemployment, increased informalisation, indebtedness and an overall collapse of agriculture.

Given that India is still an agrarian-based society, renowned journalist P Sainath says what is taking place can be described as a crisis of civilisation proportions and can be explained in just five words: hijack of agriculture by corporations. He notes the process by which it is being done in five words too: predatory commercialisation of the countryside. And another five words to describe the outcome: biggest displacement in our history.

In late November 2018, a charter was released by the All India Kisan Sangharsh Coordination Committee (an umbrella group of around 250 farmers’ organisations) to coincide with the massive, well-publicised farmers’ march that was then taking place in Delhi.

The charter stated:

“Farmers are not just a residue from our past; farmers, agriculture and village India are integral to the future of India and the world; as bearers of historic knowledge, skills and culture; as agents of food safety, security and sovereignty; and as guardians of biodiversity and ecological sustainability.”

The farmers stated that they were alarmed at the economic, ecological, social and existential crisis of Indian agriculture as well as the persistent state neglect of the sector and discrimination against farming communities.

They were also concerned about the deepening penetration of large, predatory and profit hungry corporations, farmers’ suicide across the country and the unbearable burden of indebtedness and the widening disparities between farmers and other sectors.

The charter called on the Indian parliament to immediately hold a special session to pass and enact two bills that were of, by and for the farmers of India.

If passed by parliament, among other things, the Farmers’ Freedom from Indebtedness Bill 2018 would have provided for the complete loan waiver for all farmers and agricultural workers.

The second bill, The Farmers’ Right to Guaranteed Remunerative Minimum Support Prices for Agricultural Commodities Bill 2018, would have seen the government take measures to bring down the input cost of farming through specific regulation of the prices of seeds, agriculture machinery and equipment, diesel, fertilisers and insecticides, while making purchase of farm produce below the minimum support price (MSP) both illegal and punishable.

The charter also called for a special discussion on the universalisation of the public distribution system, the withdrawal of pesticides that have been banned elsewhere and the non-approval of genetically engineered seeds without a comprehensive need and impact assessment.

Other demands included no foreign direct investment in agriculture and food processing, the protection of farmers from corporate plunder in the name of contract farming, investment in farmers’ collectives to create farmer producer organisations and peasant cooperatives and the promotion of agroecology based on suitable cropping patterns and local seed diversity revival.

Now in 2020, rather than responding to these requirements, we see the Indian government’s promotion and facilitation of – by way of recent legislation – the corporatisation of agriculture and the dismantling of the public distribution system (and the MSP) as well as the laying of groundwork for contract farming.

This legislation comprises three acts: The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act 2020, Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act 2020 and Essential Commodities (Amendment) Act 2020

Although the two aforementioned bills from 2018 have now lapsed, farmers are demanding that the new pro-corporate (anti-farmer) farms laws are replaced with a legal framework that guarantees the MSP to farmers.

According to an article by the Research Unit for Political Economy (RUPE), it is clear that the existence of MSPs, the Food Corporation of India, the public distribution system and publicly held buffer stocks constitute an obstacle to the profit-driven requirements of global agribusiness interests who have sat with government agencies and set out their wish-lists.

RUPE notes that India accounts for 15 per cent of world consumption of cereals. India’s buffer stocks are equivalent to 15-25 per cent of world stocks and 40 per cent of world trade in rice and wheat. Any large reduction in these stocks will almost certainly affect world prices: farmers would be hit by depressed prices; later, once India became dependent on imports, prices could rise on the international market and Indian consumers would be hit.

At the same time, the richer countries are applying enormous pressure on India to scrap its meagre agricultural subsidies; yet their own subsidies are vast multiples of India’s. The end result could be India becoming dependent on imports and the restructure of its own agriculture to crops destined for export.

RUPE concludes:

“Vast buffer stocks would still exist; but instead of India holding these stocks, they would be held by multinational trading firms, and India would bid for them with borrowed funds.”

Instead of holding physical buffer stocks, India would hold foreign exchange reserves.

Successive administrations have made the country dependent on volatile flows of foreign capital and India’s foreign exchange reserves have been built up by borrowing and foreign investments. The fear of capital flight is ever present. Policies are often governed by the drive to attract and retain these inflows and maintain market confidence by ceding to the demands of international capital.

This throttling of democracy and the ‘financialisation’ of agriculture would seriously undermine the nation’s food security and leave almost 1.4 billion people at the mercy of international speculators and foreign investment.

But agricapital’s free-for-all bonanza and the planned displacement of tens of millions of cultivators mirrors what has been happening across the world for many decades: the consolidation of a global food regime based on agro-export mono-cropping (often with non-food commodities taking up prime agricultural land) linked to sovereign debt repayment and foreign exchange inflows and earnings and World Bank/IMF ‘structural adjustment’ directives.

The outcomes have included a displacement of a food-producing peasantry, the dominance of Western agri-food oligopolies and the transformation of countries from food self-sufficiency to food deficiency. Little wonder then that among the owners of global agribusiness family firm Cargill 14 are now billionaires – the very company that profited from running down India’s edible oils sector in the 1990s.

It is not that India needs these people. It is already the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables, fruit and cotton. This is despite India’s farmers already reeling from the effects of 30 years of neoliberal policies, decades of public underinvestment/disinvestment and a deliberate strategy to displace them at the behest of the World Bank and predatory global agri-food corporations.

If unrepealed, the recent legislation represents the ultimate betrayal of India’s farmers and democracy as well as the final surrender of food security and food sovereignty to unaccountable corporations. This legislation is wholly regressive and will eventually lead to the country relying on outside forces  to feed its population – and a possible return to hand-to-mouth imports, especially in an increasingly volatile world prone to conflict, public health scares, unregulated land and commodity speculation and price shocks.

A shift towards food sovereignty – encompassing local people’s right to healthy and culturally appropriate food and their ability to define and control their own food and agriculture systems – is key to achieving genuine independence, national sovereignty, food security and facilitating farmers’ demands.

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

New York Times admits schemes could lead to “a dystopic system that would limit the rights of people who have been careful to avoid infection and are unable or unwilling to be vaccinated”

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Several more countries have indicated that they are to adopt vaccination passports, meaning anyone crossing their borders will need to be able to prove they have been inoculated against coronavirus.

It is being reported that the South African government is working on implementing an entire Covid-19 vaccine ‘ID system’, which will not only encompass the so called ‘passports’, but will also include “management and surveillance of the Covid-19 vaccine,” as well as “an integrated track-and-trace system,” and “a dashboard system… to capture the reasons given for vaccine refusal.”

The country’s COVID battle has come under scrutiny in recent weeks with a purported super ‘mutation’ of the virus being discovered there.

The South African Department of Health has announced that all citizens who are vaccinated will be placed on a national register and provided with a vaccination card.

Meanwhile, in Europe, another country has indicated it will adopt the vaccination passport scheme with Ukrainian health officials announcing that all vaccinated people will be entered into an electronic health care database.

“When mandatory vaccination passports are introduced at the international level, Ukrainian doctors will be able to promptly issue a certificate of vaccinations,” said chief sanitary doctor of Ukraine Viktor Liashko.

Another country said to be mulling the introduction of COVID passports is Russia. The New York Times reported that

“The Russian government is considering issuing coronavirus health certificates that could ease travel and commerce for people who have been vaccinated.”

The Times quoted the head of the Russian Parliament’s committee on public health, Dmitri Morozov, who said that a Covid passport was “very important and needed.”

“This is great, this is the new world,” Morozov reportedly stated.

The Times also noted that

“A regional governor in Russia, Radi Khabirov, proposed on Monday that Covid passport holders receive discounts at stores, as an incentive for people to obtain the certificate.”

The report also noted that

“President Vladimir V. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said on Tuesday that the government is considering issuing Covid passports.”

After the Times report was published, Russian state media denied that a COVID passport scheme to limit travel had been discussed by Peskov or the Kremlin.

“We are far from a unified point of view on this subject right now, there are no consistent approaches or a consensus on this subject,” Peskov said, but added that “this subject is circulating, it’s being worked out.”

Interestingly, while the likes of the New York Times has reported on other countries adopting the COVID passports, in its coverage of Russia potentially doing the same, it paints a much darker picture, stating that

“Opponents fear a dystopic system that would limit the rights of people who have been careful to avoid infection and are unable or unwilling to be vaccinated.”

“Russia has a grim history rooted in the Soviet era of controlling citizens’ movements, through a residency permit system that was never fully abolished,” the Times report continues.

So when Russia do it, it’s bad, but when other countries do it, it’s part of restoring ‘open society’. Hmmmm.

While scores of countries are now slowly moving toward the implementation of vaccination passports, airlines appear to have fully embraced the idea and essentially already have them in place.

Emirates airlines has announced that it will be trialling the IATA Travel Pass ‘digital passport’ which shows passengers’ proof of Covid-19 tests and other entry requirements when flying.

Adel Al Redha, Emirates’ Chief Operating Officer said that

“While international travel remains as safe as ever, there are new protocols and travel requirements with the current global pandemic.”

“We have worked with IATA on this innovative solution to simplify and digitally transmit the information that is required by countries and governments into our airline systems, in a secure and efficient manner,”Al Redha continued, adding “We are proud to be one of the first airlines in the world to pilot this initiative, which will provide an enhanced customer experience and conveniently facilitate our customers’ travel needs.”

As we reported last November, the IATA, the world’s largest air transport lobby group, expects its COVID travel pass app to be fully rolled out in the first months of 2021.

Other airlines, including United Airlines and Cathay Pacific have already trialled the IATA’s scheme.

Meanwhile, American Airlines has reportedly partnered with biometric authentication provider VeriFLY to develop its own COVID passport app, which will be rolled out within days.

“We support the implementation of a global program to require COVID-19 testing for travelers to the United States, and we want to do everything we can to make travel a seamless experience for customers,” Julie Rath, the vice president of customer experience at American Airlines, said in a statement.

Virgin Atlantic owner Richard Branson has also thrown his weight behind the vaccination passport idea, telling CNBC he hopes that soon

“there will be a proof-of-vaccination piece of paper that people can use to be able to get on a plane without having to be tested or without having to quarantine.”

“Vaccination is everything. Once vulnerable people, in particular, have been vaccinated, I think all kinds of businesses can start opening up again: restaurants, travel companies, cruise companies,” Branson declared.

The narrative of adopting vaccination passports is now so ubiquitous that it would be surprising not to see them adopted world-wide, despite the fact that even the World Health Organisation has warned that such schemes should absolutely not be implemented while there is no proof that vaccinations can provide immunity to coronavirus.

“Being vaccinated should not exempt international travellers from complying with other travel risk reduction measures,” the WHO committee stressed during its meeting held on January 14.

Others have warned that the adoption of vaccination passports will inevitably lead to a two-tier society, and must be prevented.

“The immunity passport could become a ‘passport for privilege,’ accentuating the divide between those who already have a comfortable position in society and those on the margins,” warns Dr Israel Butler, Head of Advocacy, at the Civil Liberties Union for Europe, Liberties.

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New peer-reviewed study of adverse events following MMRV vaccines highlights the urgent need for independent research on vaccine safety and the importance of informed consent and vaccine choice.

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As health officials strive to brush off as “coincidences” the mounting number of deaths and other serious adverse reactions occurring worldwide in connection with Pfizer’s and Moderna’s experimental mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, the need for independent scrutiny of vaccine safety data has never been more apparent.

A new peer-reviewed study about adverse events following immunization (AEFI) and the measles-mumps-rubella-varicella (MMRV) vaccine brings home the urgent need for independent research.

The study, published by two northern Italian researchers on an open access platform suggests that most existing safety monitoring systems, whether in Italy or the U.S., are “utterly inadequate to document the real incidence of serious AEFIs and that current methods of assessing [vaccine-related] causality may be questioned.”

The study also reveals how an unbiased reanalysis of adverse event data puts the lie to the “reassuring conclusions” officials like to disseminate about vaccine safety.

Scrutinizing the existing data

Italy made MMRV vaccination compulsory for young children in 2017. In their 2021 open access study, Italian researchers Paolo Bellavite and Alberto Donzelli indirectly assess the impact of this policy by examining the incidence of MMRV-related AEFI as reported to or studied by Italy’s pharmacovigilance system.

Bellavite and Donzelli note that while Italy’s vaccine surveillance “is mainly of the ‘passive’ type” (characterized, as in the U.S., by vast underreporting), it also includes occasional “active vigilance” studies.

Bellavite and Donzelli summarize the findings of one such study, conducted in the region of Apulia in 2017 and 2018. The Apulia study’s university- and health-department-based researchers asked the parents of more than 2,500 children to keep diaries for three weeks post-MMRV-vaccination. The researchers then followed up with phone calls and review of relevant hospitalization records.

The Apulia researchers detected 992 post-MMRV adverse events among the 2,149 children for whom they were able to complete the three-week telephone follow-up — an AEFI reporting rate of 462 events per 1000 enrolled children. One hundred nine of the 992 adverse events (11%) met World Health Organization (WHO) criteria classifying them as “serious,” meaning fatal or life-threatening; requiring intervention or hospitalization; or causing persistent disability or incapacity.

The most common serious adverse events experienced by young MMRV recipients in Apulia were hyperpyrexia (very high fever in excess of 106°F — a medical emergency), neurological symptoms (including balance disorders and agitation), gastrointestinal problems and thrombocytopenia (abnormally low platelet levels). All of the adverse events are listed as side effects in the package insert for the Merck-manufactured MMRV vaccine (brand name ProQuad) as well as in the inserts for a number of other childhood and adult vaccines. (Notably, the healthy 56-year-old Florida doctor who recently died after getting Pfizer’s mRNA COVID-19 vaccine developed an ultimately fatal form of thrombocytopenia three days after vaccination.)

The MMRV insert also lists dozens of other post-vaccination reactions, including anaphylaxis, febrile seizures, muscle and joint pain, arthritis, bleeding disorders, autoimmune problems and serious infections, including both measles and varicella (chickenpox)!

The next step for the Apulia investigators was to apply the WHO’s causality assessment algorithm to their findings. According to the inflexible and somewhat paradoxical WHO criteria,

“Only reactions that have previously been acknowledged in epidemiological studies to be caused by the vaccine are classified as a vaccine-product-related-reaction. New serious adverse reactions that emerge post-licensure “are labelled as ‘coincidental deaths/events’ or ‘unclassifiable.’”

Even so, the Apulia study showed that 82 of 109 serious adverse reactions displayed a causal association “consistent with MMRV immunization.” This translates to 38 serious adverse events per 1,000 children enrolled — or one in 26.

In the U.S., which relies almost exclusively on passive surveillance, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) has received 13,382 reports of MMRV-related adverse events since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved ProQuad in 2005 — an average of 836 reported incidents annually over the 16 years.

VAERS classifies roughly one in 20 of these (4.7%) as “serious,” including 19 deaths. Over the same time frame (that is, since 2005), VAERS accumulated another 40,070 reports of adverse events following MMR vaccination (2,500 annually on average), with one in 10 categorized as serious.

A 2016 FDA study that looked at 204 VAERS reports (through 2014) for infants who, largely due to “vaccination errors,” received the MMR or MMRV vaccines before nine months of age (rather than at the recommended 12 to 15 months of age) found that nearly one in six of the reported adverse events (17%) were serious.

Critiquing the spin

Knowledgeable experts have roundly criticized the WHO algorithm for being biased toward rejecting vaccine-related causality (describing the algorithm as being “not fit for purpose”).

Thus, the fact that there was one serious WHO-confirmed adverse event for every 26 enrolled children should have been extremely noteworthy.

Apparently, the Apulia researchers did not think so. As Bellavite and Donzelli note, though the Apulia study was unique in applying WHO causality assessment methods to comprehensive active surveillance data, the investigators vastly downplayed their own results, describing serious AEFIs as “absolutely rare” and reporting that “the active surveillance program confirmed and reinforced the safety profile of the [MMRV] vaccine.”

Bellavite and Donzelli dispute this tame characterization of the Apulia findings, explaining the following:

• An AEFI rate of 38 per 1000 — one in 26 — should appropriately be classified as “common” rather than “absolutely rare.”
• Apulia’s active surveillance data, when compared with Italian health authorities’ passive surveillance data, show a MMRV-related rate of serious AEFIs “hundreds of times higher than expected.”
• Comparing the serious AEFIs that showed a consistent MMRV-related causal association (as per the WHO algorithm) to the Italian Medicines Agency’s passive surveillance data reveals an even greater “977 times difference.”
• The frequency of serious, MMRV-related neurological and gastrointestinal symptoms identified through active surveillance — which stands out in comparison to the incidence documented in the literature and passive surveillance systems — should be interpreted as a safety signal.
• Projecting the AEFI rate of 38 per 1000 onto an Italian birth cohort would yield “tens of thousands of serious AEFIs.”

In the U.S., the FDA and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention researchers maintain that neither the MMR nor MMRV vaccines display “any major safety concerns,” despite the thousands of adverse events reported each year and the vast iceberg of additional adverse reactions that go unreported.

U.S. regulators’ nonchalance is further contradicted by a U.S. government study estimating that one of every 39 vaccines administered results in vaccine injury.

Bellavite and Donzelli also call attention to other considerations typically ignored or overlooked by researchers for whom a “confirmed” vaccine safety profile is the a priori conclusion — considerations that are as pertinent in the U.S. as they are in Italy. For example:

• Studies focusing on vaccine-related adverse events should take into account each and all rounds of vaccination. The Apulia research was limited to reactions following the first MMRV injection only.
• Vaccine safety surveillance rarely (if ever) accounts for administration of multiple vaccines at one time, yet the same-day injection of the MMRV and hepatitis A vaccines in Italy — and multiple combination vaccines in one healthcare visit in the U.S. — could be a factor contributing to elevated AEFI rates.
• In persons with underlying genetic susceptibilities or a concomitant infectious or inflammatory disease, vaccination “can act as a synergistic or triggering factor” and should not be discounted when considering causality.

Drawing appropriate conclusions

Overall, Bellavite and Donzelli are unsparing in their critique of the systems usually relied on to monitor vaccine safety. Discussing “the inadequacy of passive surveillance to represent the real incidence of even short-term AEFIs, both of mild and serious kind,” they recommend directing more resources toward active surveillance of representative samples of the population, while also continuing to collect spontaneous reports through passive surveillance to capture “rare events that active surveillance would have little chance to intercept.”

These and other recommendations, articulated by Children’s Health Defense and many others, have fallen on deaf ears in the U.S.

More broadly, the Italian authors emphasize the fundamental principles of vaccine choice and informed consent, stating that “the choice of whether to vaccinate or not [is] a choice that must be made by the patient or by parents of underage children, properly advised by their doctors.”

They also noted how vaccine mandates alter doctors’ roles and turn them into “public officer[s] enforcing the government’s decisions.” Americans who are leery of experimental COVID-19 vaccines — and the improbable fairy tales being spun about the vaccines’ risk-benefit calculus — would likely agree with the Italians’ conclusions. The principle of informed consent cannot be satisfied “by a generic statement of a ‘safe profile’ or ‘lack of worrying signals,’” particularly when researchers ignore evidence of serious adverse effects in a significant percentage of vaccine recipients.

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The New Domestic War on Terror Is Coming

By Glenn Greenwald, January 20 2021

The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting “terrorism” that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago.

A Belligerent Foreign Policy Towards the Middle East: The Legacy of US President Donald J. Trump

By Timothy Alexander Guzman, January 20 2021

As the Trump era is coming to an end, his legacy in the Middle East will be described by the Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians and the rest of the Arab world as aggressive, dangerous and extremely reckless.

Biden’s Key Role in the Crime of the Century: The 2003 U.S. Invasion of Iraq

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, January 20 2021

Joe Biden presents himself as an empathetic guy who is willing to go the extra mile to help people overcome their personal tragedies. However, Biden has throughout his career endorsed policies that caused countless personal tragedies for millions of people.

“Covid Relief Plan”: Biden Lifts Health Care Plan from Insurance Lobbyists

By Andrew Perez and Julia Rock, January 20 2021

It adopts proposals from health insurance lobbying groups’ recent letter to lawmakers demanding lucrative new subsidies for insurance companies, at a moment when those corporations have recorded record profits as millions lose coverage and many face claims denials.

The Deep State’s Stealthy, Subversive, Silent Coup to Ensure Nothing Changes

By John W. Whitehead, January 20 2021

No doubt about it: the coup d’etat was successful. That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump’s call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys.

Video: The Silent Enemy: The Lockdown Concerto of Dr. Ronald B. Brown, PhD

By John C. A. Manley, January 20 2021

He disrupted the academic world with his peer-reviewed paper exposing the exaggerated threat of an “invisible enemy” (the novel coronavirus). In an interview, Dr. Brown said that “the public’s overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic was based on the worst miscalculation in the history of humanity.”

British Medical Journal: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% Effective” Vaccines—Let’s be Cautious and First See the Full Data

By Dr. Peter Doshi, January 19 2021

In the United States, all eyes are on Pfizer and Moderna. The topline efficacy results from their experimental covid-19 vaccine trials are astounding at first glance. Let’s put this in perspective.

China Health Experts Call for Suspension of COVID Vaccines as Norway Investigates 33 Deaths, Germany Probes 10 Deaths

By Children’s Health Defense, January 19 2021

Norway upped the number of deaths under investigation, from 23 last week to 33, while in Germany, health officials said they are investigating 10 deaths that occurred among elderly patients who received the COVID vaccine.

Dystopia Now! – Surveillance Through Vaccine Certificates, Digital IDs, and Biometric Data

By Jesse Smith, January 19 2021

No matter the origin or true lethality of SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus pandemic has been utilized to implement broader agendas that have been planned well in advance.

Destroying the Web of Life: The Destruction of Earth’s Biodiversity Is Accelerating

By Robert J. Burrowes, January 19 2021

In August 2010, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, warned that ‘We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.’ According to the UN Environment Program, ‘the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life’ with scientists estimating that ‘150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours’ which is nearly 1,000 times the ‘natural’ or ‘background’ rate.

We’re Being Locked-down for an Infection Fatality Rate of Less than 0.2%? Dr. Richard Schabas to Ontario Premier Doug Ford

By Dr. Richard Schabas, January 19 2021

The national lockdown was never part of our planned pandemic response nor is it supported by strong science. Two recent studies on the effectiveness of lockdown show that it has, at most, a small COVID mortality benefit compared to more moderate measures. Both studies warned about the excessive cost of lockdowns.

The Basic Principles of War Propaganda: The US Lies About Every War

By Rod Driver, January 19 2021

Propaganda as a science really got under way during World War 1 (WW1). The British and the German governments both brainwashed their populations into believing that the other country was a demonic enemy that had to be defeated.

The situation in Syria’s Idlib appears to be, once again, on the brink of escalation, with the US preoccupied with what’s happening at home, and Turkey attempting to push towards Ain Issa, while being targeted by its own proxies.

The terrorist threat is far from removed, and attacks are common, moments of calm in the country’s east and northwest appear to be few and far between. The situation that’s transpiring is, to a large degree, due to Turkey’s actions and its policies.

Ankara, too, is suffering from it, since the many of the groups that it backs, officially or otherwise, seem to be eager to bite the hand that feeds. On January 16th, Turkish troops in observation posts in Idlib were targeted by sniper fire from a group that calls itself “Saryat Ansar Abu Baker As-Siddiq”. According to the group itself, three Turkish soldiers were shot. One appears to be in critical condition.

This is the group’s third attack against Turkey, with the first taking place in November of 2020, and then in December of 2020. The December attack resulted in one Turkish soldier’s death. Other reports of Turkish proxies attacking Ankara’s armed forces occasionally take place.

The Turkish military maintains more than 60 posts, camps and bases throughout Greater Idlib. Most of them are located in terrorist-controlled areas, and attacks on them are rather infrequent due to Ankara’s close ties with terrorists operating in the area. Nonetheless, as the recent attacks show, this policy has some weak sides for the Turkish personnel deployed.

Ankara is attempting to encroach near the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)-controlled area, attempting to establish an observation post near Ain Issa. A push on SDF positions is expected, but there will be a defense.

Meanwhile, Iran has been expanding its presence in Syria despite the endless Israeli-US attempts to oppose this. Tehran’s forces deployed a signal intelligence system along Syria’s border with Jordan. This may be used to either spy on the US forces deployed in Jordan, or even on Israel.

Iran has ample opportunity, Tel Aviv is likely to be on the back foot, since the US’ Biden administration is likely to support Israel less than that of Trump. This provides Tehran with a chance to dig in and reinforce its position and prepare an asymmetric response to its geopolitical opponents.

There is likely to be an advent of a new round of confrontation in the conflict zone, with the Syrian Arab Army still struggling to get rid of ISIS cells in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert, Turkey focused on the SDF and being targeted by militants in Idlib, and Iran attempting to focus on its opponents.

Both Ankara and Tehran are likely taking a chance to improve their positions in Syria due to the lull in American activity in the face of the unprecedented chaos in the United States. At the same time, the new US administration would not likely support the Trump-announced troop withdrawal effort. So, Washington still has a word to say.

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War is merely the continuation of politics by other means(1) — Claus Von Clausewitz

They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game. — R.D. Laing

“A continuation of politics by other means.”  

One could just as easily say that politics is the continuation of war by other means. And perhaps surmise that the strategies of war games can also be pursued within a “predatory culture”(2) via interpersonal games.

The battle for dominance in the fields of war, sports and business often mirrors personal struggles for domestic one-upmanship. Family politics may follow patterns of office politics and vice versa. Fear and greed as demonstrated on Wall Street can poison human relationships in a more personal arena.

Games of all sorts often use the terminology of war, as the pursuit of war uses the terminology of games. People put on their “game face” in the bathroom rmirror as they prepare to sally forth to engage with the citadel of commerce. They put on their game masks, their “personas”(3), to face the world. Now, alas, even that is insufficient, and must be further disguised with one more layer behind which to hide.

Just as there are tactics of war, there are tactics in business. How many aspiring CEOs pursuing an MBA have a copy of Sun Tzu’s The Art of War in their college backpack? And how many acknowlege warlike tactics in personal games with friends and family?(4)

Is it any less satisfying to feel one’s power over a lover, than to feel the thrill of martial music, while astride a prancing charger viewing one’s invincible army massed on the plain below? Is the art of seduction not often compared to a successful military campaign? The “battle of the sexes,” though now a tired cliche, could appear to a warring couple as a fight to the death with the enemy they are in bed with. 

So the question left hanging out to dry, if not twisting gently in the breeze, is how these tactics relate to the shaping of personality. Do the power politics of the larger world insert themselves into our personas to shape our personal strategies, the strategies we use to engage with others in our everyday social relationships? 

If the pursuit of power shapes the landscapes of war, sports and business, it can also shape our personal landscape and even the expression of our personality–of who we think we are. Conscious or unconscious shaping of our personality can be a means to pursue strategic advantage in love or war. 

If “all the world’s a stage, and the men and women merely players,”(5) can we not assume an appropriate persona to suit our desires? Do we not learn who we would like to be “when we grow up” as children playing house or doctor? Perhaps we may craftily weave a “tangled web,” when “first we practice to deceive,”(6) far better than we let on, even to ourselves. 

It could be possible that some of us have taken, not Hamlet’s advice to the players: “Suit the word to the action, the action to the word,”  but follow another path to “smile, and smile, and be a villain.”(7)

As Shakespeare’s Richard III prepares to play the part of the lover, confiding to the audience his plans to transform his discontent, so might we prepare to play parts on our own personal stages. And even disguise from ourselves our true intentions, much as a Method(8) actor gets lost in the part, virtually “becoming” the role.

Perhaps in a culture of dissembling, of dark and smokey mirrors, we may be better actors than we think. 

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S. M. Smyth was a founding member of the 2006 World Peace Forum in Vancouver and organized a debate about TILMA at the Maple Ridge City Council chambers between Ellen Gould and a representative of the Fraser Institute. 

Notes

(1) The phrasing of the Clausewitz quote has been disputed.

(2) Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class

(3) Wikipedia, Persona

(4) Eric Berne, Games People Play

(5) Shakespeare, As You Like It

(6) Walter Scott, Marmion

(7) Shakespeare, Hamlet

(8) Stanislavski, An Actor Prepares, Method acting

So far, it’s unclear if Trump will face Senate trial on the fraudulent charge of inciting insurrection — as a private citizen.

He had nothing to do with the January 6 storming of Capitol Hill. Nor did his nonviolent supporters in Washington.

Anti-Trump elements were responsible for what Dems in Washington falsely blamed him.

According to Trending Politics:

“(F)ederal law enforcement officials have told CNN that they believe the January 6th storming of the Capitol was planned ahead of time by bad actors instead of a random riot inspired by President Trump’s speech.”

Nothing Trump said or tweeted called for inciting insurrection, just the opposite.

He urged legitimate nonviolent protests, not the other way around.

What happened was well-planned in advance by forces hostile to Trump — wanting him further demonized for the wrong reasons, not legitimate ones.

They want him banned from politics to prevent him from running again for president in 2024.

There’s plenty of wrongdoing to hold him and most other US elected and appointed officials accountable for.

Impeachment charges against Trump on December 18, 2019 and on January 13, 2021 had no constitutional or US statute law validity.

They were and remain politicized for the above reasons.

Throughout US history, 15 Senate trials were conducted in response to 19 officials impeached by the House, including judges.

Three US presidents were impeached, Trump alone twice — both times on politicized charges with no validity.

What’s clear based on facts is unreported by hostile-to-Trump establishment media.

Yet most Americans believe what’s false because of anti-Trump media propaganda.

According to Pew Research on January 15, “68% of the public does not want Donald Trump to remain a major political figure in the future.”

In stark contrast, “64% of voters express(ed) a positive opinion of” Biden.

Pew Research also reported that 54% of respondents supported Trump’s removal from office despite nearing the end of his term.

Overall, “Republicans and (Dems) remain deeply divided” as they have been throughout Trump’s tenure, according to reported findings by Pew Research on January 15.

Only 52% of Republicans and “Republican-leaning independents say Trump bears any responsibility for” the Capitol Hill incident.

Only 21% of these respondents believe Trump should be removed from office before end of his tenure — in stark contrast to virtually all Dems and Dem “leaners (95%).”

“(A)nd 83% (of this group) favor his removal as president.”

At the same time, “a large segment of Trump voters” believe he was reelected on November 3 last year.

Among all respondents, “65%” believe Biden defeated Trump.

Clearly it was the other way around.

Most Americans are at least largely unaware of Biden’s betrayal of the public trust in office for a near-half century as senator and vice president.

They know little or nothing about his support for wars by hot and other means on invented enemies, corporate profiteering, and indifference toward peace, equity, justice, and the rule of law.

Hostile-to Trump throughout his time in office CNN actually reported the following:

“Evidence uncovered so far, including weapons and tactics seen on surveillance video, suggests a level of planning that has led investigators to believe the attack on the US Capitol was not just a protest that spiraled out of control, a federal law enforcement official says.”

The above is correct for mentioning pre-planning and incorrect at the same time.

There was nothing happenstance about orchestrated January 6 storming of Capitol Hill’s main building — no evidence that Trump promoted or otherwise supported it.

Establishment media overall and anti-Trump Dems refuse to admit the above.

Militant anti-Trump elements want him tried and convicted of phony charges by Senate trial.

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell shifted from Trump backer to antagonist, on Tuesday saying to following:

Storming of Capitol Hill on January 6 was “provoked by (Trump) and other powerful people (sic).”

“The mob was fed lies (sic).”

“(T)hey tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like (sic).”

He hasn’t decided whether to go along with trying Trump for the charge of inciting insurrection — he and at least most other congressional members know is politicized, not true.

A two-thirds super-majority is required to convict if a Senate trial is held — requiring 17 Republicans to conspire with 50 undemocratic Dems against Trump after leaving office.

A separate vote would be required to ban him from seeking public office again.

Reportedly, McConnell and Senate Dem leader Chuck Schumer met to set rules for a Senate trial if held.

The evenly divided Senate is Dem-controlled because in case of 50 – 50 votes, Harris becomes the tie-breaking one.

Without GOP support, convicting Trump won’t happen. Enough Republicans have to go along for a required two-thirds majority.

What earlier seemed highly unlikely is now uncertain but very possible.

As things now stand, a politicized Senate trial is likely.

Nothing stands in its way with McConnell willing to conspire with Schumer in conducting one.

While its outcome is more likely not to convict Trump, the other way around could be its outcome.

If thing turn out this way, Trump will be the only US president ever impeached, tried and convicted.

Notably it would be after leaving office for politicized reasons lacking legitimacy, justifiable ones ignored.

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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 Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Montenegro’s military — and maybe NATO — want the Sinjajevina Highlands for maneuvers; traditional herding communities want these biodiverse alpine pasturelands conserved.

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Mileva “Gara” Jovanović’s family has been taking cattle up to graze in Montenegro’s Sinjajevina Highlands for more than 140 summers. The mountain pastures of the Sinjajevina-Durmitor Massif are the largest on Europe’s Balkan Peninsula, and they’ve provided her family not only with milk, cheese, and meat, but with an enduring livelihood and the means to send five of her six children to university.

“It gives us life,” said Gara, an elected spokesperson for the eight self-described tribes who share the summer pasture.

But, Gara says, this alpine pasture — “the Mountain,” she calls it — is under serious threat, and with it the tribes’ way of life. Two years ago, Montenegro’s military moved ahead with plans to develop a training ground where soldiers would carry out maneuvers and artillery practice in these grasslands.

No stranger to the daunting challenges of life as an alpine herder, Gara said that when she first heard of the military’s plans, it brought her to tears. “It’s going to destroy the Mountain because it’s impossible to have both the military polygon there and cattle,” she told Mongabay.

A map showing the approximate location of the proposed military polygon in the Sinjajevina pasturelands. Image courtesy of Pablo Domínguez (inset courtesy of Google Earth Engine).

Anthropologists who have studied the region say that pastoralists have been bringing their herds to the Sinjajevina grasslands for around 3,000 years. Now, Gara fears that the military’s use of the land will utterly disrupt the current natural balance that 250 local families have carefully cultivated.

The tribes are all part of the same ethnic group, and they meet periodically to discuss the management of the pasturelands. Thanks to their nurturing efforts, verdant grasses carpet the Mountain each spring that feed not only their cattle, sheep and horses. The long-sustained partnership between natural and human communities also engenders a unique and richly specied landscape, while snowmelt flowing down from Sinjajevina supplies Montenegro with water and supports its human population.

“Maintaining a diversity of uses and practices up there is helping conserve some very valuable stuff,” Pablo Domínguez, an environmental anthropologist at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) at the University of Toulouse, told Mongabay.

Milan Sekulović, who leads the Save Sinjajevina Association, with a horse on Sinjajevina Mountain. Image courtesy of Milan Sekulović.

The battle over Sinjajevina’s future — whether it remains a rare example of nature coexisting alongside humanity, or becomes a proving ground for kitted-out troops and heavy artillery — has embroiled not just Gara, the eight tribes, and the government of a small Balkans nation; it may also figure significantly into the global geopolitics of NATO and the European Union.

To many, including Gara, the two paths are incompatible. That stance led to a 51-day protest in late 2020. Around 150 farmers and activists camped on the Mountain in the fall, blocking the military’s deployment with little more than their presence and sheer determination.

For now, at least, they’ve succeeded, coinciding with a seismic, generational political shift in Montenegro. Today, the challenge that preservation proponents like Gara and Domínguez face is to parlay this ephemeral triumph into permanent protections for Sinjajevina and its people.

A highland and homeland of surprising diversity

The Sinjajevina grasslands cover a rocky, rolling plain in northern Montenegro of more than 450 square kilometers (147 square miles), according to the government, amid the craggy dolomitic peaks and limestone karsts of the Dinaric Alps.

Average elevations of 1,600 meters (5,250 feet) mean that impassable snows blanket the high pastures for five or six months each year. During that time, herders vacate their katuns — small, seasonal alpine outposts — until the warmth of late spring returns.

These grasslands border Durmitor National Park and the Tara River Basin Biosphere Reserve, both UNESCO World Heritage Sites where the rivers that drain these heights converge, plunging into Europe’s deepest river gorge.

At first glance, Sinjajevina appears boundless and quiet — even barren. In the military’s view, “It is empty,” said Petar Glomazić, a documentary filmmaker. Since 2019, Glomazić has co-led a coalition of international and local human rights groups, environmental NGOs and the European Union’s Green Party in a push to stop Montenegro’s military from commandeering the heart of Sinjajevina.

A katun on Sinjajevina Mountain. Image courtesy of the Save Sinjajevina Association.

Those initial impressions of the region’s emptiness can be deceiving. Sinjajevina’s pastures are capable of fattening 10,000 cattle and 70,000 sheep each summer, according to estimates by agricultural scientists. But through the ages, these “semi-natural” grasslands — a designation given because the ecosystem’s persistence depends in part on human activities — have remained an oasis of ecological stability.

“That way of life, that very sustainable way of life, has been there for centuries,” Glomazić said.

Beyond Sinjajevina, in the lands below, the people and the environment alike have been hammered by centuries of human-induced tumult in a politically turbulent region. The Balkans sit at the nexus of trade routes connecting Europe and Asia and along the borders between now-defunct empires and religious divisions. That location has led to repeated conflicts amid shuffled power structures over many centuries.

Gara’s tribe, the Bjelopavlići, trace their legal claim to Sinjajevina back to the 1880s. After a war with the Ottoman Empire, King Nikola I gave the Bjelopavlići the legal right to graze their herds there in recognition of their efforts and sacrifice in holding off the Turks.

Gara and her six children descend from that line of pastoralists who have shepherded their flocks to the Mountain, first by foot, a journey that took three to four days, and now with trucks. They’ve endured two world wars, the formation and disintegration of nation-states, the rising and falling tide of Communism, and a vicious ethnic conflict that brutalized the Balkan Peninsula in the 1990s.

For their part, Gara’s children remain committed to preserving the way of life that their mother and others have kept alive, said her daughter, Persida Jovanović.

A cow on the pastures of Sinjajevina. Image courtesy of the Save Sinjajevina Association.

The eight tribes feel certain that stripping human influence from the grasslands would trigger an immediate change in the landscape, Gara said — one that could bankrupt the ecosystem and profoundly disrupt the balance that exists there today.

“Our ancestors, and us today, have unwritten laws how to keep the Mountain clean, especially the spring water,” Gara said. This code governs how early in the season people can bring their livestock to the high pastures, the number of animals allowed, where they can drink to keep waters free of pollution, and other considerations to encourage the renewed production of grasses year after year.

These handed-down strategies have in turn helped preserve wild animal and plant life.

“It is really a beautiful example of symbiosis of humans and nature. That nature would be different without the humans,” Glomazić said, “and vice versa.”

Vanishing global grasslands

Maintaining this time-honored balance requires a delicate dance between traditional pastoral livelihoods and nature — a dance that’s dying out around the world, especially on grasslands as humanity converts them for industrial agribusiness and other modern uses.

In 2020, a team of researchers in Japan, led by Taiki Inoue of the University of Tsukuba in Nagano, looked at plant communities in the Sugadaira Highland grasslands. Japan’s Sugadaira, like Sinjajevina, has hosted herders for thousands of years. More recently, pastoralists have abandoned parts of these Asian grasslands, as they find it harder to make a living herding in today’s world.

The researchers compared the number of plant species living in the grasslands with those living in the forests that sprung up in the herders’ absence and in new grasslands created after loggers cleared some of those forests. They found that the old grasslands — at least 160, and in some cases thousands, of years old — had the widest plant variety by far. Younger grasslands, stemming from deforestation over the past 52 to 70 years, had fewer plant species, but still more than the forest itself.

The authors note that, globally, grasslands are diminishing. About 13% of Japan’s land area was covered by grassland in the early 20th century, a figure that dropped to 1% by the early 2000s. Likewise, in recent decades, Brazil lost half of its vast Cerrado savanna biome, the largest grasslands now left on Earth. Given these precipitous declines, the authors suggest that conservation efforts should target the oldest “hotspot grasslands” where biodiversity is greatest — places like Sinjajevina.

Collecting herbs on Sinjajevina Mountain. Image courtesy of Milan Sekulović.

Part of what makes the hotspots “hot” stems from their susceptibility to takeover by powerful institutions such as modern governments or corporations, which in turn derives from how grasslands are typically managed by traditional communities, Domínguez said.

Grasslands are often communally shared, rather than being privately owned by a single individual, family or other legally deeded entity. Domínguez noted that it doesn’t make much sense to divide up a grass-covered landscape among herders for individual exploitation. In expansive range systems like Sinjajevina, livestock need vast spaces so they do not overexploit the grasses available on a single plot. Sometimes, these commonly managed pastoral areas are even pejoratively referred to as “badlands.” He said this misnomer is due to the incorrect assumption that land is only good when it can be exploited intensively. In fact, he added, such so-called badlands often sustain many times more natural and cultural values than does intensive farming.

In contrast with conventional modern agriculture, the herders of Sinjajevina share the sprawling pastures, across which they move their animals from place to place, adhering to a strict code of self-imposed regulations to avoid overtaxing any one location. As a result, the pastures can offer people sustainable livelihoods almost indefinitely. Gara’s family is living proof that this approach to caring for the commons works, Domínguez said.

But the small population — 250 families in the case of Sinjajevina — leaves these herders in a position where they can “hardly oppose a central state or NATO in their land grabbing,” he said.

Humans and nature in concert

Though Sinjajevina has thrived in balance for centuries, it turns out that the “beautiful” symbiosis” found there — so rare, and becoming more so in the world’s grasslands, rainforests, and other landscapes — isn’t well understood by scientists.

Ecologist Vladimir Pešić said that the dearth of data on Sinjajevina makes it “very difficult to talk [about] from a scientific point of view” what would happen if the military turns part of it into a training ground.

“We can only speculate,” said Pešić, a professor at the University of Montenegro. But, he added, “For sure there will be an impact on the Tara River canyon ecosystem.”

Milan Sekulović, the secretary-general for the Montenegrin NGO Save Sinjajevina Association, still walks with his family’s herds to the Mountain every spring. He noted that the military incursion risks ruining “one big ecological resource because we still don’t know what we exactly have.”

A lake on Sinjajevina Mountain. Image courtesy of the Save Sinjajevina Association.

In fact, the government’s Agency for Nature and Environmental Protection of Montenegro (EPA) probed the ecology of Sinjajevina before the military had — publicly, at least — shown interest in the Mountain. That research, released in 2018, was an initial step toward protecting the Sinjajevina Highlands as a regional nature park.

The study revealed a striking amalgam of plant and animal species, many found in few other places. Researchers recorded 1,300 plant species, 56 of which live only on the Balkan Peninsula. The massif boasts dozens of bird and mammal species, as well as a handful of protected amphibian and reptile species, including the karst viper (Vipera ursinii macrops), a small, venomous snake that thrives in mountain grasslands but whose numbers have dwindled along with its favored habitat.

The EPA study led to the promise of funding from the European Union to establish a park that would protect both the ecosystem and the herders’ way of life.

Other government documents attest to Sinjajevina’s ecological value. A 2015 reportfrom the Montenegrin Ministry of Sustainable Development and Tourism notes that Sinjajevina is a bulwark for threatened mammals, of both the wild and domesticated sort, including the Piva sheep that local shepherds developed.

What’s more, scientists say Sinjajevina feeds Montenegro’s other regions. Every spring, alpine rivers swell with melting snow, gushing down from limestone peaks and providing a vital source of clean freshwater for Montenegro’s population. Pešić, the lead editor of a book called The Rivers of Montenegro, explained that the snowfall on the Mountain was a “very important” water source for the Balkan nation.

Montenegrin Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić (left) and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg speak to the press on Dec. 15, 2020, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. Image courtesy of NATO.

Zdravko Krivokapić, the country’s new prime minister, recently acknowledged this reliance, noting the urgent need to better understand how altering Sinjajevina will impact not just the immediate environment and the people who live there, but also the broader population of Montenegro.

“We have to be very careful about everything that we are doing,” Krivokapić told NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg at a joint press conference on Dec. 15, 2020. “We have to find the best solution in order to meet the needs of NATO requirements and our [national] plans, and to preserve the essential value, which is, first and foremost, our environment.”

Gara was more forthright in her assessment. “If they do the military exercises in Sinjajevina, they’re going to pollute our rivers and mountains,” she said. “The waters that come from Sinjajevina — I think they go to half of the country. If those waters are polluted, everything else is polluted.”

Winds of (geo)political change

Considering these concerns, why, then, would Montenegro have chosen to move ahead with military plans that could endanger the country’s environment and water supply?

Several sources speculated to Mongabay that the push for a Sinjajevina training ground wasn’t driven by Montenegro’s army alone, which at full muster comprises fewer than 2,400 active soldiers. Instead, it is possible that Montenegro’s position on Europe’s southeastern flank is seen as strategic by NATO, and perhaps the European Union, of which Montenegro is not yet a member. But those military goals could also put Montenegro at odds with the EU’s stringent requirements for protecting nature.

Through a spokesperson, NATO declined to comment, except to direct Mongabay to the press conference held by the organization’s secretary-general and Montenegrin Prime Minister Krivokapić on Dec. 15.

European Commission spokesperson Ana Pisonero, on behalf of the EU Commissioner for Neighbourhood and Enlargement, acknowledged to Mongabay that the military training area overlaps with a UNESCO World Heritage Site — the Tara River Biosphere Reserve — and that Sinjajevina is a candidate for inclusion in the European Community’s Natura 2000 network.

Milan Sekulović and another protester at the Margita camp, where activists blocked a military exercise for 51 days in late 2020. Image courtesy of Milan Sekulović.

The Natura 2000 program includes threatened species habitat and breeding areas, often in places where humans also use the landscape. These spots don’t have the strict protections of national parks and preserves, but EU bylaws require member nations to manage them sustainably.

Pisonero noted that a 2020 EU report required Montenegro to prioritize “urgent measures to preserve and improve the ecological value of protected areas and potential Natura 2000 sites.”

She said the report called for any military operations in Sinjajevina to “be planned and monitored in line with the UNESCO principles of socio-cultural and ecological sustainability.” Pisonero also pointed out that the remaining unfulfilled requirements related to the environment and climate change for Montenegro’s admission to the EU were “among the most demanding.”

“To progress on the EU-accession path, the country must deepen and speed up reforms,” Pisonero said. “The faster Montenegro aligns with EU legislation, [and] conducts and implements necessary reforms, the faster it will be in a position to join.”

Military incursions begin

In the summer of 2019, the movement to protect Sinjajevina called for the cancelation of the March 2019 decree creating the military training ground. The activist coalition argued that, in addition to the risks to the environment, the government hadn’t carried out the necessary consultations and assessments to comply with the international principle of free, prior and informed consent.

“No negotiations with anybody,” Domínguez said. “They just declared it.”

To draw attention to the military’s plans, close to 10,000 people signed a series of petitions organized by Save Sinjajevina and groups from abroad, including Land Rights Now, the Indigenous Peoples’ and Community Conserved Areas and Territories (ICCA) Consortium, the International Land Coalition, and the Common Lands Network. And nearly 100 local and international NGOs from as far away as the Philippines, Indonesia and Burundi signed a statement supporting the measures.

Gara, along with Save Sinjajevina’s Sekulović, said that the tribes weren’t even told the size or the location of the troop training ground.

The Montenegrin Ministry of Defense did not respond to telephone and emailed requests for comment. However, available estimates put the proposed area at between 100 and 250 km2 (39 and 97 mi2). Wider ecological impacts could also occur as military missions travel to and from alpine areas.

In September, Thomas Waitz, a member of the European Parliament and co-chair of the EU Green party, visited Sinjajevina and voiced his support via tweet for keeping the military out.

“Military exercises here will have devastating consequences for farmers, animals, and the natural environment,” Waitz later told Mongabay in an email. “We need to protect this vital ecosystem and say no to military destruction.”

Still, in late September 2019, an international contingent of around 300 soldiers armed with explosives moved into Sinjajevina for military exercises.

“Now we are in the situation when you must fight for your home against your own army,” Sekulović said in an interview. “It’s a strange situation, but it’s real.”

Proponents of militarizing Sinjajevina have called the protesters traitors, saying they’re standing in the way of national defense in a volatile region. And the conservation movement’s leaders worried that their movement’s resistance wouldn’t be sufficient to end the military’s plans.

New government, new resistance

Then, in August 2020, the results of Montenegro’s elections buoyed the hopes of Sinjajevina’s defenders.

In all but a few of the past 30 years, Milo Djukanovic has led Montenegro as either president or prime minister. But Djukanovic’s grip on power in the Balkans appears to be on the wane: In last August’s election, the loss of seats by Djukanovic’s Democratic Party of Socialists meant that a new government coalition would soon rule Montenegro. That has opened the door for a ruling coalition that’s ostensibly more attuned to environmental issues and specifically Sinjajevina.

One of the members of that new coalition, the United Reform Action (URA) party, recently became a member of the EU Green Party. URA leader Dritan Abazović, who in December 2020 became Montenegro’s deputy prime minister, signaled his support of conservation prior to the formation of the new government in a tweet, writing in October, “There will be no military exercises on #Sinjajevina!” He called the preservation of the Mountain’s pastures a “significant victory” for the people and the environment of the little Balkan nation.

But that claim quickly collided with reality, as hundreds of soldiers, including not just Montenegrins but also international troops, reportedly planned to camp and carry out shelling exercises in the Margita area of Sinjajevina.

The Save Sinjajevina Association responded with dogged resistance. Beginning Oct. 16, some 150 protesters camped in the Margita area, where they believed the exercise would take place. They stayed for nearly two months, withstanding plummeting temperatures and winter storms and standing in the way of a military takeover at the heart of Sinjajevina.

Throughout November 2020, the soldiers remained close to Margita, to the frustration of Domínguez and other supporters of the Save Sinjajevina movement.

In Podgorica, the capital, talks among the newly elected members of the coalition failed to produce a working government, first missing one deadline in November, and then another. That led to concerns about whether URA leader Abazović, even with the support of the EU Greens, would in fact have the final say on the military training ground.

Relief on the Mountain

Finally, on Dec. 5, the coalition came together and formed a new government. The same day, incoming Minister of Defense Olivera Injac announced that the protesters should “go home freely.”

“I will be very happy to visit our natural pearl together with my colleagues and talk to the locals as soon as the opportunity arises,” Injac said, according to the Montenegrin newspaper Vijesti — an announcement that was “welcomed” by the European Commission, spokesperson Ana Pisonero said.

That same day, the protesters decamped, based on a promise from Injac that the military’s presence on the Mountain would be reevaluated. Still, the activists remain steadfast in calling for the permanent cancelation of the decree that created the training ground. They also want to see a park designated in Sinjajevina and created with the involvement of local communities and protection of traditional livelihoods in a region buffeted by political vagaries.

However, they worry whether the initial support their movement has marshaled will last, particularly in the context of global politics involving NATO, the EU and Montenegro’s place in Europe. Montenegro, after all, is a country in flux: The new governing coalition represents the first meaningful change in the country’s leadership in three decades, and it remains a young nation that only arose in its current form out of the former Yugoslavia less than two decades ago.

“It is surely too early to say if this decision is going to be stable and definitive,” Domínguez said in an email to Save Sinjajevina supporters, “and we will have to look very carefully at the developments.”

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John Cannon is a staff features writer with Mongabay. Find him on Twitter: @johnccannon

Featured image: Activists on Sinjajevina celebrated a victory on Dec. 5 when the newly formed government promised to reevaluate the military’s use of the pasturelands. Image courtesy of Milan Sekulović.

Zakaria acts as the informal Democratic Party CNN “spokesperson,” especially on international issues. The following may possibly provide us with an idea of what Biden is thinking. Aired January 17, 2021.

Guest: CNN Global Affairs Analyst and New Yorker staff writer Susan Glasser.

From the full extract of the official CNN Transcript dealing mainly with Cuba:

ZAKARIA: Secretary Pompeo spent the better part of the week making big pronouncements and bigger moves on the world stage. He said that al-Qaeda’s new home base is in Iran. He labeled Cuba a state sponsor of terror and the Houthis in Yemen a foreign terrorist organization.

GLASSER: And so you have it as an example, I think, of how the U.S. has, sort of, abdicated leadership in the region. And, you know, there’s real costs to this. He’s also seeking to impose political costs, of course, on the incoming Biden administration if they seek to reverse this, if they reverse the Cuba designation, that they are somehow going to be in league with terrorists. You can just imagine, you know, the campaign commercials that—that Mike Pompeo is cutting in his mind.

ZAKARIA: Right. So—and if you look at the Cuba and the Iran ones, they seem both entirely of that—of that nature. You know, he’s designating Cuba as a state sponsor of terror. You know, it falls on the Biden administration to awkwardlyhave to, you know, undo that designation.

But both of them are—would be very awkward, politically, to undo, right?

GLASSER: Well, that’s exactly it, or they think that they will.
ZAKARIA: Unfortunately, Susan—I’m so sorry, but I’ve got to—I’ve got to let you go. We will—we will come back to this and to you because it’s always a pleasure.

GLASSER: Thank you, Fareed.”

***

Both Zakaria and Glasser go on to predict that, should Biden try to undo these designations, Pompeo and Trump will have a perfect excuse to attack the new administration. Yet, if they were at all honest, both would argue against this excuse rather than allowing it to hang in the air as a reasonable alibi for the State Department’s parting shot.

Compare this CNN transcript to the statement by eight US Senators. Furthermore, why did the CNN not cite this?

“Klobuchar, Leahy, and Colleagues Demand Answers from The State Department About Move to Designate Cuba a State Sponsor of Terrorism

WASHINGTON – On Friday January 8, 2021, U.S. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Jack Reed (D-RI), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), and Tina Smith (D-MN) sent a letter to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo expressing concern over reports that the Trump Administration would designate Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism without formal consultation and review by Congress. The Senators also asked the State Department to commit to conducting a formal review before designating any nation a state sponsor of terrorism or removing any such designation. Without consulting Congress, today the State Department announced its intent to redesignate Cuba a state sponsor of terrorism.” 

We note that Pompeo placed Cuba on the list without a formal review by the Congress. However, if Pompeo could do this so easily, then Biden, far from feeling “awkward,” could remove Cuba from the list on January 20.

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Arnold August is a Montreal-based author and journalist whose articles are published in web sites across North America, Latin America, Europe and the Middle East in English, Spanish and French. He is a Fellow at the Canadian Foreign Policy Institute.

After condemning the pro-Trump invasion of the Capitol, the incoming Biden administration invited Carlos Vecchio – a coup leader charged in the 2014 torching of the Venezuelan Attorney General’s office – to its inaugural ceremony.

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As Washington recovered from shock and outrage caused by pro-Trump hooligans storming the United States Congress – breaking windows, smashing doors, and intimidating police officers in order to push their way inside – a sense of pre-inaugural excitement began to sweep the nation’s capital. Who would be attending incoming President Joe Biden’s inauguration on January 20, scheduled to take place exactly two weeks following the Capitol riot?

While heavily armed National Guard troops descended onto Washington’s streets to set up check-points, construct fences around government buildings, and establish their military presence, news about the upcoming swearing-in ceremony began to trickle out in the media.

Lady Gaga was booked to belt out the National Anthem, while Jennifer Lopez, John Legend, Bruce Springsteen, and a host of other Democratic Party-aligned pop artists were scheduled to perform throughout the day. Former Trump cabinet members, including Vice President Mike Pence, Supreme Court Justices, and lawmakers were all expected to attend, though the National Mall would be closed to the general public.

Beyond entertainers and high-level federal officials, foreign dignitaries were invited to join a smaller-than-usual group of individuals permitted to witness the day’s festivities. Among those dignitaries is Carlos Vecchio, a former Exxon lawyer who currently serves as US-recognized “Interim President” Juan Guaidó’s envoy in Washington. When the Trump Administration initiated a coup against Venezuela’s government in January of 2019, Vecchio became Guaidó’s ambassador, and has risen to prominence as the de facto leader of a US-based exile lobby dedicated to toppling Venezuela’s UN-recognized government.

The Biden team’s decision to invite Vecchio was a disappointing sign to those hoping the new administration would break from Trump’s failed and destructive policy of recognizing Guaidó as Venezuela’s leader. In the two years since Washington appointed the previously unknown opposition figure to lead its attempt at regime change, Guaidó has failed to rally public support in Venezuela or gain control of any government ministry. The country’s military remains loyal to President Nicolás Maduro and the United Nations still recognizes the Maduro government’s authority.

Beyond giving the appearance that Biden will continue the Trump Administration’s doomed Venezuela policy, Vecchio’s presence at the presidential swearing-in ceremony was filled with irony. In the days following the Capitol riot, Biden and his allies have denounced the violent takeover of Congress as an assault on democracy, with the incoming president himself declaring the rioters to be “domestic terrorists.”

Yet Carlos Vecchio, the Guaidó ally with a fresh ticket to Biden’s inauguration, is responsible for leading his own assault on his home country’s democracy – and is currently wanted in Venezuela for inciting a violent attack on the Attorney General’s office in Caracas.

After condemning Trump for inspiring the Capitol riot, Biden sent inaugural invite to @carlosvecchio – Venezuelan coup leader charged with inciting insurrectionist 2014 attack on gov't building.

See what Vecchio's charged for here, it might seem familiarhttps://t.co/S3nJHdccrk pic.twitter.com/zb6umY3WJ4

— Anya Parampil (@anyaparampil) January 18, 2021

Biden’s guest charged with inspiring a violent assault on Venezuela’s public institutions

On February 12, 2014, right-wing opposition leader Leopoldo López led a feverish rally of his supporters in the heart of Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. For over a month, López and his political allies had been holding demonstrations aimed at overthrowing newly-elected president Nicolás Maduro, who came into office following snap elections held in the aftermath of Hugo Chávez’s death.

Carlos Vecchio, the corporate lawyer who went on to represent Juan Guaidó in Washington, also spoke at the demonstration, and stood loyally by López’s side as he delivered his incendiary speech calling for an angry march to the Attorney General’s office, and whipping the crowd into chants of, “No fear! No fear!”

López’s supporters heeded his call and charged straight for the office of Venezuela’s Public Prosecutor, eventually setting the building on fire. Columbia University’s Global Freedom of Expression project concededthe mayhem “resulted in the death of two people and considerable damage to public property.”

López and his allies, including Vecchio, were charged for their role in inciting the destruction. López was eventually sentenced to 13 years in prison for his actions, while Vecchio fled to the United States to escape “incitement of violence” charges.

The attack on Venezuela’s public institutions in February of 2014 mirrored events that would take place in Washington DC roughly six years later, when President Donald Trump delivered a speech on the White House eclipse instructing his supporters to march to the Capitol as lawmakers voted to cerity his election loss. Within minutes of arriving at Congress, Trump’s followers overwhelmed the meager crowd of police deployed to protect the legislature and forced their way inside – unafraid to shatter doors and windows as they did so.

Following the violent breach of the Capitol, incoming president Joe Biden characterized the mob’s actions as “an unprecedented assault on our democracy, an assault literally on the citadel of liberty, in the United States Capitol itself” and “an assault on the rule of law.” Democrats in the House of Representatives quickly moved to impeach Trump, charging the president with “incitement of insurrection.”

In light of their outraged response to the Capitol raid, which they branded an act of illegal insurrection, Biden and his allies might be sympathetic to the Venezuelan government, which similarly moved to charge López and his co-conspirators, including Vecchio, for their role in encouraging a blitz on government buildings after the country’s Attorney General’s office was torched by a politically-charged mob.

Instead, the wanted coup leader Vecchio was welcomed by a bipartisan crew of top Washington politicians including President Trump, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Florida neocon Senator Marco Rubio, and former Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

The violent actions of Vecchio and his allies were hardly limited to the events of February 12, 2014. The chaotic demonstrations they led lasted until May of that year, resulting in the deaths of 49 people and roughly 10 billion dollars in damage. Regime change rampages by Venezuela’s opposition have featured assaults on journalists, the construction of barricades manned by vandals, and the burning to death of political opponents.

On June 13, 2017, activists set Venezuela’s Supreme Court on fire following jailed opposition leader López’s call for a rebellion against the Maduro government. Days later a police officer named Óscar Pérez hijacked a government helicopter and attempted to launch four grenades at the Court while firing live bullets at the country’s Interior Ministry. (Trump honored Pérez during a political rally in South Florida on February 18, 2019).

For his part, Juan Guaidó has led two failed campaigns of violent insurrection against Venezuela’s government. In April of 2019, he called for an uprising against President Maduro while a group of a few dozen soldiers launched an attack on the La Carlota Air Base in Caracas. While the rebellion failed to generate popular support, López was broken out of house arrest during the day’s events, leading to his eventual exile in Spain.

Roughly a year later, Guaidó was exposed at the center of yet another coup plot when former U.S. Green Beret Jordan Goudreau accused the politician of contracting his services to carry out a botched capture or kill operation targeting President Maduro. Goudreau, who previously provided private security for Trump campaign rallies, produced a contract containing Guaidó’s signature along with a voice recording of Guaidó allegedly discussing the deal though Guaidó himself has denied involvement.

Biden and the Democrats reacted with indignation when the U.S. Capitol was breached for just one afternoon, immediately initiating Trump’s second impeachment by the House of Representatives. Within days, the Capitol was surrounded with unscalable fencing and 25,000 National Guard soldiers were summoned to occupy central Washington DC – more than three times the amount of troops deployed to Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan combined.

It would be instructive to imagine how Democrats would have responded if Trump or his supporters attempted anything like the years-long campaign of insurrection by Venezuela’s opposition – and did so with the full-throated support of a foreign power. What if Trump supporters had set up barricades around Washington DC, preventing residents from leaving or entering their own neighborhoods? What if they had lit the Supreme Court on fire and bombed it from the air in a stolen military helicopter? And how would Democrats have reacted if Trump had contracted foreign mercenaries to capture or kill Biden?

Anyone troubled by these hypothetical scenarios should be equally disturbed that Carlos Vecchio, a veteran coup leader allied with seditious forces in his home country, will be present at Biden’s inauguration on January 20.

Sen. Durbin lobbies for Venezuelan coup leaders hours after condemning Trumpist “insurrection”

In the lead up to the House vote on President Trump’s impeachment, on January 11, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin tweeted, “The President and his Republican enablers incited a violent mob into storming the Capitol… This was an assault on our democracy, our national security, and our Constitution. There must be accountability, including impeachment.”

Hours later Durbin took to Twitter again to boast of his meeting with incoming Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, saying the two discussed “his plan for the State Department in the Biden Administration.”

According to the senator’s office, Durbin explicitly advocated the Biden administration preserve support for Juan Guaidó, whom he described as Venezuela’s “Interim-President.”

We thank you @SenatorDurbin for addressing with the nominee for US Secretary of State @ABlinken the critical situation of Venezuela, the actions to restoring democracy hijacked by Nicolas Maduro's dictatorship, and the necessary support to the Venezuelan people. https://t.co/IUTNVPbTI7

— CARLOS VECCHIO (@carlosvecchio) January 13, 2021

“We thank you Senator Durbin for addressing with the nominee for U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken the critical situation of Venezuela, the actions to restoring democracy hijacked by Nicolas Maduro’s dictatorship, and the necessary support to the Venezuelan people,” Vecchio tweeted in response to news of the conversation.

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Anya Parampil is a journalist based in Washington, DC. She has produced and reported several documentaries, including on-the-ground reports from the Korean peninsula, Palestine, Venezuela, and Honduras.

Featured image is from The Grayzone

He disrupted the academic world with his peer-reviewed paper exposing the exaggerated threat of an “invisible enemy” (the novel coronavirus).

In an interview, Dr. Brown said that “the public’s overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic was based on the worst miscalculation in the history of humanity.”

Now, in this music video, Dr. Ronald B. Brown, PhD, presents a melancholy tapestry of sounds and images exposing the understated harm of a real, yet “silent enemy” (the coronavirus control measures)…

SILENT ENEMY

This classical composition was performed and recorded by Brown in his home studio, using samples of orchestral instruments. In addition to pursuing a second PhD in epidemiology, Dr. Brown is a professional timpanist with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony Orchestra in Ontario, Canada.

In an interview, Dr. Brown said that “the public’s overreaction to the coronavirus pandemic was based on the worst miscalculation in the history of humanity.”

Dr. Ronald B. Brown’s paper, Public Health Lessons Learned From Biases in Coronavirus Mortality Overestimation, has remained the most read article in the journal of Disaster Medicine and Public Health Preparedness for last six months. A follow up article is currently under peer review with the same journal.

“I can promise readers many more insights about the pandemic,” says Dr. Brown, “assuming the manuscript gets published.

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

John C. A. Manley has spent over a decade ghostwriting for medical doctors, naturopaths and chiropractors. Since March 2020, he has been writing articles that question and expose the contradictions in the COVID-19 narrative and control measures. He is also completing a novel, Much Ado About Corona: A Dystopian Love Story. You can visit his website at MuchAdoAboutCorona.ca. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from the author

The last two weeks have ushered in a wave of new domestic police powers and rhetoric in the name of fighting “terrorism” that are carbon copies of many of the worst excesses of the first War on Terror that began nearly twenty years ago. This trend shows no sign of receding as we move farther from the January 6 Capitol riot. The opposite is true: it is intensifying.

We have witnessed an orgy of censorship from Silicon Valley monopolies with calls for far more aggressive speech policing, a visibly militarized Washington, D.C. featuring a non-ironically named “Green Zone,” vows from the incoming president and his key allies for a new anti-domestic terrorism bill, and frequent accusations of “sedition,” “treason,” and “terrorism” against members of Congress and citizens. This is all driven by a radical expansion of the meaning of “incitement to violence.” It is accompanied by viral-on-social-media pleas that one work with the FBI to turn in one’s fellow citizens (See Something, Say Something!) and demands for a new system of domestic surveillance.

Underlying all of this are immediate insinuations that anyone questioning any of this must, by virtue of these doubts, harbor sympathy for the Terrorists and their neo-Nazi, white supremacist ideology. Liberals have spent so many years now in a tight alliance with neocons and the CIA that they are making the 2002 version of John Ashcroft look like the President of the (old-school) ACLU.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security website, touting a trademarked phrase licensed to it in 2010 by the City of New York, urging citizens to report “suspicious activity” to the FBI and other security state agencies

The more honest proponents of this new domestic War on Terror are explicitly admitting that they want to model it on the first one. A New York Times reporter noted on Monday that a “former intelligence official on PBS NewsHour” said “that the US should think about a ‘9/11 Commission’ for domestic extremism and consider applying some of the lessons from the fight against Al Qaeda here at home.” More amazingly, Gen. Stanley McChrystal — for years head of Joint Special Operations Command in Iraq and the commander of the war in Afghanistan — explicitly compared that war to this new one, speaking to Yahoo News:

I did see a similar dynamic in the evolution of al-Qaida in Iraq, where a whole generation of angry Arab youth with very poor prospects followed a powerful leader who promised to take them back in time to a better place, and he led them to embrace an ideology that justified their violence. This is now happening in America….I think we’re much further along in this radicalization process, and facing a much deeper problem as a country, than most Americans realize.”

Anyone who, despite all this, still harbors lingering doubts that the Capitol riot is and will be the neoliberal 9/11, and that a new War on Terror is being implemented in its name, need only watch the two short video clips below, which will clear their doubts for good. It is like being catapulted by an unholy time machine back to Paul Wolfowitz’s 2002 messaging lab.

The first video, flagged by Tom Elliott, is from Monday morning’s Morning Joe program on MSNBC (the show that arguably did more to help Donald Trump become the GOP nominee than any other). It features Jeremy Bash — one of the seemingly countless employees of TV news networks who previously worked in Obama’s CIA and Pentagon — demanding that, in response to the Capitol riot, “we reset our entire intelligence approach,” including “look[ing] at greater surveillance of them,” adding: “the FBI is going to have to run confidential sources.” See if you detect any differences between what CIA operatives and neocons were saying in 2002 when demanding the Patriot Act and greater FBI and NSA surveillance and what this CIA-official-turned-NBC-News-analyst is saying here:

The second video features the amazing declaration from former Facebook security official Alex Stamos, talking to the very concerned CNN host Brian Stelter, about the need for social media companies to use the same tactics against U.S. citizens that they used to remove ISIS from the internet — “in collaboration with law enforcement” — and that those tactics should be directly aimed at what he calls extremist “conservative influencers.”

“Press freedoms are being abused by these actors,” the former Facebook executive proclaimed. Stamos noted how generous he and his comrades have been up until now: “We have given a lot of leeway — both in the traditional media and in social media — to people with a very broad range of views.” But no more. Now is the time to “get us all back in the same consensual reality.”

In a moment of unintended candor, Stamos noted the real problem: “there are people on YouTube, for example, that have a larger audience than people on daytime CNN” — and it’s time for CNN and other mainstream outlets to seize the monopoly on information dissemination to which they are divinely entitled by taking away the platforms of those whom people actually want to watch and listen to:

(If still not convinced, and if you can endure it, you can also watch MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski literally screaming that one needed remedy to the Capitol riot is that the Biden administration must “shutdown” Facebook. Shutdown Facebook).

Calls for a War on Terror sequel — a domestic version complete with surveillance and censorship — are not confined to ratings-deprived cable hosts and ghouls from the security state. The Wall Street Journal reports that “Mr. Biden has said he plans to make a priority of passing a law against domestic terrorism, and he has been urged to create a White House post overseeing the fight against ideologically inspired violent extremists and increasing funding to combat them.”

Meanwhile, Congressman Adam Schiff (D-CA) — not just one of the most dishonest members of Congress but also one of the most militaristic and authoritarian — has had a bill proposed since 2019 to simply amend the existing foreign anti-terrorism bill to allow the U.S. Government to invoke exactly the same powers at home against “domestic terrorists.”

Why would such new terrorism laws be needed in a country that already imprisons more of its citizens than any other country in the world as the result of a very aggressive set of criminal laws? What acts should be criminalized by new “domestic terrorism” laws that are not already deemed criminal? They never say, almost certainly because — just as was true of the first set of new War on Terror laws — their real aim is to criminalize that which should not be criminalized: speech, association, protests, opposition to the new ruling coalition.

The answer to this question — what needs to be criminalized that is not already a crime? — scarcely seems to matter. Media and political elites have placed as many Americans as they can — and it is a lot — into full-blown fear and panic mode, and when that happens, people are willing to acquiesce to anything claimed necessary to stop that threat, as the first War on Terror, still going strong twenty years later, decisively proved.

An entire book could — and probably should — be written on why all of this is so concerning. For the moment, two points are vital to emphasize.

First, much of the alarmism and fear-mongering is being driven by a deliberate distortion of what it means for speech to “incite violence.” The bastardizing of this phrase was the basis for President Trump’s rushed impeachment last week. It is also what is driving calls for dozens of members of Congress to be expelled and even prosecuted on “sedition” charges for having objected to the Electoral College certification, and is also at the heart of the spate of censorship actions already undertaken and further repressive measures being urged.

This phrase — “inciting violence” — was also what drove many of the worst War on Terror abuses. I spent years reporting on how numerous young American Muslims were prosecuted under new, draconian anti-terrorism laws for uploading anti-U.S.-foreign-policy YouTube videos or giving rousing anti-American speeches deemed to “incite violence” and thus provide “material support” to terrorist groups — the exact theory which Rep. Schiff is seeking to import into the new domestic War on Terror.

It is vital to ask what it means for speech to constitute “incitement to violence” to the point that it can be banned or criminalized. The expression of any political viewpoint, especially one passionately expressed, has the potential to “incite” someone else to get so riled up that they engage in violence.

If you rail against the threats to free speech posed by Silicon Valley monopolies, someone hearing you may get so filled with rage that they decide to bomb an Amazon warehouse or a Facebook office. If you write a blistering screed accusing pro-life activists of endangering the lives of women by forcing them back into unsafe back-alley abortions, or if you argue that abortion is murder, you may very well inspire someone to engage in violence against a pro-life group or an abortion clinic. If you start a protest movement to object to the injustice of Wall Street bailouts — whether you call it “Occupy Wall Street” or the Tea Party — you may cause someone to go hunt down Goldman Sachs or Citibank executives who they believe are destroying the economic future of millions of people.

If you claim that George W. Bush stole the 2000 and/or 2004 elections — as many Democrats, including members of Congress, did — you may inspire civic unrest or violence against Bush and his supporters. The same is true if you claim the 2016 or 2020 elections were fraudulent or illegitimate. If you rage against the racist brutality of the police, people may go burn down buildings in protest — or murder randomly selected police officers whom they have become convinced are agents of a racist genocidal state.

The Bernie Sanders campaign volunteer and hard-core Democratic partisan, James Hodgkinson, who went to a softball field in June, 2017 to murder Republican Congress members — and almost succeeded in fatally shooting Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) — had spent months listening to radical Sanders supporters and participating in Facebook groups with names like “Terminate the Republican Party” and “Trump is a Traitor.”

Hodgkinson had heard over and over that Republicans were not merely misguided but were “traitors” and grave threats to the Republic. As CNN reported, “his favorite television shows were listed as ‘Real Time with Bill Maher;’ ‘The Rachel Maddow Show;’ ‘Democracy Now!’ and other left-leaning programs.” All of the political rhetoric to which he was exposed — from the pro-Sanders Facebook groups, MSNBC and left-leaning shows — undoubtedly played a major role in triggering his violent assault and decision to murder pro-Trump Republican Congress members.

Despite the potential of all of those views to motivate others to commit violence in their name — potential that has sometimes been realized — none of the people expressing those views, no matter how passionately, can be validly characterized as “inciting violence” either legally or ethically. That is because all of that speech is protected, legitimate speech. None of it advocates violence. None of it urges others to commit violence in its name. The fact that it may “inspire” or “motivate” some mentally unwell person or a genuine fanatic to commit violence does not make the person espousing those views and engaging in that non-violent speech guilty of “inciting violence” in any meaningful sense.

To illustrate this point, I have often cited the crucial and brilliantly reasoned Supreme Court free speech ruling in Claiborne v. NAACP. In the 1960s and 1970s, the State of Mississippi tried to hold local NAACP leaders liable on the ground that their fiery speeches urging a boycott of white-owned stores “incited” their followers to burn down stores and violently attack patrons who did not honor the protest. The state’s argument was that the NAACP leaders knew that they were metaphorically pouring gasoline on a fire with their inflammatory rhetoric to rile up and angry crowds.

But the Supreme Court rejected that argument, explaining that free speech will die if people are held responsible not for their own violent acts but for those committed by others who heard them speak and were motivated to commit crimes in the name of that cause (emphasis added):

Civil liability may not be imposed merely because an individual belonged to a group, some members of which committed acts of violence. . . .

[A]ny such theory fails for the simple reason that there is no evidence — apart from the speeches themselves — that [the NAACP leader sued by the State] authorized, ratified, or directly threatened acts of violence. . . . . To impose liability without a finding that the NAACP authorized — either actually or apparently — or ratified unlawful conduct would impermissibly burden the rights of political association that are protected by the First Amendment. . . .

While the State legitimately may impose damages for the consequences of violent conduct, it may not award compensation for the consequences of nonviolent, protected activity. Only those losses proximately caused by unlawful conduct may be recovered.

The First Amendment similarly restricts the ability of the State to impose liability on an individual solely because of his association with another.

The Claiborne court relied upon the iconic First Amendment ruling in Brandenburg v. Ohio, which overturned the criminal conviction of a KKK leader who had publicly advocated the possibility of violence against politicians. Even explicitly advocating the need or justifiability of violence for political ends is protected speech, ruled the court. They carved out a very narrow exception: “where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action” — meaning someone is explicitly urging an already assembled mob to specific violence with the expectation that they will do so more or less immediately (such as standing outside someone’s home and telling the gathered mob: it’s time to burn it down).

It goes without saying that First Amendment jurisprudence on “incitement” governs what a state can do when punishing or restricting speech, not what a Congress can do in impeaching a president or expelling its own members, and certainly not social media companies seeking to ban people from their platforms.

But that does not make these principles of how to understand “incitement to violence” irrelevant when applied to other contexts. Indeed, the central reasoning of these cases is vital to preserve everywhere: that if speech is classified as “incitement to violence” despite not explicitly advocating violence, it will sweep up any political speech which those wielding this term wish it to encompass. No political speech will be safe from this term when interpreted and applied so broadly and carelessly.

And that is directly relevant to the second point. Continuing to process Washington debates of this sort primarily through the prism of “Democrat v. Republican” or even “left v. right” is a sure ticket to the destruction of core rights. There are times when powers of repression and censorship are aimed more at the left and times when they are aimed more at the right, but it is neither inherently a left-wing nor a right-wing tactic. It is a ruling class tactic, and it will be deployed against anyone perceived to be a dissident to ruling class interests and orthodoxies no matter where on the ideological spectrum they reside.

The last several months of politician-and-journalist-demanded Silicon Valley censorship has targeted the right, but prior to that and simultaneously it has often targeted those perceived as on the left. The government has frequently declared right-wing domestic groups “terrorists,” while in the 1960s and 1970s it was left-wing groups devoted to anti-war activism which bore that designation. In 2011, British police designated the London version of Occupy Wall Street a “terrorist” group. In the 1980s, the African National Congress was so designated. “Terrorism” is an amorphous term that was created, and will always be used, to outlaw formidable dissent no matter its source or ideology.

If you identify as a conservative and continue to believe that your prime enemies are ordinary leftists, or you identify as a leftist and believe your prime enemies are Republican citizens, you will fall perfectly into the trap set for you. Namely, you will ignore your real enemies, the ones who actually wield power at your expense: ruling class elites, who really do not care about “right v. left” and most definitely do not care about “Republican v. Democrat” — as evidenced by the fact that they fund both parties — but instead care only about one thing: stability, or preservation of the prevailing neoliberal order.

Unlike so many ordinary citizens addicted to trivial partisan warfare, these ruling class elites know who their real enemies are: anyone who steps outside the limits and rules of the game they have crafted and who seeks to disrupt the system that preserves their prerogatives and status. The one who put this best was probably Barack Obama when he was president, when he observed — correctly — that the perceived warfare between establishment Democratic and Republican elites was mostly theater, and on the question of what they actually believe, they’re both “fighting inside the 40 yard line” together:

A standard Goldman Sachs banker or Silicon Valley executive has far more in common, and is far more comfortable, with Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan than they do with the ordinary American citizen. Except when it means a mildly disruptive presence — like Trump — they barely care whether Democrats or Republicans rule various organs of government, or whether people who call themselves “liberals” or “conservatives” ascend to power. Some left-wing members of Congress, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Ilhan Omar (D-MN) have said they oppose a new domestic terrorism law, but Democrats will have no trouble forming a majority by partnering with their neocon GOP allies like Liz Cheney to get it done, as they did earlier this year to stop the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Germany.

Neoliberalism and imperialism do not care about the pseudo-fights between the two parties or the cable TV bickering of the day. They do not like the far left or the far right. They do not like extremism of any kind. They do not support Communism and they do not support neo-Nazism or some fascist revolution. They care only about one thing: disempowering and crushing anyone who dissents from and threatens their hegemony. They care about stopping dissidents. All the weapons they build and institutions they assemble — the FBI, the DOJ, the CIA, the NSA, oligarchical power — exist for that sole and exclusive purpose, to fortify their power by rewarding those who accede to their pieties and crushing those who do not.

No matter your views on the threat posed by international Islamic radicalism, huge excesses were committed in the name of stopping it — or, more accurately, the fears it generated were exploited to empower and entrench existing financial and political elites. The Authorization to Use Military Force — responsible for twenty-years-and-counting of war — was approved by the House three days after the 9/11 attack with just one dissenting vote. The Patriot Act — which radically expanded government surveillance powers — was enacted a mere six weeks after that attack, based on the promise that it would be temporary and “sunset” in four years. Like the wars spawned by 9/11, it is still in full force, virtually never debated any longer and predictably expanded far beyond how it was originally depicted.

The first War on Terror ended up being wielded primarily on foreign soil but it has increasingly been imported onto domestic soil against Americans. This New War on Terror — one that is domestic in name from the start and carries the explicit purpose of fighting “extremists” and “domestic terrorists” among American citizens on U.S. soil — presents the whole slew of historically familiar dangers when governments, exploiting media-generated fear and dangers, arm themselves with the power to control information, debate, opinion, activism and protests.

That a new War on Terror is coming is not a question of speculation and it is not in doubt. Those who now wield power are saying it explicitly. The only thing that is in doubt is how much opposition they will encounter from those who value basic civic rights more than the fears of one another being deliberately cultivated within us.

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This is the second of two posts about war propaganda, and the last of four posts about propaganda more generally.

“War will exist until the distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today” (John F.Kennedy(1))

War Propaganda Runs Through Our Culture 

Hollywood movies about war or spying tend to portray the US military, or James Bond, as the ‘good guys’ involved in ‘goodies vs baddies’ conflicts, with little discussion of the crimes of the US and British militaries and their spy agencies. The US military cooperates closely with these productions provided that they have final script approval, and can change scripts or scenes that they do not like. Where movies have tried to say anything negative about the US military, cooperation has been refused. They expect to have a generally patriotic view of the US, with the military portrayed as heroes, always with good intentions. These films actually help to recruit people for the military. The US navy provided planes, pilots and warships for the 1986 movie ‘Top Gun’. This led to a big rise in applications for people to become US fighter pilots. A more recent development has been the use of internet adverts for Hollywood movies, which deceptively take people to disguised army recruitment websites.(2)

One of the best examples of CIA propaganda is their manipulation of the film version of George Orwell’s book ‘Animal Farm.’ The book highlights the fact that politicians in both capitalist and communist countries can be corrupted by power. The CIA bought the film rights, knowing that it could be used as a propaganda tool. The CIA’s film version omits the most important part of the ending (which criticises capitalism) creating the impression that it is only a criticism of communism.(3)

The developers of many computer video games work closely with the US military. There is increasing use of drones in the military, piloted by soldiers thousands of miles away. What they see on their control screens is indistinguishable from a video game. The content of some games involves overthrowing governments in countries such as Venezuela.(4)  Evidence from wars in Afghanistan and Iraq indicates that US soldiers participate in war as if they are playing a video game, and therefore they can convince themselves that their actions have no consequences.

Never Question The Soldiers 

One of the strongest parts of any pro-war propaganda system is convincing everyone that whatever criticisms they make, they must always support the troops. But the job of a British or American soldier has nothing to do with freedom or democracy. They are trained killers whose job is to invade and occupy other countries, and kill anyone who gets in the way. Britain’s military is much smaller than that of the US, but British propaganda plays an important role in generating support for war.(5) Military veterans are always praised on television when they appear at public events. When large numbers of people are being slaughtered in Iraq, there is a big difference between saying ‘The valiant British and American soldiers in Iraq were viciously attacked by terrorists, but successfully defended themselves’ and ‘The British and American occupation forces murdered large numbers of Iraqi people’. Variations of the first comment appear in US and British media regularly, but the second is a more honest way of describing what is going on.

Groups of former soldiers, such as ‘Veterans for Peace’, are now coming forward to explain that basic training is a form of brainwashing, and that the version of war that they experience, which is the mass slaughter of innocent people, is completely different from the propaganda.(6)

Brainwashing Begins In Childhood 

Children’s comic books about World War 2, such as Commando and War Picture Library, were very popular for decades after the war. They had a strong focus on patriotism and heroism. They stereotyped people from enemy countries as cruel or cowardly, and used derogatory terms such as jerries, huns or krauts for German people, eyeties for Italian people, or nips for Japanese people.(7) A generation of children grew up with a very distorted view of the war and people in other countries.

Astute readers will have realised that the materials in these blogs are not taught in schools. Most young people reach adulthood with no understanding of how the world really works. This is because governments do not want citizens to understand the crimes they commit.

In 2007 the British government decided to increase its military propaganda in schools and society more generally. It is encouraging more schools to have cadet forces. Sports competitions for injured soldiers, such as the Invictus games in the UK, and the Warrior games in the US, are intended to present former soldiers as heroes.(8) The link between the military and the British Royal family also plays a propaganda role. More recently, Britain’s cybersecurity agency, GCHQ, started running courses in schools teaching hacking skills, and inviting young children to visit them.(9) One campaign group noted:

“Armed Forces Day, Remembrance Day, Uniform to Work Day, Camo Day [where people wear camouflage], in the streets, on television, on the web, at sports events, in schools, advertising and fashion – the military presence in UK civilian life is increasing daily”(10)

All of the activities described above are forms of militarism, where people are encouraged to see the military, and spying, in positive terms; to think of violent, military solutions as the best way to solve international disagreements; and to ignore peaceful alternatives. There is no discussion of British and US war crimes, or the illegal spying activities of GCHQ(11) and its US equivalent, the NSA. Encouraging children to play with military vehicles and weapons, and to watch military parachutists or airshows, is intended to indoctrinate them. School trips to war museums have a similar effect. Ideas learned at a young age come to seem like common sense, as opposed to propaganda intended to serve the interests of rich and powerful people. These activities play a direct role in recruiting soldiers, but just as importantly, they recruit a large number of people to support militarism unquestioningly.(12)

The Power of Patriotism 

The military activities mentioned above also indoctrinate people into thinking about patriotism and nationalism, which are incredibly powerful propaganda tools.(13) Putting the head of a Monarch or an Emperor onto coins was one of the earliest forms of propaganda, and stamps with the Queen on them have a similar purpose. Royal pageants and processions are celebrated as major national events. We are encouraged to think of our country as a single entity, to be proud of it, and to forget, ignore, or be unaware of the crimes of our government, and the fact that most people have little in common with the billionaires and millionaires who dominate political decision-making. It makes it easy for decision-makers to generate support for foreign wars, and to describe others as ‘the enemy’.

Propaganda Works on Politicians Too 

It is important to realise that some government propaganda is targeted at politicians. This is where the intelligence services come in. Most people think that intelligence services exist to provide accurate information. This is only partly true. Some parts of the intelligence services have a secondary role, which is to present information that supports policy. The US decided to invade Iraq a long time before the invasion actually happened. From that point onwards, they were trying to find intelligence that would give them a good excuse to invade. Intelligence officers in Britain were told that if they did not sign up to a dossier on Weapons of Mass Destruction, that they knew was untrue, that would be the end of their careers. In the US, whole new departments were set up. The Office of Strategic Influence was set up in 2001 to support the war on terror through psychological operations (PSYOPs), which includes creating fake stories and propaganda. The Office of Special Plans was set up in 2002 specifically to ‘re-interpret’ data to create a case for war. If the data did not support war, officers would be told that this was not what their superiors wanted to hear, and they should try again until they came up with the ‘right’ result.(14)

Anti-war opinions are being censored – Manipulating Information on the Internet 

The internet is becoming increasingly important as a source of information, particularly for young people. Wikipedia began as an online encyclopedia that could be edited by anyone. On some non-political topics, it is a useful source of information. Unfortunately, most edits are now made by a small number of people. There is strong evidence that some of these people are not honest, independent researchers. They work to protect the establishment against its critics.(15) Critical websites such as The Grayzone have been blacklisted by Wikipedia, even though it has an outstanding track record of investigative journalism.(16) Many anti-war activists, including the former ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray, discovered that their Wikipedia entries had all been changed hundreds of times in very negative ways by a single individual (or, more likely, a group of people operating under a single username).

Critical writers have noted that Facebook and Twitter censor their output, and Google manipulates search results so that critical work does not appear on the first page of results. This means that it is becoming more and more difficult for people to find information that challenges the mainstream view.

Some Propaganda is More Subtle – Newspeak and Euphemisms 

Most of the war propaganda discussed so far is reasonably obvious, once people have been made aware that it is propaganda. However, as with other forms of propaganda, war propaganda actually permeates our society.

We saw in an earlier post about the weapons industry that the word defence is actually a euphemism for invasions, occupations, mass murder and maiming. There are many other words that are intentionally used to give a misleading impression of what’s going on. The following is just a short selection of the more obvious ones:

• National interest means the interests of the biggest corporations, and the rich and powerful more generally
• International community means the US government and any country that can be bribed or threatened to support the US
• Rogue state is a country that the US does not like. In reality, the biggest rogue state is the US, with Britain also having a global reputation for ignoring international law and committing war crimes.
• Official secrets and national security are mechanisms to help the most powerful people cover up their crimes.

George Orwell, the author of ‘1984’, used the term ‘Newspeak’ to describe how the government and the media use language as a weapon to limit the range of ideas that people consider reasonable, and to distort our understanding of important issues. For example, politicians such as Jeremy Corbyn, who object to invasions or drone assassinations, are labeled as ‘soft-on-defence’ or ‘soft-on-terror’,(17) when in fact they are objecting to serious crimes by our government. If you watch any mainstream news program, particularly on the BBC, you eventually realise that Newspeak is being used all the time.

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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 fifteenth 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) John F. Kennedy, cited in David Swanson, War is a Lie, 2011, p.133

2) Jonathan McIntosh, ‘Military recruitment and Hollywood’, Pop Culture Detective, 28 Sep 2016, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5xfBtD6rLY 

3) Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters, 2001

Laurence Zuckerman, ‘How The Central Intelligence Agency Played Dirty Tricks With Culture’, The New York Times, 18 March 2000, at https://www.nytimes.com/2000/03/18/books/how-the-cia-played-dirty-tricks-with-culture.html

4) Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal, ‘War games: Pentagon/CIA push regime change propaganda in video games’, The Grayzone, 15 April 2019, at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72v7PWJUyxY

5) Mark Curtis, Web Of Deceit, 1998, p.22

6) https://www.veteransforpeace.org/

https://vfpuk.org/

7) James Chapman, British Comics: A Cultural History, 2011

8) John Kelly, ‘Western Militarism and the Political Utility of Sport’, 17 August 2017, at https://www.researchgate.net/publication/297917074_Western_Militarism_and_the_Political_Utility_of_Sport 

9) Matt Kennard, ‘Revealed: The UK’s largest intelligence agency is infiltrating British schools’, DeclassifiedUK, 2 June 2020, at https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2020-06-02-revealed-the-uks-largest-intelligence-agency-is-infiltrating-british-schools/#gsc.tab=0 

10) War School (2018) synopsis, at https://www.war.school/test

11) Russell Brandon, ‘UK admits it spied illegally for 17 years, is sorry, won’t stop’, The Verge, 7 Oct 2016, at https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/17/13305270/uk-illegal-surveillance-gchq-investigatory-powers-tribunal 

12) www.ppu.org.uk/everyday-militarism

13) David Cromwell and David Edwards ‘Patriotism as Propaganda – Part 1’, Medialens, 8 Jan 2007, at https://www.medialens.org/2007/patriotism-as-propaganda-part-1/ 

David Cromwell and David Edwards, ‘Patriotism as propaganda – Part 2: Voluntary Subjection Cannot be Forced’, 9 Jan 2007, Medialens, at https://www.medialens.org/2007/patriotism-as-propaganda-part-2/

14) Craig Murray, ‘Murder in Samarkand – Document 1 – FCO Comment’, pp.158-159,  http://www.inference.org.uk/sanjoy/craig-murray/FCO_Comment.html 

Seymour M. Hersh, ‘Selective Intelligence: Donald Rumsfeld has his own special sources. Are they reliable?’, New Yorker, 5 May 2003, at https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intelligence

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Influence

15) Craig Murray, The Philip Cross Affair, 18 May 2018, at https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/

16) Ben Norton, ‘Wikipedia Formally Censors Grayzone as Regime-change Advocates Monopolize Editing, Global Research, 10 June 2020, at https://www.globalresearch.ca/wikipedia-formally-censors-grayzone-regime-change-advocates-monopolize-editing/5715810

17) Boris Johnson, ‘Corbyn has been soft on terror for 30 years’ – video, The Guardian, 6 Jun 2017, at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2017/jun/06/boris-johnson-corbyn-has-been-soft-on-terror-for-30-years-video

Featured image by Nathaniel St. Clair

As the Trump era is coming to an end, his legacy in the Middle East will be described by the Palestinians, Syrians, Iranians and the rest of the Arab world as aggressive, dangerous and extremely reckless.  Israelis will say that Trump was one of the most supportive and loyal American presidents to the State of Israel. The Israeli government even named a settlement after Trump in the Golan Heights called ‘Trump Heights.’ 

So how will history judge Trump’s Middle East policies?

For starters, Trump had increased tensions with all of Washington’s and Israel’s long-time enemies including the one country whose been on the hit list since 1979, Iran.  In mid January 2021, Iran’s president Hassan Rouhani criticized Trump’s policies towards Iran, “a president who lacked political understanding took the helm of a country, and was accompanied by a stupid foreign minister and an ignorant and radical national security advisor. He handled everything with his gambling and business-oriented mind, and we finally saw how his term ended” and that “no one could believe this law-breaker [Trump] would order riot against his own nation, his own security, and the country’s legislature, and provoke people against the very democracy they believe in”  proclaimed Rouhani.  On February 2017, Trump’s former National Security advisor Michael Flynn presented a short and threatening statement towards Iran:

Recent Iranian actions involving a provocative ballistic missile launch and an attack against a Saudi naval vessel conducted by Iran-supported Houthi militants underscore what should have been clear to the international community all along about Iran’s destabilizing behavior across the entire Middle East

Flynn spoke on the types of threats that come from Iran “including weapons transfers, support for terrorism and other violations of international norms.”  Flynn’s final words of the statement did not at all sit well with Tehran “as of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice.”  Not a good start to diplomatic relations.  Fast forward to May of 2018, taking advice from Israel’s Prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump announced the US withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal with Iran, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made” and that “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”  

The next day, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei called Trump’s decision “inane and superficial.” In the following months, the Trump regime prepared to impose economic sanctions on Iran targeting its banking, energy, shipbuilding, and financial sectors if they did not follow Washington’s demands.  As tensions, increased, Washington designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces as a “foreign terrorist organization,” Iran retaliated by designating the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) as a “terrorist organization.”

In the following year, President Trump then imposed new sanctions on Iran by targeting numerous areas of production including aluminum, copper, iron and the steel sectors.  A number of incidents including tanker explosions in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and a pipeline attack in Saudi Arabia prompted Trump to order US troops to the region and that created more tensions between Tehran and Washington.  Then in early 2020, the Trump regime approved a drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, the well-respected commander of Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Forces who led the fight against terrorists in the region and Mahdi al-Muhandis, the vice president of Hashd al-Shaabi group.  Trump said “what the United States did yesterday should have been done long ago.”   Tehran condemned the attack vowing to retaliate. History will remember when Trump threatened to hit 52 Iranian targets including cultural sites as a response to any attack on U.S. citizens on twitter:

Iran has been nothing but problems for many years. Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!

A few days later, Iran made its threat a reality when the Revolutionary Guards Corps fired several missiles at the Ain al-Assad airbase in Iraq where US and Iraqi forces were based. The Revolutionary Guards released an official statement after the retaliation:

In Operation Martyr Soleimani in the early hours of Wednesday, tens of ground-to-ground missiles were fired at the U.S. base and successfully pounded Ain al-Asad Base

Luckily, a war between the US and Iran did not happen.  On January 20th, Trump is set to depart from the White House, now Iran will have to wait and see what happens under the new President-Elect and self admitted Zionist and long-time supporter of Israel, Joe Biden.

From Planning the Assassination of Bashar al-Assad to Stealing Syrian Oil

In September 2020, The Hill published a report on Trump’s plan to assassinate Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad titled ‘Trump says he wanted to take out Syria’s Assad but Mattis opposed it’ claimed that Trump had admitted to a plan to have Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad assassinated while he criticized former Defense Secretary James Mattis.   Trump’s “assassination operation” was discussed on Fox & Friends when he said that “I would’ve rather taken him out. I had him all set. Mattis didn’t want to do it. Mattis was a highly overrated general.” According to The Hill “The president added that he did not regret the decision not to target Assad, saying he “could’ve lived either way.”

The report also noted another quote from Trump on the idea of assassinating the Syrian president in a book written in 2018 by mainstream-media journalist Bob Woodward titled ‘Fear; Trump in the White House’ which Trump denied when he was asked about the plot and said that it was “never even discussed” and “No, that was never even contemplated, nor would it be contemplated and it should not have been written about in the book.”

However, according to Woodward “Trump urged Mattis that the U.S. should f—— kill Assad” after a chemical attack that occurred on April 2017 on civilians in the town of Khan Shaykhun in Idlib Syria. “Mattis reportedly went along with the president’s demands during the phone call, but immediately told aides after hanging up that they would take a “much more measured” approach.” Despite the fact that the mainstream media journalists have an extreme hatred towards Trump, it is quite possible that Israel did attempt to influence him to assassinate Assad and create a political crisis in Syria.

Trump also has been calling for the US to take Iraq and Syria’s oil for some time.  An ABC news report has claimed that Trump said that the “U.S. will be keeping the oil” in Northeastern Syria  after that his administration was “looking into the specifics” of the situation at hand. In 2020, Trump kept his promise.  Last August, Newsweek published a report ‘Syria Says Donald Trump ‘Stealing’ Its Oil, After U.S. Company Makes Deal to Drill.’ The report said that Crescent Delta Energy and ‘Pentagon-backed militia’ or elements of ISIS and other terrorist groups who are allied with US and Israeli forces are operating in Syria’s oil fields:

Syria has accused President Donald Trump of stealing the country’s oil, after U.S. officials confirmed that a U.S. company has been allowed to operate there in fields under the control of a Pentagon-backed militia.

In remarks delivered Tuesday and sent to Newsweek by the Syrian permanent mission to the United Nations, representative Bashar al-Jaafari told the U.N. Security Council that “the U.S. occupation forces, in full view of the United Nations and the international community, took a new step to plunder Syria’s natural resources, including Syrian oil and gas” through the recent establishment of a company called “Crescent Delta Energy.”

This firm, “with the sponsorship and support of the US Administration, has entered into a contract with the so-called ‘Syrian Democratic Forces/SDF’ militia, an agent of the US occupation forces in northeastern Syria, with the aim of stealing Syrian oil and depriving the Syrian state and Syrian people of the basic revenues necessary to improve the humanitarian situation, provide for livelihood needs and reconstruction,” he added

Last December, another development took place against Syria with the Trump regime sanctioning President Bashar al-Assad’s wife, Asma and several members of her family.  Sanctions were also imposed on the Central Bank of Syria, a member of parliament and several businesses that are associated with the Assad government according to The Hill.  “Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the sanctions mark the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the United Nations Security Council resolution aimed at laying out a political solution to end the conflict in Syria.”  

Trump Announces Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital

In 2017, Trump announced the recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the new location of the US embassy that was originally located in Tel Aviv, the Palestinians responded by the ‘Day of Rage’,setting off  protests in several areas including where 2 Palestinians were killed and hundreds more wounded after Israeli forces bombed the Gaza strip and many more were injured by either live fire or by rubber bullets in the West Bank.  Fast forward to January 2020, the Associated Press reported on Trump’s Mideast peace plan that favored Israel which at this point in time, should not have surprised anyone:

Trump’s plan envisions a disjointed Palestinian state that turns over key parts of the West Bank to Israel. It sides with Israel on key contentious issues that have bedeviled past peace efforts, including borders and the status of Jerusalem and Jewish settlements, and attaches nearly impossible conditions for granting the Palestinians their hoped-for state

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas called it “nonsense” and Netanyahu called it a “historic breakthrough” and that “it’s a great plan for Israel. It’s a great plan for peace.” Then Netanyahu promised to move forward to annex the Jordan Valley and the rest of the illegal Israeli settlements.

The US-Saudi Arms Deal and the Houthis Are Now a State Sponsor of Terror

Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace between Israel and UAE which was not about peace between the two, it’s was about creating a US-Israel-UAE alliance against Iran and creating long-term buyers of US and Israeli made weapons to the Emiratis.  Israel and the UAE have been collaborating in the areas of security in terms of protecting the UAE’s oil fields for more than a decade or so.  Israel’s Mossad has a long-time relationship with the UAE’s military that conduct covert spying operations against Iran adding to the fact that high-level Israeli officials had been visiting the UAE for many years.  So Trump’s peace deal was another complete farce.  The US and Israel basically have a good-long standing relationship with the Gulf State monarchies who both view Iran as their common enemy.

One of Trump’s first visit to the Middle East as US president was to Saudi Arabia to sell US weapons which he did successfully after sealing a $110 billion deal plus an additional $350 billion deal over a 10-year period.  The US is preparing Saudi Arabia for a long-term war with its adversaries in the region which brings us to the Houthis of Yemen who the Trump regime will designate as a terrorist organization by January 19th.  The US Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo released a statement on the matter and said that “the designations are also intended to advance efforts to achieve a peaceful, sovereign, and united Yemen that is both free from Iranian interference and at peace with its neighbors.”   

Despite the fact that Trump fired his advisor at the time, Neocon John Bolton, a war hawk who wanted to launch more wars in the Middle East was a good move. However, Trump’s legacy based on his decisions during his time in the White House will be remembered as a disaster, a president that made Israel great for Israelis and America hated even more than ever.

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

Featured image is from the author

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

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Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on January 8 that Tehran was in no rush for the United States to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but, he also said, sanctions on Iran must be lifted immediately. “If the sanctions are lifted, the return of the Americans makes sense,” he insisted. President-elect Joe Biden has announced his plan to return to the deal soon after he is sworn into office. “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal,” he wrote in an op-ed for CNN, “the United States would rejoin.” His Iranian counterpart, President Hassan Rouhani, has also expressed willingness to return to the deal, stating that, “Iran could come into compliance with the agreement within an hour of the United States doing so.”

Five years ago, after years of intensive negotiations, six world powers managed to sign the world’s most comprehensive nuclear agreement with Iran. While the agreement was a political one, it was also ratified by the UN Security Council in Resolution 2231. And, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the organization tasked with verifying the agreement’s technical aspects, Iran was fully complying with the deal for about three years, until President Trump withdrew from it in May 2018. In response to the US violations of the nuclear agreement, Iran too reduced some of its commitments. Most recently, on January 4, Iran announced that it had increased its uranium enrichment levels to 20 percent.

Although reviving the agreement is certainly still possible, it won’t be easy. The two sides will need to overcome nine hurdles to make it happen.

First, the sequencing of a mutual return could be an immediate problem. Iran expects the United States to lift sanctions first, because it  was the Trump administration that withdrew first. While Tehran’s demand is legitimate, Washington may ask that Iran come into full compliance before lifting sanctions. Indeed, a straightforward reading of the quotation from Joe Biden’s op-ed suggests just that. In this scenario, after Joe Biden’s executive order rejoining the deal, Iran and the world powers can meet and agree on a realistic plan with a specified timeline of proportionate reciprocal actions.

Second is the issue of what compliance constitutes. During the Obama administration there was one major barrier to the full realization of the terms of the agreement: Many US primary sanctions, targeting US citizens and permanent residents, organizations, and individuals that engage in trade and business with their Iranian counterparts, remained intact. These sanctions limited the economic benefits of the deal for Iran. The 29th paragraph of the deal clearly states that all signatories will refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalization of trade and economic relations with Iran. This cannot be achieved without abolishing the primary sanctions.

Third, the Trump administration imposed numerous sanctions against Iran under the guise of terrorism and human rights, aimed at preventing the Biden administration from returning to the deal. For a clean implementation of the agreement, Biden will need to remove all of these sanctions as well.

Fourth, Trump’s withdrawal from the agreement and violation of the UN Security Council Resolution 2231 as well as other international commitments has damaged US credibility abroad. There is now a widespread belief among policy makers in Iran that the United States will simply not live up to its end of the bargain, no matter what that bargain is. This naturally raises the important question: What guarantees are there that the United States will remain committed to the deal in the post-Biden era?

Fifth, because of Trump’s maximum pressure policy, the Iranian economy has suffered hundreds of billions of dollars of losses while Iran was in full compliance with the terms and conditions of the deal. Some Iranian leaders, including Iran’s foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, have demanded compensation for the economic damage the country suffered after the United States withdrew. The challenge will be to find a mechanism to compensate for the economic damages that the Trump administration inflicted on the Iranian economy.

Sixth, the “snapback” mechanism built into the agreement allows any country to force the UN Security Council to reimpose multilateral sanctions against Iran if Iran fails to fulfill its commitments. But this is one-sided: There is no such remedy for Iran if other parties fail to do their part. This became abundantly clear when the Trump administration first withdrew from the deal and then tried to unilaterally re-impose multilateral sanctions on Iran through the snapback mechanism. It was as if the injurer was demanding punishment for the injured. Although the UN Security Council rejected the US demand, the stunt revealed the structural flaw of the snapback.

Seventh, in the first week of December 2020, the Iranian parliament passed a bill mandating Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization to resume enriching uranium to 20 percent purity. The legislation also requires the Iranian government to cease voluntary implementation of the IAEA’s Additional Protocol within two months of the bill’s enactment if the other signatories fail to fully deliver on their commitments under the agreement. And after three months, the Atomic Energy Organization is obliged to begin using at least 1,000 second generation centrifuges. In short, president-elect Biden will need to move fast.

Eighth, there are some in the United States who are worried that Trump may start a reckless last-ditch war with Iran before leaving office. While this concern is overblown, there should be no doubt that US partners in the region will do whatever they can to prevent Biden’s return to the deal. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already said as much. To be sure, the hardliners in Iran are also fundamentally opposed to the deal.

Ninth, some pundits and politicians in Washington want Biden to leverage the Trump administration’s sanctions to pressure Iran to accept additional commitments beyond the original agreement as a condition for US return to compliance. These include limiting Iran’s missile capability, extending the so-called “sunset” clauses within the deal, or resolving regional disputes. But from Iran’s perspective, such demands are a non-starter. As the spokesperson for Iran’s foreign ministry said recently, “No negotiation has been, is being, or will be held about Iran’s defense power.”

Despite these hurdles, Biden should nevertheless seek a reentry into the deal. Only a clean and full implementation by all parties can save the world’s most comprehensive nuclear agreement, contain rising US-Iran tensions, and open the path toward more confidence building measures. That path should include, upon Biden’s issuing an executive order to rejoin the JCPOA, the creation of a working committee of parties to the agreement tasked with ensuring full compliance by all signatories, and a forum, organized by the UN secretary general, in which Iran and the Gulf countries can discuss a new structure for improving security and cooperation in the region.

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Ambassador Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a Middle East Security and Nuclear Policy Specialist at Princeton University and a former chief of Iran’s National Security Foreign Relations Committee. His book, A Middle East Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction, was published in May 2020 by Routledge. His latest book, A New Structure for Security, Peace, and Cooperation in the Persian Gulf, was published in December 2020 by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Joe Biden presents himself as an empathetic guy who is willing to go the extra mile to help people overcome their personal tragedies.

However, Biden has throughout his career endorsed policies that caused countless personal tragedies for millions of people.

The best example is his support for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

It led to the deaths and wounding of thousands of U.S. soldiers, killing of an estimated one million Iraqis, and destabilization of a wide swath of the Middle East.

In 2002, Biden was riding high, as Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in his 30^th year in the Senate.

Having supported Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada in 1983 and bombing of Libya in 1986, Biden went on to embrace George H.W. Bush’s invasion of Panama in 1991, and Bill Clinton’s bombing of Kosovo in 1999.^[1]

When Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (1979-2003) invaded Kuwait in 1991, Biden did vote against invading Iraq, believing that Bush had not made the case for war and that Hussein could be contained through an international embargo.

However, once Bush went to war, Biden declared that he was giving Bush his total support, and praised Bush for displaying real “leadership,” never mentioning the 110,000 civilians who died.^[2]

Following the 9/11 attacks, Biden supported the invasion of Afghanistan and tried to raise funds for a Marshall Plan-type program to fund the country’s reconstruction.

Biden was so well connected to President George W. Bush in this period that he had a secure phone line to the White House set up in his home and met with Bush privately to plot out a public relations message for the Afghan War.^[3]

The New Republic termed Biden “the Democratic Party’s de facto spokesman on the war against terrorism.” 

In a CSPAN talk before the Council on Foreign Relations in October 2001, Biden framed the War on Terror as an apocalyptic struggle between civilization and a trans-national terrorist entity who would bring violent disorder and chaos to the world.

Biden called for a strong U.S. commitment to the Middle East to defeat al-Qaeda and help empower “moderate Muslims,” while pushing for better efforts at public diplomacy.

When asked about Iraq, Biden said he was not in favor of immediate invasion, but rather for imposing a “smarter sanctions” policy and generating consensus for a multilateral coalition that would support the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Several months later, Biden told a crowd of 400 Delaware National Guard officers that, “if Saddam Hussein is still there five years from now, we are in big trouble … It would be unrealistic, if not downright foolish, to believe we can claim victory in the war on terrorism if Saddam is still in power.”

“Take This Son of a Bitch Down”

Biden’s support for regime change in Iraq went back to the late 1990s.

After the first Persian Gulf War, Saddam had agreed to destroy Iraq’s chemical weapons stockpile and to allow weapons inspectors into the country.

Senator Biden supported President Clinton’s decision to remove the weapons inspectors in 1998 in order to launch a four-day bombing campaign, despite being warned that it would likely end Saddam’s cooperation. Subsequently, Biden insisted that “Saddam kicked the [inspectors] out.”

Biden presides over hearings where he advocated for regime change in Iraq in 1998. [Source: theintercept.com]

Scott Ritter, the chief UN weapons inspector, resigned in protest and accused the international community of not giving him and his colleagues the support they needed to carry out their job in Iraq.

Ritter was called to testify before the Senate in September 1998 where Biden, who was then the highest-ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, grilled him.

Biden told Ritter—whom he referred to condescendingly as “old Scotty Boy”—that no matter how thorough the inspections, the only way to eliminate the threat was to remove Saddam Hussein.

“The primary policy is to keep sanctions in place to deny Saddam the billions of dollars that would allow him to really crank up his program, which neither you nor I believe he’s ever going to abandon as long as he’s in place,” Biden said, characterizing the then Clinton administration’s policy.

Biden continued:

Mobilizing Support for War

Biden followed up on these statements at the end of July 2002 by chairing hearings in the Senate that were designed to mobilize congressional support for Operation Iraqi Freedom, whose goal was the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

Biden stated that the purpose of the hearings was to initiate a “national dialogue” on Iraq.

However, the witnesses were skewed to represent alarmist views about Saddam and his alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and to support a preemptive strike. The three who testified on the subject of al-Qaeda, falsely claimed it received direct support from Iraq.

Former UN Assistant Secretary-General Hans Von Sponeck complained about the “deliberate distortions and misrepresentations” that “make it look to the average person in the U.S. as if Iraq is a threat to their security.”^[5]

Biden set the tone in his opening remarks when he emphasized that

These comments echoed a New York Times op-ed Biden published the first day of the hearings with Richard Lugar (R-IN), which suggested that continued containment of Saddam raised the “risk that Mr. Hussein will play cat-and-mouse with inspectors while building more weapons” and that “if we wait for the danger to become clear and present, it may be too late.”

The first witness at the hearings was Richard Butler, a diplomat-in-residence at the Council on Foreign Relations and former executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), an inspection regime designed to ensure Iraqi compliance with international protocols on WMD after the first Persian Gulf War.

Butler testified that Saddam’s claims that he had no WMDs was false. Rather, Iraq had the components that were needed to manufacture nuclear weapons and a weaponized biological warfare program with capability of loading anthrax onto missile warheads, and had terminated UNSCOM’s work in order to hide the truth.

In Butler’s view, Saddam was a war criminal who should be on trial at The Hague alongside Serb leader Slobodan Milošević. 

The next witness, Khidir Hamza, was an Iraqi nuclear scientist who had defected from Saddam’s regime and told his story in the book, Saddam’s Bombmaker: The Daring Escape of the Man Who Built Iraq’s Secret Weapon, written with Jeff Stein.

Claiming that Iraqis would welcome an American invasion “with open arms,” Hamza warned that Saddam Hussein had “turned Iraqi science and engineering enterprises into a “giant weapons making body.”

He said that Iraq possessed more than ten tons of uranium, and one ton of slightly enriched uranium, which he claimed was enough to allow them to build three nuclear weapons by 2005. Saddam was also well into chemical warfare production and developing biological warfare capabilities.

Image on the right: Khidir Hamza [Source: wikipedia.org]

According to Hamza, Saddam was a vicious tyrant who had hunted down defectors in exile like his brother-in law Hussein Kamel, who was killed in 1996.

Saddam was further linked to Islamic fundamentalism, training foreign jihadist fighters at an Iraqi intelligence camp twenty miles south of Baghdad, including in tactics of hijacking which was confirmed allegedly by satellite photos.

The Iraqi ambassador to Turkey, Farouk Hijazi, had traveled to Afghanistan and met with Osama bin Laden in 1998.

Most, if not all of Hamza’s information on Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was untrue, and UNSCOM inspectors insist that Hamza was never actually part of Iraq’s nuclear program.

David Albright, who wrote a series of articles on Iraq’s nuclear program, stated that Hamza’s unreliability stemmed from his support for U.S. military action. He told me he wanted to get a gun himself and go back and fight with his sons.

UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter heavily criticized the use of Hamza’s testimony as a rationale for invading Iraq. He said:

These comments provide a stinging rebuke of Biden and his deceit of the American people.

Witness after witness that followed Hamza advanced a similar underlying message to him.

Charles Duelfer, the former executive chairman of UNSCOM, stated from the outset that he favored regime change in Iraq, and highlighted, as a source of comparison, the 1919 Versailles Treaty’s failure to prevent Hitler from rearming Germany despite an inspections regime that had been set up.

Duelfer asked subsequently “whether we were prepared to give back the Saddam regime control over the oil revenues.” He stressed that “our highest priority should be convincing Iraqis in Iraq that they will be better off when Saddam was gone, and that he will be gone.”

Lieutenant General Thomas G. McInerney, the former Assistant Vice Chief of the Air Force, detailed before the committee how regime change could be accomplished through “blitz warfare”–a “24-hour, 7 day a week campaign,” using “precision weapons,” and “supported by fast mobbing ground forces and heavy, light, airborne amphibious, special covert operations working with [Iraqi] opposition forces.”

One of the hearings’ main academic experts, Fouad Ajami, director of Middle East Studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, emphasized an alleged linkage between Iraq and 9/11 and said that Muslim hatred of America resulted from jealousy of American success and talent–among the untalented–and not historical factors or opposition to U.S. foreign policies.

Image below: Fouad Ajami, an Arab Uncle Tom. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Ajami went on to suggest that Americans would be greeted in Baghdad and Basra with “kites and boom boxes”—as they allegedly had been in Kabul.

Residents of these cities were “eager for deliverance from the tyranny and the great big prison of Saddam Hussein.”

Rend al-Rahim Francke, a cousin and close associate of Ahmed Chalabi—a con man who helped lobby for the Iraq War—echoed Ajami in claiming that American troops would be greeted as liberators and said that there would be no civil war after the U.S. invaded.

A member of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which was set up to lobby Congress to support an invasion of Iraq, she proposed a Bonn meeting for Iraq modeled on Afghanistan to help select the post-Saddam leadership.

The Bonn conference was highly unpopular among Afghans, however, because foreigners selected their leaders for them, and it went against the idea of democracy.

After Saddam was overthrown, Francke was appointed Iraqi ambassador to the U.S., and in 2004 was a guest of Laura Bush in the First Lady’s box at George W. Bush’s State of the Union address. Subsequently, she established the Iraqi-American Freedom Alliance, whose aim was to show the positive consequences of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The few skeptics who testified at the hearing mainly raised questions about tactics, economic cost and military feasibility of regime change and how long it might take to stabilize the country, but not about the potential cost for Iraqis or hidden underlying motives behind U.S. policy.^[6]

Dr. Phebe Marr, an Iraq expert and former professor at the National Defense University, was characteristic in considering the goal of regime change to be “ambitious.”

She stated:

In short, the United States should try to be good colonials and initiate a sustained long-term military and political commitment or none at all—hardly an anti-war position.

In the afternoon session of the last day, former Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger(1981-1987), branded Saddam Hussein as a “purveyor of evil” and “implacable” and “permanent foe of the United States,” and former National Security Adviser Sandy Berger (1993-1996), called Saddam a “menace to his own people and the stability of the region.”

Emphasizing Saddam’s link to terrorist groups such as the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Hamas, and al-Qaeda’s growing presence in Iraq, Weinberger was most strident in his support for preemptive war.

The United States, he said, had successfully “changed several regimes after World War II” and “in each case, the result was a “vast and major improvement.”

Exclusion of Voices for Peace

While Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) praised Biden for “producing a very fine moment in the history of the [Senate Foreign Relations] Committee,” anti-war Senators Lincoln Chafee (R-RI) and Paul Wellstone (D-MN) raised concern about the lack of balance.

Chafee told Biden that the panel he had set up “gave the perspective that the threat [from Saddam and his alleged WMDs] was very real, very immediate” but that it would have been “good to have a different perspective [offered].”

Wellstone was able to get inserted into the record three principled anti-war statements.

The first was written by Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). She provided a warning from Nelson Mandela that “attacking Iraq would be a disaster,” and predicted that it would “kill thousands of civilians,” risk the lives of U.S. military personnel, lead to a “long and bloody occupation” and “cost billions of dollars urgently needed at home.”]

Bennis noted that there were absolutely no verifiable reports regarding Iraq’s WMD program or evidence of Iraqi involvement in the 9/11 terrorist attacks—Iraq was in fact antagonistic to bin Laden and vice versa—and she said that preemptive strikes were illegal under international law.

The second anti-war statement came from J. Daryl Byler of the Mennonite Central Committee’s Washington Office, who advocated for a regional approach to Iraq’s disarmament and establishment of an international tribunal as a right way to investigate allegations of crimes against humanity by Saddam Hussein.

Byler noted that, for more than 20 years, ordinary Iraqis had suffered from the aftermath of the Iran-Iraq and Gulf Wars and impact of UN sanctions intended to contain and control the Iraqi government, and that a U.S. invasion would make a bad situation worse and result in the deaths of thousands of children and civilians.

Byler predicted that the war would further destabilize the Middle East and provide “yet another example that the world’s superpower is unilaterally able to impose its will and wish on less powerful countries.” An Iraqi evangelical church leader told his delegation that “we hope that someday your country will stop doing everything with force.”

The third anti-war statement was written by Dr. Peter Pellet, emeritus professor of nutrition at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Dr. Colin Rowat, a professor of economics at the University of Manchester.

They emphasized the humanitarian crisis resulting from the U.S. bombing of the electrical grid during the first Persian Gulf War and imposition of economic sanctions and believed that the civilian costs of new military action would be greater than in 1990.

The three principled anti-war statements contrasted markedly with the rest of the hearings and were prescient in their analysis and warnings.

They did not command the same attention, however, as the regular panelists since they were not issued in-person.^[7]

Their inclusion was a masterful trick designed to sustain the illusion that all sides were represented in the “national dialogue.” Really, however, it was a staged political event designed to lay the groundwork for war.

Afterwards, President Bush thanked Biden for holding the hearings, and Biden went on all the major television networks to argue for war, citing the lopsided testimony he had arranged. “We have no choice but to eliminate the threat,” he told Meet the Press.^[8]

Twisting the Truth

Image on the right: Scott Ritter giving a lecture at the Harvard Kennedy school pointing to the lack of evidence for WMDs. He was a key figure excluded from the hearing. [Source: news.harvard.edu]

In his memoir, Promises to Keep—published in 2007 when he was running to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee—Biden claimed that the two days of expert testimony at the Senate hearings were “a good start to educating the country about the monumental difficulties of opening up another military front.”

Biden wrote that “not wanting the president to get locked into going to war,” his intention was to “make public the disincentives to going to war in Iraq.”^[9]

Prior to the hearings, Biden wrote that President Bush personally assured him that “there was no plan to take down Iraq” and that he was confident at the time that “Secretary of State Colin Powell was trying to dissuade the president from an invasion.”

Ten days later, however, Biden read in the Washington Post that Bush had signed an intelligence order directing the CIA to undertake a comprehensive covert program to topple Saddam Hussein, including lethal authority to capture the Iraqi president.” Biden wrote that he didn’t ask the administration to send any witnesses as such because “I didn’t want to force their hand.”^[10]

Biden leaves the impression that he was opposed to the war and trying to stop it and did not want to give the Bush administration a voice, stating that the consensus of the experts was that Saddam “was five to ten years away from developing a nuclear weapon” and “not an imminent threat.”

However, in his introductory remarks and accompanying New York Times op-ed, Biden had stated that Saddam was a major threat who had to be confronted, and the experts at the hearings testified that Saddam was a grave threat, had WMD, was linked to al-Qaeda, and would have a nuclear weapon within three years; not five to ten.

Biden directly contradicted what he wrote in in his memoir when he told Meet the Press host Tim Russert in April 2007 that “everyone in the world thought he [Saddam] had them [WMDs]. The weapons inspectors said he had them.”

In an attempt to show the hearings promoted a cautionary message, Biden referenced the testimony of military expert Anthony Cordesman, who said that war was not a game and quoted from the Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder: “Small boys throw stones at frogs in jest. But, the frogs do not die in jest. The frogs die in earnest.”^[11]

Cordesman, however, promoted an alarmist narrative about Saddam in his testimony, warning about his possession of anthrax weapons with nuclear lethalities, and capacity for carrying out chemical and biological weapon attacks directed against U.S. bases and troops in the Persian Gulf. Cordesman further insinuated the need for a full-scale ground invasion since air strikes would not be enough.^[12]

Biden Ignores CIA Director’s Assessment

One month and a half after the hearings, Biden gained access to information that disproved the WMD claims, though he never acted upon it.

In a classified hearing on September 24, 2002, at the urging of a staff member, Biden asked then-CIA Director George Tenet what evidence of WMDs the U.S. had “technically collected.”

“None, Senator,” Tenet said, according to an account in the book Hubris, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn. Biden, wondering if there was some highly classified evidence, asked Tenet, “George, do you want me to clear the staff out of the room?” Tenet told him no. “There’s no reason to, Senator.”

Later in that same hearing, Biden heard from two government witnesses who rejected the “aluminum tubes” claim that had been circulating, and would later become a centerpiece of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the United Nations promoting preemptive war.

General Colin Powell has called his 2003 speech to the United Nations, laying out the Bush administration’s rationale for war in Iraq, a “blot” on his record. The speech set out to detail Iraq’s weapons program, but as the intelligence confirmed, that program was nonexistent. The former Secretary of State acknowledged that his report to the Security Council was only intended to give credit to the accusations from the administration and that the intelligence services had not “worked properly.” [Source: volatirenet.org]

Biden nevertheless would go on to vote in favor of the war on Iraq, even though he knew that the stated reasons—that Saddam had WMD—was unproven or false, and lied about this later.

Biden Votes for War

After hearing from Tenet, Biden, with Richard Lugar and Chuck Hagel (R-NE), proposed an alternative to George W. Bush’s war resolution that would only allow Bush to attack Iraq for the purpose of destroying WMD and only after seeking UN approval.

If the UN turned Bush down, he would have to come back to Congress and prove Saddam posed a WMD threat so “grave” that only military action could eliminate it.

When Biden’s plan was derailed, however, through the work of Dick Gephardt (D-MI), the Democratic Party leader in the House, Biden backed Bush’s war resolution.

On October 10, 2002, on the eve of the vote, Biden repeated before the Senate his claims about Saddam’s threat and pursuit of nuclear weapons and framed military intervention as a “march to peace and security,” specifying that the “threat need not be imminent for us to take action.”

The next day, Biden was one of 77 Senators who voted to authorize military force in Iraq, joining fellow Democrats Hillary Clinton, Chuck Schumer, Harry Reid, John Kerry, and Dianne Feinstein.

In early November, Biden introduced the Iraqi Scientists Liberation Act before the Senate, which granted permanent residency status to 500 Iraqi scientists if they supplied information on weapons of mass destruction.

The clear intent was to lure defectors like Khidir Hamza who could validate the Bush administration’s stated reasons for going to war, while giving the impression that the U.S. was trying to destroy Iraq’s WMD.

Years later, when campaigning for higher office, Biden told NPR that he had voted for war only after he got a commitment from Bush that he needed the vote to get inspectors into Iraq to determine whether or not Saddam was establishing a nuclear program. According to Biden, his mistake was to trust Bush.

Bush’s office denied Biden’s version of events, however, saying that his recollections were wrong.

Biden later conceded that he had misspoke and at a Democratic Party debate said that he “never should have voted to give [President] Bush the authority to go in and do what he said he was going to do.”

Staying the Course

When Bush issued an ultimatum to Saddam on March 17, 2003—leave or be invaded—Biden predictably backed him.^[13]

Four months later, Biden told a gathering at the Brookings Institution that he had cast “the right vote [on the war], and it would be a correct vote today.”

Biden went on to praise the leadership of the Coalition Provisional Authority, a corrupt and incompetent organization. Its chief, Paul Bremer, was “first-rate,” Biden said mere months after Bremer disbanded the Iraqi army, leading directly to the rise of an insurgency and civil war.

Biden called Bernard Kerik, the former NYPD Commissioner tasked with building a new police force, “a serious guy with a serious team.” However, Iraq’s police would soon become indistinguishable from sectarian death squads, and Kerik would later plead guilty to tax fraud and other federal corruption charges.

In the summer of 2003, as security broke down in Iraq, Biden’s solution was “more foreign troops to share our mission.” 

At the 2004 Democratic Party Convention at the Fleet Center in Boston, Biden tried to deflect responsibility away from himself and onto President Bush.

Biden admitted at the time that the intelligence “was hyped to justify going to war,” causing “America’s credibility and security [to] have suffered a terrible blow.” 

This was a stunning admission in light of the role Biden had played in “hyping” the Iraqi threat.

Biden said he felt that the worst legacy of the Iraq war was not its human costs, but rather a “further hardening of the Vietnam syndrome that afflicts some in the Democratic Party—a distrust of the use of American power.”

These comments reflected Biden’s longstanding neoconservative outlook and disdain for the Vietnam era anti-war movement, which was unaffected by his shifting position on Iraq.

As a law student at Syracuse University in the late 1960s, Biden had derided Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) activists who occupied the Chancellor’s office to protest the Vietnam War, calling out “look at these assholes.”^[14]

A Neocolonial Solution

In July 2005, as Iraq descended into nightmarish sectarian violence, Biden told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he remained “hopeful” about the situation, despite some of his earlier critical comments, and that U.S. forces had “turned a political corner of sorts.” Subsequently, Biden said that “calling it quits and withdrawing” would be a “gigantic mistake.”

Biden in this period routinely voted for billion-dollar war appropriations and used his status as Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee to “advocate loudly for more troops and better police training,” which he considered key to successful counterinsurgency.^[15]

In May 2006, Biden penned a New York Times op-ed, with Leslie Gelb of the Council on Foreign Relations, which rejected the false choice of “staying the course” or “bringing the troops home,” but aimed to wind down the U.S. military presence “responsibly.”

This was to be achieved by establishing three largely autonomous regions, one for each of Iraq’s major ethnic and confessional groups, presided over by a nominally national Baghdad government, something he called “unity through autonomy.”

The model was the Dayton accords on Bosnia, which kept the country whole by dividing it into ethnic federations, and allowing Muslims, Croats and Serbs to retain separate armies. These accords were deeply flawed, however, in that they enshrined the violent division of Bosnia along ethnic lines.

In September 2007, Biden prevailed upon his fellow senators to endorse his flawed proposal in a lopsided 75-23 vote. Outside of Kurdistan, there was zero support among Iraqis, who saw the proposal as a neocolonial strategy designed to break up, divide and weaken their country.

The plan so tarnished Biden’s reputation that, in August 2008, when he was named Barack Obama’s running mate, Iraqis across the political spectrum reacted with dismay.

“This choice of Biden is disappointing, because he is the creator of the idea of dividing Iraq,” Saleh al-Mutlaq, head of National Dialogue, one of the main Sunni Arab blocs in parliament, told Reuters that day.

“We rejected his proposal when he announced it, and we still reject it. Dividing the communities and land in such a way would only lead to new fighting between people over resources and borders. Iraq cannot survive unless it is unified, and dividing it would keep the problems alive for a long time.”

Obama’s Point Man

Despite Biden’s unpopularity and complicity in the destruction of Iraq, Obama appointed him as his point man there, allegedly telling him: “Joe, you do Iraq.”

This was not in hindsight a very smart move.

Robert Ford, a one-time diplomat at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, blames Biden for helping to fuel the rise of the Islamic State when he decided to support the return of the sectarian Shia politician Nouri al-Maliki as Prime Minister in 2010.

According to Emma Sky, who was the political adviser to Raymond Odierno, the commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq that year, Biden seemed preoccupied with the idea of irreconcilable sectarian differences during a visit.

Odierno told Biden that the previously secular al-Maliki had become so sectarian and authoritarian that Iraqis feared him, and a secular leader would be more welcome, Sky recalled in her memoir, “The Unraveling: High Hopes and Missed Opportunities in Iraq.”

“I tried to explain the struggle between secularists and Islamists, and how many Iraqis wanted to move beyond sectarianism,” Sky wrote. “But Biden could not fathom this. For him, Iraq was simply about Sunnis, Shia and Kurds.”

As Sky pushed back on Biden’s belief that sectarian differences were the key to Iraq, she wrote: “He was clearly irritated by me. ‘Look, I know these people,’” he went on. “‘My grandfather was Irish and hated the British. It’s like in the Balkans. They all grow up hating each other.’”

The result, as Reidar Visser observed in 2011, was an al-Maliki government “made up of mostly pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists,” with the secular Iraqiya Party, which had won a plurality of votes in the March 2010 parliamentary elections, sidelined.

Though Biden was close to al-Maliki, when Arab-Spring style protests erupted, Biden and Secretary of State John Kerry quietly worked to help install Haidar al-Abadi, the former communications minister who was committed to privatizing Iraq’s economy in line with the original goals of the 2003 military invasion.

Al-Abadi tried to increase Sunni participation in government and root out corruption in the army and police, while securing a $1.5 billion pledge from the Obama administration to train the Iraqi security forces and sell F-16 fighter jets.

In 2016, frustration with Al-Abadi’s government resulted in a revolt led by Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who won parliamentary elections in 2018.

Al-Sadr had mobilized his Mahdi army to resist the U.S. occupation of Iraq after the toppling of Saddam Hussein and drew Iraq closer to Iran. His ascendancy reflected the failings of U.S. policy, which Biden had been integral to.

Supporting Another War on an Enemy He Helped Create

Image below: Moqtada al-Sadr [Source: wikipedia.org]

After overseeing troop withdrawals in 2011, Biden played an important role in the second Iraq War, which began when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)—led by former Saddamist Generals, al-Qaeda terrorists and disaffected Sunnis—took over swaths of territory in Iraq in the summer of 2014 with Turkish backing.

In June 2014, the Obama administration ordered thousands of troops back into Iraq without authorization from Congress, claiming that the troops would serve in an advisory capacity, and that ISIS was equivalent to al-Qaeda, against which the U.S. had already declared war.^[16]

According to Brett McGurk, a former U.S. official with extensive experience in Iraq, Biden supported the strategy known as “by, with, and through” to fight ISIS, in which America left most of the fighting to local soldiers and used its special forces, intelligence, and air power.

The heavy focus on air strikes deriving from Biden’s strategy resulted in untold civilian casualties. A study published in the New York Times Magazine determined that one in five of the 27,500 coalition air strikes over Iraq resulted in at least one civilian death, more than 31 times that acknowledged by the coalition. The second war in Iraq, the authors noted, “may be the least transparent war in recent American history.”^[17]

The U.S. forces in Iraq were commanded by General Lloyd Austin, whom President-elect Biden appointed as the first African American Secretary of Defense.

Austin helped oversee the razing of Mosul by U.S. and Iraqi forces which deployed rocket-assisted munitions and powerful explosive weapons that caused blast-related injuries.

The New York Times described “a panorama of destruction in the neighborhood of Judida so vast one resident compared the destruction to that of Hiroshima, Japan. There was a charred arm, wrapped in a piece of red fabric poking from the rubble, rescue workers in red jumpsuits who came wore face masks to avoid the stench, some with rifles slung over their shoulders, searching the wreckage for bodies.”^[18]

Biden’s involvement in Iraq by this time had come full circle.

During his vice presidency he found himself championing another dirty war against an enemy he had been instrumental in creating—first by supporting preemptive war against Saddam Hussein, and then by supporting the ethnic division of the country and sectarian politicians like Nouri al-Maliki.

Biden himself has suffered from his poor decisions—his son Beau died from brain cancer suspected to have derived from toxic exposure at Balad Air Base north of Baghdad, where the U.S. military burned an estimated 140 tons of waste a day in open air burn pits.^[19]

It is unclear as of this writing what President Biden might do to further torture Iraqis in the next four years.

Certainly, he will follow through with previously announced troop withdrawals, but will also continue to sustain military advisory and training programs, special forces operations, air strikes and private military contractors as part of a light footprint approach.

The ultimate aim is to gain access to military bases and Iraq’s oil fields, which is what the long Iraq War has always really been about.

*

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine.

Notes

[1] Branko Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden (London: Verso, 2020), 159.

[2] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 140.

[3] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 148.

[4] Ryan Grim, “Five Years Before Invasion, Said the Only Way of Disarming Iraq Is ‘Taking Saddam Down,’” The Intercept, January 7, 2020, https://theintercept.com/2020/01/07/joe-biden-iraq-war-history/. Biden repeated his call for war in an oped in The Washington Post in September 1998 in which he wrote: “as long as Saddam Hussein is at the helm, no inspectors can guarantee that they have rooted out the entirety of Saddam Hussein’s weapons program. And I said [at the Senate hearing] the only way to remove Saddam is a massive military effort, led by the United States.”

[5] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 151.

[6] Many of the skeptics endorsed a strengthening of economic sanctions—which were known to have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of children from disease and malnutrition—and expanded aid to Iraqi opposition groups, even though the U.S.-sponsored ones were led by charlatans like Ahmed Chalabi, who had been sentenced to twenty-two years in prison in Jordan for bank fraud.

[7] The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was willing to fly one witness in from Australia but would not allow authors of the anti-war statements appear in person—even though at least one, Phyllis Bennis, lived in Washington.

[8] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 151.

[9] Joe Biden, Promises to Keep (New York: Random House, 2007), 332, 333.

[10] Biden, Promises To Keep, 332.

[11] Biden, Promises to Keep, 333.

[12] According to an article in National Business Review, Cordesman was said to have been “48 per cent” convinced on the need to invade Iraq in 2003, but contends that “concerns over Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction were valid.” Jeremy Hall, “The Clash Within Civilizations,” National Business Review, September 17, 2006, https://web.archive.org/web/20110611061421/http://www.nbr.co.nz/article/the-clash-within-civilizations

[13] Marcetic, Yesterday’s Man, 153.

[14] Biden, Promises to Keep, 159. It is uncertain if this story is true.

[15] Biden, Promises to Keep, 348.

[16] See Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019), 180.

[17] Azmat Khan and Anand Gopal, “The Uncounted: An on-the-Ground Investigation Reveals That the U.S. led Battle Against ISIS—Hailed as the Most Precise Air Campaign in History—is Killing Far more Iraqi Civilians than the Coalition Has Acknowledged,” The New York Times Magazine, November 19, 2017, 43-47.

[18] Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars, 181, 182.

[19] In a 2019 speech to the Service Employees International Union, Joe Biden said that, because of Beau’s “exposure to burn pits, in my view, I can’t prove it yet, he came back with stage four glioblastoma. Eighteen months he lived, knowing he was going to die.”

Featured image: Biden was sworn into office by Associate Justice John Paul Stevens on January 20, 2009. (Public Domain)

“You have such a fervent, passionate, evangelical faith in this country…why in the name of God don’t you have any faith in the system of government you’re so hell-bent to protect? You want to defend the United States of America, then defend it with the tools it supplies you with—its Constitution. You ask for a mandate, General, from a ballot box. You don’t steal it after midnight, when the country has its back turned.”—Seven Days in May (1964)

No doubt about it: the coup d’etat was successful.

That January 6 attempt by so-called insurrectionists to overturn the election results was not the real coup, however. Those who answered President Trump’s call to march on the Capitol were merely the fall guys, manipulated into creating the perfect crisis for the Deep State—a.k.a. the Police State a.k.a. the Military Industrial Complex a.k.a. the Techno-Corporate State a.k.a. the Surveillance State—to swoop in and take control.

It took no time at all for the switch to be thrown and the nation’s capital to be placed under a military lockdown, online speech forums restricted, and individuals with subversive or controversial viewpoints ferreted out, investigated, shamed and/or shunned.

This new order didn’t emerge into being this week, or this month, or even this year, however.

Indeed, the real coup happened when our government “of the people, by the people, for the people” was overthrown by a profit-driven, militaristic, techno-corporate state that is in cahoots with a government “of the rich, by the elite, for the corporations.”

We’ve been mired in this swamp for decades now.

Every successive president starting with Franklin D. Roosevelt has been bought lock, stock and barrel and made to dance to the Deep State’s tune.

Enter Donald Trump, the candidate who swore to drain the swamp in Washington DC. Instead of putting an end to the corruption, however, Trump paved the way for lobbyists, corporations, the military industrial complex, and the Deep State to feast on the carcass of the dying American republic.

Joe Biden will be no different: his job is to keep the Deep State in power.

Step away from the cult of personality politics and you’ll find that beneath the power suits, they’re all alike.

Follow the money.  It always points the way.

As Bertram Gross noted in Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, “evil now wears a friendlier face than ever before in American history.”

Writing in 1980, Gross predicted a future in which he saw:

…a new despotism creeping slowly across America. Faceless oligarchs sit at command posts of a corporate-government complex that has been slowly evolving over many decades. In efforts to enlarge their own powers and privileges, they are willing to have others suffer the intended or unintended consequences of their institutional or personal greed. For Americans, these consequences include chronic inflation, recurring recession, open and hidden unemployment, the poisoning of air, water, soil and bodies, and, more important, the subversion of our constitution. More broadly, consequences include widespread intervention in international politics through economic manipulation, covert action, or military invasion…

This stealthy, creeping, silent coup that Gross prophesied is the same danger that writer Rod Serling envisioned in the 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May, a clear warning to beware of martial law packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

Incredibly enough, almost 60 years later, we find ourselves hostages to a government run more by military doctrine and corporate greed than by the rule of law established in the Constitution. Indeed, proving once again that fact and fiction are not dissimilar, today’s current events could well have been lifted straight out of Seven Days in May, which takes viewers into eerily familiar terrain.

The premise is straightforward.

With the Cold War at its height, an unpopular U.S. President signs a momentous nuclear disarmament treaty with the Soviet Union. Believing that the treaty constitutes an unacceptable threat to the security of the United States and certain that he knows what is best for the nation, General James Mattoon Scott (played by Burt Lancaster), the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and presidential hopeful, plans a military takeover of the national government.  When Gen. Scott’s aide, Col. Casey (Kirk Douglas), discovers the planned military coup, he goes to the President with the information. The race for command of the U.S. government begins, with the clock ticking off the hours until the military plotters plan to overthrow the President.

Needless to say, while on the big screen, the military coup is foiled and the republic is saved in a matter of hours, in the real world, the plot thickens and spreads out over the past half century.

We’ve been losing our freedoms so incrementally for so long—sold to us in the name of national security and global peace, maintained by way of martial law disguised as law and order, and enforced by a standing army of militarized police and a political elite determined to maintain their powers at all costs—that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly when it all started going downhill, but we’ve been on that fast-moving, downward trajectory for some time now.

The question is no longer whether the U.S. government will be preyed upon and taken over by the military industrial complex. That’s a done deal, but martial law disguised as national security is only one small part of the greater deception we’ve been fooled into believing is for our own good.

How do you get a nation to docilely accept a police state? How do you persuade a populace to accept metal detectors and pat downs in their schools, bag searches in their train stations, tanks and military weaponry used by their small town police forces, surveillance cameras in their traffic lights, police strip searches on their public roads, unwarranted blood draws at drunk driving checkpoints, whole body scanners in their airports, and government agents monitoring their communications?

Try to ram such a state of affairs down the throats of the populace, and you might find yourself with a rebellion on your hands. Instead, you bombard them with constant color-coded alerts, terrorize them with shootings and bomb threats in malls, schools, and sports arenas, desensitize them with a steady diet of police violence, and sell the whole package to them as being for their best interests.

This present military occupation of the nation’s capital by 25,000 troops as part of the so-called “peaceful” transfer of power from one administration to the next is telling.

This is not the language of a free people. This is the language of force.

Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

Meanwhile, the police have been transformed into extensions of the military while the nation itself has been transformed into a battlefield. This is what a state of undeclared martial law looks like, when you can be arrested, tasered, shot, brutalized and in some cases killed merely for not complying with a government agent’s order or not complying fast enough. This hasn’t just been happening in crime-ridden inner cities. It’s been happening all across the country.

And then you’ve got the government, which has been steadily amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

So you see, January 6 and its aftermath provided the government and its corporate technocrats the perfect excuse to show off all of the powers they’ve been amassing so assiduously over the years.

Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

Brace yourself.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by the antics of the political ruling class that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware.

Anytime you have a government that operates in the shadows, speaks in a language of force, and rules by fiat, you’d better beware.

And anytime you have a government so far removed from its people as to ensure that they are never seen, heard or heeded by those elected to represent them, you’d better beware.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are at our most vulnerable right now.

All of those dastardly seeds we have allowed the government to sow under the guise of national security are bearing demon fruit.

The gravest threat facing us as a nation is not extremism but despotism, exercised by a ruling class whose only allegiance is to power and money.

*

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

This article was originally published on EFF in June 2018.

So why do we know so little about it?

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly building what will likely become the largest database of biometric and biographic data on citizens and foreigners in the United States. The agency’s new Homeland Advanced Recognition Technology (HART) database will include multiple forms of biometrics—from face recognition to DNA, data from questionable sources, and highly personal data on innocent people. It will be shared with federal agencies outside of DHS as well as state and local law enforcement and foreign governments. And yet, we still know very little about it.

The records DHS plans to include in HART will chill and deter people from exercising their First Amendment protected rights to speak, assemble, and associate. Data like face recognition makes it possible to identify and track people in real time, including at lawful political protests and other gatherings. Other data DHS is planning to collect—including information about people’s “relationship patterns” and from officer “encounters” with the public—can be used to identify political affiliations, religious activities, and familial and friendly relationships. These data points are also frequently colored by conjecture and bias.

In late May, EFF filed comments criticizing DHS’s plans to collect, store, and share biometric and biographic records it receives from external agencies and to exempt this information from the federal Privacy Act. These newly-designated “External Biometric Records” (EBRs) will be integral to DHS’s bigger plans to build out HART. As we told the agency in our comments, DHS must do more to minimize the threats to privacy and civil liberties posed by this vast new trove of highly sensitive personal data.

DHS Biometrics Systems—From IDENT to HART

DHS slide showing growth of its legacy IDENT biometric database

DHS currently collects a lot of data. Its legacy IDENT fingerprint database contains information on 220-million unique individuals and processes 350,000 fingerprint transactions every day. This is an exponential increase from 20 years ago when IDENT only contained information on 1.8-million people. Between IDENT and other DHS-managed databases, the agency manages over 10-billion biographic records and adds 10-15 million more each week.

DHS slide showing breadth of DHS biometric and biographic data

DHS’s new HART database will allow the agency to vastly expand the types of records it can collect and store. HART will support at least seven types of biometric identifiers, including face and voice data, DNA, scars and tattoos, and a blanket category for “other modalities.” It will also include biographic information, like name, date of birth, physical descriptors, country of origin, and government ID numbers. And it will include data we know to by highly subjective, including information collected from officer “encounters” with the public and information about people’s “relationship patterns.”

DHS slide showing expansion of its new HART biometric and biographic database

HART will Impinge on First Amendment Rights

DHS plans to include records in HART that will chill speech and deter people from associating with others.

DHS’s face recognition roll-out is especially concerning. The agency uses mobile biometric devices that can identify faces and capture face data in the field, allowing its ICE (immigration) and CBP (customs) officers to scan everyone with whom they come into contact, whether or not those people are suspected of any criminal activity or an immigration violation. DHS is also partnering with airlines and other third parties to collect face images from travelers entering and leaving the U.S. When combined with data from other government agencies, these troubling collection practices will allow DHS to build a database large enough to identify and track all people in public places, without their knowledge—not just in places the agency oversees, like airports, but anywhere there are cameras.

Police abuse of facial recognition technology is not a theoretical issue: it’s happening today. Law enforcement has already used face recognition on public streets and at political protests. During the protests surrounding the death of Freddie Gray in 2015, Baltimore Police ran social media photos against a face recognition database to identify protesters and arrest them. Recent Amazon promotional videos encourage police agencies to acquire that company’s face “Rekognition” capabilities and use them with body cameras and smart cameras to track people throughout cities. At least two U.S. cities are already using Rekognition.

DHS compounds face recognition’s threat to anonymity and free speech by planning to include “records related to the analysis of relationship patternsamong individuals.” We don’t know where DHS or its external partners will be getting these “relationship pattern” records, but they could come from social media profiles and posts, which the government plans to track by collecting social media user names from all foreign travelers entering the country.

Social media records, even if they are publicly available, can include highly personal and private information, and the fear that the government may be collecting and searching through this information may cause people to self-censor what they say online. The data collected also won’t be limited to information about foreign travelers—travelers’ social media records may include information on family members and friends who are U.S. citizens or lawful permanent residents, two groups protected explicitly by the Privacy Act. As the recent, repeated Facebook scandals are showing us, even when you think you have done everything you can to protect your own data, it could easily be disclosed without your control through the actions of your friends and contacts or Facebook itself.

DHS’s “relationship pattern” records will likely be misleading or inaccurate. DHS acknowledges that these records will include “non-obvious relationships.” However, if the relationships are “non-obvious,” one has to question whether they truly exist. Instead, DHS could be seeing connections among people that are based on nothing more than “liking” the same news article, using the same foreign words, or following the same organization on social media. This is highly problematic because records like these frequently inform officer decisions to stop, search, and arrest people.

DHS plans to include additional records in HART that could be based on or impact First Amendment protected speech and activity. Records will include “miscellaneous officer comment information” and “encounter data.” These types of information come from police interactions with civilians, and are often collected under extremely questionable legal circumstances. For example, ICE officers use mobile devices to collect biometric and biographic data from people they “encounter” in the field, including via unauthorized entry into people’s homes and Bible study groups, and in public places where people congregate with other members of their community, such as on soccer fields, in community centers, and on buses. “Encounters” like these, whether they are conducted by ICE or by state or local police, are frequently not based on individualized suspicion that a civilian has done anything wrong, but that doesn’t prevent the officer from stockpiling any information obtained from the civilian during the encounter.

Finally, DHS relies on data from gang databases (its own and those from states), which often contain unsubstantiated data concerning people’s status and associations and are notoriously inaccurate. DHS has even fabricated gang status as an excuse to deport people.

HART Will Include Inaccurate Data and Will Share that Data with Other Agencies

DHS is not taking necessary steps with its new HART database to determine whether its own data and the data collected from its external partners are sufficiently accurate to prevent innocent people from being identified as criminal suspects, immigration law violators, or terrorists.

DHS has stated that it intends to rely on face recognition to identify data subjects across a variety of its mission areas, and “face matching” is one of the first components of the HART database to be built out. However, face recognition frequently is an inaccurate and unreliable biometric identifier. DHS’s tests of its own systems found significantly high levels of inaccuracy—the systems falsely rejected as many as 1 in 25 travelers. As a Georgetown report recently noted, “DHS’ error-prone face scanning system could cause 1,632 passengers to be wrongfully delayed or denied boarding every day at New York’s John F. Kennedy (JFK) International Airport alone.”

DHS’s external partners are also employing face recognition systems with high rates of inaccuracy. For example, FBI has admitted that its Next Generation Identification database “may not be sufficiently reliable to accurately locate other photos of the same identity, resulting in an increased percentage of misidentifications.” Potential foreign partners such as police departments in the United Kingdom use face recognition systems with false positive rates as high as a 98%—meaning that for every 100 people identified as suspects, 98 in fact were not suspects.

DHS Slide Showing Partner Agencies

People of color and immigrants will shoulder much more of the burden of these misidentifications. For example, people of color are disproportionately represented in criminal and immigration databases, due to the unfair legacy of discrimination in our criminal justice and immigration systems. Moreover, FBI and MIT research has shown that current face recognition systems misidentify people of color and women at higher rates than whites and men, and the number of mistaken IDs increases for people with darker skin tones. False positives represent real people who may erroneously become suspects in a law enforcement or immigration investigation. This is true even if a face recognition system offers several results for a search instead of one; each of the people identified could be detained or brought in for questioning, even if there is nothing else linking them to a crime or violation.

In addition to accuracy problems inherent in face recognition, DHS’s own immigration data has also been shown to be unacceptably inaccurate. A 2005 Migration Policy Institute study analyzing records obtained through FOIA found “42% of NCIC immigration hits in response to police queries were ‘false positives’ where DHS was unable to confirm that the individual was an actual immigration violator.” A 2011 study of DHS’s Secure Communities program found approximately 3,600 United States citizens were improperly caught up in the program due to incorrect immigration records. As these inaccurate records are propagated throughout DHS’s partner agencies’ systems, it will become impossible to determine the source of the inaccuracy and correct the data.

HART Is Fatally Flawed and Must Be Stopped

DHS’s plans for future data collection and use should make us all very worried. For example, despite pushback from EFF, Georgetown, ACLU, and others, DHS believes it’s legally authorized to collect and retain face data from millions of U.S. citizens traveling internationally. However, as Georgetown’s Center on Privacy and Technology notes, Congress has never authorized face scans of American citizens.

Despite this, DHS plans to roll out its face recognition program to every international flight in the country within the next four years. DHS has stated “the only way for an individual to ensure he or she is not subject to collection of biometric information when traveling internationally is to refrain from traveling.”

This is just the tip of the iceberg. CBP Commissioner Kevin McAleenan has stated CBP wants to be able to use biometrics to “confirm the identity of travelers at any point in their travel,” not just at entry to or exit from the United States. This includes creating a “biometric pathway” to track all travelers through airports, from check-in, through security, into airport lounges and shops, and onto flights. Given CBP’s recent partnerships with airlines and plans to collect social media credentials, this could also mean CBP plans to track travelers from the moment they begin their internet travel research. Several Congress members have introduced legislation to legitimize some of these plans.

Congress has expressed concerns with DHS’s biometric programs. Senators Edward Markey and Mike Lee, in a recent letter addressed to the agency, stated, “[w]e are concerned that the use of the program on U.S. citizens remains facially unauthorized[.] . . . We request that DHS stop the expansion of this program and provide Congress with its explicit statutory authority to use and expand a biometric exit program on U.S. citizens.” The senators have urged DHS to propose a rulemaking to clarify its plans for biometric exit. Congress also withheld funds last year from DHS’s Office of Biometric Identity Management.

DHS’s Inspector General criticized the agency last year for failure to properly train its personnel on how biometric systems worked and noted that the agency’s reliance on third parties to verify travelers leaving the country “occasionally provided false departure or arrival status on visitors.” The OIG is again investigating the biometric exit program this year and plans to “assess whether biometric data collected at pilot locations has improved DHS’s ability to verify departures.” The Government Accountability Office has also looked into the agency’s programs, criticizing the reliability of DHS’s data and the agency’s failure to evaluate whether a program that collects biometrics from all travelers leaving the country was even feasible.

However, these actions are not enough. DHS needs to end its plans to use its HART database to collect even more biometric and biographic information about U.S. citizens and foreigners. This system poses a very real threat to First Amendment-protected activities. Further, DHS has a well-documented history of poor data management, and face recognition has a high rate of misidentifications. Congress must step in with more oversight and act now to put the brakes on DHS’s broad expansion of data collection.

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Featured image is from EFF

President-elect Joe Biden’s new COVID relief plan does not adopt existing Democratic legislation to expand government sponsored medical coverage nor does it propose a promised public health insurance option. Instead, it adopts proposals from health insurance lobbying groups’ recent letter to lawmakers demanding lucrative new subsidies for insurance companies, at a moment when those corporations have recorded record profits as millions lose coverage and many face claims denials.

Those initiatives — which could further boost insurers’ skyrocketing profits — were recently recommended in a letter to lawmakers from America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP) and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, two insurance lobby groups in Washington that have opposed the expansion of government-sponsored health care programs.

A few days after the letter was sent, AHIP said that “health insurance providers are eager to assist the Biden health team.”

Biden’s inaugural committee has received donations from at least two major health insurers, Anthem and Centene, which both offer plans on state marketplace exchanges. Centene’s CEO bundled donations for Biden’s presidential campaign, and Biden’s first major campaign fundraiser was headlined by Independence Blue Cross’s CEO.

During the 2020 primary campaign, Biden repeatedly demonized Medicare for All legislation offered by Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Sen. Bernie Sanders, questioning how the country would pay for it and proposing a public health insurance option people can buy into instead. Democrats previously considered creating a public option during ACA negotiations a decade ago — AHIP secretly bankrolled a successful $100 million advocacy campaign to kill it.

While Medicare for All could actually save the country up to $650 billion annually, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, Biden is now proposing some of the most costly and inefficient ways to expand health insurance coverage. The moves could still leave people exposed to substantial out-of-pocket costs — from deductibles, copays, and coinsurance — that act as barriers to care.

Nightmare Deductibles And Widespread Claim Denials

Pushing people onto ACA plans and subsidizing COBRA coverage would be expensive — but not necessarily popular.

Health care coverage purchased through the ACA marketplace costs 83 percent more than Medicaid coverage, and ACA plans leave patients with ten times the amount of out-of-pocket costs, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The researchers concluded that marketplace plans cost so much more than Medicaid because private insurers pay “higher prices for the same services.” Hospitals often bill people with employer health insurance plans, which are maintained under COBRA, more than twice as much as those with Medicare or Medicaid.

The Biden proposal does include a measure to slightly lower the percentage of Americans’ annual incomes that insurers can collect through premiums — from a maximum of 9.86 percent to 8.5 percent. Altogether, the Biden transition says its plan “would reduce premiums for more than ten million people and reduce the ranks of the uninsured by millions more.”

The ACA marketplace was a centerpiece of Democrats’ 2010 health care reform law, but only a small slice of Americans are actually buying insurance plans this way now — often people who are self-employed, independent contractors, or gig workers. The ACA exchanges are only currently “a miniscule part of the health insurance system,” the People’s Policy Project wrote last month.

While the marketplace was billed as allowing people to shop for health insurances, in reality the state exchanges offer few choices, and most are expensive. The average lowest-cost premium for bronze-level plans is $321 this year, though the numbers vary widely by state.

The premiums are pricy, but an even bigger issue is the nightmarish deductibles people with ACA plans are expected to pay before their insurance company actually starts footing their medical bills. The average bronze plan deductible on the individual market was nearly $5,900 in 2019.

Deductibles are lower on silver and gold-tier plans, but the average lowest-cost monthly premiums this year are $436 for silver plans and $482 for gold.

Poorer enrollees may qualify for subsidized premiums or cost-sharing reductions limiting their maximum out-of-pocket expenses — but those reduced out-of-pocket maximums are still substantial.

Making matters worse, health insurers deny nearly one in five claims for in-network care by patients with ACA plans, according to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation for 2017. For some insurers, about 40 percent of claims are rejected.

Moving the uninsured into these plans would be a massively expensive way to expand coverage — and if insurers are still allowed to impose huge out-of-pocket costs and deny claims with regularity, it may not help people much at all.

Backing Away From A Public Option

During the 2020 campaign, a health care industry front group called the Partnership for America’s Health Care Future (PAHCF), spent $4.5 million on advertisements attacking Medicare for All. The group launched a late wave of ads in South Carolina — where Biden’s strong performance helped propel him to victories around the country.

PAHCF’s tax return shows it is steered by executives from AHIP and lobbying groups for pharmaceutical companies and investor-owned hospitals. The industry group raised more than $55 million in 2019, and it has made clear that it would fight against a federal public option plan, just as AHIP did in 2009 and 2010. It also spent millions of dollars in 2020 to block a state level public option in Colorado.

Biden consistently campaigned in support of a public health insurance option, and after the primary, a joint task force made up of Biden and Sanders allies negotiated a fairly robust public option plan.

“The public option will provide at least one plan choice without deductibles, will be administered by the traditional Medicare program, not private companies, and will cover all primary care without any copayments and control costs for other treatments by negotiating prices with doctors and hospitals, just like Medicare does on behalf of older people,” the task force wrote.

The Democratic National Committee’s 2020 platform included a similar pledge: “Democrats will also make available on the marketplace a public option administered through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) which includes a platinum-level choice, with low fees and no deductibles. Low-income Americans will be automatically enrolled in the public option at zero cost to them, though they may choose to opt out at any time.”

Now, on the eve of his presidency, Biden is proposing a much more conservative health insurance expansion plan proposed by the health insurance industry. If enacted, the plan could head off any talk in Washington of a public option plan down the road.

There are many other options available. Democratic lawmakers could choose to rally around existing legislation to enact an emergency Medicare for All program, or they could press for a public option, as the party and its incoming president promised.

Biden could use his executive authority to expand Medicare during the pandemic, using emergency provisions in the Affordable Care Act. Democrats could also seek to expand Medicaid to cover more people.

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Early in 2012, I started having debilitating cognitive lapses, pressure headaches, nausea and worse when around wireless and electronic devices. 

That winter and spring, I’d put in long hours, drafting an eco-themed novel, writing for a hyperlocal news blog and starting to update a climate series I’d done for the site five years before.

But my worsening symptoms felt more extreme than simply too-much-screen-time fatigue. By late May, I could not sit down at any keyboard without losing my ability to work within minutes.

“What changed before this began?” one doctor asked me. As we explored the question, technology kept coming up.

Not only had I logged extra computer time in recent months, but a new community-wide wireless internet service had started nearby. My symptoms consistently worsened within what I later learned was the range of that service. The 12-mile trips from my country home into town, where this new provider and others had transmitters, often left me so impaired it took days to recover.

Was it possible higher levels of wireless radiation had crashed my health?

My search for answers led me deep into a topic that has expanding relevance for the environmental beat in the current COVID-19 era.

Recent lockdowns and more time online — plus the push for rapid expansion of 5G infrastructure, now touted for economic recovery (see sidebar) — are increasing our exposures to non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation (EMR, aka electromagnetic fields or EMF). This includes the radiofrequency radiation, or RFR, emitted by wireless devices.

Are these exposures safe? That’s hotly debated, so you’ll find plenty of story potential at the intersection of wireless tech, health and environment.

Plus, Project Censored — which since 1976 has publicized important news stories missed by mainstream media — says the health risks of wireless technologies are underreported. The topic has made the group’s annual list of Top 25 Censored Stories in 2012-13, 2017-18 and 2018-19.

The safety debate

Arguments over these health risks center on whether RFR, which includes microwave frequencies, does much or any harm when below intensities that heat tissue.

Those who say that low-intensity RFR poses little risk include the U.S. Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, or FDA, the Institute of Electrical  and Electronics Engineers, the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection and the wireless industry.

Accordingly, safety standards and guidelines in the United States and many other locations are based on avoiding RFR’s tissue-heating effects.

Those concerned about this approach say thousands of studies — such as research cited by the BioInitiative Report, Physicians for Safe Technology, Americans for Responsible Technology, Understanding EMFs, Electromagnetic Radiation Safety and Environmental Health Trust — conclude that RFR can hurt us at levels well below those microwave ovens used for cooking.

[DISCLOSURE: In October 2019, the author became one of four directors of a small family foundation whose donations include some to charities which research and/or educate the public about wireless radiation health risks, among them: Environmental Health Trust, the Golomb Research Group at University of California-San Diego and others not mentioned in this story.]

The non-thermal biological effects linked to RFR by these studies include increased cancer risk, DNA damage, sperm degradation and more.

The International EMF Scientist Appeal says these effects can occur at intensities of RFR considered safe by “most international and national guidelines.” The appeal, now signed by more than 250 scientists from more than 40 countries, asks the United Nations, its sub-organizations including the World Health Organization, or WHO, and its member nations for greater public health protection from EMF exposure.

Echoing those concerns, a 2018 Lancet Planetary Health article reported that, of 2,266 studies evaluated, 1,546 “demonstrated significant biological or health effects associated with exposure” — both acute and chronic — to anthropogenic EMR, including RFR.

In contrast, the wireless industry says “the overall balance” of RFR science shows little risk, as Mark Hertsgaard and Mark Dowie wrote in 2018 in The Nation. Their article also reported that when industry-funded research is excluded, larger proportions of studies show low-intensity RFR can cause harm.

Hertsgaard and Dowie described an analysis by Henry Lai, a bioengineering professor emeritus at the University of Washington who showed that while 67 percent of independently-funded studies found biological effects from cellphone radiation, just 28 percent of industry-funded studies did the same. A 2007 analysis in Environmental Health Perspectives replicated Lai’s findings.

This sort of published science has had limited influence on public policy, especially since passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. This law bars states and localities from regulating wireless facilities based on RFR-related environmental concerns. Subsequent legal rulings determined that this includes concerns about RFR’s health risks.

Thus, no wireless infrastructure policies can be based on RFR research showing non-thermal health effects except at the federal level, mainly through the FCC.

Against this backdrop — and sometimes obscured by special-interest spin or tales of conspiracy — several issues are playing out, offering multiple angles for stories.

Cancer: Can wireless radiation increase the risk?

There’s “clear evidence” for rare cancers called schwannomas of the heart, concludes a 2018 paper by the U.S. National Toxicology Program, or NTP, and “some evidence” it’s a yes for malignant gliomas of the brain.

Although aspects of the NTP’s rodent study have been debated by scientists and regulators, Italy’s Ramazzini Institute has corroborated the NTP findings. Both long-term studies show “an increase in the incidence of tumors of the brain and heart in RFR-exposed Sprague-Dawley rats,” the Ramazzini study says.

Despite the NTP findings, the FDA — which initially called for the study — responded with a statement affirming the acceptability of current cell phone safety standards. Uncertainty remains about possible responses from other agencies now planning to review RFR’s carcinogenicity, including the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, or IARC.

As early as 2011, enough research had linked RFR to cancer so that IARC listed it as “possibly carcinogenicto humans.” Other agencies and scientific organizations have issued similar cautions. Now, some scientists want IARC to step up its RFR designation to “probable carcinogen” or definite “carcinogen.” IARC has prioritized this issue for consideration in the near future.

Meantime, wireless cancer risk studies continue to accumulate. One example is a meta-analysispublished November 2, 2020 in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. This study found that “cell phone use with cumulative call time more than 1,000 hours significantly increased the risk of tumors.” It noted that 1,000 hours corresponds to roughly 17 minutes a day for 10 years.

Regulators — including the FCC — continue to argue that existing wireless safety guidelines are adequate. But the issue is going before federal judges. Pending in court are lawsuits claiming people’s tumors came from cell phone use, as well as lawsuits challenging FCC safety regulations.

On another regulatory front, should consumers have the “right to know” of possible wireless cancer risks — for instance, via point-of-sale notices as mandated until recently in Berkeley, California? The city’s test-case ordinance required retailers to post warnings recommending that customers heed safety instructions required in phone manuals by the FCC but rarely read. These include the typically half-inch distance users should keep cell phones away from the body to meet exposure guidelines (keeping live phones in bras or pockets, for instance, does not generally do so).

Though the wireless industry sued Berkeley shortly after the 2015 passage of its ordinance, early rulings sided with the city, and included industry losses (subscription required) in the U.S. Supreme Court. But as Bob Egelko reported (subscription required) in the San Francisco Chronicle, a June 2020 court filing by the FCC led a federal district judge to rule in September that Berkeley’s ordinance interfered with federal oversight of the cellphone industry.

The city will leave its law unenforced for now. According to Egelko, an attorney representing Berkeley said the ordinance “remains on the books awaiting a better FCC.” This story might resurface early this year.

What about other health effects?

Numerous studies link low-intensity RFR exposures with various biological impacts, including heart and circulatory problems, neurological disorders, immune system changes, reduced fertility, blood-brain barrier leakage, sleep disruption, memory impairment and more.

A 2015 review article in Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine explored one explanation for this variety of potential effects: the “significant activation” by low-intensity RFR of “key pathways generating reactive oxygen species” — in other words, generation of free radicals which can build up in biological tissues to create oxidative stress and related effects such as DNA damage.

Effects of this type were documented in 93 of the 100 human tissue, animal and plant studies that the article examined. The researchers write that this could explain “a range of biological/health effects of low-intensity RFR” and give this type of environmental exposure “a wide pathogenic potential.”

Children and pregnant women might be particularly vulnerable to such effects. Imaging in human head models like that done in a 2018 study published in Environmental Research has shown that children’s thinner skulls allow more RFR penetration of their brains. This has raised concerns about WiFi in schools, as well as the additional screen time required by pandemic-era digital schooling.

What happened to me in 2012 is called electromagnetic hypersensitivity, or EHS, which is also known as electrosensitivity. It is considered an “idiopathic environmental illness” by the WHO and is not included as a separate condition in that agency’s International Classification of Diseases.

A recent edition of Physician’s Weekly calls EHS a “clinical syndrome characterized by … a wide spectrum of non-specific multiple organ symptoms.” Headaches, fatigue, insomnia and cognitive impairments are most common but a variety of other symptoms from heart arrhythmias to nausea to tinnitus are also reported, and can range from mild to disabling.

Although some have suggested EHS is psychogenic, research is accumulating that concludes that it is not. Dr. Beatrice Golomb, who studies the condition, has stated that “[EHS] symptoms arise from physiological injury.” [Editor’s Note: See disclosure above.]

A 2020 paper by Dominique Belpomme and Philippe Irigaray lists EHS biomarkers — including oxidative stress by-products in blood samples and scan-detected blood-flow changes in the brain — and asks that EHS now be included as a separate condition in the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases.

Surveys of countries from Finland to Taiwan have estimated that EHS affects from 0.7% to 13.3% of studied populations. Noting an upward trend, a 2006 letter to Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine by scientists Örjan Hallberg and Gerd Oberfeld asked, “Will we all become electrosensitive?” Already, write Belpomme and Irigaray, “millions of people may in fact be affected by EHS worldwide.”

How might wireless radiation affect nature?

Researchers have reported that birds and bees lose their navigational ability near cell towers, while treessport damaged leaves and foliage die-off. Studies also suggest that RFR might contribute to bird population declines, bee colony collapse disorder and recent dramatic drops in insect numbers.

A 2013 review of 113 plant and animal studies catalogs these and other findings on RFR’s impacts. So does Dr. Cindy Russell of Physicians for Safe Technology in her article, “Wireless Silent Spring,” which draws parallels between toxic chemicals and EMR.

Such impacts concerned the U.S. Department of the Interiorin 2014, when it wrote to the FCC that wireless safety guidelines did not adequately protect wildlife. But now, within Interior, the National Park Service is expanding wireless facilities, writes Christopher Ketcham — including in the Grand Tetons, as reported by Jimmy Tobias (who conducted his investigation with funding from the Society of Environmental Journalists’ Fund for Environmental Journalism).

These articles hint at openings for more media coverage of wireless tech’s effects on nature. Study findings, too, raise opportunities for more reporting. Just how serious are the effects of RFR on flora and fauna? How might they impact various species in combination with factors such as habitat loss, chemical pollution or climate change?

More reporting issues and angles

• Wireless from space: Recent and proposed satellite launches will vastly expand wireless services from space. Astronomers complain these satellites obscure the night sky; others warn of potential health effects. What might be the cumulative impact of 50,000-plus wireless-from-space satellites and their transmitting/receiving equipment on Earth?
• 5G and forecasts: 5G has raised concerns beyond health — security, privacy and the integrity of weather forecasting among them. Columbia Journalism Review recently covered meteorologists’worries. As 5G develops, will it impair collection of accurate water vapor data, as they fear, and compromise weather and climate forecasts?
• Misleading media: Journalists can do a better job drilling down to the facts on wireless radiation. Misleading media reports are all over the map. Recent stories with headlines like “5G networks have few health impacts, study finds,” covered research that examined one 5G wavelength but did not include mm waves. Conversely, conspiracy theory stories alleging 5G horrors are overshadowing “real 5G issues,” according to Investigate Europe, a nonprofit cross-border team of European journalists based in Germany.
• Our technological footprint: The internet’s energy and ecological footprint is already large. How much bigger might the demand for mobile wireless connectivity make energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions and other impacts on planetary health?
• Wary insurers: The insurance industry was early among businesses to recognize climate change risks. Is its approach to wireless tech similar? Insurance policies class EMF as a “pollutant” and don’t offer product liability coverage for devices. A related paper by Michigan Technological University Professor Joshua Pearce recognizes potential wireless liability risks, advising that cell towers be sited away from schools and hospitals due to growing evidence of health effects.
• Environmental justice: Some science suggests EMR and toxic chemicals, including metals, can have synergistic health impacts. Since higher toxic exposures often occur in low-income areas, tribal communities and communities of color, does placing wireless transmitters in those locations — especially if used in place of fiber to close the digital divide — constitute an environmental justice issue?
• Smart meters: “Smart” utility meters, which often transmit data using RFR, continue to elicit health complaints. Are you covering any? A 2011 SEJ TipSheet written by the late environmental journalist Robert Weinhold provides relevant background.
• Medical EMR assessments: The non-specific symptoms sometimes attributed to EMR exposures — such as headache or fatigue — led the American Academy of Environmental Medicineto suggest in 2012 that doctors routinely ask patients about their electromagnetic environments. How many doctors do so? How much might they overlook this or other environmental factors that could contribute to illness?
• Safer tech R&D: Is there potential for safer tech? Is your nearest university engineering department doing any feature-worthy research along these lines? In the last section of his article, “Wireless Wake-Up Call: A New Paradigm in EMF Science,” engineer Jeromy Johnson covers areas of safer tech research and development — possible starting points for interview questions or background research.
• Home improvements: If we don’t use wireless, what then? Stories about creating lower-RFR homes with cabled and corded alternatives might find a bigger audience among the pandemic period’s homebound populace.

By the way, journalist Louis Slesin of Microwave News is an ongoing source of story ideas and insights into EMR science and policy. Another useful source is Joel Moskowitz, director of U.C. Berkeley’s Center for Family and Community Health, whose Electromagnetic Radiation Safety blog regularly posts summaries of and links to recent studies on EMR and health.

Some final words

I’m still electrosensitized, although not nearly as debilitated as in the first years after my health crashed. Avoiding RFR, I’ve found, has been the most effective way to avoid symptoms and maintain my health (see sidebar for how you can reduce your own potential risks). I don’t own a cell phone or anything wireless, and no longer use computers, at least not directly (helpful others typed up this story).

In the documentary Full Signal, Swedish EMR scientist Olle Johansson said that those of us with EHS might be “the lucky ones:” to avoid difficult symptoms, we often radically reduce our EMR exposure, thus cutting our potential risk of future — perhaps worse — health consequences.

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Long-time SEJ member Katie Alvord is an award-winning freelance writer whose work has appeared in a range of publications. She received the 2007 AAAS Science Journalism Award for Excellence in Online Reporting, for writing a series on Lake Superior Basin climate change. She has also worked with and written for libraries, government agencies and nonprofit groups, and is the author of “Divorce Your Car!” Marjorie Alvord, Katie’s sister, contributed research, computerization and editorial material for this story.

Featured image is by Alistair McIntyre, Pixabay

National environmental groups filed a lawsuit today in the Southern District of New York challenging the Trump administration’s reinterpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which eliminated longstanding, vital protections for more than 1,000 species of waterfowl, raptors and songbirds.

Under the Trump administration’s revised interpretation, the Act’s protections will apply only to activities that are specifically intended to kill birds. So-called “incidental” take, regardless of its impact on bird populations or how foreseeable that impact is — such as letting birds drown in uncovered oil pits — is rendered immune from enforcement under the law.

“Trump’s tenure has been a reign of terror for the environment, and his cruel insistence on destroying this century-old law is a testament to his total disregard for wildlife,” said Noah Greenwald, endangered species director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The revised rule is nothing but a gift to oil companies and other polluters, allowing them to kill birds without legal consequence. The courts rightfully stopped this farce once before, and we hope this latest suit again fully restores legal protection to birds that desperately need it.”

Had the Trump administration’s policy been in place at the time of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, British Petroleum would have avoided paying more than $100 million in fines to support wetland and migratory bird conservation to compensate for more than a million birds the accident was estimated to have killed.

“Trump’s rollback of migratory bird protections is an appalling and inexcusable give-away to corporate polluters who don’t want to face any consequences for killing birds,” said Bonnie Rice, Sierra Club’s endangered species representative. “Two-thirds of North America’s birds are imperiled by climate change. More than three billion birds have vanished since 1970. We need more protections, not less, in the face of this massive loss and the current human-caused extinction crisis.”

“We are back in the courts to fight the Trump administration’s callous decision to eliminate protections for migratory birds,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. “Even though a federal court already ruled that the administration’s reinterpretation of the MBTA was illegal, it pushed forward with its rulemaking to cement this destructive policy into law. We are here to overturn this terrible decision once and for all.”

Background

The Trump administration began its assault on the Migratory Bird Treaty Act in December 2017 with a legal opinion authored by Daniel Jorjani, the solicitor of the Department of the Interior and a former Koch Industries employee. This opinion has already allowed birds deaths across the country that could have easily been avoided. In May 2018 the Center and allies filed suit in the Southern District of New York to challenge the proposed revision, resulting in a blistering court decision overturning the opinion.

Flouting the court ruling invalidating the basis for the reinterpretation, the Trump administration moved ahead with finalizing the rule on Jan. 4, along with a flurry of other last-minute actions aimed at eviscerating an array of essential environmental laws and regulations.

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The following are excerpts of an important article published by the British Medical Journal. The author Dr Peter Doshi is associate editor of The BMJ.

To read the complete BMJ article click here

In the United States, all eyes are on Pfizer and Moderna. The topline efficacy results from their experimental covid-19 vaccine trials are astounding at first glance. Pfizer says it recorded 170 covid-19 cases (in 44,000 volunteers), with a remarkable split: 162 in the placebo group versus 8 in the vaccine group. Meanwhile Moderna says 95 of 30,000 volunteers in its ongoing trial got covid-19: 90 on placebo versus 5 receiving the vaccine, leading both companies to claim around 95% efficacy.

Let’s put this in perspective.

First, a relative risk reduction is being reported, not absolute risk reduction, which appears to be less than 1%.

Second, these results refer to the trials’ primary endpoint of covid-19 of essentially any severity, and importantly not the vaccine’s ability to save lives, nor the ability to prevent infection, nor the efficacy in important subgroups (e.g. frail elderly). Those still remain unknown.

Third, these results reflect a time point relatively soon after vaccination, and we know nothing about vaccine performance at 3, 6, or 12 months, so cannot compare these efficacy numbers against other vaccines like influenza vaccines (which are judged over a season).

Fourth, children, adolescents, and immunocompromised individuals were largely excluded from the trials, so we still lack any data on these important populations.

I previously argued that the trials are studying the wrong endpoint, and for an urgent need to correct course and study more important endpoints like prevention of severe disease and transmission in high risk people. Yet, despite the existence of regulatory mechanisms for ensuring vaccine access while keeping the authorization bar high (which would allow placebo-controlled trials to continue long enough to answer the important question), it’s hard to avoid the impression that sponsors are claiming victory and wrapping up their trials (Pfizer has already sent trial participants a letter discussing “crossing over” from placebo to vaccine), and the FDA will now be under enormous pressure to rapidly authorize the vaccines.

But as conversation shifts to vaccine distribution, let’s not lose sight of the evidence. Independent scrutiny of the underlying trial data will increase trust and credibility of the results. There also might be important limitations to the trial findings we need to be aware of.

Most crucially, we need data-driven assurances that the studies were not inadvertently unblinded, by which I mean investigators or volunteers could make reasonable guesses as to which group they were in.

Blinding is most important when measuring subjective endpoints like symptomatic covid-19, and differences in post-injection side-effects between vaccine and placebo might have allowed for educated guessing. Past placebo-controlled trials of influenza vaccine were not able to fully maintain blinding of vaccine status, and the recent “half dose” mishap in the Oxford covid-19 vaccine trial was apparently only noticed because of milder-than-expected side-effects. (And that is just one of many concerns with the Oxford trial.)

…

Neither Moderna nor Pfizer have released any samples of written materials provided to patients, so it is unclear what, if any, instructions patients were given regarding the use of medicines to treat side effects following vaccination, but the informed consent form for Johnson and Johnson’s vaccine trial provides such a recommendation:

“Following administration of Ad26.COV2.S, fever, muscle aches and headache appear to be more common in younger adults and can be severe. For this reason, we recommend you take a fever reducer or pain reliever if symptoms appear after receiving the vaccination, or upon your study doctor’s recommendation.”

There may be much more complexity to the “95% effective” announcement than meets the eye—or perhaps not. Only full transparency and rigorous scrutiny of the data will allow for informed decision making. The data must be made public.

To read the complete BMJ article click here

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Peter Doshi is associate editor of The BMJ.

Featured image source

Was liegt näher, als sich an den Weisheiten großer europäischer Dichter und Denker wie Goethe, Schiller, Rolland oder Camus zu erfreuen und Kraft daraus zu schöpfen. Sind wir nicht alle – jeder einzelne! – dringend gefordert, uns nicht weiter zu blinden Dienern korrupter Regierungen im Sold einer verbrecherischen Milliardärs-Clique zu erniedrigen, sondern unserem persönlichen Gewissen zu folgen, unser Recht auf individuellen und kollektiven Widerstand wahrzunehmen und gegen sie aufzustehen? Dieser Akt der Empörung schließt – oft abgesondert von der trägen Herde – zivilen Ungehorsam und weitere gewaltfreie individuelle und gemeinschaftliche Handlungen mit ein. Der Mensch kommt dabei zu sich selbst. Romain Rolland warnte in einer ähnlich finsteren Zeit wie der heutigen in seinem Antikriegs-Roman „Clerambeault“ vor der Gefahr des Versinkens der Einzelseele im Abgrund der Massenseele. (1) Freie Seelen und starke Charaktere müssten verblendeten Regierungen und deren Strippenziehern im Hintergrund Schach bieten – aus Liebe zur Menschheit.

Der Worte sind genug gewechselt, …

In dem Goethes „Faust“ entliehenen Zitat-Fragment „Der Worte sind genug gewechselt,…“ wird dazu aufgerufen, den Worten auch Taten folgen zu lassen. Viele unerschrockene Aufklärer in den alternativen sozialen Medien haben uns ja unermüdlich darüber informiert,

• dass wir den Mut haben sollten, uns unseres eigenen Verstandes zu bedienen,
• dass man keinem Politiker die Macht übergeben dürfte,
• dass die geplante und in Teilen bereits umgesetzte „Neue Weltordnung“ der sogenannten Elite ein „Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit“ darstellt, das sie eines Tages vor einem neuen „Nürnberger Prozess“ zu verantworten hat,
• dass die Aufforderung zur sozialen Distanzierung und der Maulkorb-Zwang ebenfalls verborgene Ziele verfolgt,
• dass das Schüren irrationaler Ängste (wie zum Beispiel vor dem Tod durch einen Virus) ein bewährtes Disziplinierungs- und Herrschaftsmittel Regierender ist,
• dass die gleichgeschalteten und konzernabhängigen Lügen-Medien („Journaille“) dabei eine erbärmliche und unheilvolle Rolle spielen,
• dass man den unwillkürlichen Reflex des absoluten geistigen Gehorsams aufgeben kann und
• dass man sich durch das Auflehnen gegen die illegal verordneten Einschränkungen der persönlichen Freiheiten wieder als Mensch fühlt.

… lasst mich auch endlich Taten sehn!

Warum sollte es nicht auch den Bürgern unserer Generation gelingen, was jungen und älteren Männern und Frauen des deutschen Widerstands drei Generationen früher gelang: Aufstehen gegen schreiendes Unrecht und Gesetzlosigkeit. Nein, eine Grenze hat Tyrannenmacht! (Schiller) Und die Kraft dafür kommt nicht aus körperlichen Fähigkeiten; sie entspringt einem unbeugsamen Willen. (Gandhi). Nicht an der Menschheit verzweifeln! Der Mensch ist gut. Das Böse wird nicht siegen!

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel ist Erziehungswissenschaftler und Diplom-Psychologe.

Noten

[1] Reinbeck bei Hamburg (1988). Aus dem Französischen übersetzt von Stefan Zweig. Ersterscheinung 1920 im Pariser Verlag Ollendorff. Ursprünglicher Titel „Einer gegen alle“ (1917)

La portaerei Cavour, dopo essere stata ristrutturata nell’Arsenale militare di Taranto per imbarcare i caccia F-35B a decollo corto e atterraggio verticale, sta per salpare verso gli Stati uniti.

Lo ha annunciato l’attaché navale presso l’Ambasciata italiana a Washington, precisando che dalla metà di febbraio la portaerei sarà dispiegata nella base a Norfolk, in Virginia, per ottenere la qualifica che le permetterà di partecipare a «operazioni congiunte» con la Marina e il Corpo dei marines degli Stati uniti.

Si prepara così la partecipazione della nave ammiraglia della Marina italiana a missioni Nato sotto comando Usa in distanti teatri bellici.

Tutto ciò costa, sia in termini politici legando sempre più l’Italia alla strategia di guerra Usa/Nato, sia in termini economici.

La portaerei Cavour è costata 1,3 miliardi di euro; i 15 F-35B per la Marina costano 1,7 miliardi. Si aggiungono le spese operative: un giorno di navigazione della Cavour costa oltre 200 mila euro e un’ora di volo di un F-35 oltre 40 mila euro. Gli altri 15 F-35B acquistati dall’Italia vanno all’Aeronautica, insieme a 60 F-35A a capacità nucleare.

La portaerei Cavour © Marina Militare

C’è però un problema: nel 2019 è stata varata un’altra portaerei, la Trieste, che dovrà imbarcare un numero di caccia F-35B maggiore di quello della Cavour: essi dovranno essere acquistati con un costo complessivo ancora più alto.

Per dotarsi di questi e altri armamenti, l’Italia deve accrescere la spesa militare: i 26 miliardi di euro annui non bastano più, occorre passare ad almeno 36 miliardi annui come stabilito dalla Nato e ribadito dal neopresidente democratico Joe Biden.

Ma dove trovare i soldi in una situazione di crisi come quella attuale?

Ed ecco l’idea geniale, partorita dal Center for American Progress, uno dei più influenti think tank di Washington legato al Partito democratico: la Nato crei una propria banca per risolvere il «gap finanziario». In altre parole, una volta istituita la banca, i paesi dell’Alleanza che non hanno i fondi per accrescere la spesa militare al livello richiesto, li possono ricevere in prestito dalla stessa Nato attraverso la nuova istituzione finanziaria.

Nessun problema, quindi, per l’Italia: se non ha i 10 miliardi di euro da aggiungere ogni anno alla propria spesa militare, glieli presta la Banca Nato a un non precisato tasso di interesse.

L’Italia, però, accumulerebbe in tal modo un nuovo, crescente debito estero con un organismo controllato dagli Stati uniti, che detengono il comando della Nato.

Nel presentare il progetto, il think tank sottolinea che immediatamente «l’amministrazione Biden dovrà ripristinare l’impegno dell’America nei confronti della Nato e spingere l’Alleanza a rafforzarsi», in primo luogo per «difendere l’Europa dalla aggressione russa».

Da qui la necessità che «la Nato istituisca una propria banca per investire in capacità militari fondamentali».

Tra queste sicuramente gli F-35 della statunitense Lockheed Martin che, con gli altri colossi dell’industria bellica, sarebbe la principale beneficiaria della Banca Nato: ad esempio sarebbe la banca a finanziare l’acquisto di altri F-35B per la Marina italiana, pagando alla Lockheed Martin miliardi di dollari, che noi italiani dovremmo rimborsare con gli interessi sempre con denaro pubblico.

Oltre a questa, vi sono altre funzioni che la Banca Nato dovrebbe svolgere. «Investire in infrastrutture a duplice uso»: ponti che permettano in Europa il transito anche di pesanti mezzi corazzati da Ovest ad Est e reti 5G per uso anche militare. Fornire a paesi e regioni «una alternativa rispetto a quella di rivolgersi a banche di rivali della Nato, come Cina e Russia».

La Banca Nato avrebbe, in generale, la funzione di «accrescere la capacità dell’Alleanza di affrontare le sfide finanziarie del conflitto», poiché «qualsiasi significativo sforzo militare dipende dalla capacità economica e finanziaria».

Chiaro è il messaggio agli alleati europei: «Il finanziamento dell’Alleanza non può essere solo responsabilità americana, deve essere una responsabilità condivisa».

Questo, nelle linee essenziali, è il progetto della Banca Nato che, prima di essere presentato dal think tank di Washington, è stato vagliato da politici che andranno a ricoprire importanti incarichi nell’amministrazione Biden.

Manlio Dinucci

Russian anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny inexplicably decided to return to the same country that he claimed had unsuccessfully tried to kill him, curiously timing his trip to coincide with the immediate run-up to Biden’s inauguration in what some suspect is nothing more than a Hybrid War provocation to establish the “publicly plausible” pretext for the incoming president to intensify his country’s anti-Russian crusade following Navalny’s detainment in response to his probation violations.

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“In war, truth is the first casualty” (Aeschylus(1))

A Very Brief History of War Propaganda

Propaganda as a science really got under way during World War 1 (WW1). The British and the German governments both brainwashed their populations into believing that the other country was a demonic enemy that had to be defeated. The famous writer, Aldous Huxley, once wrote that: 

“The propagandist’s purpose is to make one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human”(2)

The war itself, and the propaganda that helped to create the war, has been described as an:

“extraordinary state accomplishment – mass enthusiasm at the prospect of a global brawl that otherwise would mystify those very masses, and that shattered most of those who actually took part in it.”(3)

Students of propaganda are usually aware that Germany’s propaganda minister in the 1930s and 40s, Goebbels, had a large propaganda library. He was very interested in the scientific approach to propaganda and he followed the research of early propaganda pioneers.

He used this to minimise criticism of German policy, whilst at the same time he carried out a campaign against the Jews which led to millions of them being killed.(4) However, propaganda by Britain and the US relating to these wars is discussed much less. We are encouraged to think that during WW1 and WW2, the British and US were ‘the good guys’, but this is an example of propaganda through re-writing history. In 1914 (beginning of WW1) and also in 1939 (beginning of WW2) Britain was the dominant imperial power in the world, and the US and France had their own colonial territories. This involved many invasions and occupations, and a great deal of mass murder, torture and rape. Germany wanted its own Empire, so both wars (sometimes described as a single war divided into 2 parts) were fights for imperial supremacy. None of these nations deserve the label ‘the good guys’ in either world war. They were all run by insane leaders who were prepared to slaughter millions of people for their own ends.(5)

There is further evidence of US and British criminality in those periods. In 1917, the Russian people overthrew their rulers (known as the Tsars) and withdrew from World War 1. Britain and the US then invaded Russia, in 1918, to (unsuccessfully) try to overthrow the new government. Similarly, after WW2, many Greek people wanted to govern themselves, but Britain and the US invaded Greece to (successfully) get the pre-war dictators back into power.(6) The Russians in WW1 and the Greeks in WW2 had initially fought on the same side as the US and Britain. The idea that Britain and the US were not the ‘good guys’ during that period is almost unmentionable in polite US and British society, and is almost never mentioned in the mainstream press.

Don’t Show The Reality of War – Censorship by Omission 

The most effective propaganda technique of all is to block discussion so thoroughly that almost no-one realises that there is an important topic not being talked-about. When the US invaded Panama in 1989, they finished the fighting before any reporters were even aware that there was an invasion taking place. When Ethiopia invaded Somalia in 2006, the US army fought, in secret, alongside the Ethiopians, so there was no discussion of it in the US or British press. Proxy warfare, where the US and Britain supply weapons to someone else, such as Saudi Arabia, to do the fighting allows the US and Britain to minimise scrutiny, and avoid challenges to the legality of their actions.

There are two other issues where the most effective propaganda is not talking about something. The first of these is not showing what war is really like for the people on the receiving end of British and US bombs. Bodies of men, women and children everywhere; people maimed or disabled for life; the ruined lives of people who have lost mothers, fathers, children or other relatives; the destruction of whole cities and, ultimately, whole nations.

The second is not engaging with the act of going to war as a monstrous crime. Where war crimes are discussed, the focus is on individual actions within war. There will occasionally be a discussion in the mainstream press about whether a war is illegal. But these discussions are often quite technical and use legal terminology, giving the impression that it’s a finely balanced debate, with strong arguments to say the war is legal. This is propaganda. Destroying a nation, or invading a country to overthrow the government, is never legal. It is the crime of aggressive war – one of the worst crimes that any group of people can commit.(7)

Similarly, there are other aspects of war that are rarely discussed by the press. There is an ongoing attempt to block proper investigation into the effects of depleted uranium (DU) used in modern ammunition. Thousands of tons have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan. The number of babies born with birth defects in these regions has increased significantly. The Italian government has announced that some of its soldiers have died from DU poisoning. Belgium has now banned DU weapons but so far the US and British governments have successfully avoided a proper investigation, despite the fact that some US Gulf war veterans are now disabled due to DU.(8) There is virtually no mention of this issue in the US and British media, and therefore no widespread public pressure to do anything about it.

Lie About Our Weapons and Death Tolls 

The videos we see during wartime of smart bombs precisely hitting their targets are another form of propaganda. They give us the impression that weapons are accurate and that civilians will be relatively unscathed. The government would like us to believe that more accurate weapons lead to fewer civilian casualties, but this is a myth. In order to minimise US casualties, their strategy is to use enormously destructive air power from long range, with an approach that has been described as “shoot first, ask questions later.”(9) They deliberately attack weddings and funerals. In practice, civilians are being slaughtered in huge numbers. The expression ‘collateral damage’ is also an example of propaganda. It is intended to give the impression that civilian deaths are accidental, when in fact US strategy guarantees that most deaths will be civilian. To confuse people over the scale of civilian deaths, the US now label every military-age man in a warzone as a combatant or a terrorist.(10)

Leaders repeatedly lie about the scale of casualties, although for changing reasons. Historically, they would exaggerate the number of enemy deaths to improve morale among their own soldiers and their civilian population. These days they understate the number of dead civilians in order to minimise objections to war. During discussions relating to casualty figures in Vietnam, a foreign office representative explained that it was important for every spokesperson to keep “stonewalling” so no one knew the true figures, which were in the millions.(11)

There has been a great deal of propaganda about the number of people killed in Iraq. A 2006 report in the medical journal, The Lancet, using the best research methods available, suggested that the number of deaths in Iraq was over 600,000. The best estimate of deaths by 2007 was over a million.(12) US and British politicians regularly appeared in the media trying to persuade the public that the true figure was much lower, but leaked reports show that their own experts believed the figures to be correct.(13) In 2007, Americans were asked their estimate of civilian deaths in Iraq. The average answer was under 10,000, a tiny fraction of the true figure.(14) Clearly, government and media propaganda is highly effective at making sure that ordinary people have little understanding of the true consequences of war. It was noted that the official figures were clearly absurd. If they had been correct then the death rate in the middle of a war zone would have been only half the death rate in US cities such as Detroit or Baltimore. In 2014 the US air force increased the scale of their bombing in Iraq and Syria, reducing some cities, such as Mosul, to ruins. The current death toll in Iraq is likely to be over 2 million,(15) but this figure is rarely mentioned in the mainstream.

The US Lies About Every War 

In many of the earlier posts we have seen examples of recent war propaganda. The use of exaggerated threats such as communism, terrorism, or weapons of mass destruction, or exaggerating atrocities to justify war. A detailed study of 25 US wars, from 1945 onwards, was carried out in 1992. The conclusion was that the US government lied about all of them.(16) The US military provides an endless stream of retired officers and specialists to fill airtime on TV channels whenever the US government wants to promote its wars. They are vetted beforehand to ensure that they will say the right things.

If the US decides to overthrow the leadership of another country, then almost everything that we hear in the mainstream news about that country contains elements of propaganda. A good example is the phrase ‘axis of evil’ that President Bush used in 2002 to describe Iraq, Iran and North Korea. There is nothing particularly ‘evil’ about these countries or their leaders. Their human rights records were no worse than many of the US’s allies, and they posed no military threat to the US or Britain. Presenting the enemy as evil is an extremely powerful form of propaganda.

Smearing Whistleblowers 

Propaganda is also used when whistleblowers and journalists expose war crimes. A standard technique is to deflect attention elsewhere by smearing the journalist or the whistleblower. They will say that the journalist has caused harm to others. No evidence will be presented. The immense harm caused by the war crimes is ignored. This was one of the techniques used to discredit Julian Assange and Wikileaks. The US government eventually admitted in court that they had no evidence of anyone ever being killed due to Wikileaks’ releases about US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where it is impossible to deny wrongdoing, the attention will be focused on lower-ranking individuals, so that the senior people who determine policy again escape scrutiny. This was the case with the torture at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where a small number of low-ranking soldiers were prosecuted, even though evidence emerged that the torture was US government policy.(17) Journalists have exposed serious crimes by US, British, Australian and New Zealand soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan. No senior people have been prosecuted, but whistleblowers have been prosecuted and imprisoned, and some journalists have been arrested.(18)

The Basic Principles of War Propaganda 

Having already written many of these posts on propaganda, I came across the writing of Anne Morelli, who wrote a book called “The basic Principles of War Propaganda” in 2001.(19) It has not been fully translated into English, but the ideas have been discussed. Morelli studied propaganda throughout the last century by all sides and came up with a summary that is described as the 10 principles of war propaganda:

1) We don’t want war, we are only defending ourselves

2) Our adversary is solely responsible for this war

3) Our adversary’s leader is inherently evil and resembles the devil

4) We are defending a noble cause, not our particular interests

5) The enemy is purposefully committing atrocities; if we are making mistakes this happens without intention

6) The enemy makes use of illegal weapons

7) We suffer few losses, the enemies losses are considerable

8) Recognised intellectuals and artists support our cause

9) Our cause is sacred

10) Whoever casts doubt on our propaganda helps the enemy and is a traitor

It is remarkable how consistently these principles have been used to justify recent US and British wars. The leaders of Iraq, Libya, and Syria, (Hussein, Gadaffi, and Assad) were all portrayed as evil. In Afghanistan, the Taliban were portrayed as evil. We were repeatedly told that they were committing atrocities or using illegal weapons, even whilst our governments and militaries were slaughtering millions of people and destroying whole nations. Critics of these wars have been demonized, particularly in relation to Syria. Whilst not every one of these principles applies to every US and British invasion, it provides a good framework for understanding how war propaganda works.

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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 fifteenth 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) Quote is usually attributed to Aeschylus, a Greek dramatist (525 – 456BC), but the dictionary of modern proverbs indicates that this attribution was not used before the 1980s, so the source is contested.

2) Aldous Huxley, The Olive Tree, 1937

3) Mark Crispin Miller, Introduction to Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 2004, p.11 (originally published in 1928)

4) Stauber and Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good For You, 1995, p.24 

5) Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The beginnings of World War II, the end of civilization, 2008

6) Ian Sinclair, ‘Retrieved from the memory hole: British intervention in Greece in the 1940s’, openDemocracy, 19 June 2017, at https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/retrieved-from-memory-hole-british-intervention-in-greece-in-1940s/

7) The closest we might have come to a situation where an invasion was justified would be when the Vietnamese army invaded Cambodia to overthrow the Genocidal dictatorship of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in January 1979. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodian_genocide

8) Christian Fraser, ‘Uranium ‘killing Italian Troops’’, BBC News, 10 Jan 2007, at http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6247401.stm

Willem Van den Panhuysen, ‘Belgium Bans Uranium Weapons and Armour’, Global Research, 23 March 2007, at https://www.globalresearch.ca/belgium-bans-uranium-weapons-and-armour/5167

Project Censored, ‘US/British Forces Continue Use of Depleted Uranium Weapons Despite Massive evidence of Negative Health Effects’, 2004 (updated 29 April 2010), at https://www.projectcensored.org/8-us-british-forces-continue-use-of-depleted-uranium-weapons-despite-negati/?doing_wp_cron=1591940256.1105339527130126953125

For more on depleted uranium, see International Coalition to Ban Uranium Weapons (ICBUW), at https://www.icbuw.eu/en/

9) https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pdf

10) Conor Friedersdorf, ‘Under Obama, men killed by drones are presumed to be terrorists’, The Atlantic, 29 May 2012, at https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/05/under-obama-men-killed-by-drones-are-presumed-to-be-terrorists/257749/

11) Mark Curtis, Unpeople, 2004, p.237 

12) Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S.Davies, ‘The staggering death toll in Iraq’, Salon, 19 Mar 2018, at https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-in-iraq_partner/

13) Owen Bennett-Jones, ‘Iraq death survey was robust’, BBC World Service, 26 March 2007 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/6495753.stm

14) Nancy Benac, cited in PSR, ‘Body Count: Casualty Figures after 10 years of the “War on Terror”’, Physicians for Social Responsibility, March 2015, at https://www.psr.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/05/body-count.pdf

15) Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S.Davies, ‘The staggering death toll in Iraq’, Salon, 19 March 2018, at https://www.salon.com/2018/03/19/the-staggering-death-toll-in-iraq_partner/ 

16) John Quigley, The Ruses for War, 1992 

17) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Ghraib_torture_and_prisoner_abuse

18) Nicky Hager, Other People’s Wars: New Zealand in Afghanistan, Iraq and the war on terror, 2011 

19) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Basic_Principles_of_War_Propaganda

US President Donald Trump can be considered guilty of many things, but he can’t be considered guilty of not attempting to preserve the fruits of his labor.

This can be seen in the maximum pressure campaign against Iran, his endless antagonism directed against China, the unstoppable crusade against the Nord Stream 2, and most recently, and one would say most notably – the premier product of his presidency: the US Space Force.

It is no secret that under the guidance of Trump and Co., the United States has advanced rapidly in terms of space exploration (move aside Elon Musk), and especially militarily.

The largest leap so far, is an Executive Presidential Order on promoting small modular nuclear reactors for Space Exploration (and National Defense). After all, the US was the first country to develop nuclear energy and use it, back in 1951 in Arco, Idaho.

Because the US Space Force plans to not only go to Space, but also reach the far reaches of the cosmos (possibly together with the “Galactic Federation”). It needs better energy, since solar power can’t always be used (you could go too far from the Sun, and who knows if other stars work in the same way, surely Trump doesn’t).

Nuclear reactors of up to 100 kilowatts may be needed to support human habitats, ISRU, other facilities, and rovers on both on the Moon and on Mars.

After all, just over a year ago the US Space Force got its first recruits, now called Guardians, and they’ve not even faced a lawsuit from ViacomCBS for ripping off the Star Trek logo, and from Disney for simply copying the name of the “Guardians of the Galaxy.”

These are only some of the successes – they also got their first deployment; it should be mentioned that it was off US soil – to Qatar, which is in the Middle East, not in Space. But why should that be a deterrent to Trump and his Space Force’s enthusiasm?

There’s really nothing new in space, and the race to get the upper hand in it. It’s been going on for years, and neither Neil Armstrong nor Yuri Gagarin put a pin in it.

In terms of militarization there have been concerns for a while, and all the leading powers have expressed their worries and have accused each other, more than once. The end of those empty accusations has come, however, and if nothing else, the US Space Force has lifted the arms race above the atmosphere.

It is unknown if Joe Biden and his administration will continue developing the Space Force and continue Trump’s legacy. Even if it does, it’s a significant question how it will do so.

Until then, however, other Middle Eastern countries (and potentially outer space at some point) should get ready, because Trump’s Space Force is coming to shake things up!

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Norway upped the number of deaths under investigation, from 23 last week to 33, while in Germany, health officials said they are investigating 10 deaths that occurred among elderly patients who received the COVID vaccine.

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China health experts say Norway and other countries should suspend the use of mRNA vaccines like those produced by Pfizer and Moderna, especially among the elderly, according to Global Times.

Norway health officials said last week they were investigating the deaths of 23 elderly people who died shortly after receiving the vaccine, and had confirmed 13 of those were directly related to the vaccine.

Today, Bloomberg reported that the number of deaths under investigation in Norway had risen to 33 and that all had occurred in people ranging from age 75 to 80. According to Bloomberg, Camilla Stoltenberg, head of the Norwegian Institute of Public Health, said at a press conference today:

“It is important to remember that about 45 people die every day in nursing homes in Norway, so it is not a given that this represents any excess mortality or that there is a causal connection.”

The Norwegian Medicines Agency previously told Bloomberg that all of the deaths occurred in people who received the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, which until Friday was the only COVID vaccine approved for use in Norway.

The Norwegian Institute of Public Health, which had originally prioritized the elderly for the vaccine, has since revised its advice to urge more caution when vaccinating the elderly, especially those with underlying conditions.

The institute told Bloomberg that “for those with the most severe frailty, even relatively mild vaccine side effects can have serious consequences. For those who have a very short remaining life span anyway, the benefit of the vaccine may be marginal or irrelevant.”

The Institute also admitted to Global Times that the clinical trials that resulted in emergency approval of the vaccine included “very few people over the age of 85,” but added “we assume that the side effects will largely be the same in the elderly as in those over 65 years of age.”

According to the Global Times, a Beijing-based immunologist who requested anonymity said the mRNA vaccines had not proven safe for large-scale use or for preventing infectious diseases. Noting that people over 80 have weaker immune systems, he said they should not receive the vaccine, but instead should take medicines to improve their immune systems.

Meanwhile, The BMJ and other news outlets reported last week that in Germany, the Paul Ehrlich Institute is investigating 10 deaths in people ranging in age from 79 to 93 who died shortly after receiving the COVID vaccine.

U.S. health officials continue to push COVID vaccinations in nursing homes, despite growing resistance among nursing home employees to take the vaccine.

So far, there’s no word of any investigation into the deaths of 29 elderly people at a nursing home in New York. According to a Jan. 9 news report from Syracuse.com, a single nursing home in upstate New York vaccinated 193 residents beginning on Dec. 22 and subsequently reported 24 deaths within the span of a couple of weeks.

The facility attributed the deaths to a COVID-19 “outbreak,” even though there had been no COVID-19 deaths in any nursing homes in the entire county “until the first three deaths … were reported Dec. 29.”

Florida health officials and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are investigating the death of a 56-year-old doctor who died of a rare autoimmune disease 15 days after getting the Pfizer vaccine. A Johns Hopkins scientist told the New York Times it was a “medical certainty” that the death was related to Pfizer’s vaccine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is investigating numerous severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis, in healthcare workers who received the vaccine.

Sunday night, California health officials called for a pause on the use of a huge batch of Moderna’s COVID vaccine due to its ”higher-than-usual number of possible allergic reactions.” As The Defender reported this morning, California’s top epidemiologist Dr. Erica S. Pan is recommending providers pause the administration of lot ‘041L20A’ of the Moderna COVID vaccine.

According to the latest figures, updated Jan. 7, from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), 66 deaths have been reported in the U.S. as being possibly related to a COVID vaccine. It’s estimated that only 1% of vaccine injuries are reported to VAERS.

Anyone who suspects an injury or death related to the COVID vaccine, or any vaccine, can go to the VAERS website and file a report.

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New allegations have surfaced, accusing Syrian President Assad of some connection to the Beirut Port blast.  Allegations don’t need proof, and they are a tool used repeatedly by the US against nations and leaders who they deem as an enemy.

Lebanese officials had for years known the dangerous chemicals were improperly stored at the port.  No one took any action to ensure the safety and security of the residents of the area.  It was hinted that Hezbollah must be to blame, but it was later proven that Hezbollah had no control over the Port and its contents.

Faysal Itani, a political analyst and deputy director of the Center for Global Policy at Georgetown University wrote that the Port, like other aspects of Lebanese society, suffered from a “pervasive culture of negligence, petty corruption and blame-shifting.”

Now, they must find a scapegoat. Almost three months ago, Walid Jumblatt began unsubstantiated accusations against President Assad, accusing him of having a hand in the Beirut Port blast. Recently, a Lebanese filmmaker aired a segment on a Beirut TV channel, Al Jadeed, in which he makes some connections to Syrian-Russian businessmen. These men vigorously deny any connection to the blast.

Lebanon may become a failed state in terms of the government, banking, economy, electricity, medical care, and security.  President Macron of France has tried to help, but the Lebanese officials refuse to comply with common-sense measures.

The Beirut Port blast highlighted in deadly terms the depths of the failure of the administration. Now, a filmmaker and a corrupt politician are trying to blame President Assad. This would not be the first time the Assad government has been blamed without proof.

Rafik Hariri’s assassination

Rumors and unsubstantiated accusations were hurled at President Assad and his government after the death of Rafik Hariri’s death.

Rafik Hariri, a dual Lebanese-Saudi citizen, was a billionaire businessman who served as prime minister of Lebanon five times, with his last term in office in 2004, after which he aligned himself with the opposition in parliament and was a symbol of Saudi influence after the end of the Lebanese civil war.

On February 14, 2005, Hariri got into his car and after his motorcade passed along the seafront corniche, a truck bomb tore through his vehicle, leaving a massive crater and ripping the facades of the surrounding buildings.

In August 2005, four Lebanese generals were arrested at the request of the UN investigator but were released nearly four years later without charge.

Hariri’s son, Saad, led a coalition of anti-Syrian parties known as March 14, which was backed by the US and Saudi Arabia.

Saad Hariri, who had blamed Syria for his father’s death, retracted his accusation against Damascus in 2010.

On August 18, 2020, an UN-backed court found a member of the militant group Hezbollah guilty of involvement in the assassination of Hariri. Judges at the Netherlands-based Special Tribunal for Lebanon said Salim Ayyash had a central role in the bomb attack in Beirut in 2005 that killed Hariri.

They acquitted three other defendants, who like Ayyash were tried in absentia. The prosecution’s case relied on the analysis of calls between mobile phones that it said were used to plan, prepare, and execute the attack. One of the judges, David Re, said the court had found motive but not evidence.

Hezbollah denied any involvement, and the judges said no evidence implicated the Shia militant group’s leaders.

Saad Hariri told reporters outside the court: “I think today everybody’s expectation was much higher than what came out, but I believe the tribunal came out with a verdict that is satisfying and we accept it.”

Chemical use

President Obama, the architect of the US-NATO attack on Syria for ‘regime change’ made a famous speech in which he said the use of chemical weapons in Syria would be a ‘red line’.  In mid-March 2013 the ‘rebels’ in Syria attacked Khan al-Assal, a small town near Aleppo, and killed about 30 people, and injured others. The Syrian government began requesting the UN to send investigators, but the UN did not quickly respond. The UN was standing politically with the US, UK, France, and trying to pin the blame on Syria.

Carla Del-Ponte, a former Swiss attorney-general, and prosecutor with the International Criminal Tribunal said in May 2013, “strong, concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof” suggesting the ‘rebels’ have used the nerve agent, sarin.

On August 18, 2013, a UN team of investigators arrived in Damascus, with Chemical weapons expert Ake Sellstrom in the lead. Before they could visit Khan al-Assal, the ‘rebels’ attacked East Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus on August 21, and uploaded videos that went viral on news media.  Claims of thousands dead from a sarin attack were made but without proof.

Ake Sellstrom said on August 24, 2013, “The weapons looked quite professional. But who has been using them, none of that we could conclude.”

Investigative journalist, Seymour M. Hersh, published “The Red Line and the Rat Line” which exposed the reason Obama decided not to attack Syria in September 2013 was the sample of the sarin used in East Ghouta was proven to not have come from a Syrian government source.

President Assad accused rebel groups supported by the US, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia of using chemical weapons to blame Syria because they were losing. The Syrian Arab Army has troops, weapons, and aircraft.  It has no motive to use chemical weapons when in a winning position.  It especially defies logic to ask for the UN inspectors to arrive to investigate chemical use by ‘rebels’, only to then use them just as the inspectors are unpacking their bags.

The repeated use of unsubstantiated accusations against President Assad and his government is not new, but an ongoing western led media war against Syria. This new accusation about the Beirut Port blast is a new chapter in a very old story.

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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.

After a resounding victory in the first real elections in which the Congolese participated, Patrice Lumumba became Prime Minister of Congo from 24 June 1960 until his overthrow and imprisonment on 14 September of the same year by Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu and his supporters. Mobutu then ruled the country, first in the shadow, then directly from 1965 until his overthrow in 1997.

On 17 January 1961, Lumumba, this great fighter for Congo’s independence, for social justice and for internationalism, was tortured and then executed, along with several of his comrades, by Congolese leaders complicit with Western powers, as well as by Belgian police and soldiers. Lumumba was only 35 years old and could have continued to play a very important role in his country, in Africa and at a global level.

As journalist Colette Braeckman wrote,

“Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese Prime Minister who was illegally removed from office in September, placed under house arrest and then detained in Thysville, had been sent to Katanga on 17 January 1961. Five hours after his arrival on Katangan soil, he was put to death with his two companions Maurice M’Polo and Robert Okito.” [1]

Among the Congolese leaders who directly participated in the killing of Lumumba, we find Moïse Tshombé, self-proclaimed president of the Congolese province of Katanga, which seceded on 11 July 1960, less than two weeks after the independence of Congo on 30 June 1960. The Katangan secession proclaimed by Moïse Tshombe was supported by Belgium and the large Belgian mining corporations that controlled that part of Congo (see below) with a view to destabilizing the government led by Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

At least five Belgian policemen and soldiers were present at the assassination. Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, one of the major Congolese leaders responsible for the assassination of Lumumba, did not attend the murder as he was in in the capital city in the West of the country.

Belgium’s responsibility in the assassination of Lumumba in January 1961 was established by several historians, among whom Ludo De Witte in The assassination of Lumumba and was was the subject of a commission of inquiry within the Belgian Parliament in 2001-2002. See also Ludo De Witte’s interview in 2018,(in French).

In it De Witte sums up in simple words the causes that led to the assassination of Lumumba:

“Lumumba was a victim of imperialism. Actually the powers that wanted to continue imperial rule in Congo, replace a colonial system with a neocolonial system, a system in which Africans would wield political power but controlled by Western powers and their corporations. This is the neocolonialism Lumumba wanted to fight and this is why he was assassinated.”

We should remember the speech delivered by the the Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, Patrice Lumumba, in reply to what Baudouin, King of the Belgians had said, namely,

“Congo’s independence is the culmination of the Belgian ‘civilising mission’ devised by the genius of Leopold II, which he launched with tenacious courage and which was continued with perseverance by Belgium.”

During the proclamation of Congo’s independence on June 30, 1960, the Prime Minister of Congo, Patrice Emery Lumumba, gave a memorable speech

In his speech Lumumba insisted that justice be done for the Congolese people. Here is an English translation of it.

Speech delivered in Parliament after those by King Baudouin and President Joseph Kasavubu, on the day of the proclamation of the independence of the Republic of Congo.

“Men and women of the Congo,

Victorious independence fighters,

I salute you in the name of the Congolese Government.

I ask all of you, my friends, who tirelessly fought in our ranks, to mark this June 30, 1960, as an illustrious date that will be ever engraved in your hearts, a date whose meaning you will proudly explain to your children, so that they in turn might relate to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren the glorious history of our struggle for freedom.

Although this independence of the Congo is being proclaimed today by agreement with Belgium, an amicable country, with which we are on equal terms, no Congolese will ever forget that independence was won in struggle, a persevering and inspired struggle carried on from day to day, a struggle, in which we were undaunted by privation or suffering and stinted neither strength nor blood.

It was filled with tears, fire and blood. We are deeply proud of our struggle, because it was just and noble and indispensable in putting an end to the humiliating bondage forced upon us.

That was our lot for the eighty years of colonial rule and our wounds are too fresh and much too painful to be forgotten.

We have experienced forced labour in exchange for pay that did not allow us to satisfy our hunger, to clothe ourselves, to have decent lodgings or to bring up our children as dearly loved ones.

Morning, noon and night we were subjected to jeers, insults and blows because we were ‘Negroes’. Who will ever forget that the black was addressed as ‘tu’ not because he was a friend, but because the polite ‘vous’ was reserved for the white man?

We have seen our lands seized in the name of ostensibly just laws, which gave recognition only to the right of might.

We have not forgotten that the law was never the same for the white and the black, that it was lenient to the ones, and cruel and inhuman to the others.

We have experienced atrocious sufferings, being persecuted for political convictions and religious beliefs, and exiled from our native land: our lot was worse than death itself.

We have not forgotten that in the cities the mansions were for the whites and the tumbledown huts for the blacks; that a black was not admitted to the cinemas, restaurants and shops set aside for ‘Europeans’ that blacks travelled in the barge’s holds, under the feet of the whites in their luxury cabins.

Who will ever forget the shootings which killed so many of our brothers, or the cells into which were mercilessly thrown those who no longer wished to submit to the regime of injustice, oppression and exploitation used by the colonialists as a tool of their domination?

All that, my brothers, brought us untold suffering.

But we, who were elected by the votes of your representatives, representatives of the people, to guide our native land, we, who have suffered in body and soul from colonial oppression, we tell you that henceforth all that is finished with.

The Republic of Congo has been proclaimed and our beloved country’s future is now in the hands of its own people.

Brothers, let us commence together a new struggle, a sublime struggle that will lead our country to peace, prosperity and greatness.

Together we shall establish social justice and ensure for everyone a fair remuneration for their labour.

We shall show the world what the black man can do when working in liberty, and we shall make the Congo the pride of Africa.

We shall see to it that the lands of our native country truly benefit its children.

We shall revise all the old laws and make them into new ones that will be just and noble.

We shall stop the persecution of free thought. We shall see to it that all citizens enjoy to the fullest extent the basic freedoms provided for by the Declaration of Human Rights.

We shall eradicate all discrimination, whatever its origin, and we shall ensure for everyone a station in life befitting their human dignity and worthy of their labour and their loyalty to the country.

We shall institute in the country a peace resting not on guns and bayonets but on concord and goodwill.

And in all this, my dear compatriots, we can rely not only on our own enormous forces and immense wealth, but also on the assistance of the numerous foreign states, whose co-operation we shall accept when it is not aimed at imposing upon us an alien policy, but is given in a spirit of friendship.

Even Belgium, which has finally learned the lesson of history and need no longer try to oppose our independence, is prepared to give us its aid and friendship; to that end an agreement has just been signed between our two equal and independent countries. I am sure that this co-operation will benefit both countries. For our part, we shall, while remaining vigilant, try to observe the engagements we have freely made.

Thus, both in the internal and the external spheres, the new Congo, our beloved Republic to be created by my government, will be rich, free and prosperous. But to attain our goal without delay, I ask all of you, legislators and citizens of the Congo, to give us all the help you can.

I ask you all to forget your tribal quarrels: they weaken us and may cause us to be despised abroad.

I ask you all not to shrink from any sacrifice that might ensure the success of our grand undertaking.

Finally, I ask you unconditionally to respect the life and property of fellow-citizens and foreigners who have settled in our country. If the conduct of these foreigners leaves much to be desired, our Justice will promptly expel them from the territory of the Republic; if, on the contrary, their conduct is good, they must be left in peace, for they, too, are working for our country’s prosperity.

The Congo’s independence is a decisive step towards the liberation of the whole African continent.

Our government, a government of national and popular unity, will serve its country.

I call on all Congolese citizens, men, women and children, to set themselves resolutely to the task of creating a national economy and ensuring our economic independence.

Eternal glory to the fighters for national liberation!

Long live independence and African unity!
Long live the independent and sovereign Congo!”

Lumumba, a fighter for internationalism

Before becoming Prime Minister, Lumumba had woven steadfast connections with a number of anti-imperialist, panafricanist and internationalist movements and people. In December 1958, he attended the All African Peoples’ Conference in Accra where he met among others the Caribbean-Algerian psychiatrist and freedom fighter Frantz Fanon, the Ghanaian president Kwame Nkrumah and the Cameroonian anti-colonialist leader Félix-Roland Moumié. [2] He made a speech in which he said, “The fundamental aim of our movement is to free the Congolese people from the colonialist regime and earn them their independence. We base our action on the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man — rights guaranteed to each and every citizen of humanity by the United Nations Charter — and we are of the opinion that the Congo, as a human society, has the right to join the ranks of free peoples.” He concluded with the following words, “This is why we passionately cry out with all the delegates: Down with colonialism and imperialism! Down with racism and tribalism! And long live the Congolese nation, long live independent Africa!”

At the end of the All African Peoples’ Conference, Lumumba was appointed a permanent member of the co-ordinating committee, as Saïd Bouamama recalls in his Figures de la révolution africaine. [3] Lumumba was also in close contact with Belgian anticolonialist and anticapitalist militants such as Jean Van Lierde, who worked in support of the revolution in Algeria and who maintained close ties [4] with the weekly La Gaucheand its main driving force, Ernest Mandel.

A few weeks after the conference in Accra, Lumumba and his movement held a meeting to report on the proceedings of the anticolonialist summit in Léopoldville, then capital of the Belgian Congo. He called for the independence of Congo before an audience of 10,000. He described the goal of the Mouvement National Congolais as “to liquidate the colonialist regime and the exploitation of men by men.” [5]

According to Le Monde Diplomatique of February 1959, a riot broke out in Léopoldville following the conference, beginning 4 January1959. This is what the French monthly had to say: “The origin of the riot is directly related to the All-Africa Peoples’ Conference in Accra. It was as the leaders of the Mouvement National Congolais — headed by the president of the movement, Mr. Lumumba — were preparing to hold a public meeting on the subject that the unrest first broke out. With the authorisation of the Governor General of the Belgian Congo, Mr. Cornelis, a delegation of Congolese nationalists, led by Mr. Lumumba, had travelled to Ghana in December. It was as the delegation was preparing to report on its visit and its work, on 4 January, that the police gave the conference attendees and those who had come to hear them the order to disperse.” [6]

It is important to point out that during the year 1959, the repression organised by colonialist Belgium resulted in the deaths of dozens if not hundreds of people. One example of the extent of the repression: in October 1959, during the national congress of the Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) in Stanleyville, police fired into the crowd, killing 30 and wounding hundreds. Lumumba was arrested a few days later, tried in January 1960 and sentenced to six months in prison on 21 January 1960.

But protest was so intense that out of fear, the regime in Brussels decided to defuse the situation by calling local elections in which the Congolese were allowed to participate. Lumumba was freed on 26 January, only a few days after his sentencing. Finally, following the local elections, a general election was held in May 1960, the first in the history of the Belgian Congo. The Mouvement National Congolais (MNC) won the election and as a result Lumumba was appointed prime minister.

The sequence of events that led to the coup against Lumumba and to his assassination

Following Lumumba’s speech of 30 June, the Belgian government, the monarchy and the heads of the major Belgian companies present in Congo decided to destabilize Lumumba and provoke the secession of Katanga, the province where most of the raw materials (copper, cobalt, radium) were extracted. Congolese accomplices immediately stepped up in the form of Moïse Tshombé, proclaimed president of Katanga on 11 July 1960, President Joseph Kasa-Vubu, who revoked Lumumba in September 1960 despite having no constitutional authority to do so, and Joseph-Désiré Mobutu, who led a coup d’état a few days later and had Lumumba arrested, despite the fact that his ministers had expressed their confidence in him and that his party was the leading party in the parliament. Mobutu, who had had a military career during the colonial period and was a former journalist for the pro-colonial press in Congo, had managed to be appointed to the rank of colonel in the new army and quickly turned against Congo’s elected government.

Belgium, as a member of NATO, had a heavily-equipped military zone in Western Germany extending from the Belgian border to that of the Soviet-aligned countries. The Belgian general staff had at its disposal a considerable military arsenal, at least partly originating in the USA, and NATO allowed them to deploy aircraft, troop transports and even warships which bombarded Congolese positions in the Congo estuary. The US government and CIA were also at the controls “alongside” the Belgians, with whom they had decided to assassinate Lumumba. [7]. France was also on board. In a telegram dated 26 August 1960, the director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, told his agents in Léopoldville, concerning Lumumba: “Consequently, we concluded that his removal must be an urgent and prime objective and that under existing conditions this should be a high priority of our covert action.” [8]

We should mention that on 12 August 1960, Belgium had signed an accord with Tshombé, recognising de facto the independence of Katanga. The attempts made by Lumumba’s government to deal with the secession were fully legitimate, but were fought against by the major Western powers.

Despite his arrest by Mobutu, Lumumba did not capitulate and maintained contact with the ministers who remained faithful to their commitments, and with his comrades. A clandestine government led by Antoine Gizenga was established in Stanleyville. Lumumba managed to escape from his jailers on 27 November 1960 and attempted to join up with the government in Stanleyville, but was arrested a few days later in transit. In January 1961, with Lumumba still highly popular, Mobutu and the Western powers feared that a popular revolt would lead to the leader’s liberation and decided to have him executed. The operation leading to Lumumba’s execution was directly accompanied and directed by Belgians on orders from Brussels. On 17 January 1961, Lumumba, Maurice Mpolo and Joseph Okito were taken in an airplane piloted by a Belgian crew to Élisabethville, the capital of Katanga, and handed over to the local authorities. They were then tortured by Katangese leaders, including Moïse Tshombé, and by Belgians. They were shot that evening by soldiers under the command of a Belgian officer.

According to the testimony of Belgian Gerard Soete, then police commissioner in charge of setting up a “Katangese national police force”, the three bodies were transported 220 kilometres from the place of execution, and were buried in the earth behind a termite mound, in the middle of a wooded savannah.

Image on the right: Mobutu and Ronald Reagan

The AFP, which had collected this testimony, reports that three days later the bodies were moved again to delete any possibility of tracking them. Soete said he was accompanied by “another white man” and a few Congolese when they cut up the corpses with saws and dissolved them in acid. [9]

Belgium’s support for the Mobutu dictatorship

The Belgian army intervened twice in the Congo to help Mobutu and his dictatorial regime to crush the resistance of Lumumbist organizations, first in November 1964 with the operation Red Dragon and Black Dragon, respectively at Stanleyville and at Paulis. On this occasion, the operation was jointly led by the Belgian army, Mobutu’s army, the General Staff of the US army and mercenaries, among whom some anti-Castro Cubans.

In a speech delivered at the UN General Assembly in November 1964, Ernesto Che Guevara condemned this intervention, as he also did in a speech delivered in Santiago de Cuba, “today, the most poignant and pervasive memory that stays with us is that of the Congo and of Lumumba. Today, in that country that is both so distant and so near to our hearts, historical events have occurred which we have to know about, as we have to learn from what has been experienced. The other day, Belgian parachutists assaulted the city of Stanleyville.” (excerpt from Che Guevara’s speech in Santiago de Cuba on 30 November 1964, on the occasion of the 8^th anniversary of the town’s uprising led by Frank País (translation CADTM, from the French version).

The second intervention of the Belgian army occurred in Kolwezi in the heart of the mining area of Shaba (Katanga) in May 1978 in collaboration with the French army and Mobutu’s army.

Litigation still in progress in Belgium concerning the assassination of Lumumba

The Belgian courts have not yet handed down a judgment concerning the murder of Lumumba. If the case has remained open, it is only due to the ongoing actions of all those who are determined to see justice done. The Lumumba family continues its actions toward revealing the truth. A Belgian examining magistrate is still in charge of the case since it has been classified as a war crime to which no statute of limitations applies. And as the family’s attorney, Christophe Marchand, pointed out to Belgian television on 23 June 2011 “the main instigators are all dead today (…) but former advisors and attachés of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are still alive.”

Image below: Lumumba in Brussels (1960) (CC – Wikimedia)

Lumumba has become an emblematic figure

The figure of Patrice Lumumba has traversed history and still serves today as an example for all who champion the emancipation of peoples. Lumumba never surrendered.

Such was his popularity under the regime of the dictator Mobutu that the latter decreed Patrice Lumumba a national hero in 1966. Not satisfied with having overthrown him in September 1960 and with being one of the main organizers of his murder, Mobutu attempted to steal a part of his aura. The day of his execution, 17 January, is a bank holiday in Congo-Kinshasa.

In Brussels, after years of actions by anticolonialist militants, the municipal council voted on 23 April 2018 to create a square, the Place Patrice-Lumumba, which was officially inaugurated on 30 June of the same year, the date of the 58^th anniversary of the independence of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But all of that amounts to very little.

Beyond the need to disseminate the truth about Lumumba’s struggle and to demand that justice be done him, his struggle and that of all the women and men of Congo who fought against all forms of spoliation, oppression and exploitation must be continued.

That is why the CADTM feels that the Belgian authorities must:

• Recognise publicly and name all of the abuses and crimes committed against the people of Congo by Léopold II and the Belgian monarchy, and make official excuses;
• Deepen and extend the task of remembrance by involving the appropriate personnel both in public education and popular educational activities and including in institutional areas;
• Restore all Congolese cultural property to the Congolese;
• Actively support the review of all colonialist symbols in public spaces in Belgium;
• Conduct a historical audit of debt in order to make unconditional financial reparation and retrocession for the amounts extracted during the colonisation of Congo;
• Take action within the multilateral institutions (World Bank, IMF, Paris Club, etc.) so that their members totally and unconditionally cancel repayment of all odious debt on the Democratic Republic of Congo;
• Publicly support all moratoria on repayment of debt enacted by the government of Congo in order to improve the public health system and face the epidemic of CoViD-19 and other diseases which cause deaths that would be entirely preventable if expenditures on public health are increased.

The CADTM supports the various collectives calling for actions in Belgium in the wake of the Black Lives Matter protests and all those who are taking action in the area of awareness of colonialism.

The CADTM supports the Congolese people in facing the health, economic and social consequences of the CoViD-19 crisis. In spite of the diktats of creditors and the serious failures of successive Congo governments, which have resulted in severe repression and flagrant denial of fundamental human rights, social movements in Congo have resisted. The CADTM supports these and other struggles for social justice.

Source : World Bank, CD-Rom, GDF, 2001

“In many cases, the loans were used to corrupt governments during the Cold War. The issue was not whether the money was improving a country’s welfare, but whether it was leading to a stable situation, given the geopolitical realities in the world.” \

Joseph E. Stiglitz, Chief Economist of the World Bank from 1997 to 1999, Nobel Laureate in Economics in 2001, on a French television show L’Autre mondialisation (The Other Globalization), on Arte, March 7, 2000

Therefore, the IMF and the WB, where de Groote was a senior official, became complicit in the abuses committed by the Mobutu regime against human, economic, social and cultural rights inasmuch as they maintained their support for the dictatorial system, which did not at all honour its financial obligations.

“The issue of the moral responsibility of the creditors was particularly apparent in the case of Cold War loans. When the IMF and the World Bank lent money to the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s notorious ruler Mobutu, they knew (or should have known) that most of the money would not go to help that country’s poor people, but rather would be used to enrich Mobutu. It was money paid to ensure that this corrupt leader would keep his country aligned with the West. To many, it doesn’t seem fair for ordinary taxpayers in countries with corrupt governments to have to repay loans that were made to leaders who did not represent them.” – Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents, 2002

Mobutu and his clan used the State coffers as a steady and plentiful source of personal enrichment with three different kinds of misappropriation: legal, illegal, and mysterious expenditures. The legal ones, such as the presidential endowment, was allocated without any control. The illegal expenditures are described in the Blumenthal report (this secret report was made public in 1982), [20] which indicates that it was impossible to control the State’s financial transactions since the presidential office hardly made a distinction between personal expenses and public spending. Erwin Blumenthal identified at least seven bank accounts held abroad that were used to channel money directly to Mobutu’s personal bank accounts or to corrupt political figures. Erwin Blumenthal’s message was clear: “The corruptive system in Zaire with all its wicked and ugly manifestations, its mismanagement and fraud will destroy all endeavours of international institutions, of friendly governments and of commercial banks towards the recovery and rehabilitation of Zaire’s economy. Sure, there will be new promises by Mobutu, […] but no (repeat: no) prospect for Zaire’s creditors to get their money back in any foreseeable future.” [21]

Since 1979, the main lenders to Mobutu’s regime, closely connected to the IMF, had known and been aware of these fraudulent practices, and of the risk they were taking by continuing to lend to Mobutu.

As indicated in this report, the third category of embezzlement consisted of “mysterious expenditures.” One of the State’s largest budget items (accounting for 18% according to a 1989 World Bank study) was “other goods and services,” a hotchpotch with little information on how the expenditures were allocated. According to World Bank experts, most of the money was used for extravagant expenditures as well as to purchase military equipment. This shows that the World Bank was also well aware of the illegal use made of the loans it was granting.

By the mid-1970s, it was clear that the money injected into Zaire in the form of loans or grants was systematically misappropriated. They were either directly transferred to personal bank accounts held abroad  [22] or invested in prestigious, inadequate, and/or useless projects that helped many people to get richer, but certainly did not help the sustainable industrialisation of the economy. For instance, according to the Office of ill-gotten gains (Office des biens mal acquis, OBMA), which was created at the National Conference, Mobutu supposedly pocketed a 7% commission on the value of the Inga hydroelectric plant. The investigation could not be pursued to its conclusion because of resistance from official circles.  [23]

J. de Groote actively supported Mobutu’s regime and intervened several times to improve the relationships between the IMF, the World Bank and Mobutu, although he was very well placed to know in detail what Blumenthal denounced in his report. He also knew about the serious violations of human rights committed by the Mobutu regime.

Yet in 1994, at the end of his term, de Groote said he was satisfied with his action vis-à-vis Congo-Kinshasa. While all along, the vast majority of the Congolese people lived in great misery, the persecutions and assassinations of opponents were rife, and the economy was devastated.

Belgian private corporations systematically derived profits from the relationships between Belgium and the Congo

The excerpt below speaks for itself. It was pronounced by Jacques de Groote in a speech given in 1986 to a group of Belgian company directors, and then published in the Bulletin de la Fédération des Entreprises de Belgique (Newsletter of the Federation of Belgian Companies). “The advantages Belgium derives from its participation in the activities of the Group’s institutions– as do all World Bank member countries – can be measured in terms of flow-back, that is to say the relationship between, on the one hand, the total amount of disbursements made by the IDA (International Development Association, which is part of the World Bank Group) or the World Bank in favour of a country’s companies, when these companies sign contracts, and, on the other hand, the contributions of this country to the Bank’s capital, as well as to the IDA’s resources. Flow-back is thus the relationship between what the companies obtain via the sales of equipment or consulting services and what Belgium provides as a contribution to the IDA’s resources and to the Bank’s capital. The flow-back from the World Bank toward industrialised countries is significant, and has continually increased: for all industrialised countries, it has increased from 7 to 10 from the end of 1980 to the end of 1984. In other words, for one dollar put into the system, the industrialised countries got back $7 in 1980 and receive $10.5 today.”  [31]

Jacques de Groote after the end of his term at the IMF and World Bank

In his interview with Béatrice Delvaux from Le Soir in March 1994, at the end of his term at the IMF, de Groote congratulated himself on the role he had played in the decision made by Belgium to adopt the neoliberal agenda in the 1980s.

Béatrice Delvaux : “You did, however, from Washington play a major role in the orientation of Belgian economic policy. You provided a guarantee from the IMF for the economic shift at the beginning of the 1980s, in close relationship with the Poupehan group?”  [32] J. de Groote’s response: “Absolutely, and I’m extremely proud of this. I am even extremely satisfied. At that time, we completed studies that enabled the major economic policy options to be defined for Belgium, which were then discussed with Alfons Verplaetse, [33] and other figures including Wilfried Martens.”  [34]

These statements provide a good illustration of the close relationships between figures like De Groote and the key political leaders in a particular country. De Groote acknowledged, moreover, that the independence of the Belgian National Bank was only for the form, because Belgian (monetary) policy was defined in a very small, secretive circle bringing together key stakeholders, ranging from the Prime Minister to the Governor of the National Bank, and including the head of the Christian Unions and representatives of corporate management, all in cahoots with the IMF.

Belgium’s attitude after Mobutu’s fall

Belgium was complicit in whitewashing the odious debt accumulated by Mobutu. Instead of acknowledging that it had to be cancelled because it was illegitimate, Belgium got involved in the setting up of a complex mechanism whereby the Congolese people were bound to lose and the creditors that had helped the former regime were to win

After Mobutu’s fall, in spite of pleas from the CADTM and other organizations, the Belgian government did not do anything to help the Congolese people retrieve the money that Mobutu and his clan had embezzled and invested in cash or real estate in Belgium. Yet a country like Switzerland had moved a long way in that direction, for once. But the ties between the Belgian ruling class and Mobutu’s clan were so tight that nothing conclusive was done even though some magistrates tried to take positive measures.

Later, Belgium was complicit in whitewashing the odious debt accumulated by Mobutu. Instead of acknowledging that it had to be cancelled because it was illegitimate, Belgium got involved in the setting up of a complex mechanism whereby the Congolese people were bound to lose and the creditors that had helped the former regime were to win.

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This article was originally published on CADTM.

Translated by Snake Arbusto and Christine Pagnoulle

Source of the two appendices: Éric Toussaint, “Reply to the letter by Philippe, King of the Belgians, about Belgium’s responsibility in the exploitation of the Congolese people”

Eric Toussaint is a historian and political scientist who completed his Ph.D. at the universities of Paris VIII and Liège, is the spokesperson of the CADTM International, and sits on the Scientific Council of ATTAC France. He is the author of Debt System (Haymarket books, Chicago, 2019), Bankocracy (2015); The Life and Crimes of an Exemplary Man (2014); Glance in the Rear View Mirror. Neoliberal Ideology From its Origins to the Present, Haymarket books, Chicago, 2012 (see here), etc.

Notes

Today – Friday 15th January – over 50,000 restaurants are planning to open, an act of mass civil disobedience against “anti-Covid” lockdown measures which have massively hurt the restaurant business, especially small family-owned businesses.

Spreading through social media under the hashtag #IoOpro (“I am opening”), the movement is largest country-wide act of civil disobedience since lockdowns began.

Italain opposition MP Vittorio Sgarbi has backed the movement, saying in an interview:

Open up, & don’t worry, in the end we will make them eat their fines”.

Italy’s government is already facing internal conflict and crisis, an early election is a possibility.

A similar movement already started in Mexico on January 12th, when hundreds of restaurant owners gathered to protest the lockdowns:

Mexico 🇲🇽 Epic scenes, Over 500 restaurants have joined forces, agreeing to open up together, defying LOCKDOWN. Forced closed since Dec 18, they've stated it's either 'WE OPEN UP OR WE DIE'. Long Live the People 💥👊 pic.twitter.com/PeSQpaGtqb

— ✖️TIME ✖️2✖️RISE✖️ (@itstime2rise) January 12, 2021

The “I am Open” protest is spreading across Europe as well, with variants already taking hold in German-speaking Switzerland (#Wirmachenauf) and Poland (#OtwieraMY).

It’s good to be reminded that, no matter how much it looks like the new normal is spreading unopposed, it’s not. People all over the world are resisting where they can. That’s what “Covid Positive” is all about.

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Featured image is from OffGuardian

In August 2010, the secretary-general of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, Ahmed Djoghlaf, warned that ‘We are losing biodiversity at an unprecedented rate.’ According to the UN Environment Program, ‘the Earth is in the midst of a mass extinction of life’ with scientists estimating that ‘150-200 species of plant, insect, bird and mammal become extinct every 24 hours’ which is nearly 1,000 times the ‘natural’ or ‘background’ rate. Moreover, it ‘is greater than anything the world has experienced since the vanishing of the dinosaurs nearly 65m years ago.’

See ‘Protect nature for world economic security, warns UN biodiversity chief’.

Two months later, at the tenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, held from 18 to 29 October 2010, in Nagoya, Aichi Prefecture in Japan, a revised and updated Strategic Plan for Biodiversity, including the Aichi Biodiversity Targets, for the 2011-2020 period was adopted.

See ‘Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, including Aichi Biodiversity Targets’.

You can read the 20 Aichi Biodiversity Targets on the Convention’s website. They were ambitious but represented a realistic assessment of what needed to be achieved by 2020 if national governments were to achieve the longer term goal of ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’ by 2050. The 2050 Vision for Biodiversity required ‘a significant shift away from “business as usual” across a broad range of human activities.’

See ‘Global Biodiversity Outlook 5’.

So how have we done in the past ten years?

In 2015, distinguished conservationists Professor Gerardo Ceballos, Anne H. Ehrlich and Professor Paul R. Ehrlich published their book titled The Annihilation of Nature: Human Extinction of Birds and Mammals which tells the story of humanity’s ‘massive and escalating assault on all living things on this planet’ precipitating what is now Earth’s sixth great mass extinction: ‘a time of darkness for our planet’s birds and mammals’.

Noting that the roots of this destruction ‘run deep through time’ with human hunting and other activities responsible for pushing populations of animals to extinction long before the agricultural revolution (which began about 10,000 years ago), they observe that the current collective assault on animals, plants and microbes has reached a level so horrendous that ‘any alarm call we might sound will be too faint to match the tragedy that is unfolding’. But while the decimation of life that is currently underway is being caused by Homo sapiens, the consequences of this decimation will also have impact on humanity itself because the life-forms being annihilated are ‘working parts of life-support systems on which civilization depends’.

Despite the impressive statistics that record the demise of life on Earth and the fundamental threat this extinction crisis poses, Cebellos and the Ehrlichs are well aware that the public and politicians generally are not reacting emotionally to this crisis as do those who are ‘deeply familiar with the impoverishment of nature’. They hope we can relate to the fate of the last Spix’s macaw, a male that searched fruitlessly for a mate until it disappeared from the savannah of northeastern Brazil in 2000.

And did you know that even the iconic African lion may be facing extinction in the wild? In 2015, as a result of decades of hunting, disease and habitat loss, only 23,000 lions remained in Africa’s vast savannahs: less than 10% of what roamed there in 1950. There are fewer lions today.

But separately from species extinctions, Earth continues to experience ‘a huge episode of population declines and extirpations, which will have negative cascading consequences on ecosystem functioning and services vital to sustaining civilization’. In a 2017 report, Professor Ceballos and his coauthors describe what they label ‘a “biological annihilation” to highlight the current magnitude of Earth’s ongoing sixth major extinction event.’ Moreover, local population extinctions ‘are orders of magnitude more frequent than species extinctions. Population extinctions, however, are a prelude to species extinctions, so Earth’s sixth mass extinction episode has proceeded further than most assume.’

See ‘Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signaled by vertebrate population losses and declines’.

Beyond even this, however, many additional species are now trapped in a feedback loop that will inevitably precipitate their extinction as well because of the way in which ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ work once initiated and as has already occurred in almost all ecosystem contexts. See the (so far) six-part series ‘Our Vanishing World’.

Have you seen a flock of birds of any size recently? A butterfly?

What is Driving the Sixth Mass Extinction?

Homo sapiens. And the key tool is always destruction of habitat, whether on land or in the ocean.

Of course, particular human behaviours have a huge impact. Fighting wars (or even just wasting resources to manufacture weapons and other military infrastructure) is one (particularly given that the perpetual war in which the US is engaged is to secure resources and markets), destroying the climate is another and deploying 5G is yet another. But there are many other destructive human behaviours too.

Consider the forests. Just last year, 6.5 million hectares of pristine forest were cut or burnt down for purposes such as clearing land to establish cattle farms so that many people can eat cheap hamburgers, mining (much of it illegal) for a variety of minerals (such as gold, silver, copper, coltan, cassiterite and diamonds) and logging to produce woodchips so that some people can buy cheap paper (including cheap toilet paper).

See ‘Our Vanishing World: Rainforests’.

One outcome of this destruction is that 40,000 tropical tree species are now threatened with extinction. In addition, rainforest destruction is also the primary cause of species extinctions globally given the number of species that live in rainforests.

See ‘Global Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services’.

Another outcome is that ‘the precious Amazon is teetering on the edge of functional destruction and, with it, so are we’.

See ‘Amazon Tipping Point: Last Chance for Action’.

And in relation to another major habitat that is being destroyed, consider the world’s oceans. In summary, the oceans are warming, acidifying and deoxygenating; being contaminated with nuclear radiation, by offshore oil and gas drilling as well as oil spills; being damaged by deep sea mining; being polluted by industrial (including chemical) and farming wastes while being damaged in a myriad other ways and being overfished.

In short: the oceans are under siege on a vast range of fronts and are effectively ‘dying’. For a comprehensive 18-point summary,

see ‘Our Vanishing World: Oceans’.

If you like, you can read comprehensive summaries of the fate of Earth’s birds and insects too.

See ‘Our Vanishing World: Birds’ and ‘Our Vanishing World: Insects’.

What is the State of Play in early 2021?

In a report published by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) in May 2020, the authors observe that ‘Nature is declining globally at rates unprecedented in human history – and the rate of species extinctions is accelerating, with grave impacts on people around the world now likely.’ With a total estimated number of animal and plant species on Earth of 8 million (of which 5.5 million are insect species), an accelerating daily extinction rate combined with an ongoing decline in ecosystem health, the report concludes that 1,000,000 species of life on Earth are threatened with extinction.

See ‘Nature’s Dangerous Decline “Unprecedented”; Species Extinction Rates “Accelerating”’ and ‘A million threatened species? Thirteen questions and answers’.

And the latest edition of the Convention on Biological Diversity’s flagship publication ‘Global Biodiversity Outlook 5’was published on 18 August 2020. It reports that ‘Humanity stands at a crossroads with regard to the legacy it leaves to future generations. Biodiversity is declining at an unprecedented rate, and the pressures driving this decline are intensifying. None of the Aichi Biodiversity Targets will be fully met.’

But this is an understatement, to put it politely.

In their commentary on this predicament in November 2020, scholars Ruchi Shroff and Carla Ramos Cortés note that ‘Despite wide-spread international calls to curb the sixth mass extinction, no single goal of the Convention of Biological Diversity’s Aichi Biodiversity Targets, for the second consecutive decade, have been met. In some cases, biodiversity loss has been made worse as no action has been taken to curb pesticide use, pollution, fossil fuels and plastics.’

See ‘The Biodiversity Paradigm: Building Resilience for Human and Environmental Health’.

But the destruction is far worse than suggested by this. Given, as already noted above, the ongoing destruction of rainforests and oceans, not to mention other habitats ranging from wetlands to deserts, the annihilation of life on Earth continues to accelerate with no indicators signaling that this destruction is being slowed in any way.

Therefore, destruction of biodiversity remains one of the four primary paths to human extinction (along with nuclear war, the deployment of 5G and the climate catastrophe).

Is it too late to do anything?

It might be. As mentioned above: Because many species are now trapped in a feedback loop that will inevitably precipitate their extinction because of the way in which ‘co-extinctions’, ‘localized extinctions’ and ‘extinction cascades’ work once initiated, many further extinctions are now inevitable.

However, we can take action to save those individuals and species not yet trapped in a feedback loop and that might yet be saved. But if you wait for governments or corporations to act responsibly, you will wait in vain as the last 20 years has demonstrated.

So you have some powerful options to consider. The first, and most important, is to consider the ways in which you can reduce your own consumption. The planetary environment is only being destroyed so that governments and corporations can respond to consumer demand. Everything from military spending and war to the extraction and burning of fossil fuels are fundamentally driven by what you buy. And each and every item that you buy has a negative environmental impact. There are no exceptions.

If you reduce your own consumption and increase your self-reliance, you will reduce the burden that extraction, transport, manufacture and distribution of resources imposes on the natural environment resulting in the destruction of habitat and the annihilation of biodiversity.

One option to consider is ‘The Flame Tree Project to Save Life on Earth’ which outlines a graduated series of steps for reducing consumption and increasing self-reliance.

If you want to better understand why so many human beings are addicted to endless consumption, see ‘Love Denied: The Psychology of Materialism, Violence and War’. There is more detail on the origins of this behaviour in ‘Why Violence?’and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

If you are inclined to campaign to defend biodiversity in one context or another, whether by campaigning to end war, halt the climate catastrophe, stop the deployment of 5G or end wildlife trafficking for example, consider doing so strategically.

See ‘Nonviolent Campaign Strategy’.

You might also consider signing the online pledge of ‘The People’s Charter to Create a Nonviolent World’.

Conclusion

One species – Homo sapiens – is annihilating life on Earth, driving at least 200 species to extinction each day. In the time it took you to read this article, another species of life on Earth vanished into the fossil record.

This annihilation of life is driven by our over-consumption. As Mahatma Gandhi, already wearing his own homespun cloth, noted more than 100 years ago: ‘Earth provides enough for every person’s need but not for every person’s greed.’

Of course, many people around the world are not responsible for over-consuming; they live life on its margins, with barely enough to eat let alone thrive. And this reflects inequities built into a global economic system that prioritizes profit for the few, not resources for living for all.

So that means that the burden for reducing consumption must fall on those in industrialized societies who benefit from the maldistribution of planetary resources.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once noted that ‘The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.’

If we are to prove him wrong, we do not have much time left.

This is because Homo sapiens is a part of the web of life. And we are ruthlessly destroying that web.

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

The Earth Pledge

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

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

Founded in 1971, the Geneva-based World Economic Forum (WEF) meets annually in Davos, Switzerland.

It brings together top business and political leaders, along with likeminded pro-New World Order economists and pseudo-journalists.

Calling itself “an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas” is cover for its diabolical agenda.

The WEF’s Great Reset about to be formally rolled out aims to establish ruler-serf societies worldwide.

It wants ordinary people exploited serve the privileged few worldwide that goes beyond what Orwell and Huxley imagined.

It’s a diabolical scheme promoted by the WEF’s executive chairman Klaus Schwab — a dystopian nightmare wrapped in deceptive equitable socioeconomic rhetoric.

Made-in-the-USA covid (renamed seasonal flu/influenza) that unleashed lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing, and harmful to human health mask-wearing caused unprecedented economic collapse in the US, West, and elswhere.

Events of last year — continuing in 2021 with no end of them in prospect — were planned by dark forces before unleashed on unsuspecting billions of people worldwide.

For Schwab and likeminded extremists, what’s going on is a “unique window of opportunity” for global leaders to reshape “global relations…national economies, the priorities of societies, the nature of business models, and the management of a global commons…”

Instead of serving “the dignity” and interests “of every human being,” it intends exploiting them.

The Great Reset is an updated new world order, a diabolical socioeconomic “revamp” worldwide.

If achieved, life as once existed will be replaced by Dante’s Hell.

According to upcoming late January Davos Agenda propaganda:

“The (covid) pandemic has demonstrated that no institution or individual alone can address the economic, environmental, social and technological challenges of our complex, interdependent world (sic).”

“The pandemic has accelerated systemic changes that were apparent before its inception (sic).”

“The fault lines that emerged in 2020 now appear as critical crossroads in 2021 (sic).”

“The time to rebuild trust (sic)) and to make crucial choices is fast approaching as the need to reset priorities and the urgency to reform systems (sic) grow stronger around the world (sic).”

“The Davos Agenda is a pioneering (sic) mobilization of global leaders to shape the principles, policies and partnerships needed in this challenging new context (sic).”

“It is essential for leaders from all walks of life to work together virtually for a more inclusive, cohesive and sustainable future as soon as possible in 2021 (sic).”

Seven diabolical themes that pretend to be beneficial for societies and their people are worlds apart from what’s claimed.

They include the following:

“How to save the planet” by plundering it for maximum profit-making.

Exploitive economies masquerading as “fairer” ones.

“Tech” for pure evil called “good.”

“Socit(ies) & future of work” to be  under ruler-serf rules worldwide.

“Better business” by maximum exploitive harshness.

Unhealthy “futures” pretending to be the other way around.

“Beyond geopolitics” pretending that “we’re all in this together.”

Calling for “nations…to change” is code language for promoting abolition of sovereign rights according to the rule of law.

Late January Davos Agenda will formally launch exploitive Great Reset policies to be exposed, condemned and opposed.

A Final Comment

Great Reset New World Order policies include digital mass-surveillance worldwide.

It calls for monitoring virtually everything about our daily lives to control them.

Pretending to support “sustainable development” and “stakeholder capitalism” is polar opposite what’s planned.

Great Reset policies aim to more greatly empower wealth, power and privileged interests at the expense of ordinary people worldwide.

It promotes global control by and exploitation of most people by their privileged few masters.

Great Reset pusher Schwab called for “not letting (made-in-the-USA covid and economic collapse) go to waste.”

Selling it involves mass deception because understanding what’s planned would assure mass-rejection.

Nothing intended will improve public health, welfare, safety and societies fit to live in — just the opposite.

The WEF’s slogan “build back better” is mass deception to disguise what’s diabolically planned.

Reject and resist are the only options.

The alternative is Great Reset New World Order enslavement by a higher power that’s hostile to a safe and and fit to live in world.

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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 OffGuardian

Below is an important letter from former Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Richard Schabas, addressed to Ontario Premier Doug Ford.

“The national lockdown was never part of our planned pandemic response nor is it supported by strong science”.

“Two recent studies on the effectiveness of lockdown show that it has, at most, a small COVID mortality benefit compared to more moderate measures. Both studies warned about the excessive cost of lockdowns.”

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We’d like to thank Mark Taliano for bringing this to our attention.

With the mainstream media still obsessing about the January 6th “violent coup attempt” at the US Capitol Building, the incoming Biden Administration looks to be chock full of actual purveyors of violent coups. Don’t look to the mainstream media to report on this, however. Some of the same politicians and bureaucrats denouncing the ridiculous farce at the Capitol as if it were the equivalent of 9/11 have been involved for decades in planning and executing real coups overseas. In their real coups, many thousands of civilians have died.

Take returning Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, for example. More than anyone else she is the face of the US-led violent coup against a democratically-elected government in Ukraine in 2014. Nuland not only passed out snacks to the coup leaders, she was caught on a phone call actually plotting the coup right down to who would take power once the smoke cleared.

Unlike the fake Capitol “coup,” this was a real overthrow. Unlike the buffalo horn-wearing joke who desecrated the “sacred” Senate chamber, the Ukraine coup had real armed insurrectionists with a real plan to overthrow the government. Eventually, with the help of incoming Assistant Secretary of State Nuland, they succeeded – after thousands of civilians were killed.

As we were unfortunately reminded during the last four years of the Trump Administration, the personnel is the policy. So while President Trump railed against the “stupid wars” and promised to bring the troops home, he hired people like John Bolton and Mike Pompeo to get the job done. They spent their time “clarifying” Trump’s call for ending wars to mean he wanted to actually continue the wars. It was a colossal failure.

So it’s hard to be optimistic about a Biden Administration with so many hyper-interventionist Obama retreads.

While the US Agency for International Development (USAID) likes to sell itself as the compassionate arm of the US foreign policy, in fact USAID is one of the main US “regime change” agencies. Biden has announced that a top “humanitarian interventionist” – Samantha Power – would head that Agency in his Administration.

Power, who served on President Obama’s National Security Council staff and as US Ambassador to the UN, argued passionately and successfully that a US attack on the Gaddafi government in Libya would result in a liberation of the people and the outbreak of democracy in the country. In reality, her justification was all based on lies and the US assault has left nothing but murder and mayhem. Gaddafi’s relatively peaceful, if authoritarian, government has been replaced by radical terrorists and even slave markets.

At the end of the day, the Bush Republicans – like Rep. Liz Cheney – will join hands with the Biden Democrats to reinstate “American leadership.” This of course means more US overt and covert wars overseas. The unholy alliance between Big Tech and the US government will happily assist the US State Department under Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Assistant Secretary of State Nuland with the technology to foment more “regime change” operations wherever the Biden Administration sees fit. Finish destroying Syria and the secular Assad? Sure! Go back into Iraq? Why not? Afghanistan? That’s the good war! And Russia and China must be punished as well.

These are grave moments for we non-interventionists. But also we have a unique opportunity, informed by history, to denounce the warmongers and push for a peaceful and non-interventionist foreign policy.

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Featured image is from SCF

This 92nd anniversary of the birth of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. comes at a time of great historical conjunctures inside the United States and around the globe.

For the last ten months the country has been imperiled by the worst public health crisis in more than a century where nearly 400,000 have perished due to the COVID-19 pandemic amid the infections of more than 24 million people.

The public health disaster is a direct result of the failure of the outgoing administration of President Donald J. Trump to adequately address the advent and rapid spread of the virus, seeking instead to downplay the pandemic while the widespread sickness and death throughout the land has prompted an unprecedented economic downturn. Millions are jobless and facing imminent foreclosure and eviction absent of much needed drastic federal, state and municipal interventions aimed at guaranteeing housing, food, water and education for the majority of working and oppressed people.

COVID-19 and its concomitant social ills has not for one minute eased the level of institutional racism, economic exploitation and state repression which has been the hallmark of U.S. capitalism and imperialism for several centuries. The brutal police and vigilante executions of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, Hakim Littleton, among others, exemplifies the character of the ruling class during this period.

Fortunately, in line with our tradition of resistance to injustice, millions are rising up to mobilize against the wanton arrest, prosecution, injuring and killing of African Americans and other communities of color. These demonstrations and rebellions since late May in particular, has alerted the world that the U.S. can in no way claim to be the paragon of democracy and human rights in which it describes itself.

In response to this renewed mass uprising among the people, thousands have been arrested and dozens killed. The administration has deployed state and federal forces into municipalities with the expressed intent to suppress the unrest. Both locally and nationally, the ruling interests have sought to denigrate and demoralize anti-racist activists.

These efforts have failed miserably in the last few months. People continued to come into the streets to protest while at the same time they have registered and voted in record numbers sending a clear message that racism and state repression must end immediately.

The Trump administration launched a well-funded propaganda and psychological warfare campaign to convince its supporters that the inevitable electoral defeat on November 3 could have only occurred as the result of massive fraud. Despite the rejection by the majority along with the court systems at all levels, in regard to these endless misrepresentations of the actual situation in the U.S., the right-wing has persisted in promoting these lies to the point of advocating the declaration of Marshall Law which could only be consolidated through a neo-fascist coup.

The Significance of the January 6 Coup Attempt in Washington, D.C.

Despite the shocking events of earlier this month when thousands of Trump supporters stormed Capitol Hill, these developments should not have taken any politically conscious person by surprise. The administration had signaled the need for extra-judicial and violent actions against not only working class and oppressed peoples but also others who would dare stand in the way of such a program of reaction.

The ultimate realization of a neo-fascist and racist coup of this character would in fact disenfranchise tens of millions of principally African Americans and other voters from oppressed communities. It requires the throwing out of all the advances won through more than a century-and-a-half of protracted struggle related to civil rights and universal suffrage.

Even some among the spokespersons for the ruling class through its media outlets and other public platforms contemplated the apparent complicity of not only the White House and members of Congress in the attempted coup. Obviously, which has been the case historically, the overlap between military, intelligence and law-enforcement personnel easily became operational. It has been the policy of successive Democratic and Republican administrations to further militarize the police and to continue to replenish the prison-industrial-complex where more than 2.5 million remain incarcerated as millions of others are subjected to grossly overreaching judicial and law-enforcement supervision.

How can these ultra-rightist and militarist forces be defeated? We know from the history of the U.S. that the racist and reactionary forces are deeply embedded in the security apparatus of the capitalist state. If sections of the ruling class which are in disagreement with the Trump program attempts to purge these reactionary elements from the bureaucracy it could trigger even more violent unrest. One key aspect of the failure of the January 6 putsch was the lack of support among the highest levels of the military and intelligence structures. Although the Trump administration prodded the generals, intelligence heads, state politicians and the leaders of the Senate, including Vice President Mike Pence, to engage in the attempt to overthrow the electoral will of the people, these forces did not feel compelled to engage in a dictatorial solution to the contemporary crisis of racial capitalism and imperialism.

This is not to say that under a different set of circumstances such a coup would not gain the allegiance of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, leading political officials, government bureaucrats and directors of intelligence agencies. Only the masses of people properly organized and militant could be in a social position to reverse a right-wing coup through the use of general strikes, school boycotts and direct action. Consequently, our objective is to enhance the capacity of the working class, the nationally oppressed and other popular sectors of the population to guard against the advent of fascism and for the acquisition of genuine democracy and social emancipation.

Imperialist Militarism as an Outgrowth of Domestic Racism and Neo-fascism

During the last year of Dr. King’s life, he took a firm position in opposition to the U.S. genocidal war in Vietnam. King linked the struggle against imperialist war abroad with the need to eradicate poverty and institutional racism inside the country. Such a view in 1967-68 as well as in 2021 places one at loggerheads with the ruling class.

Nonetheless, we know that the actual enemies of the masses of people in the U.S. are in Washington, D.C., on Wall Street and other areas where the exploitation and repression of the majority remains in force. The peoples of Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean are not the inherent adversaries of the working class and nationally oppressed. In fact, the working and struggling masses of the world are the natural allies of the people within the U.S.

Therefore, we must be forthright in our solidarity with the peoples of Palestine, the Western Sahara, Yemen, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Venezuela, and all other oppressed and struggling nations throughout the globe. The total liberation of these geo-political regions will assist in the efforts of people inside the U.S. in their struggles to win genuine freedom and self-determination.

Let us continue our fight to prevail over the forces of racism and reaction in the U.S. and internationally. The securing of a federal holiday in honor of Dr. King some 35 years ago was not an end within itself. These concessions from the ruling class must be utilized to push the movement towards newer heights of achievement.

We salute all organizers in the city of Detroit, the state of Michigan, nationally and internationally. We will continue to march towards the objectives of eliminating all forms of injustice and oppression in our lifetimes and for future generations to come.

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Author’s note: These remarks were delivered at the Virtual 18th Annual Detroit MLK Day Rally and Cultural Program held on Monday January 18, 2021. This event brought together over 30 speakers and cultural workers to honor the social justice and antiwar legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Azikiwe, a co-founder of MLK Day in Detroit in 2004, has served as both a speaker and emcee at all of the previous rallies, demonstrations and cultural programs. Others presentations at this event were delivered by Jesus Rodriguez Espinoza, editor and publisher at the Orinoco Tribune based in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela; Darnell Summers, former GI war resister, musician and target of the United States government’s counter-intelligence program (COINTELPRO); Aurora Harris, Detroit poet, author and lecturer at the University of Michigan-Dearborn; Blair Anderson, former Black Panther Party member and political prisoner; Sammie Lewis, organizer for Detroit Will Breathe (DWB); Nakia Wallace, co-founder of DWB; Tristan Taylor, co-founder and organizer with DWB; Anthony Ali, artist and organizer with DWB; Sarah Torres, event co-chair, musician, technician and member of Moratorium NOW! Coalition; Saydi Sarr, co-founder of the African Bureau for Immigration and Social Affairs (ABISA); Clarence Thomas, retired member of the International Longshoreman and Warehouse Workers Union Local 10 (ILWU); Efren Peredes, juvenile lifer and prison organizer; Jae Bass, Detroit spoken word artist and organizer for DWB; a Peoples’ Spirit of Detroit award was given to DWB for their pioneering role in the anti-racist movement; Yvonne Jones, Moratorium NOW! Coalition organizer and spokesperson for the Racial Profiling Across 8 Mile billboard campaign; among many others. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on Detroit, the entire event was held online. Here is the link to the entire program streamed over You Tube.

Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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