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Since June 5, 2017, Saudi Arabia ordered a land, air, and sea blockade on Qatar and severed diplomatic ties, along with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and Bahrain. The self-styled “Anti-Terror Quartet” issued Doha 13 demands, including closing media outlets like Al Jazeera, ending ties with Iran, reducing military cooperation with Turkey, and severing ties to terrorist groups, which are following the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood ideology. Qatar denies support for terrorism. 

President Trump supported the blockade, tweeting on June 6: “During my recent trip to the Middle East, I stated that there can no longer be funding of Radical Ideology. Leaders pointed to Qatar…”

On December 2, Doha News reported that a breakthrough was impending and that it was “understood that Saudi Arabia will open its air space for Qatar Airways flights, and there are some reports that Riyadh may even open its land border.”

Qatar was able to use its deep financial reserves to keep the economy moving, and with orders of foods and other necessities from Iran, was able to manage the blockade for three years since Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) crisis. Qatar has also strengthened its ties with Turkey, increasing trade and air traffic.

Qatar statements

Qatar’s Foreign Affairs Minister, Mohammed Abdur Rahman Al-Thani, said Friday that the solution to the Gulf crisis must be comprehensive, denying any link between resolving the crisis and normalization with Israel. He added, “Normalization with Israel at the present time will not add any momentum to the Palestinian cause.”

Qatar’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Mohammed said on a videoconference on December 4 that Qatar is very optimistic about resolving the Gulf crisis and is positive about any initiative to achieve peace in the region.

Kushner’s trip

Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to US President Donald Trump, and US Special Envoy to the Middle East met Qatar’s Emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani in Doha on December 2. On what may be his last trip to the region, Kushner worked to bridge the divide between Saudi Arabia and Qatar, following talks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) in Neom on December 1, the site of the November 22 meeting between MBS, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Ahmad Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah thanked Kushner personally for his recent efforts in mediating the process of talks between Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

US media said that the visit was aimed at “reaching more diplomatic agreements in the Middle East before leaving the White House next January.” Kushner had tried to make the “Deal of the Century” between Israel and the Palestinians, but the deal fell flat.  To ensure added security for Israel, Trump and Kushner are pushing for Arab nations to normalize relations with Israel, and ending the blockade of Qatar makes the region more secure and unified in the face of Iran.

Trump wants the Qatar blockade to end

On December 3, The New York Times reported that Trump’s administration wants to resolve the Gulf crisis before its departure to guarantee to tighten the screws on Iran.

The Trump administration is pressing Saudi Arabia to open its airspace for Qatari flights that pay millions of dollars to use Iran’s airspace. MBS had forged a close relationship with Trump and Kushner, and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Zayed (MBZ) also has strong ties with the US President and his son in law.

On September 14, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said, “To keep our focus on this work and to close the door to increased Iranian meddling, it’s past time to find a solution to the Gulf rift.”

Trump’s administration focused on uniting the GCC countries with Israel to form a unified front against Iran but neglected to address the deep divisions that caused the crisis, such as Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood, which they share in common with Turkey, who has been another big problem for Trump.

US policy in the Middle East is changing

The US is oil self-sufficient, and they don’t need to defend Saudi Arabia, the other oil-rich monarchies, of the Straits of Hormuz. The US wants to drawdown some bases and troops in the region, but can’t leave Israel surrounded by hostile neighbors. By promoting normalization between the Arab nations and Israel, the US may be able to leave the area one day.

Arab countries have normalized with Israel

Saudi Arabia remains keen on improving security ties with Israel to contain Iran, but without openly normalizing relations. However, Egypt and Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel decades ago, and during the summer the UAE and Bahrain signed the Abraham Accord, which normalizes relations with Israel.

Palestinian rights 

Former Saudi intelligence chief and former ambassador to the US, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, criticized the Palestinian leadership for condemning Gulf states which decided to normalize ties with Israel. His remarks in October called Palestinian leaders “failures” and signaled that Riyadh’s support for them was eroding.

Publically, the Arab Peace Initiative, which Saudi Arabia unveiled back in 2002 still represents the Arab world’s basis for normalization with Israel. The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, told the Manama conference on December 5 that Riyadh was “completely open to full normalization with Israel.” The only condition first was for “the Palestinians to get their state, and we do need to settle that situation.”

At the regional security conference in Manama recently, the former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal, the seasoned former ambassador to the UK and the US, attacked Oman on foreign interference and called Israel the “last of the Western colonizing powers in the Middle East” and doubting its commitment to peace with the Palestinians, as well as its claim to be a democracy, which provoked the foreign ministers of Oman and Israel who were in attendance.

“They’re demolishing homes as they wish and they assassinate whomever they want, and yet the Israeli Knesset passed a law that defines the citizenship of Israel as exclusively Jewish, denying the non-Jewish inhabitants of Israel of equal rights under the law,” said Prince Turki while asking, “What kind of democracy is that?”

Iran and the Arab Gulf 

As a result of the blockade, Qatar moved closer to Iran and Turkey, establishing international supply channels and becoming independent of its neighbors.  One year after the blockade began, Iran’s exports to Qatar increased five-fold and are expected to increase 15 times by 2022. Qatar’s leaders have also repeatedly spoken out in support of Iran.

Abdulaziz Aluweshej, Assistant Secretary-General of the GCC, said that Iran’s role in the region is a major issue of concern between the US and the Gulf Arab countries, and both intend to contain Iran.

Some experts have asked why the GCC doesn’t negotiate directly with Iran, to establish some common ground, rather than only serving the US and Israeli interests.

Turkey and Qatar

Turkey and Qatar are both led by the political ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has been associated with many terrorist groups in Syria and Libya.

Egypt accused Qatar of undermining Libya’s current peace talks, following an agreement on November 13 between Doha and the internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in Tripoli. Qatar agreed to provide support and training to the GNA’s military force, which is run by terrorists following Radical Islam, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey is also on the ground in Libya, having sent armed terrorists from Idlib, Syria to Libya.

To counter the government of Tripoli, the UAE has funded General Haftar, who is fighting to establish a secular government in Libya.

The Obama-NATO war on Libya for regime change in 2011 succeed only in destroying the country, killing thousands, and has left the country after 10 years of chaos under the control of the Radical Islam ideology, which President Macron recently declared France was at war with.

Saudi Arabia’s statements

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said recently that his country was seeking ways to end the blockade on Qatar. “We continue to be willing to engage with our Qatari brothers, and we hope that they are as committed to that engagement,” said bin Farhan in October.

On December 4 Prince Faisal said, “We hope that this progress can lead to a final agreement which looks in reach, and I can say that I am somewhat optimistic that we are close to finalizing an agreement between all the nations in the dispute to come to a resolution that we think will be satisfactory to all.”

Kuwait is the broker

Kuwaiti foreign minister Sheikh Ahmad Nasser Al-Sabah, who is heavily involved in mediating negotiations, declared that “fruitful discussion has taken place” and that both sides wanted “to reach a final agreement.” Qatari foreign minister Muhammad bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani thanked the Kuwaitis for their mediation and said that there is “a movement that we hope will put an end to this crisis.” Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal said that Saudi Arabia appreciated Kuwait’s efforts to resolve the crisis.

GCC summit

The 41st annual summit for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is scheduled to take place in Riyadh later in December and may provide a venue for resolving the Gulf crisis with Qatar, especially as the GCC now operates under a Kuwaiti Secretary-General.

Saudi, the UAE, Bahrain, and Qatar will be negotiating the points of contention and the demands that have been in place since the crisis erupted in 2017, through working groups that will be tasked with drafting a final agreement.

Biden and Saudi Arabia

Joe Biden’s victory in the US Presidential elections has put pressure on Saudi Arabia to alter its foreign policy.

Biden has criticized MBS throughout his presidential campaign, promising to “reassess” Washington’s ties with Saudi Arabia over the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in September 2018, and the Saudi-led war in Yemen.

Biden didn’t call for an end to the blockade against Qatar, but his pressure on MBS could force the Crown Prince to alter Riyadh’s foreign policy, and stopping the blockade would be an important first step, as Saudi Arabia might want to paint itself as a diplomatic bridge-builder to the upcoming Biden administration.

Trump’s departure will remove the support and protection MBS enjoyed during his 4-year term.

Biden has warned Saudi Arabia that he will reverse some of Trump’s policies, which include new negotiations with Iran. This makes Gulf unity of urgent concern.

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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 the third certification of the results of the presidential elections in the state of Georgia, efforts are underway to ensure equal access to the franchise leading up to the pivotal race to determine the composition of the United States Senate.

The administration of President Donald Trump along with its failed campaign organization has sought over the last month to overturn their defeats in several key states won by incoming President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Georgia, a southern state with a sordid history of African enslavement and national oppression, voted by a margin of 12,000 against the Trump-Pence ticket. These developments came as a shock and disappointment to the right-wing which was relying on the Republican Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to reject and reverse the popular will of the electorate in favor of the administration.

Republican incumbent Senators Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue represent the hopes of their party since a victory by Democratic challengers John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock would shift the majority within the Senate, removing the current leadership of Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Trump visited Georgia to campaign on behalf of the Republican candidates claiming once again the presidential elections were marred by fraud and that he is the rightful winner. The president has attacked both the Governor and Secretary of State of Georgia after they would not go along with his charges and mandate to interfere with the documented results.

Lawsuit Filed Against Disenfranchisement

In Georgia a lawsuit was filed during early December claiming that 200, 000 people have been purged from the voter’s rolls. The legal action is seeking to avoid the circumstances which resulted in the ascendancy of Governor Kemp in 2018 when he was serving as Secretary of State.

Stacey Abrams, the former Democratic minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives, was poised to become the first African American to hold the position of governor in the state. Although a protracted struggle was waged in the courts to redress the electoral irregularities, Kemp prevailed as the winner. (See this)

Image on the right: Barbara Arnwine

Barbara Arnwine, of the Transformative Justice Coalition (TJC) and one of three litigants in the case, told Ms. Magazine that:

“Black Voters Matter et al. v. Raffensperger was filed in the United States District Court on Dec. 2. Black Voters Matter Fund, TJC and the Rainbow Push Coalition are the plaintiffs in the case suing Secretary of State of Georgia Brad Raffensperger in his official capacity for violations of the National Voters Registration Act.” (See this)

The decision to remove so many people from the voter registration list, the plaintiffs contend, is a direct violation of a law which was passed nearly three decades ago. The rationale utilized by the Secretary of State Raffensperger is that those denied eligibility had not updated their addresses along with non-participation in the two most recent elections. The plaintiffs refute this position saying that the Secretary of State did not exercise the proper methodology in determining whether the voters were still qualified to cast their ballots on January 5 in the runoff senatorial election.

Arnwine emphasized in relationship to the eligibility of these members of the electorate saying:

“The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 is clear on this. There’s no way of misreading the statute: It says that if you’re going to remove somebody because you believe they put in a change of address, you’ve got to use a certified USPS licensee. Georgia didn’t. The tragedy of it is that since they were told about it, they’ve done nothing to restore these people’s right to vote. They knew this going into November, that they had wrongfully removed 70,000 people, and that they had violated the law in doing so, and they did nothing to restore those people. We couldn’t sue them then because the NVRA requires that we give the state 90 days’ notice. So, we had to run the full 90 days and unfortunately those 90 days ran beyond November the third, but fortunately they just ran in time for us to file for this January 5 runoff election.” (See this)

Universal Suffrage, Self-Determination and the Need for an Independent Political Program

African Americans have historically been subjected to national oppression, institutional racism and economic exploitation, particularly in the former antebellum slavocracy in the South. After the conclusion of the Civil War, the question for the ruling interests in the U.S. was what would be the future status of the 4.5 million people of African descent.

Reconstruction efforts aimed at dismantling the plantation system and providing an avenue for “citizenship” to the formerly enslaved population became a serious point of contention on a national level. There were advances made during the late 1860s and 1870s with the support of the Radicals within the U.S. Congress to provide voting rights, land, education and due process to the African American people.

Nonetheless, the post-Civil War plantation economy still required the super-exploitation of Africans and even poor whites, in order to prevent the emergence of a genuinely democratic system in the U.S. After the elections of 1876 and the historic compromise over the outcome of the contest between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden, the federal government withdrew its support for Reconstruction. Over the proceeding decades of the 19^th century, African Americans were systematically disenfranchised and placed in a social status quite similar, if not worst, than what existed during legalized slavery. (See this)

The criminal justice apparatus was a tool to charge African Americans with various crimes so they could be further marginalized and incarcerated in order to work without wages as in a slave system, and even lynched. Between the 1880s and the 1960s, it is estimated that approximately 3,700 African Americans were murdered extra-judicially. Despite these atrocities, the federal government refused to pass anti-lynching legislation to hold the white racist mobs accountable for their crimes against humanity. (See this)

Today, in the third decade of the 21^st century, 2.5 million people remain jailed and imprisoned in the U.S. Over half of the people detained are African Americans, people of Latin American descent and working people in general. There are no rich people on death row. The death penalty is still in effect as evidenced by the scheduled federal executions of four African American men and one impoverished white woman as the Trump administration is slated to leave office on January 20. These events are taking place amid the pardoning of Trump loyalists, and possibly himself, for crimes committed while in office. (See this and this)

African Americans and people of color communities must have the right to vote and equal protection under the law. The nationally oppressed should have the right to determine their own destiny from a political and economic perspective. There can be no democracy in the U.S. absent of the full participation of the most oppressed and exploited sections of the population.

The senatorial elections in Georgia represents a test for the U.S. political system. Irrespective of the outcome of January 5 elections, ultimately African Americans cannot achieve genuine equality and self-determination without a fundamental change in the structures of the racist capitalist system. The mobilizations by various organizations nationally must extend their scope to demand the destruction of institutional racism and the realization of the social liberation of all working class and exploited peoples in the U.S.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of Pan-African News Wire. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author

The unknown is simply the future.

This future is to be determined by a declining global economy becoming saturated with massive U.S. money printing to prop up the banksters and corporate CEOs.

It will be determined by the disregard domestically and internationally for the supposed ‘rule of law’ but more importantly international law and true justice for all people.

The changes to our environment are at the moment relatively slow, but are becoming irreversible under current trends.

Finally, the massive military investments on a global scale for both nuclear and conventional weaponry threatens everyone with a very delicate balance of power.

 

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Days of the future passed: Point of no return

Kindle edition

Author: Jim Miles

Publication date: December 6, 2020

Print length: 423 pages

ASIN: B08PVZSHCC

 Click here to order.

This article was originally published on Asia Times.

Seven years after being launched by President Xi Jinping, first in Astana and then in Jakarta, the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increasingly drive the American plutocratic oligarchy completely nuts.

The relentless paranoia about the Chinese “threat” has much to do with the exit ramp offered by Beijing to a Global South permanently indebted to IMF/World Bank exploitation.

In the old order, politico-military elites were routinely bribed in exchange for unfettered corporate access to their nations’ resources, coupled with go-go privatization schemes and outright austerity (“structural adjustment”).

This went on for decades until BRI became the new game in town in terms of infrastructure building – offering an alternative to the imperial footprint.

The Chinese model allows all manner of parallel taxes, sales, rents, leases – and profits. This means extra sources of income for host governments – with an important corollary: freedom from the hardcore neoliberal diktats of IMF/World Bank. This is what is at the heart of the notorious Chinese “win-win”.

Moreover, BRI’s overall strategic focus on infrastructure development not only across Eurasia but also Africa encompasses a major geopolitical game-changer. BRI is positioning vast swathes of the Global South to become completely independent from the Western-imposed debt trap. For scores of nations, this is a matter of national interest. In this sense BRI should be regarded as the ultimate post-colonialist mechanism.

BRI in fact bristles with Sun Tzu simplicity applied to geoeconomics. Never interrupt the enemy when he’s making a mistake – in this case enslaving the Global South via perpetual debt. Then use his own weapons – in this case financial “help” – to destabilize his preeminence.

Hit the road with the Mongols

None of the above, of course, is bound to serenade the paranoid volcano, which will keep spitting out a 24/7 deluge of red alerts  deriding BRI as “poorly defined, badly mismanaged and visibly failing”. “Visibly”, of course, only for the exceptionalists.

Predictably, the paranoid volcano feeds on a toxic mix of arrogance and crass ignorance of Chinese history and culture.

Xue Li, director of the Department of International Strategy at the Institute of World Economics and Politics of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, has shown how “after the Belt and Road Initiative was proposed in 2013, China’s diplomacy has changed from maintaining a low profile to becoming more proactive in global affairs. But the policy of ‘partnership rather than alliance’ has not changed, and it is unlikely to change in the future. The indisputable fact is that the system of alliance diplomacy preferred by Western countries is the choice of a few countries in the world, and most countries choose non-aligned diplomacy. Besides, the vast majority of them are developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”

Atlanticists are desperate because the “system of alliance diplomacy” is on the wane. The overwhelming majority of the Global South is now being reconfigured as a newly energized Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) – as if Beijing had found a way to revive the Spirit of Bandung in 1955.

Chinese scholars are fond of quoting a 13^th century imperial handbook, according to which policy changes should be “beneficial for the people”. If they only benefit corrupt officials, the result is luan (“chaos”). Thus the 21^st century Chinese emphasis on pragmatic policy instead of ideology.

Rivaling informed parallels with the Tang and Ming dynasties, it’s actually the Yuan dynasty that offers a fascinating introduction to the inner workings of BRI.

So let’s go for a short trip back to the 13^th century, when Genghis Khan’s immense empire was replaced by four khanates.

We had the Khanate of the Great Khan – which turned into the Yuan dynasty – ruling over China, Mongolia, Tibet, Korea and Manchuria.

We had the Ilkhanate, founded by Hulagu (the conqueror of Baghdad) ruling Iran, Iraq, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, parts of Anatolia and the Caucasus.

We had the Golden Horde ruling the northwestern Eurasian steppe, from eastern Hungary to Siberia, and most of all the Russian principalities.

And we had the Chaghadaid Khanate (named after Genghis Khan’s second son) ruling Central Asia, from eastern Xinjiang to Uzbekistan, until Tamerlane’s rise to power in 1370.

This era saw an enormous acceleration of trade along the Mongol Silk Roads.

All these Mongol-controlled governments privileged local and international commerce. That translated into a boom in markets, taxes, profits – and prestige. The khanates competed to get the best trading minds. They laid out the necessary infrastructure for transcontinental travel (13^th century BRI, anyone?) And they opened the way for multiple East-West, trans-civilizational exchanges.

When the Mongols conquered the Song in southern China they even expanded overland Silk Roads trade into Maritime Silk Roads. The Yuan dynasty was now controlling China’s powerful southern ports. So when there was any kind of turbulence overland, trade switched to the seas.

The key axes were through the Indian Ocean, between south China and India, and between India and the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea.

Cargo was traveling overland to Iran, Iraq, Anatolia and Europe; by sea, through Egypt and the Mediterranean, to Europe; and from Aden to east Africa.

A slave trade maritime route between the Golden Horde’s ports on the Black Sea and Egypt – run by Muslim, Italian and Byzantine traders – was also in effect. The Black Sea ports transited luxury merchandise arriving overland from the East. And caravans traveled inland from the Indian coast during dangerous monsoon seasons.

This frantic commercial activity was the proto-BRI, which reached its apex in the 1320s and 1330s all the way to the collapse of the Yuan dynasty in 1368 in parallel to the Black Death in Europe and the Middle East. The key point: all the overland and maritime roads were interlinked. 21^st century BRI planners benefit from a long historical memory.

“Nothing will fundamentally change”

Now compare this wealth of trade and cultural interchange with the pedestrian, provincial, anti-BRI and overall anti-China paranoia in the US. What we get is the State Dept. under exiting Mike “We Lie, We Cheat, We Steal” Pompeo issuing a paltry diatribe on the “China challenge”. Or the US Navy recommissioning the First Fleet, probably to be based in Perth, to “have an Indo-Pac footprint” and thus maintain “maritime dominance in an era of great power competition”.

More ominously, here is a summary of the humongous, 4,517-page, $740.5 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2021, just approved by the House by 335 to 78 (Trump threatened to veto it).

This is about funding for the Pentagon next year – to be supervised in theory by the new Raytheon General, Lloyd Austin, the last “commanding General” of the US in Iraq who run CENTCOM from 2013 to 2016 and then retired for some juicy revolving door gigs such as the board of Raytheon and crucially, the board of ultra-toxic air, water, soil polluter Nucor.

Austin is a revolving door character who supported the war on Iraq, the destruction of Libya, and supervised the training of Syrian “moderate rebels” – a.k.a. recycled al-Qaeda – who killed countless Syrian civilians.

The NDAA, predictably, is heavy on “tools to deter China”.

That will include:

1. A so-called “Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI), code for containment of China in the Indo-Pacific by boosting the Quad.

2. Massive counter-intel operations.

3. An offensive against “debt diplomacy”. That’s nonsense: BRI deals are voluntary, on a win-win basis, and open to renegotiation. Global South nations privilege them because loans are low-interest and long-term.

4. Restructuring global supply chains which lead to the US. Good luck with that. Sanctions on China will remain in place.

5. Across the board pressure forcing nations not to use Huawei 5G.

6. Reinforcing Hong Kong and Taiwan as Trojan Horses to destabilize China.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe has already set the tone: “Beijing intends to dominate the US and the rest of the planet economically, militarily and technologically”. Be afraid, very much afraid of the evil Chinese Communist Party, “the greatest threat to democracy and freedom worldwide since World War II”.

There you go: Xi is the new Hitler.

So nothing will fundamentally change after January 2021 – as officially promised by Biden-Harris: it’s gonna be Hybrid War on China all over again, deployed all over the spectrum, as Beijing has perfectly understood.

So what? China’s industrial production will continue to grow while in the US it will continue to decline. There will be more breakthroughs by Chinese scientists such as the photonic quantum computing – which performed 2.6 billion years of computation in 4 minutes. And the 13^th century Yuan dynasty spirit will keep inspiring BRI.

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Venezuela held legislative elections on December 6 and, as has become the norm, the U.S. and sectors of the opposition that boycotted the election are claiming fraud without presenting evidence. The coalition of parties supporting President Maduro won 68% of the vote and a supermajority in the National Assembly. All the evidence suggests the elections were free and fair. However, turnout was only 31%, a participation rate that was hampered by a partial opposition boycott of the election. 

This call to abstain was made by Juan Guaidó and his allies, but a different faction of the opposition participated fully. In the past three years, this faction of the opposition has taken a moderate stance that involves engaging in dialogue and participating in elections. The moderates accepted the election’s results, called for reflection and strongly criticized the call for a boycott.

The Trump administration spent the last several months attempting to sabotage Venezuela’s elections by characterizing them as a “sham” and sanctioning some of these moderates. Yet now that the vote took place, there is no evidence of irregularities. Claiming that elections are fraudulent before they’re even held – and insisting that fraud occurred in the face of overwhelming evidence against such a claim – is a specialty of the Trump administration.

The U.S. government repeatedly said that there were “no conditions” for free and fair elections, but the condition it sought to impose was the resignation of President Maduro. Unsurprisingly, the European Union, the Lima Group (an ad hoc set of Latin American countries pushing for regime change in Venezuela) and the corporate media followed the State Department’s lead, attempting to delegitimize what is likely one of the most fraud-proof electoral processes in the world. In contrast, observers on the ground, including the Latin American Council of Electoral Experts, underscored the election’s compliance with international standards.

A secure electoral system 

Back in 2012, Jimmy Carter called Venezuela’s process “the best in the world.” It’s not hard to see why. Venezuela has electronic voting machines that print paper receipts. The machines are only unlocked when a voter’s identity is verified by digital fingerprint scan and a spot-check of their national identity card. After voting on the machine (a simple process that can take as little as ten seconds), it prints out a paper receipt so electors can verify that their vote was correctly recorded. The elector then places this receipt in a secure ballot box, and then signs and places a thumbprint on the voter roll.

A graphic from Venezuela’s National Electoral Council showing the voting process. 

After polls close, the digital vote count is compared to a random sampling of at least 54% of the ballot boxes (a figure that is higher than necessary to have a statistically significant result). It’s a system with multiple redundancies that is backed by 16 different audits that must be signed off on by representatives of political parties.

In these elections, 14,000 candidates from 107 parties (97 of which oppose the Maduro government) ran for 277 seats. The choices ran the ideological spectrum from communists and socialists to evangelicals, Christian conservatives and neoliberals. Opposition candidates got air time on state television stations and took part in several debates.

The elections were monitored by 300 international observers from 34 countries, as well as over 1,000 national observers from political parties and social organizations. Teri Mattson, who observed two previous elections in Venezuela, led a CODEPINK observation delegation and described this year’s elections as free and fair, and without fraud or tampering. “Voting is easy, fast and secure: an incentive for all voters while also preventing long lines due to cumbersome ballots and voter procedures such as those seen in the U.S.,” Mattson said.

Voter turnout

Of course, the low turnout is bound to raise eyebrows, yet it’s important to place it into context. One factor that depressed participation is a gasoline shortage induced by U.S. sanctions, which made it difficult for some voters to travel to polls. Migration is another factor that artificially reduced turnout. Only citizens who currently reside in the country can vote in legislative elections, but most who left in recent years still appear on voter rolls as living in Venezuela.

A further factor is the pandemic. Venezuela is doing significantly better than most countries in handling the coronavirus (3,694 cases per million population and 33 deaths per million population, versus 46,348 cases per million and 877 deaths per million in the U.S.). However, there’s still enough fear of the virus that it serves as a disincentive to voting.

International comparisons should also be taken into account when analyzing the turnout. For example, parliamentary elections were also held Sunday in Romania, which had similarly low voter turnout (33%). Other countries have also had poor participation this year, including legislative elections in Egypt (28% turnout), Mali (35%), Jamaica (38%) and Jordan (30%), as well as municipal elections in Costa Rica (38%). Additionally, U.S. midterm elections typically feature 40% voter turnout (it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison, as virtually all eligible voters are registered in Venezuela, which is not the case in the U.S.). None of these elections are less legitimate for their low participation, and neither is Venezuela’s.

The failed strategy of boycotts

Clearly, a significant factor in reduced turnout was the extremist opposition’s call for a boycott. This tactic of boycotting elections has been used by the opposition in the past, including in the 2005 legislative elections, the 2017 national constituent assembly elections, the 2017 municipal elections (partial boycott) and the 2018 presidential elections (partial boycott).

However, at no point has boycotting elections helped them in any way. So why do the extremists keep engaging in a failed tactic? After all, the opposition routinely claims (again, offering no evidence) that 80% of the population disapproves of the Maduro administration; it doesn’t make sense to cede ground when there’s the possibility of winning.

One explanation is that they were afraid of losing. In the last elections that featured full participation, the 2017 gubernatorial elections, the opposition ended up losing in 19 of 23 states. It’s not clear that they would have won this time around, particularly as a significant percentage of their base has migrated in recent years. A loss would have destroyed once and for all the fiction of Juan Guaidó’s so-called interim president (his “claim” to the presidency is based on his being a legislator in the current National Assembly). Better to not run than run and lose.

Another explanation is that a boycott was part of the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign, which involves ongoing attempts to delegitimize Venezuela’s democratic credentials. This strategy was threatened when the moderate opposition engaged in dialogue and announced they were running in the elections. The Trump administration quickly denounced them as “complicit” with and “puppets” of the Maduro government, before sanctioning several of those leaders.

The U.S. got the European Union on board with this plan as well. In January, the EU sanctioned three moderate opposition figures for “acting against the National Assembly’s democratic functioning” after they were elected to leadership positions in the legislature, replacing Juan Guaidó and two of his allies.

More recently, the EU refused the calls from two-time presidential candidate Henrique Capriles to monitor the elections. Capriles said his participation was contingent upon EU monitoring, which didn’t occur because the EU claimed it did not have enough time to prepare a delegation. This was back in September, three months before the vote. After the elections, the EU had the gall to criticize the Venezuelan government for failing “to mobilize the Venezuelan people to participate.”

In practical terms, higher turnout may have opened the doors for negotiations between the U.S. and moderate opposition, but that possibility now seems less likely. Other than that, the low turnout is not going to have much impact on the ground in Venezuela.

The Maduro government will have a supermajority in the National Assembly for the next five years, which should help it develop measures to counter the economic sanctions. It’s in a stronger position now than it was prior to the elections. After four years of sanctions, sabotaged industries, attempted coups, an assassination by drone attempt, a mercenary incursion and paramilitary attacks, among others, Venezuela managed to survive the Trump administration’s maximum pressure. The elections were carried out in complete tranquility. That is quite an achievement and puts to rest the magical thinking of the Trump administration and extreme opposition, which have spent years saying that regime change is just around the corner.

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Leonardo Flores is a Latin American policy expert and campaigner with CODEPINK.

Featured image is from Alliance for Global Justice

Before the January 4 ruling of District Judge Vanessa Baraitser in the extradition case of Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks publisher will continue to endure the ordeal of cold prison facilities while being menaced by a COVID-19 outbreak.  From November 18, Assange, along with inmates in House Block 1 at Belmarsh prison in south-east London, were placed in lockdown conditions.  The measure was imposed after three COVID-19 cases were discovered. 

The response was even more draconian than usual.  Exercise was halted; showers prohibited.  Meals were to be provided directly to the prisoner’s cell.  Prison officials described the approach as a safety precaution.  “We’ve introduced further safety measures following a number of positive cases,” stated a Prison Service spokesperson.

Assange’s time at Belmarsh is emblematic of a broadly grotesque approach which has been legitimised by the national security establishment.  The pandemic has presented another opportunity to knock him off, if only by less obvious means.  The refusal of Judge Baraitser to grant him bail, enabling him to prepare his case in conditions of guarded, if relative safety, typifies this approach.  “Every day that passes is a serious risk to Julian,” explains his partner, Stella Moris.  “Belmarsh is an extremely dangerous environment where murders and suicides are commonplace.”

Belmarsh already presented itself as a risk to one’s mental bearings prior to the heralding of the novel coronavirus.  But galloping COVID-19 infections through Britain’s penal system have added another, potentially lethal consideration.  On November 24, Moris revealed that some 54 people in Assange’s house block had been infected with COVID-19.  These included inmates and prison staff.  “If my son dies from COVID-19,” concluded a distressed Christine Assange, “it will be murder.”

The increasing number of COVID-19 cases in Belmarsh has angered the UN Special Rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer.  On December 7, ten years from the day of Assange’s first arrest, he spoke of concerns that 65 out of approximately 160 inmates had tested positive.  “The British authorities initially detained Mr. Assange on the basis of an arrest warrant issued by Sweden in connection with allegations of sexual misconduct that have since been formally dropped due to lack of evidence.” He was currently being “detained for exclusively preventive purposes, to ensure his presence during the ongoing US extradition trial, a proceeding which may well last several years.”

The picture for the rapporteur is unmistakable, ominous and unspeakable.  The prolonged suffering of the Australian national, who already nurses pre-existing health conditions, amounts to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.  Imprisoning Assange was needlessly brutal.  “Mr. Assange is not a criminal convict and poses no threat to anyone, so his prolonged solitary confinement in a high security prison is neither necessary nor proportionate and clearly lacks any legal basis.”  Melzer suggested immediate decongestion measures for “all inmates whose imprisonment is not absolutely necessary” especially those, “such as Mr Assange, who suffers from a pre-existing respiratory health condition.”

Free speech advocates are also stoking the fire of interest ahead of Baraitser’s judgment.  In Salon, Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd, penned a heartfelt piece wondering what had happened to the fourth estate.  “Where is the honest reporting that we all so desperately need, and upon which the very survival of democracy depends?”  Never one to beat about the bush, Waters suggested that it was “languishing in Her Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh.”  To extradite Assange would “set the dangerous precedent that journalists can be prosecuted merely for working with inside sources, or for publishing information the government deems harmful.”  The better alternative: to dismiss the charges against Assange “and cancel the extradition proceedings in the kangaroo court in London.”

In the meantime, a vigorous campaign is being advanced from the barricades of Twitter to encourage President Donald Trump to pardon Assange.  Moris stole the lead with her appeal on Thanksgiving.  Pictures of sons Max and Gabriel were posted to tingle the commander-in-chief’s tear ducts.  “I beg you, please bring him home for Christmas.” 

Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard has added her name to the Free Assange campaign, directing her pointed wishes to the White House.  “Since you’re giving pardons to people,” she declared, “please consider pardoning those who, at great personal sacrifice, exposed the deception and criminality in the deep state.”

Pamela Anderson’s approach was somewhat different and, it should be said, raunchily attuned to her audience.  She made no qualms donning a bikini in trying to get the president’s attention.  “Bring Julian Assange Home Australia,” went her carried sign, tweeted with a message to Trump to pardon him.  Glenn Greenwald, formerly of The Intercept, proved more conventional, niggling Trump about matters of posterity.  “By far the most important blow Trump could strike against the abuse of power by CIA, FBI & the Deep State – as well as to impose transparency on them to prevent future abuses – is a pardon of @Snowden & Julian Assange, punished by those corrupt factions for exposing their abuses.”  Alan Rusbridger, formerly editor of The Guardian, agrees. 

While often coupled with Assange in the pardoning stakes, Edward Snowden has been clear about his wish to see the publisher freed.  “Mr. President, if you grant only one act of clemency during your time in office, please: free Julian Assange.  You alone can save his life.”  As well meant as this is, Trump’s treasury of pardons is bound to be stocked by other options, not least for himself. 

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

Featured image is from 21st Century Wire

The collective wealth of America’s 651 billionaires has jumped by over $1 trillion since roughly the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to a total of $4 trillion at market close on Monday, December 7, 2020. Their wealth growth since March is more than the $908 billion in pandemic relief proposed by a bipartisan group of members of Congress, which is likely to be the package that moves forward for a vote in the next week, but has been stalled over Republican concerns that it is too costly.  

The total net worth of the nation’s 651 billionaires rose from $2.95 trillion on March 18—the rough start of the pandemic shutdowns—to $4.01 trillion on Dec. 7, a leap of 36%, based on Forbes billionaires, according to a new report  by Americans for Tax Fairness (ATF) and the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). By around March 18 most federal and state economic restrictions in response to the virus were in place. Combined, just the top 10 billionaires are now worth more than $1 trillion.

Forbes’ annual billionaires report was published March 18, and ATF and IPS collected the real-time data on Dec. 7 from the Forbes website. The methodology of this analysis has been favorably reviewed by PolitiFact. The ATF-IPS analysis also looks at wealth growth since February 2019—the date of Forbes’ immediately previous annual billionaires report published well before the start of the pandemic and resulting market gyrations.

The $1 trillion wealth gain by 651 U.S. billionaires since mid-March is:

• More than it would cost to send a stimulus check of $3,000 to every one of the roughly 330 million people in America. A family of four would receive over $12,000. Republicans have blocked new stimulus checks from being included in the pandemic relief package.
• Double the two-year estimated budget gap of all state and local governments, which is forecast to be at least $500 billion. By June, state and local governments had already laid off 1.5 million workers and public services—especially education—faced steep budget cuts.
• Only slightly less than total federal spending on Medicare ($644 billion in 2019) and Medicaid ($389 billion in FY2019), which together serve 120 million Americans (69 million in Medicaid, 63 million in Medicare, less 12 million enrolled in both).
• Nearly four times the $267 billion total in stimulus payments made to 159 million people earlier this year.

At $4 trillion the total wealth of all U.S. billionaires today is nearly double the $2.1 trillion in total wealth held by the bottom half of the population, or 165 million Americans.

“Never before has America seen such an accumulation of wealth in so few hands,” said Frank Clemente, executive director of Americans for Tax Fairness. “As tens of millions of Americans suffer from the health and economic ravages of this pandemic, a few hundred billionaires add to their  massive fortunes. Their pandemic profits are so immense that America’s billionaires could pay for a major COVID relief bill and still not lose a dime of their pre-virus riches. Their wealth growth is so great that they alone could provide a $3,000 stimulus payment to every man, woman and child in the country, and still be richer than they were 9 months ago. Joe Biden won a tax-fairness mandate in November. We look forward to working with him and Congress to deliver on that mandate by taxing the massive wealth of these billionaires.”

“The updraft of wealth to the billionaire class is disturbing at a time when millions face eviction, destitution, and loss,” said Chuck Collins of the Institute for Policy Studies and co-author of Billionaire Bonanza 2020, a report looking at pandemic profiteering and billionaire wealth. “Billionaires are extracting wealth at a time when essential workers are pushed into the viral line of fire.”

All data in table is from Forbes and available here.

March 18, 2020 data: Forbes, “Forbes Publishes 34th Annual List Of Global Billionaires,” March 18, 2020

Dec. 7, 2020 data: Forbes, “The World’s Real-Time Billionaires, Today’s Winners and Losers,” accessed Dec. 8, 2020

Feb. 8, 2019 data: Forbes 2019 World Billionaires Report, March 5, 2019

Ordinary Americans have not fared as well as billionaires during the pandemic:

• Nearly 14.9 million have fallen ill with the virus and 284,000 have died from it. [Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center]
• Collective work income of rank-and-file private-sector employees—all hours worked times the hourly wages of the entire bottom 82% of the workforce—declined by 2.3% from mid-March to mid-October, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
• Nearly 67 million lost work between Mar. 21 and Oct. 7, 2020. [U.S. Department of Labor]
• 20 million were collecting unemployment on Nov. 14, 2020. [U.S. Department of Labor]
• 98,000 businesses have permanently closed. [Yelp/CNBC]
• 12 million workers have lost employer-sponsored health insurance during the pandemic as of August 26, 2020. [Economic Policy Institute]
• Nearly 26 million adults reported their household not having enough food in the past week between Nov. 11-23. From Oct. 28 to Nov. 7, between 7 and 11 million children lived in a household where kids did not eat enough because the household could not afford it. [Center on Budget & Policy Priorities (CBPP)]
• 12.4 million adults—1 in 6 renters—reported in November being behind in their rent. [CBPP]

Without a federal fiscal relief package, workers will face even greater loss of jobs and services than they have already suffered. The Economic Policy Institute predicts that without more federal aid 5.3 million public-sector jobs—including those of teachers, public safety employees and health care workers—will be lost by the end of 2021.

Because of long-standing racial and gender disparities, low-wage workers, people of color and women have suffered disproportionately in the combined medical and economic crises of 2020. Blacks and Latinos are far more likely to become infected with Covid-19 and to die from the disease. Billionaires are overwhelmingly white men.

The stock market surge and lock-down economy have been a boon to tech monopolies and helped create four U.S. “centi-billionaires.” Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg are now each worth more than $100 billion. Prior to this year, Bezos had been the only U.S. centi-billionaire, reaching that peak in 2018. Bezos and other billionaires have seen particularly astonishing increases in wealth between March 18 and Dec. 7:

• Jeff Bezos’s wealth grew from $113 billion on March 18 to $184 billion, an increase of 63%. Adding in his ex-wife MacKenzie Scott’s wealth of $60 billion on that day, the two had a combined wealth of almost a quarter of a trillion dollars thanks to their Amazon stock. If Bezos’s $71.4 billion growth in wealth was distributed to all his 810,000 U.S. employees, each would get a windfall bonus of over $88,000 and Bezos would not be any “poorer” than he was 9 months ago.
• Elon Musk’s wealth grew by nearly $119 billion, from $24.6 billion on March 18 to $143 billion, a nearly five-fold increase, boosted by his Tesla stock. SpaceX founder Musk has enjoyed one of the biggest boosts in net worth of any billionaire. That $119 billion growth in wealth is more than five times NASA’s $22.6 billion budget in FY2020, the federal agency Musk has credited with saving his company with a big federal contract when the firm’s rockets were failing and it faced bankruptcy.
• Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth grew from $54.7 billion on March 18 to $105 billion, an increase of 92%, fueled by his Facebook stock.
• Dan Gilbert, chairman of Quicken Loans, saw his wealth rocket by 543%, from $6.5 billion to $41.8 billion, the second biggest percentage increase of all the billionaires.

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Pearl Harbor and the Bay of Pigs

By Jacob G. Hornberger, December 09 2020

A FEMA – Agência Federal para a Gestão de Emergências, dependente do governo dos Estados Unidos – actualizou as instruções para a população, sobre como se comportar em caso de ataque nuclear. As novas instruções têm em consideração a Covid-19, os isolamentos resultantes e as normas a serem seguidas para a nação se proteger do vírus.

Nessas instruções, a FEMA ignora os efeitos reais (comprovados cientificamente) de uma explosão nuclear. Mesmo que as pessoas em fuga tenham a sorte de encontrar um lugar para se abrigarem que não esteja fechado devido à Covid, elas ainda não têm escapatória. O deslocação do ar originada pela explosão, com ventos de 800 km / h, provoca o colapso ou estouro até mesmo dos edifícios mais sólidos. O calor derrete o aço, faz explodir o betão armado. Mesmo as pessoas que encontraram “os melhores lugares para se abrigar” são vaporizadas, esmagadas e carbonizadas.

Os efeitos destruidores de uma bomba nuclear de 1 megaton (igual ao poder explosivo de 1 milhão de toneladas de TNT) estendem-se circularmente até cerca de 14 km. Se uma bomba de 20 megatoneladas explodir, os efeitos devastadores  abarcam um raio de mais de 60 km.

Nessa situação, a FEMA preocupa-se em proteger as pessoas da Covid-19. Quando for accionado o alarme nuclear, avisa, “pergunte às autoridades locais quais os abrigos públicos que estão abertos, pois podem ter sido transferidos devido ao Covid-19”; no momento da evacuação, “para se proteger e à sua família da Covid-19, levem convosco duas máscaras por pessoa e um desinfectante para as mãos que contenha pelo menos 60% de álcool”; dentro do abrigo, “continue a praticar o distanciamento social, usando a máscara e mantendo uma distância de pelo menos 6 pés (quase 2 metros) entre si e as pessoas que não fazem parte de sua família”.

Este cenário pressupõe que, no caso de alarme nuclear, os 330 milhões de cidadãos norteamericanos não entrem em pânico, mas, mantendo a calma, se informem quais os abrigos que estão abertos e, por isso,   que se preocupem em primeiro lugar em se proteger da Covid-19 trazendo consigo máscaras e desinfectantes e, uma vez no abrigo, mantenham o distanciamento social de modo que, num abrigo com capacidade para mil pessoas, seriam admitidas 200 enquanto os outros ficariam na parte de fora.

Admitindo, absurdamente, que as pessoas seguiram as instruções da FEMA para se protegerem da Covid-19, elas ainda estariam expostas à chuva radioactiva numa área muito maior do que a destruída pelas explosões nucleares. Um número crescente de pessoas aparentemente ilesas começaria a apresentar sintomas da síndrome da radiação. Como não há tratamento possível, o resultado é inevitavelmente fatal.

Se as radiações atingem o sistema nervoso, causam fortes dores de cabeça e letargia, então ocorre um estado de coma, acompanhado de convulsões, e a morte ocorre em 48 horas. No caso da síndrome da radiação gastrointestinal, a vítima sofre de vómitos e diarreia hemorrágica, acompanhados de febre alta e morre numa ou duas semanas.

Nesse cenário, a Fema também se preocupa com o estado mental das pessoas. Alerta que “a ameaça de uma explosão nuclear pode causar ainda mais stresse para muitas pessoas que já sentem medo e ansiedade devido à Covid-19”. Portanto, recomenda seguir as instruções sobre como “gerir o stresse durante um acontecimento traumático”. Deste modo, fica claro que, em caso de ataque nuclear, os cidadãos norte-americanos seriam assistidos por psicólogos que, enquanto as bombas nucleares explodem, os ensinam a controlar o stresse, convencendo-se de que, graças à Fema, foram salvos do Covid.

 Manlio Dinucci

 

Artigo original em italiano :

Come Salvarsi dal Covid-19 Sotto le Bombe Nucleari

il manifesto, 8 de Dezembro de 2020

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos

 

Recent reports from Japanese media alleging that US immigration authorities there consider Russian nationals in some of the Kuril Islands to legally be Japanese represent an attempt by the fading unipolar superpower to ruin former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s legacy of rapprochement with Russia by pressuring his successor Yoshihide Suga into backtracking from that forward-looking policy.

All vaccines are hazardous to human health.

Annually, the US Vaccine Adverse Reporting System (VAERS) reports thousands of serious adverse vaccine reactions, including many deaths and disabling disabilities.

Instead of highlighting the danger, corporate-controlled establishment media suppress what’s vital for everyone to know — one of many reasons why they can never be trusted.

Scientific evidence shows that vaccines can cause chronic headaches, rashes, skin lesions, seizures, autism, anemia, multiple sclerosis, ALS, cancer, diabetes, polio, infertility, and many other health issues.

Promoted protection against covid by vaxxing risks far greater harm to health than any benefit.

Development of vaccines takes years. Most trials fail.

Information war brainwashing is being waged by mass media on the public.

It requires a giant leap of faith to accept fourth estate-promoted industry propaganda about soon-to-be-available covid vaccines.

According to industry data, about 90% of drugs (including vaccines) that reach clinical stage development never get FDA approval in the US for human use — for lack of efficacy, adverse reactions and other reasons.

Covid vaccines about to be rolled out, perhaps by late December, were developed in 6 to 9 months — on the phony pretext of addressing a national emergency that DOES NOT exist.

Covid is another form of seasonal flu/influenza.

The latter affects millions of Americans and others worldwide annually — with no fear-mongering mass hysteria, no fast-tracked development of vaccines or other drugs for treatment.

Cutting corners exponentially increases the potential hazards of covid vaccines that Washington, other Western capitals, and their press agent media urge everyone to take — suppressing the risks to human health and welfare.

When available, everyone willingly or otherwise inoculated for alleged protection against covid will be playing Russian roulette with their health, welfare and lives.

Thailand Medical News earlier accused the drug industry of “fake or manipulated vaccine research,” adding:

“Expediting protocols and clinical trials” are contrary to proper drug development.

Pharma, “unethical politicians…medical journals and medical researchers…are involved in these scams to enrich themselves along with the owners of certain media and social media platforms.”

“The public has to be very careful about what the mainstream medical and social media platforms are disseminating with regards to medical and health news and also about COVID-19 vaccines.”

According to Health Impact News, “doctors around the world are frantically trying to warn the masses of the devastating effects of the experimental COVID vaccines about to be mass injected into the unsuspecting public assisted by military forces around the world.”

Government, Pharma, and mass media claims about safety and efficacy of covid vaccines are not based on peer-reviewed scientific data.

In October, highly respected epidemiologists Drs. Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jayanta Bhattacharya prepared what they called the “Great Barrington Declaration.”

It’s endorsed by thousands of medical and public health experts.

It states the following:

“As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.”

“(W)e have devoted our careers to protecting people.”

“Current lockdown policies are producing devastating effects on short and longterm public health.”

What’s going on risks “greater excess mortality in years to come, with the working class and younger members of society carrying the heaviest burden.”

“Keeping students out of school is a grave injustice.”

“We know that vulnerability to death from COVID-19 is more than a thousand-fold higher in the old and infirm than the young.”

“Indeed, for children, COVID-19 is less dangerous than many other harms.”

Most people should be allowed “to live their lives normally…protecti(on) (afforded only to) high risk” individuals.

“We call this Focused Protection.”

“Schools and universities should be open for in-person teaching.”

“Extracurricular activities, such as sports, should be resumed.”

“Young low-risk adults should work normally, rather than from home.”

“Restaurants and other businesses should open.”

“Arts, music, sport and other cultural activities should resume.”

“People who are more at risk may participate if they wish, while society as a whole enjoys the protection conferred upon the vulnerable by those who have built up herd immunity.”

According to founder of Doctors for Truth Dr. Elke De Klerk:

“(W)e do not have a medical pandemic or epidemic.”

“We also state that COVID-19 should not be on list A for any longer, because we now know that it is a normal flu virus.”

“We have contact with 87,000 nurses that do not want the (covid) vaccine that is being prepared for us.”

“The panic is caused by these false positive PCR tests. 89 to 94% of these PCR tests are false positive. They don’t test for the COVID-19.”

“Medical doctors need to stop looking at those tests. Let’s go back to the clinics and the facts.”

According to hundreds of German MDs called Doctors for Information:

“The Corona panic is a play. It’s a scam. A swindle. It’s high time we understood that we’re in the midst of a global crime.”

Physicians and public health experts elsewhere made similar remarks.

According to US Frontline Doctors, no one should heed advice from “career political doctor” Anthony Fauci and others like him “who do not treat patients.”

They conceal the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) combined with either azithromycin or doxycycline and zinc.

HCQ has been around for decades. It’s widely available in generic form, cheap, and safe when used early after covid infection is diagnosed.

It cures the disease safely, avoiding inoculation with an experimental, high-risk to health covid vaccine.

James Fetzer on his website jamesfetzer.org published information by Russian toxicologist Igor Shepherd who’s lived in the US since 1993.

In his professional judgment, experimental covid vaccines about to be rolled out are “genocidal bioweapon(s).”

He called Trump a traitor to public health, safety and welfare by “participat(ing) in the lockdowns…(social) distancing and civil rights violations…”

He and other US officials are “on board with the World Economic Forum and (its founder) Klaus Schwab and other global leaders in pushing forward a (Great Reset) New World Order.”

Its aim is transforming the world community of nations into dystopian ruler-serf societies — that includes mass vaxxing against covid.

“The vaccines have nothing at all to do with our health…everything to do with controlling our minds and bodies.”

“They are part of the pre-planned hoax pandemic with which to undermine our way of life in every aspect we can imagine.”

“They will control what we eat, where we go, what we do, and how we think if we do not rise together in unity and push back.”

“They know that as they continue to strip Americans of more freedoms, there will eventually be a huge opposition of armed Americans rising up.”

“Vaccinating the population rapidly (Operation Warp Speed) …is a brilliant tactic with which to take out hundreds of thousands of citizens without firing one shot.”

“Injecting them with toxic or DNA-altering vaccinations would slowly paralyze the nation and allow for the completion of the New World Order’s Great Reset.”

A Final Comment

Heed the above warnings by medical and scientific experts — likely the most important ones you’ll ever hear about how to protect human health and welfare.

DO NOT — REPEAT, DO NOT BE A HUMAN GUINEA PIG FOR INOCULATION BY EXPERIMENTAL/HAZARDOUS TO HEALTH COVID VACCINES.

One more thing by Dr. Shepard on the hazards of face masks:

“Only tyrants and people who hate humanity would force young children and the elderly to be deprived of the vital oxygen needed to ensure good health.”

“Causing everyone to give up their rights to breathe fresh air is absolutely diabolical and insane.”

“And yet, these madmen running our country are getting away with all of these civil rights violations because the citizens are allowing the travesty without a peep of defiance.”

Extended face mask-wearing is harmful to human health.

It’s ineffective in preventing exposure to covid spores that penetrate porous masks.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Health Impact News

Over the last week, considerable debate arose around a calculation I helped produce showing that the wars the U.S. government has fought since the attacks of September 11, 2001, have forced at least 37 million people — and perhaps as many as 59 million — to flee their homes.

As a co-author of the underlying report, produced for Brown University’s Costs of War Project, I was encouraged by the attention in the media — which ranged from the New York Times to Fox News — because it has generated interest in the millions of people displaced by the U.S. “global war on terror.” My American University co-authors and I note that no one inside or outside the U.S. government has previously calculated how many people these wars have displaced.

The report conservatively estimates that eight of the most violent “counterterror” wars the U.S. government has engaged in since 9/11 — in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria and Yemen — have produced 8 million refugees and 29 million internally displaced people. The 37 million total displaced is more than those displaced by any war since at least the start of the 20th century, except World War II.

Critiques of the report centered around the degree to which the U.S. government is responsible for displacement in all eight of these countries.

People agreed that the George W. Bush administration launched the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, some have said that the other countries we include in our estimate — Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen — are incredibly complex conflicts in which the U.S. government has been a less central combatant, making it hard to say what role, if any, the U.S. government has played in creating displacement.

Yet the purpose of our report is not to assess relative responsibility for displacement among different actors. Our report says clearly, “We are not suggesting the U.S. government or the United States as a country is solely responsible for the displacement.” The Taliban, Iraqi Sunni and Shia militias, the Islamic State, Al Qaeda, the U.K. government and other U.S. allies, and Bashar al Assad share considerable responsibility along with other combatants, governments, and actors.

Instead, our goal, in keeping with those of the broader Costs of War Project, is to shed light on the often unacknowledged costs of the U.S. government’s 19-year-long “war on terror.”

Our study focuses on the eight countries where the U.S. government bears significant responsibility for wars it has launched (Afghanistan and the oft-ignored overlapping war in Pakistan triggered by invading Afghanistan, and Iraq); escalated as a major combatant (Libya and Syria); or intensified through drone strikes, battlefield advising, logistical support, weapons sales, and other military aid (Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines).

Of course these are complex conflicts in which many actors — in many cases not primarily U.S. actors — have committed the violence that has displaced people. Still, we include countries  beyond Afghanistan and Iraq in our count because the U.S. government has played an undeniable and deep systemic role in these “other wars” through the “war on terror’s” combat troop deployments, contributions of military support, the rhetoric of “counterterrorism,” and the trillions of dollars that have supported these efforts. Reckoning with the effects of the entirety of our “war on terror” is a responsibility U.S. citizens cannot ignore.

With Syria in particular, many readers of the report have rightly noted the difficulty in assessing the U.S. role in causing displacement. Again, we are not blaming the U.S. government alone for the displacement of the 7.1 million Syrians we include in our total. Deep responsibility lies with other combatants who have played larger roles during the Syrian civil war (2011–present). They include Assad and the Syrian government, the Islamic State, Syrian rebel groups, the Russian and Turkish governments, and other outside forces.

As a result our methodology for calculating displacement linked to U.S. involvement in Syria was conservative. We began our calculation in 2014, when the U.S. military started fighting in Syria, but we could have included larger numbers displaced due to U.S. support for Syrian rebels since at least 2013. Some would argue that we should include all of Syria’s displaced (likely more than 20 million people since 2011) given the role of the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in destabilizing the Middle East and creating the Islamic State and other militant groups in the first place.

Our calculation also focused narrowly on Syrians displaced in and from five of Syria’s 14 provinces where U.S. forces have fought the Islamic State and operated from military bases since 2014. This is how we derive the figure of 7.1 million displaced, which is well under half of Syria’s total displaced people. It’s important to note that our calculation is an estimate based on the best available data from the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, and other international organizations; displacement statistics are always estimates giving a sense of displacement’s scale rather than precise counts.

The larger point is that tens of millions have been displaced by the wars the U.S. government has engaged in since 2001 in the name of fighting terrorism.

In Afghanistan and Iraq alone, the total displaced population reached 14.5 million. This sum itself exceeds displacement in any war since the start of the 20th century except World War II. Our report’s total also includes 3.7 million displaced Pakistanis; 1.7 million displaced Filipinos; 4.2 million displaced Somalis; 4.4 million displaced Yemenis; 1.2 million displaced Libyans; and the 7.1 million displaced Syrians.

Ultimately no number can convey the immensity of displacement’s damage. For individuals, families, towns, cities, regions, and entire countries, displacement has caused incalculable harm physically, socially, emotionally, and economically. We encourage others to build on and improve our research.

Many, we hope, will agree on the bottom line: we must focus on the suffering of those forced by war to flee their homes.

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David Vine is Professor of Anthropology at American University in Washington, DC. Vine is the director of the American University Public Anthropology Clinic and a board member of Brown University’s Costs of War Project. Vine’s newest book, The United States of War: A Global History of America’s Endless Conflicts, from Columbus to the Islamic State (University of California Press), will be released on October 13.

Featured image is from Syria News

The situation in the northern Syrian provinces of Aleppo and al-Hasakah is once again escalating amid speculations on the upcoming Turkish advance in the area.

In recent weeks, the Turkish military and its proxies increased the intensity of strikes on positions of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and even on nearby positions of the Syrian Army along the contact line in the northeast of Syria. For example, on the evening of December 6, Turkish strikes hit a position of the Syrian Army near Tall Tamr destroying a BMP vehicle and reportedly injuring or killing several soldiers. Meanwhile, fighters affiliated with the SDF attacked a position of the Turkish Army near Bab al-Khayr. According to pro-Kurdish sources, 2 Turkish soldiers were allegedly killed or injured in the attack. On the same day, the Turkish military and its proxies launched over 150 artillery shells at targets near and inside the town of Ain Issa. The shelling that lasted for several hours reportedly killed at least one SDF member and injured several others.

The activity of Turkish forces near Ain Issa was permanently high in the last few months but in recent weeks the situation deteriorated even further. A nearby observation post of the Russian Military Police and a position of the Syrian Army did not stop the Turks from violating the ceasefire. In its own turn, pro-Ankara sources insist that the tensions in the region are a result of regular sabotage attacks by the SDF and affiliated Kurdish rebels near Ain Issa itself and in entire northern part of Syria in general. For example, Kurdish groups linked with the SDF regularly inflict casualties on Turkish forces and their proxies in Afrin.  While publicly the SDF pretends that it is not linked with these attacks, nobody with at least one brain cell believes in this.

The strong SDF links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish separatist armed group that seeks to create an independent Kurdish state on the territory of southeastern Turkey, and if it is possible northern Iraq and northern Syria, also does not contribute to stability. Turkey sees the group as a vital threat to its national security. Recently, the SDF Commander-in-Chief Ferhat Abdi Şahin officially confirmed that at least 4,000 PKK members died in the battles in Syria fighting on the side of the SDF. Abdi, better known by his nom de guerre Mazloum Kobani, is himself a senior member of the PKK and a personal friend of the group’s leader Abdullah Öcalan, who has been imprisoned in Turkey since 1999.

So, there is no surprise that Ankara sees claims of the United States leadership and SDF officials that the Kurdish-led group is not an offshoot of the PKK, but a ‘democratically-oriented multiethnic alliance’ as a bad joke and the highest level of hypocrisy. In these conditions, the fate of the SDF is predetermined and the group remains under the permanent threat of a large-scale Turkish military attack.

At the same time, the main backer of the SDF, the United States, has never hurried up to openly back the group against its own important ally in the Middle East and a member of NATO. Therefore, on the one hand, in its actions, the SDF relies on US support and has been consistently sabotaging Damascus’ proposals on the political and security reintegration into Syria. On the other hand, the Kurdish-led group has already lost a large part of the territories that it had controlled as a result of Turkish attacks.

This posture led to expected results and the last time the SDF even asked the Russians and the Syrian Army to rescue it from the Turkish advance in the northeast. The deployment of the Russian and Syrian units along the contact line put an end to Turkey’s Operation Peace Spring in 2019. Immediately after this, the Kurds turned their back on their rescuers and started cooperation with Washington in the field looting Syrian oil on the eastern bank of the Euphrates. Now, when the situation near Ain Issa is once again on the brink of military confrontation with Turkey, pro-SDF media have been crying and complaining about the alleged Russian demand to surrender the town to the Syrian Army to prevent the escalation. SDF sources call this ‘unfair’ and ‘unacceptable’.

It looks like that for the current Kurdish SDF leadership on Washington’s payroll it would be more acceptable to lose another chunk of territory and provoke a bloodbath than to finally normalize relations with Damascus.

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China’s Challenge to US-Russia Space Exploration Hegemony

China is taking aim at the moon, establishing itself as a space power to be reckoned with. While currently playing catch-up behind the space accomplishments of the US and Russia, it is rapidly gaining ground as a result of an ambitious Chinese space program coinciding with domestic squabbling in the US, budgetary shortfalls in Russia, and lack of focused political will on the part of both space pioneers. 

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With the freshly-launched Chang’e 5 probe, locked into a moon orbit as of November 28, for the first time in forty years an attempt is being made to collect rocks on the moon and bring them back to earth for study.

The US Advance in Space and its Subsequent Decline

The heyday of moon exploration by the US and the USSR in the 1960s and 1970s coincided with a deadly serious space race that was effectively war by other means for the two reigning superpowers. With the epoch-setting launch of Sputnik, the USSR got off to a roaring start, putting the first man in space, the first woman in space and achieving a long catalogue of other firsts. Energized by the Kennedy challenge to put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, the US doubled down on investments in education and science, while the daunting technical requirements of the space program drove demand for silicon chips, miniaturization and other novel technologies.

On July 20, 1969, the small step of one man was memorably deemed “a giant leap for all mankind,” but that noble sentiment did not stop Armstrong and Aldrin from planting an American flag on the moon, propped up artificially to make up for the utter absence of a breeze.

But winning the race to the moon in 1969 proved as anti-climactic as “winning” the Cold War in 1989. Both successes fueled American exceptionalism and nationalistic hubris, and possessing the high ground did nothing to deter the US from engaging in cruel and gratuitous warfare, above all in defeat in Vietnam. The same kind of ballistics and chips that enabled space flight were retooled to power cruise missiles, smart bombs and drones. A smug and careless complacency set in, rooted in narcissistic self-esteem and a generalized disregard for all rivals.

The audacious derring-do of those early days is underscored by the paucity of computing power back then: the Apollo program sent men to the moon to hand-collect bags of rocks using computer systems and cameras less powerful than the average teenager’s smart phone of today.

If the early programs lacked digital prowess, they were notable for pluck and excellent rocketry. The big rockets of the day, the Saturn and the Proton, developed with the help of former Nazi scientists on both sides of the Soviet-American divide, made the reach to the moon possible.

Computing power has grown by leaps and bounds since then, but US rocketry has declined to the point that NASA had no way to send or retrieve astronauts in space for a decade, dating from the retirement of the Space Shuttle in 2011. Until the advent of the Space X Crew Dragon earlier this year, US astronauts had to hitch a ride on Russia’s Soyuz craft to access the US-built space station.

Space X Crew Dragon Demo-2

The exploits of astronauts and cosmonauts offer nail-biting narratives and crowd-pleasing photo ops, but with today’s advanced computer technology and robotics, unmanned missions suffice for most scientific purposes.

What scientific value space exploration?

During NASA’s slack years, a diverse series of unmanned spacecraft supervised by the US Jet Propulsion Lab conducted cutting-edge science, not only uncovering the unique attributes of various planets and satellites, but going a long way to help us understand related processes on earth. To gaze at other planets, is to ponder the past present and future of our own planet and the universe.

What caused Mars to lose its atmosphere and streams of liquid water? What was Venus like before a runaway greenhouse effect produced some of the hottest temperatures in the solar system? The Jovian moon Europa and Saturn’s Titan, the one containing an ice ocean, the other a thick atmosphere, seem to possess the necessary conditions for the genesis of biological life as we know it.

Which brings us back to the moon, that lonely desiccated, cratered satellite locked in orbit with the watery planet earth. The birth of the modern environmental movement was in part inspired by the Apollo astronaut’s view of earth from afar; how fragile, how delicate, how alone.

The last man to walk on the moon, Eugene Cernan, packed up his bag of rocks in 1972, and no one’s been back since. The Soviet Union’s Luna mission, a robotic craft designed to ferry a few ounces of moon rock back to the earth, last flew in 1976.

Going to the moon for a walkabout might seem old hat but there’s still much science to be done, geology in particular. Studying rocks in a volcanic basin on the moon is the ostensible purpose of the Chang’e-5 mission, though the fact that uranium is thought to be abundant there is enough to imbue China’s modest automated rock collection mission with an aura of clandestine intrigue at a time of US-China clash on numerous fronts.

Xinhua graphic of Chang’e 5 entering moon orbit

The Moon and Mars

But what the latest Chinese lunar probe is really about, though not explicitly stated, is Mars. If humankind is ever going to get to the Red Planet, competition for national prestige is likely to be a key driver.

Deadly solar radiation, unmitigated by either atmospheric or magnetic deflection, means that Mars, science fiction visions notwithstanding, is more likely to remain a lighthouse, a lonely scientific outpost, than an “empty planet” ripe for colonization. In either case, the long Mars journey requires mastery of challenging modular maneuvers that start with blast-off from earth, descent to another heavenly body, ascent back into space and safe propulsion back to the home planet.

China’s moon missions can be seen as a dry run for Mars-capable technology. Moreover, the moon also provides a viable, and relatively economical site from which to launch a Mars mission, whosetechnical requirements are too taxing for any current earthbound rocket to consider for purposes of direct human travel.

The Chang’e series of moon shots has made China a creditable moon power, first achieving a lunar orbit in 2007, followed by successful soft landings in 2013 and 2018. In January 2019, the Chang’e 4 made a daring landing on the far side of the lunar orb. This unprecedented mission required close coordination with the Queqiao, a lunar communication relay satellite that is required to keep the isolated landing craft, which remains permanently out of earth view, in touch with radio waves from the home planet.

The current Chang’e-5 mission, launched November 24, 2020, promises to cement China’s status as a leading space power if it succeeds at its rock-collecting task.

China’s Historical Interest in Space Travel

China may be a late arrival to the space race, long dominated by the US and Russia, but not for lack of imagination. Literary legend Lu Xun translated “From the Earth to the Moon” by Jules Verne at the dawn of the twentieth century and dabbled in science fiction with his own “Yuejie luxing bianyan” or “Journey to the Moon,” hoping to promote an interest in science. Decades before China ventured into space, writer Mao Dun credited the traditional legend of moon goddess Chang’e (after which the latest line of moon craft is named) as a powerful native archetype for lunar exploration.

The Queqiao satellite references the “Magpie Bridge” in the Chinese legend of the Cowherd and Weaver, which is celebrated on the 7th day of the 7th lunar month, while the Yutu, or “jade rabbit” Rover refers to the steady companion of moon goddess Chang’e.

When Sputnik, the world’s first man-made satellite was launched, Mao Zedong hinted that Chinese satellites would follow. He joined Khruschev to hail the flight of Sputnik II which was launched during his 1957 Moscow visit, carrying space dog Laika on a lamentable one-way journey.

Mao and Khruschev in Moscow in July 1958

Subject to serious disruptions due to the onset of the Cultural Revolution, China did not launch its own satellite, Dongfanghong 1, until 1970. It then famously beamed the iconic tune “East is Red” back to earth, but there was little follow up due to continued political distractions and economic constraints.

By May 1971, just before Mao’s second-in-command Lin Biao met his demise in a mysterious plane crash over Outer Mongolia, China’s Chairman revealed to visiting Romanian head of state Nicolae Ceaușescu that China had neither the capabilities nor interest to go to the moon.

Premier Zhou Enlai then reportedly cut in to say, “It doesn’t even have air or water… The problems on earth haven’t been solved, but they want to go up to the moon, it’s ridiculous.”

Zhou makes a valid lament about conditions on earth, but there may also be a touch of sour grapes to the dismissive comment about the US space program, coming as they did during the peak of the stunningly successful Apollo series of missions.

Fast forward 50 years and China, thanks to a booming economy and prudent investment in science, is a contender in technology and space. If everything goes according to plan, the Chang’e 5 lunar lander will scoop up rock samples from a lunar crater and return several kilograms of geological treasure to the Earth in late December.

China’s Chang’e Moon Program

The 18,000-pound craft, launched successfully by a Long March 5 rocket from a base on Hainan Island on November 23, is divided into four sections. It includes a service module and a “returner” capsule designed for re-entry to earth along with a lunar lander and lunar ascender. The latter pair of units will land on the moon while the other pair will remain in moon orbit until it is time to return to earth. 

Simulation of Chang’e lunar ascender lifting off from lunar lander

After the moon lander takes measurements and collects samples on the lunar surface, the ascender section will then be shot back into lunar orbit, using the base of the lander as a launch pad, echoing the modular design of the Apollo lunar craft. The “returner” capsule is designed to catapult through earth’s atmosphere, using a “skip re-entry” to slow down for a parachute landing in Inner Mongolia.

It’s a complicated mission that requires a tricky lift-off from the moon, orbital docking, an automated transfer of materials from the ascender to the return capsule and a high-velocity return to earth. A single failure anywhere in the complex chain of necessary tasks could end the costly effort instantly. Space travel remains a high-risk endeavor. Indeed, the Chang’e 5, experienced a three-year mission delay due to the July 2017 explosion of a Long March rocket resulting from a first-stage booster failure.

Heavy-lifting Chang Zheng (Long March) rocket in flight

The Chang’e 5 craft is targeted to land in a lunar volcanic plain known as Oceanus Procellarum. NASA’s Apollo 12 and other craft landed in that same general region half a century ago, but this mission will focus on a particular volcanic formation known as Mons Rumker. It successfully landed on December 1.

Chang’e 5 moon landing, December 1, 2020

The aim of the probe is to drill, dig and analyze relatively pristine lunar rock, (just over a billion years old) in contrast to the Apollo mission samples which have been dated at 3 to 4 billion years old. This seemingly arcane task will help geologists establish benchmarks for dating ancient rock on earth as well, where erosion from wind and water has irrevocably altered the surface.

The Chang’e 5 mission is an abbreviated one, scheduled to last a single day on the moon, a lunar day that is, which amounts to two weeks earth time. It will study its landing site with ground-penetrating radar, panoramic cameras, and an imaging spectrometer.

Once the sun sets below the cratered horizon of Oceanus Procellarum, an unimaginably cold night follows, with temperatures dropping to a minus 232 degrees centigrade. Chang’e, covered in reflective foil, is designed to handle the scorching day-time temperatures of 120 degrees centigrade, but being solar-powered, it is not equipped to deal with a deep freeze lasting a fortnight. During the Apollo program, manned visits were timed around lunar dawn and dusk when the shadows are long, the surface is in high contrast and temperatures are in transition from very hot to very cold.

If Chang’e 5 proves a success, an almost identical model, the Chang’e 6, will aim to land near the south pole of the moon. The lunar polar area, with its oblique shadows and angled sunlight, contains murky craters likely to contain water in the form of ice. Elsewhere on the moon, the searing radiation of sunlight causes the instant sublimation of water and ice into the atmospheric vacuum, preventing any accumulation.

The shadowy pole area is deemed uniquely suitable for a potential moon base due to the likely presence of water, which is too heavy to transport from Earth but is vital for survival. Water can be used to produce food, rocket fuel, and breathable oxygen, and a layer of ice, if available in abundance, offers natural shelter from deadly solar rays.

Super-Power Competition or Cooperation in Space?

China’s entry into a field long dominated by the US and Russia is reinvigorating the moribund competition of moon travel. It’s also raising the important question of whether it’s better to work together or go it alone. Protectionist US politicians, fearful of technical espionage, banned China from the US-led Space Station in 2011. The Wolf Amendment, also known as the China Exclusion Policy, was proposed by Republican Senator Frank Wolf, and passed into law despite objections from NASA and scientific researchers. The amendment specifically targets China; its prohibitions on the sharing of space science are not extended to Russia, Japan or any other nation.

Being thus snubbed, China has set into motion plans to construct its own space station, the Tiangong, (Heavenly Palace) which may be the only viable station orbiting earth when the creaky International Space Science Institute station is retired at some point in the next few years.

The International Space Science Institute in Beijing posted a picture of a commemorative Coca Cola, American in origin, celebrating the Chang-e 5 mission, but will Americans be welcome aboard the Tiangong and allowed to share the fruits of this historic mission?

According to Russia Today, the US is pressuring China to allow “the global scientific community” access to any newly-gained moon rocks and other research findings. But that’s just Russia Today gently trolling the US for its exceptionalist arrogance.

The same mean-spirited Wolf Amendment of 2011 that denies China access to the space station ironically denies the US access to moon rocks and scientific findings from China’s current moon missions as well.

While Newton posited that science necessarily involved borrowing, that is, standing on the shoulders of giants, and every developing and technologically advanced nation has done its own borrowing, lifting or stealing technology to get where it is today, it seems the US attitude these days is to “build a wall” to keep the science and technology of rival countries apart, as witnessed in the fierce US ban Huawei and the fight to control 5-G standards. In the jaundiced view of the US security establishment, the only thing worse than “backward” China copying US technology is a competent and advanced China outperforming the US in science and tech, as the Huawei case illustrates.

Certainly, vigorous arguments can be made pro and con for nuanced measures designed to limit the “stealing” of copyrighted technology, but the infelicitous unintended results of banning cooperation with China, and China alone, on the part of the US Congress are only beginning to be felt.

As if to justify the pre-existing hostile stance, the US national security establishment is casting a wary eye on the Chang’e program. Space Force General John Raymond sees Chinese success in space as a threat to US hegemony. The same rocket science that lifts Chang’e into orbit can carry missiles, and the same kind of precision and control of satellite technology as used in the moon shot can theoretically be deflected to disable US satellites and thus disrupt communications, if not the entire GPS system.

US Air Force veteran Raymond, who was deployed in both the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, illustrates this risk with hypocrisy, castigating China for its 2007 kinetic kill (deliberate collision) that involved targeting its own weather satellite, even though the US has experimented with its own satellite-killing technology since the 1960s. Both nations are well aware that intercept and “kill” technology has possible military applications, though it can also be used to push malfunctioning craft into a fiery, self-obliterating descent to earth.

On February 21, 2008 President George W. Bush authorized the shoot-down of a US satellite with an attack missile launched from the deck of the USS Lake Erie missile cruiser. A bravado show of US technical prowess, the militaristic “kill” of spy satellite USA 193 was spun in US government press releases as being an environmentally-friendly “clean-up.” It was supposed to reduce the risk of toxic hydrazine fuel and space debris returning to earth, though it ended up creating a debris cloud which led to launch delays of other craft. The exercise earned a rebuke from Russian defense observers unimpressed by the phony cover story.

SM-3 missile that intercepted USA-193 (Wiki)

US General Raymond concludes that space “underpins all our instruments of power” and warns that Russia and China will cooperate against American interests. There’s more than a whiff of self-fulfilling prophecy in Raymond’s prognosis. Thanks to the Wolf Amendment and earlier restrictions, China’s program, by necessity, has hewed close to Russian prototypes. The Shenzhou capsule, for example, is modeled after the sturdy and dependable Soyuz craft.

On the other hand, history shows that Sino-Russian cooperation is not a given. Shortly after Mao met Khruschev in Moscow, extolling bilateral solidarity, diplomatic relations between the two powers went into freefall, and it wasn’t until the end of the Gorbachev era that cooperation got back on track. Meanwhile, the US and Russia have cooperated not just in the realm of space science and shared use of the Space Station, but in nuclear disarmament.

Soyuz

Shenzhou

US go-it-alone pride and intransigence in the era of America First has surely played a part in pushing Moscow and Beijing closer together. Likewise, hostility towards all things Chinese threatens not just commerce and diplomatic cooperation, but scientific cooperation on vital issues such as climate and Covid-19. Educational cooperation likewise is eroding due to new, severe restrictions on Chinese access to American higher education and technology. The hostility whipped up by paranoid and borderline racist politicians threatens to discourage some of the best and brightest Chinese students and researchers from studying or working in the US. It also impacts on Asian Americans as well as a result of hostility toward China ranging from scapegoating China for the Covid-19 pandemic to its favorable balance of trade.

Is it really in the US interest to “punish” China if it results in pushing China and Russia into developing a high level of interoperability, shared specifications and synergistic cooperation?

If Chang’e 5 proves a success, an almost identical Chang’e 6, will endeavor to land near the moon’s south pole, a big step on the road to building a lunar base and a promising way station for a manned mission to Mars.

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Philip J. Cunningham is the author of Tiananmen Moon, a first-hand account of Beijing student demonstrations of 1989 released by Rowman & Littlefield in an expanded edition in 2014. He has done research on Asian media issues on grants from Fulbright, Knight/Microsoft and the Abe Foundation. His newspaper commentary is posted on Pacific Wave, which also includes links to essays and novels about Thailand and Japan.

Below is an interview with Mr. Yaghout Meraji, a former member of the anti-Iran terrorist group the Mojahedin-e Khalq MEK, conducted November 24 and 25, 2020.

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Robert Fantina: The participation of the MEK in the joint operation with Saddam Hussein has been one of the most controversial disputes between the Mojahedin-e Khalq and their opponents. You claim that you participated in 1988 the Mojahedin-e Khalq military operation from France. Can you explain the facts of this war?

Yaghout Meraji: Our main reason of presence in Iraq was the total collaboration with Saddam’s army against Iran during the war between the two neighbor countries.

Each MEK military action was completely dependent on the Iraqi army, including all authorization. Unfortunately, we betrayed our country by participating with the Iraqi army in the war against the Iranian regime and it’s an unforgivable sin forever.

RF: The opponents of the Mojahedin claim that there are many strict requirements regarding the separation of men and women, brainwashing, etc. Is this true? What information do you have in this regard?

YM: When you are an MEK member you don’t have any right to think of anything else; just the two leaders. Every other thought is strictly not allowed. You must obey as they order to do.

In fact, I can consider the MEK as a brainwashing factory.

RF: Do the security forces of the Mojahedin Khalq control the members and their behavior?

YM: I think have answered this in previous question; however, they control all.

RF: Some opponents of the Mojahedin Khalq claim that its leaders are violently opposed to other groups opposed to the Iranian government, especially the monarchists. Can you discuss this?

YM: Yes, it’s true. In each big general meeting, Mr. Rajavi used to start his speech by attacking the other opponents for saying that MEK is a unique alternative to the Iranian regime; he couldn’t ever support the other opposition groups.

RF: You say that you were present at the Zaerian residence. Do you know Mr. Amir Saadouni, who is currently participating in the vandalism case in Villepinte? Who was in charge of him and what were the duties and missions assigned to Saadouni by the Mojahedin Khalq Organization?

YM: Yes, I’ve seen Mr. Saadouni two or three times in Zaerian, when MEK needed help; generally, several people came from different European countries and Amir Saadouni was one them. His stay lasted one or two weeks. He was in charge of driving and transporting the food and any other foodstuffs to different residences of MEK. He has a very good relationship with the official members, such as Mr Abrishamchi etc.

RF: Which of the officials and cadres of the Mojahedin Khalq have you been in contact with and what have been your main duties and responsibilities in this group?

YM: The official cadre who was directly in contact with me was Mohsen Jarari (Issa) and in Zaerian Hossein Pourheidari.

My duty was mainly that of a translator.

RF: Were you involved in the financial transactions of the Mojahedin Khalq in France? How much money were transferred to the accounts related to the group?

YM: This question is very difficult to respond to, but in Zaerian I saw two financial transfers two times monthly from England.

RF: Maryam Rajavi and some of the group’s cadres have gone to Albania from France for nearly two years and have not returned to France. What is the reason for this non-return?

YM: After widespread transfer of the MEK from Iraq to Albania, all members of the group were living downtown with the population. In this case the new lifestyle has changed the vision of a large number of the MEK members and this action caused them to separate from and abandon the MEK. This situation was seriously hard, for which Maryam Rajavi understood that if she doesn’t move to Albania immediately, MEK will be finished.

This program was very interesting for the French government and it was the wish of the French government that the MEK leave France definitely without any eventual return.

RF: Have you ever been with the group’s delegations to the European Parliament? How are these programs coordinated, and what were the goals of the group during these meetings?

YM: Yes, each opportunity to speak with European countries is important just for showing that MEK and its political branch,  NCRI, are alive. The MEK foreign relationship organized the meeting with EU and into two groups, one to support Mrs Maryam Rajavi; this group was present in the meeting room just to applaud her speech,  and another group outside of EU parliament for lunch and slogans. Ultimately, it was useless as usual.

RF: Are the contents presented by the supporters of the Mojahedin Khalq on Twitter, Facebook, etc., based on personal analysis and political views of the members of the Mojahedin Khalq, or do the group officials order the posting of these articles by their supporters?

YM: When you are a member of a cult you don’t have any one to talk you out of the MEK goals so you become like a robot and have to execute everything they demand. This is exactly the same situation for the supporters who are very active in the social media.

RF: Did the Mojahedin-e Khalq also commit fraud against the French government and the French people? What were the details of these actions?

YM: Unfortunately yes, specially the members of NCRI. Those who received the wages monthly in cash didn’t report to the tax authorities. That is the same situation for the foreign workers.

RF: As you know, the Mojahedin massacred more than 12,000 Iranians since the 1990s, and then assassinated people like Sayad Shirazi, nuclear scientists, etc. in Iran; however, the group was removed from the European and American terrorist lists. What do you think was the reason for these removals?

YM: Yes you’re right, it’s a political game to put them on terrorist list for pressing Iranian regime to come to the negotiation table and remove MEK from the same list trying to stop Iran’s nuclear program.

RF: Until a few years ago, the organization had more than 500 members at its headquarters in France, and if we assume that it spends € 500 per month per member, more than € 250,000 would be the monthly cost of the headquarters of Auvers-sur-Oise. Were the incomes of the organization enough for these costs and were taxes paid to the French government?

YM: MEK had obtained sufficient financial means from Saddam during the time he was in power. Because of that abundant financial aid, the MEK is able to continue. In 2003, French security forces during a search discovered more than € 8 million cash in their office.

RF: Do you have any information about the arrest of Mrs. Rajavi by the French police on charges of money laundering in France?

YM: Early in the morning, MEK members called me to tell the news about this and asked to go to the front of security French forces office in 15th district near the Eiffel tower. A few minutes after gathering in this place, I saw a man burning in the flames.

RF: According to the US State Department in 2011, the MEK has no social base inside Iran, but abroad they declare themselves as an alternative to the Iranian government. Is the organization unaware of this or does it just intend to deceive the thoughts of European and American political elites?

YM: That is right. Since 1981 MEK hasn’t had any legitimate prestige in Iran for a simple reason, collaboration with Iraqi invading army. For the Iranian people that is unforgivable forever and for this reason was forced to link its existence to foreign forces.

RF: One of the methods of assassination the organization used was suicide operations, such as the method used in the assassination of Martyr Madani, who was assassinated by a member of the Mojahedin with an explosion. How does the organization convince its members to carry out such operations?

YM: Yes correct, this terrorist action has never existed before, MEK is founder of this kind of terrorism in the world.

RF: Saadouni, a member of the Mojahedin and close to Abrishamchi, was arrested in Belgium for carrying explosives and falsely stated during interrogation that he had received the bomb from an Iranian diplomat. Is this part of the organization’s new suicide operation, established with the intention of damaging the international image of Iran?

YM: As you know, survival of the MEK is absolutely essential in these circumstances, so sacrificing the other members as Saadouni or anyone else is very simple and crucial. And it may be mainly to attract the attention of the media as was done in the beginning of this year regarding the rumor of Maryam Rajavi’s death.

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During the pandemic quarantine this year, the celebrated artist Mira Lehr has created more work now than ever before in her six decades of artmaking. Her new series, called Planetary Visions, represents a bold departure for the artist.

She has been invited to present a solo exhibition featuring this new series at Rosenbaum Contemporary gallery in Boca Raton, Florida (November 16 – January 16).

The gallery has launched online initiatives to allow art lovers from all over the world to experience Lehr’s new work across digital platforms.

This year also marks the 60th anniversary of Lehr’s visionary founding of Continuum, one of America’s first women artist co-ops which she pioneered in 1960.

“This is a major turning point for humanity. Because of the global pandemic, for the first time in human history, the entire population of the planet is thinking about the same problems ─ and grasping for the same solutions,” says Mira Lehr.

“Together, we can meet this challenge and use this time to transcend across borders and places, with a unified vision for the world. We must now work together to address global problems without thoughts of artificial separations between human beings.”

What This Earth Does Not Remember, I and II, by Mira Lehr, from the new series Planetary Visions (acrylic, ink, gunpowder, ignited fuses, burned and dyed Japanese paper, and handwriting on canvas), 2020.

“The title Planetary Visions refers to the need for all of us to remain focused on this shared vision that we need. We are a one-world landmass island, surrounded by water, flying across the galaxy on our Spaceship Earth. What happens in one part of our world affects all of us, and the pandemic proves this like never before,” adds Mira Lehr.

“Planetary Visions also refers to the mythical places featured on some of these newer paintings, my visions of environmental flash-points happening around the globe,” adds Lehr. “While these are all imaginary places that I envisioned as an armchair traveler during the pandemic, the climate issues depicted are very real: rising seas, air pollution, global warming, and more.

These issues also point back to the pandemic. Each invented place represents different climate challenges that are alarming, and time is running out for our planet Earth.”

She ignites gunpowder fuses across the landmasses to create the visual effect of fuses from a ticking time-bomb.

“I feel the need to explore new creative pathways now. To create new imagery of imaginary places and events in nature, creating poetic visions of the earth and as a result, a more inventive and carefree approach has taken over my work,” says Lehr.

“My previous work was more part of a certain tradition in abstraction. These new works are original visions, and it feels like they are coming from a different place, more spiritual perhaps. Replaced by more of a subject matter and a narrative, about the planet and these visions.

I feel this is all new. I have no way to analyze it, this is just different.”

“It feels like I no longer have art history sitting on my shoulders and watching what I am doing. I am more of an explorer now,” says Lehr.

Ancient Secret Map, by Mira Lehr (burned Japanese paper, ignited gunpowder, ink, thread and pins on canvas), 2020.

“So many friends have expressed their loneliness, boredom and frustrations at this time, with the quarantine. I understand, and I empathize,” says Lehr. “For me, however, I experienced a surge of new ideas and concepts while alone during the quarantine.”

“This time of concern about the earth has changed everything, and I don’t think the planet will ever be the same again. We’re on the brink of making it ─ or not making it.”

“There has been more time to reflect, experiment and dream in my studio sanctuary. Being alone, without the comings and goings of normal times, has opened up new worlds for me.”

According to Lehr, “My paintings have become darker, more mysterious. Encased in a layer of resin that creates the appearance of a layer of ice that seems to cover the surface, separating the image from the viewer. Time appears to stand still, waiting for the moment to search for solutions for our world.”

“These glossy surfaces also conversely carry us in ─ because the reflection is an invitation to be involved, to be aware. Help our Spaceship Earth! There’s still time, but the clock is ticking.”

The artist Mira Lehr with her painting Norweky (acrylic, ink, burned and dyed Japanese paper, ignited fuses, and handwriting on canvas), Portrait photograph by Michael E. Fryd (2020). From her new series Planetary Visions, that she created during the pandemic quarantine.

The depth of Lehr’s perspective and the scope of her trajectory are singular, having worked as an artist through the social changes of the 1960s and 1970s, the 80s and the 90s . . . and now the 21st century, with its direction into the unknown that feels so impossible to navigate.

The new exhibition features a selection of twenty works by Lehr, spanning nearly 2,000 square feet, with the entire front of the gallery dedicated to this new show. The gallery is located at 150 Yamato Road, in Boca Raton, Florida.

The exhibition may be viewed on-site during gallery hours, 10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (Tues-Sat), in accordance with current Covid-19 safety guidelines.

Additionally, reservations for exclusive, private in-person viewings without any other visitors in the gallery may be made in advance by calling 561-994-9180.

Private zoom viewings also available, exclusively with the gallery owner for his personal walk-through online of the show via Zoom.

Digital viewing also features this 360-degree virtual tour of the exhibition.

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All images in this article are from the author

FEMA – the United States Government Emergency Management Federal Agency  –  updated instructions to the population on how to behave in the event of a nuclear attack. The new instructions, provided by the Ready Campaign, keep in mind the Covid-19 pandemic, consequent lockdowns and rules to follow in order to protect ones-self from the virus. 

In order to be ready when an imminent nuclear attack alarm goes off – FEMA warns – you need to know that “Due to COVID-19, many places you may pass on the way to and from work may be closed or may not have regular operating hours”. You must therefore first identify “the best places to shelter, they are the basements and the center of large multistory buildings”.

In these instructions, FEMA ignores the real effects (scientifically proven) of a nuclear explosion. Even though people on the run are lucky enough to find a Covid-free lockdown place to shelter, they still have no escape. The air displacement caused by the explosion,  that generates 800 kmh winds, causes the collapse or burst of even the most solid building. The heat melts the steel, makes the reinforced concrete explode. Even people who find “the best places to shelter” are vaporized, crushed, charred.

The destructive effects of a 1 megaton nuclear bomb (equal to the explosive power of 1 TNT million tons) extend in a circular way up to about 14 km. If a 20 megaton bomb explodes, the destructive effects extend over a range of more than 60 km.

In this situation, FEMA is concerned with protecting people from Covid-19. When the nuclear alarm is raised, it warns: “Check with local authorities to determine which public shelters are open, as shelter locations may have changed due to COVID-19“; at the time of evacuation, “to protect you and your family from Covid-19, bring with you two masks per person and a hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol”; inside the shelter, “continue to practice social distancing, by wearing a mask and by keeping a distance of at least 6 feet (almost 2 meters) between yourself and people who are not part of your household”.

In the event of a nuclear alert, this scenario assumes that 330 million US citizens would not panic, but keep calm, inquire about open  shelters, and be concerned about protecting themselves first from Covid-19,  bringing along masks and sanitizers, and once in the shelter, maintaining social distancing, with the result being that in a shelter capable of accommodating a thousand people, 200 would be admitted while the others remain outside.

Even if it is absurd that people followed Fema’s instructions to protect themselves from Covid-19, they would still be exposed to radioactive fallout in a much larger area than that destroyed by nuclear explosions. An increasing number of apparently unharmed people would begin to show symptoms of radiation syndrome. As there is no possible treatment, the outcome is inevitably fatal. 

If radiations hit the nervous system, they cause severe headaches and lethargy, then a state of coma takes over accompanied by convulsions, and death occurs within forty-eight hours. In the case of gastrointestinal radiation syndromes, the victim suffers from vomiting and hemorrhagic diarrhea accompanied by high fever and dies within a week or two.

In this scenario, FEMA is also concerned with the mental state of people. It warns that “the threat of a nuclear explosion can add additional stress to many people who already feel fear and anxiety about Covid-19.”  Hence, FEMA recommends following the instructions on how to “manage stress during a traumatic event.” It thus makes it clear that, in the event of a nuclear attack, US citizens would be assisted by psychologists to teach them how to manage stress while the nuclear bombs explode, by convincing them that thanks to FEMA they were saved from Covid.

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This article was originally published in Italian on Il Manifesto.

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

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

This Sunday, December 6, Nicolás Maduro voted at the Simón Rodríguez Ecological Bolivarian School in Fuerte Tiuna, accompanied by Cilia Flores, candidate in these legislative elections and the president’s wife.

Traditionally, Maduro voted at the Miguel Antonio Caro high school, Catia neighborhood, in the Sucre parish. When his voting center was announced in the morning the CNE still had the Catia high school listed as his voting center.

Right-wing political operators and the “free press” complained about the sudden change as if they knew something that the majority of the Venezuelans didn’t. For example, the right-wing website Efecto Cocuyo, in its coverage, seems to have been monitoring CNE’s website—where you can verify the voting center of a person by referencing their ID number—for the Venezuelan President constantly during the voting day. The change to Maduro’s voting station was announced only at the time that the president was actually voting, they reported.

Other “free press” sounded off about the move to a school located inside a military base, almost as if they were dismayed that a new assassination attempt on the head of state had been neutralized. They claimed that the sudden change revealed that “Maduro’s support is not in the people but in the bayonets.”

The head of the Darío Vivas Campaign Command, Jorge Rodríguez, explained this Monday the reasons that led Venezuelan authorities to change the voting center of President Nicolás Maduro at the last minute.

During a press conference, the socialist leader stressed that the Venezuelan head of state had received death threats from various spokespeople of the national and international right, a reason that was considered serious enough to request the change.

Venezuelan intelligence services may have had learned about a planned attempt on the president’s life. “He is a president threatened with death,” said Rodríguez. “A change of electoral direction was requested. There were signs that suggested an unsafe situation for the president which might provoke a serious incident.”

Acting under unsubstantiated claims—as usual—Trump’s presidency has placed an exorbitant bounty on the head of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In a recent press conference Maduro reminded Venezuelans that his life has a price tag of $15 million due to this bounty, founded on baseless drug trafficking allegations that are part of Washington’s failed regime-change operations over the last two years.

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Featured image: President Nicolás Maduro, 2016. (Cancillería del Ecuador via Flickr)

In the military realm, Donald Trump will most likely be remembered for his insistence on ending America’s involvement in its twenty-first-century “forever wars” — the fruitless, relentless, mind-crushing military campaigns undertaken by Presidents Bush and Obama in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia. After all, as a candidate, Trump pledged to bring U.S. troops home from those dreaded war zones and, in his last days in office, he’s been promising to get at least most of the way to that objective. The president’s fixation on this issue (and the opposition of his own generals and other officials on the subject) has generated a fair amount of media coverage and endeared him to his isolationist supporters. Yet, however newsworthy it may be, this focus on Trump’s belated troop withdrawals obscures a far more significant aspect of his military legacy: the conversion of the U.S. military from a global counterterror force into one designed to fight an all-out, cataclysmic, potentially nuclear war with China and/or Russia.

People seldom notice that Trump’s approach to military policy has always been two-faced. Even as he repeatedly denounced the failure of his predecessors to abandon those endless counterinsurgency wars, he bemoaned their alleged neglect of America’s regular armed forces and promised to spend whatever it took to “restore” their fighting strength. “In a Trump administration,” he declared in a September 2016 campaign speech on national security, America’s military priorities would be reversed, with a withdrawal from the “endless wars we are caught in now” and the restoration of “our unquestioned military strength.”

Once in office, he acted to implement that very agenda, instructing his surrogates — a succession of national security advisers and secretaries of defense — to commence U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan (though he agreed for a time to increase troop levels in Afghanistan), while submitting ever-mounting defense budgets. The Pentagon’s annual spending authority climbed every year between 2016 and 2020, rising from $580 billion at the start of his administration to $713 at the end, with much of that increment directed to the procurement of advanced weaponry. Additional billions were incorporated into the Department of Energy budget for the acquisition of new nuclear weapons and the full-scale “modernization” of the country’s nuclear arsenal.

Far more important than that increase in arms spending, however, was the shift in strategy that went with it. The military posture President Trump inherited from the Obama administration was focused on fighting the Global War on Terror (GWOT), a grueling, never-ending struggle to identify, track, and destroy anti-Western zealots in far-flung areas of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. The posture he’s bequeathing to Joe Biden is almost entirely focused on defeating China and Russia in future “high-end” conflicts waged directly against those two countries — fighting that would undoubtedly involve high-tech conventional weapons on a staggering scale and could easily trigger nuclear war.

From the GWOT to the GPC

It’s impossible to overstate the significance of the Pentagon’s shift from a strategy aimed at fighting relatively small bands of militants to one aimed at fighting the military forces of China and Russia on the peripheries of Eurasia. The first entailed the deployment of scattered bands of infantry and Special Operations Forces units backed by patrolling aircraft and missile-armed drones; the other envisions the commitment of multiple aircraft carriers, fighter squadrons, nuclear-capable bombers, and brigade-strength armored divisions. Similarly, in the GWOT years, it was generally assumed that U.S. troops would face adversaries largely armed with light infantry weapons and homemade bombs, not, as in any future war with China or Russia, an enemy equipped with advanced tanks, planes, missiles, ships, and a full range of nuclear munitions.

This shift in outlook from counterterrorism to what, in these years, has come to be known in Washington as “great power competition,” or GPC, was first officially articulated in the Pentagon’s National Security Strategy of February 2018. “The central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security,” it insisted, “is the reemergence of long-term, strategic competition by what the National Security Strategy classifies as revisionist powers,” a catchphrase for China and Russia. (It used those rare italics to emphasize just how significant this was.)

For the Department of Defense and the military services, this meant only one thing: from that moment on, so much of what they did would be aimed at preparing to fight and defeat China and/or Russia in high-intensity conflict. As Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis put it to the Senate Armed Services Committee that April, “The 2018 National Defense Strategy provides clear strategic direction for America’s military to reclaim an era of strategic purpose… Although the Department continues to prosecute the campaign against terrorists, long-term strategic competition — not terrorism — is now the primary focus of U.S. national security.”

This being the case, Mattis added, America’s armed forces would have to be completely re-equipped with new weaponry intended for high-intensity combat against well-armed adversaries. “Our military remains capable, but our competitive edge has eroded in every domain of warfare,” he noted. “The combination of rapidly changing technology [and] the negative impact on military readiness resulting from the longest continuous period of combat in our nation’s history [has] created an overstretched and under-resourced military.” In response, we must “accelerate modernization programs in a sustained effort to solidify our competitive advantage.”

In that same testimony, Mattis laid out the procurement priorities that have since governed planning as the military seeks to “solidify” its competitive advantage. First comes the “modernization” of the nation’s nuclear weapons capabilities, including its nuclear command-control-and-communications systems; then, the expansion of the Navy through the acquisition of startling numbers of additional surface ships and submarines, along with the modernization of the Air Force, through the accelerated procurement of advanced combat planes; finally, to ensure the country’s military superiority for decades to come, vastly increased investment in emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, robotics, hypersonics, and cyber warfare.

These priorities have by now been hard-wired into the military budget and govern Pentagon planning. Last February, when submitting its proposed budget for fiscal year (FY) 2021, for example, the Department of Defense asserted, “The FY 2021 budget supports the irreversible implementation of the National Defense Strategy (NDS), which drives the Department’s decision-making in reprioritizing resources and shifting investments to prepare for a potential future, high-end fight.” This nightmarish vision, in other words, is the military future President Trump will leave to the Biden administration.

The Navy in the Lead

From the very beginning, Donald Trump has emphasized the expansion of the Navy as an overriding objective. “When Ronald Reagan left office, our Navy had 592 ships… Today, the Navy has just 276 ships,” he lamented in that 2016 campaign speech. One of his first priorities as president, he asserted, would be to restore its strength. “We will build a Navy of 350 surface ships and submarines,” he promised. Once in office, the “350-ship Navy” (later increased to 355 ships) became a mantra.

In emphasizing a big Navy, Trump was influenced to some degree by the sheer spectacle of large modern warships, especially aircraft carriers with their scores of combat planes. “Our carriers are the centerpiece of American military might overseas,” he insisted while visiting the nearly completed carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, in March 2017. “We are standing here today on four-and-a-half acres of combat power and sovereign U.S. territory, the likes of which there is nothing… there is no competition to this ship.”

Not surprisingly, top Pentagon officials embraced the president’s big-Navy vision with undisguised enthusiasm. The reason: they view China as their number one adversary and believe that any future conflict with that country will largely be fought from the Pacific Ocean and nearby seas — that being the only practical way to concentrate U.S. firepower against China’s increasingly built-up coastal defenses.

Then-Secretary of Defense Mark T. Esper expressed this outlook well when, in September, he deemed Beijing the Pentagon’s “top strategic competitor” and the Indo-Pacific region its “priority theater” in planning for future wars. The waters of that region, he suggested, represent “the epicenter of great power competition with China” and so were witnessing increasingly provocative behavior by Chinese air and naval units. In the face of such destabilizing activity, “the United States must be ready to deter conflict and, if necessary, fight and win at sea.”

In that address, Esper made it clear that the U.S. Navy remains vastly superior to its Chinese counterpart. Nonetheless, he asserted, “We must stay ahead; we must retain our overmatch; and we will keep building modern ships to ensure we remain the world’s greatest Navy.”

Although Trump fired Esper on November 9th for, among other things, resisting White House demands to speed up the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, the former defense secretary’s focus on fighting China from the Pacific and adjacent seas remains deeply embedded in Pentagon strategic thinking and will be a legacy of the Trump years. In support of such a policy, billions of dollars have already been committed to the construction of new surface ships and submarines, ensuring that such a legacy will persist for years, if not decades to come.

Do Like Patton: Strike Deep, Strike Hard

Trump said little about what should be done for U.S. ground forces during the 2016 campaign, except to indicate that he wanted them even bigger and better equipped. What he did do, however, was speak of his admiration for World War II Army generals known for their aggressive battle tactics. “I was a fan of Douglas MacArthur. I was a fan of George Patton,” he told Maggie Haberman and David Sanger of the New York Times that March. “If we had Douglas MacArthur today or if we had George Patton today and if we had a president that would let them do their thing you wouldn’t have ISIS, okay?”

Trump’s reverence for General Patton has proven especially suggestive in a new era of great-power competition, as U.S. and NATO forces again prepare to face well-equipped land armies on the continent of Europe, much as they did during World War II. Back then, it was the tank corps of Nazi Germany that Patton’s own tanks confronted on the Western Front. Today, U.S. and NATO forces face Russia’s best-equipped armies in Eastern Europe along a line stretching from the Baltic republics and Poland in the north to Romania in the south. If a war with Russia were to break out, much of the fighting would likely occur along this line, with main-force units from both sides engaged in head-on, high-intensity combat.

Since the Cold War ended in 1991 with the implosion of the Soviet Union, American strategists had devoted little serious thought to high-intensity ground combat against a well-equipped adversary in Europe. Now, with East-West tensions rising and U.S. forces again facing well-armed potential foes in what increasingly looks like a military-driven version of the Cold War, that problem is receiving far more attention.

This time around, however, U.S. forces face a very different combat environment. In the Cold War years, Western strategists generally imagined a contest of brute strength in which our tanks and artillery would battle theirs along hundreds of miles of front lines until one side or the other was thoroughly depleted and had no choice but to sue for peace (or ignite a global nuclear catastrophe). Today’s strategists, however, imagine far more multidimensional (or “multi-domain”) warfare extending to the air and well into rear areas, as well as into space and cyberspace. In such an environment, they’ve come to believe that the victor will have to act swiftly, delivering paralyzing blows to what they call the enemy’s C3I capabilities (critical command, control, communications, and intelligence) in a matter of days, or even hours. Only then would powerful armored units be able to strike deep into enemy territory and, in true Patton fashion, ensure a Russian defeat.

The U.S. military has labeled such a strategy “all-domain warfare” and assumes that the U.S. will indeed dominate space, cyberspace, airspace, and the electromagnetic spectrum. In a future confrontation with Russian forces in Europe, as the doctrine lays it out, U.S. air power would seek control of the airspace above the battlefield, while using guided missiles to knock out Russian radar systems, missile batteries, and their C3I facilities. The Army would conduct similar strikes using a new generation of long-range artillery systems and ballistic missiles. Only when Russia’s defensive capabilities were thoroughly degraded would that Army follow up with a ground assault, Patton-style.

Be Prepared to Fight with Nukes

As imagined by senior Pentagon strategists, any future conflict with China or Russia is likely to entail intense, all-out combat on the ground, at sea, and in the air aimed at destroying an enemy’s critical military infrastructure in the first hours or, at most, days of battle, opening the way for a swift U.S. invasion of enemy territory. This sounds like a winning strategy — but only if you possess all the advantages in weaponry and technology. If not, what then? This is the quandary faced by Chinese and Russian strategists whose forces don’t quite match up to the power of the American ones. While their own war planning remains, to date, a mystery, it’s hard not to imagine that the Chinese and Russian equivalents of the Pentagon high command are pondering the possibility of a nuclear response to any all-out American assault on their militaries and territories.

The examination of available Russian military literature has led some Western analysts to conclude that the Russians are indeed increasing their reliance on “tactical” nuclear weapons to obliterate superior U.S./NATO forces before an invasion of their country could be mounted (much as, in the previous century, U.S. forces relied on just such weaponry to avert a possible Soviet invasion of Western Europe). Russian military analysts have indeed published articles exploring just such an option — sometimes described by the phrase “escalate to de-escalate” (a misnomer if ever there was one) — although Russian military officials have never openly discussed such tactics. Still, the Trump administration has cited that unofficial literature as evidence of Russian plans to employ tactical nukes in a future East-West confrontation and used it to justify the acquisition of new U.S. weapons of just this sort.

“Russian strategy and doctrine… mistakenly assesses that the threat of nuclear escalation or actual first use of nuclear weapons would serve to ‘de-escalate’ a conflict on terms favorable to Russia,” the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review of 2018 asserts. “To correct any Russian misperceptions of advantage… the president must have a range of limited and graduated [nuclear] options, including a variety of delivery systems and explosive yields.” In furtherance of such a policy, that review called for the introduction of two new types of nuclear munitions: a “low-yield” warhead (meaning it could, say, pulverize Lower Manhattan without destroying all of New York City) for a Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile and a new nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile.

As in so many of the developments described above, this Trump initiative will prove difficult to reverse in the Biden years. After all, the first W76-2 low-yield warheads have already rolled off the assembly lines, been installed on missiles, and are now deployed on Trident submarines at sea. These could presumably be removed from service and decommissioned, but this has rarely occurred in recent military history and, to do so, a new president would have to go against his own military high command. Even more difficult would be to negate the strategic rationale behind their deployment. During the Trump years, the notion that nuclear arms could be used as ordinary weapons of war in future great-power conflicts took deep root in Pentagon thinking and erasing it will prove to be no easy feat.

Amid arguments over the withdrawal of American forces from Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Somalia, amid the firings and sudden replacements of civilian leaders at the Pentagon, Donald Trump’s most significant legacy — the one that could lead not to yet more forever wars but to a forever disaster — has passed almost unnoticed in the media and in political circles in Washington.

Supporters of the new administration and even members of Biden’s immediate circle (though not his actual appointees to national security posts) have advanced some stirring ideas about transforming American military policy, including reducing the role military force plays in America’s foreign relations and redeploying some military funds to other purposes like fighting Covid-19. Such ideas are to be welcomed, but President Biden’s top priority in the military area should be to focus on the true Trump military legacy — the one that has set us on a war course in relation to China and Russia — and do everything in his power to steer us in a safer, more prudent direction. Otherwise, the phrase “forever war” could gain a new, far grimmer meaning.

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Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change.

Featured image is from TruePublica

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) announced that Change-5 probe carrying the country’s first lunar samples blasted off from the moon at 11:10 p.m. (Beijing Time) on Thursday.

Launched on Nov. 24, the Chinese spacecraft comprises an orbiter, a lander, an ascender, and a returner. Its lander-ascender combination touched down in the Ocean of Storms on Dec. 1. After the samples were collected and sealed, the ascender of Change-5 took off from the lunar surface.

“An engine, after working for about six minutes, pushed the ascender to preset lunar orbit,” said Xing Zhuoyi, a designer of the Change-5 probe from the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST).

Different from the ground takeoff, the ascender could not rely on a launch tower system. The lander acted as a temporary “launching pad.” The lunar liftoff conquered many challenges, including limited diversion space for the engine plume and different environments between Earth and the moon.

Without any navigation constellation around the moon, the ascender used its own special sensors to conduct self-positioning and attitude determination after the takeoff, assisted by the ground monitoring and control system.

Wonderful! From the China Moon landing yesterday!🌚👍 https://t.co/GsdoCeMTbA

— Steve Scharmer (@SScharmer) December 2, 2020

The spacecraft had worked for about 19 hours on the moon and finished its sampling work at 10 p.m. on Dec. 2. The samples were stowed in a container inside the ascender of the probe as planned.

It adopted two methods of moon sampling, including using drills to collect subsurface samples and grabbing samples on the surface with a robotic arm. It gathered diverse samples at different sites.

The ascender is expected to complete the unmanned rendezvous and docking with the orbiter-returner in lunar orbit, an unprecedented feat, and the samples will be transferred to the returner.

When the geometric relationship between Earth and the moon is suitable, the orbiter will carry the returner back to Earth. Change-5 is the world’s first moon-sample mission in more than 40 years.

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Featured image: Photo taken at Beijing Aerospace Control Center shows the ascender of Chang’e-5 flying above the moon, Dec. 3, 2020. | Photo: Xinhua

Preserving tropical rainforests is critical to help stop climate breakdown and to safeguard the rights of the local communities and indigenous peoples who depend on and defend them. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the importance of preserving biodiversity hotspots like the Amazon in order to prevent the spread of zoonotic diseases.

Stopping the destruction of rainforests to make way for pasture for beef production could reduce Brazil’s agricultural carbon emissions by 69%, help slow the sixth mass extinction of species and maintain a crucial carbon sink, vital for cooling our climate.

But as our new investigation reveals, a chain of actors from cattle ranchers through to multinational beef traders, international financiers, supermarkets and fast-food chains, and the governments that regulate them, are either destroying rainforests or are complicit in the destruction of the Amazon, with flawed audits undertaken by US and European auditors.

A former FDA employee-turned-whistleblower says the agency downgraded his report on safety violations at a Merck vaccine plant. The allegation raises questions about how the FDA will monitor safety of COVID vaccine manufacturers.

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A former employee of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) whose job it was to inspect vaccine manufacturing plants told Vanity Fair last week that when the FDA ignored his allegations of gross safety violations at a Merck vaccine plant, he blew the whistle — only to be ignored.

Coming amid growing concerns over the safety of COVID vaccines, which are being rushed to market at unprecedented speed, the newly revealed allegations raise questions about how the FDA will oversee safety at COVID vaccine manufacturing operations.

According to Vanity Fair, “the unprecedented effort to actually make the more than 300 million doses that a successful national vaccination effort will require has gotten less attention” than issues related to the safety and efficacy of the actual vaccines themselves.

“Vital questions about the FDA’s inspections of vaccine plants have slipped under the radar,” the magazine reported.

Vanity Fair, the first to report on the whistleblower complaint, focused on concerns related exclusively to the manufacturing process. The article dismissed concerns about the actual safety of the vaccine.

In an interview after her article was published, reporter Katherine Eba told PBS NewsHour the “last thing she wanted to do” was contribute to “vaccine hesitancy.”

“You know, the issues we raised in this story have nothing to do with the anti-vaxxer position. They have to do with whether the FDA is doing the job it is supposed to do, which is ensuring that all these manufacturing plants follow good manufacturing practices.”

But many people, including doctors and scientists, have raised a multitude of concerns about the safety of the leading COVID vaccine candidates. In fact, polls consistently show that more people than not, including healthcare workers, won’t sign up, at least not right away, for the vaccines.

Compounding concerns about the safety of the vaccines themselves, are concerns about the FDA’s process for emergency authorization — will the agency prioritize public safety over pharmaceutical industry profits?

According to Arie Menachem, the whistleblower who told his story to Vanity Fair, that’s not been his experience with the FDA, at least not when it comes to the safety of vaccine manufacturing.

Menachem — who according to Vanity Fair holds a master’s degree in biochemistry and worked for 13 years in quality assurance and compliance at several pharmaceutical companies before joining the FDA in 2014 — was a member of the FDA’s Team Biologics.

The “elite” team’s 14 members were responsible for inspecting 280 manufacturing plants that make vaccines and blood products for U.S. patients.

In November 2018, Menachem filed a whistleblower complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel after his initial report detailing a host of disturbing safety violations at a Merck vaccine plant was downgraded by FDA officials.

Menachem’s report — based in part on information provided to him by whistleblowers within the company — included this, according to Vanity Fair:

“The allegations described a biohazard nightmare. Workers appeared to be defecating and urinating in their uniforms, and feces had been found smeared on the floor of the plant’s production area, the letter alleged. In a sterile manufacturing plant, bathroom breaks can be difficult to take because they require additional time, which could serve as one possible explanation for the events inside the Merck plant. Ungowning can take 15 minutes, regowning can take 15 minutes, and on a night shift, there may be no one else to cover an essential worker during that time, Menachem said.”

Vanity Fair said the magazine confirmed Menachem’s account, as well as his description of conflict inside Team Biologics, “through interviews with four current or former FDA employees, including Menachem, a detailed review of documents, and an analysis of Team Biologics inspection data.”

Merck isn’t the only drugmaker whose manufacturing operations have been called into question. As Children’s Health Defense previously reported, Eli Lilly, which has been working on a COVID therapeutic drug, recently had a run-in with the FDA over problems with one of its manufacturing plants. Reuters reported that the FDA had cited “serious quality control problems” at an Eli Lilly plant working on an antibody therapy.

A former associate counsel at the FDA told Reuters the violations were “serious enough and have a significant enough impact on the public health that something needs to be fixed.”

When it comes to COVID vaccines, Dr. Joshua Sharfstein, vice dean for public health practice and community engagement at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Vanity Fair, “There is not a lot of room for error on a COVID vaccine.”

But as Vanity Fair and Bloomberg pointed out, if the FDA, as it’s expected to, grants emergency use authorization for a COVID-19 vaccine, “it is not even clear whether the FDA will require full inspections of manufacturing plants” because transparency has been “notably absent in Operation Warp Speed,” the public-private partnership launched by the Trump administration to rapidly develop and distribute a COVID-19 vaccine.

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If the governor of Florida handles this breakthrough correctly, it could be the beginning of the end for one widespread piece of COVID test fakery…

And the beginning of the end of “rising case numbers”

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As I’ve reported, COVID testing labs never tell doctors or patients how the PCR test is run. [1]

This means the number of cycles is a secret.

A cycle is a step up in amplification of the tissue sample taken from the patient.

As even Tony Fauci has asserted, tests run at 35 cycles or above are useless. [1] [2] They’re also misleading. The results tend to be positive, meaning the patient is “infected with the virus.” But this is false.

However, as I’ve also reported, the CDC and the FDA recommend that the test should be run at up to 40 cycles. [1] [3] This is a direct hustle. It ensures false positives and higher COVID case numbers—used as justification for lockdowns.

Now, the state of Florida is doing something unheard of. It’s demanding that labs report the “cycle threshold” for every test they run.

Here is the relevant wording in a release from the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, and the state Department of Health, dated December 3, 2020 [4]:

“Cycle threshold (CT) values and their reference ranges, as applicable, must be reported by laboratories to FDOH via electronic laboratory reporting or by fax immediately.”

“If your laboratory is not currently reporting CT values and their reference ranges, the lab should begin reporting this information to FDOH within seven days of the date of this memorandum.”

We can assume there is only one reason for this order. The Florida governor and the Department of Health are aware that tests run at 35 cycles or higher are useless and misleading, and they want to stop this crime.

Imagine what happens if the trend of “new COVID cases” in Florida soon takes a sudden dip and keeps on falling—because labs are finally telling the truth. Because their deceptive test results are being rejected. The con will be exposed.

And imagine other states following Florida’s example.

I have a few concerns. The term “cycle threshold” is taken to be more or less synonymous with “number of cycles.” But I would prefer Florida simply say: “All labs must report the number of cycles for each PCR test they run.” For me, that would be clearer.

And then, down in the Florida memo, we have this: “If your laboratory is unable to report CT values and their reference ranges, please fill out the brief questionnaire attached to this memorandum and submit by facsimile to the FDOH’s Bureau of Epidemiology confidential fax line…” [the link to the questionnaire is in [4]]

Unable to report? Why would any lab be unable?

The questionnaire offers two bizarre possibilities. The first: “Although the qualitative result is generated based on a CT value, the assay/instrument does not provide the user [the lab] with the actual CT value—it only provides the qualitative result.”

What?? This indicates the lab’s PCR equipment is internally pre-programmed to run the test at a certain number of cycles, and the lab doesn’t know what that number is, can’t find out, and can’t demand the equipment manufacturer disclose that vital piece of information. ABSURD. We’re dealing with a state secret?

The second item in the questionnaire for labs: “The laboratory does not have a separate mechanism to report the CT value to FDOH [Florida Dept. of Health] since the CT value does not get reported to the submitting provider.”

No mechanism for reporting? SET ONE UP. Email, fax, pencil and paper, carrier pigeon. Also ABSURD.

As always, the devil is in the details. I’m sure many labs will try to avoid reporting. They don’t want to be exposed as the charlatans they are.

Memo to Florida Governor DeSantis: Don’t let the labs weasel out of this one. Don’t let them give you excuses. Don’t let them off the hook. Failure to report true facts during a public health crisis is felony. Charge a few labs, drag them into court. Put fear of prosecution into state labs. You’re on the right track. You’ve made a major breakthrough. You see the con at work. You don’t want your state to be pressured into lockdowns based on fake case numbers derived from deceptive tests. Now make sure your enforcement personnel crack down on reluctant labs. Go the distance. If labs have equipment pre-set for the number of cycles, and they don’t know how to get inside the equipment to find that number, bring in pros who will do the job for them. I believe you’ll uncover a major scandal. Much of that equipment will be pre-set for 40 cycles. Keep updating the public on what you discover. Blow this crime wide open. Keep a very close eye on your public health officials. Among them, you’ll find agents who don’t want the truth to emerge. They’ll try to sabotage your good efforts every which way they can.

DON’T LET THEM.

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Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Notes

[1] https://blog.nomorefakenews.com/2020/12/03/lockdowns-are-based-on-fraud-open-letter-to-people-who-want-freedom/

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Vy6fgaBPE

[3] https://www.fda.gov/media/134922/download

[4] https://www.flhealthsource.gov/files/Laboratory-Reporting-CT-Values-12032020.pdf

U.S. officials have long criticized Japan for its supposedly unprovoked military attack on Pearl Harbor, which enabled President Roosevelt to fulfill his desire to intervene into World War II. As I showed in my blog post yesterday, the Japanese attack was hardly unprovoked, given Roosevelt’s actions that were designed to provoke Japan into “firing the first shot,” which would enable Roosevelt to exclaim: We’ve been attacked! We are shocked! This is a day that will live in infamy! Now give me my declaration of war so that I can enter World War II.

Given the outrage over what the court historians and the U.S. mainstream press have long maintained was an unprovoked attack by Japan on the United States, why have these same court historians and mainstream media outlets given a pass to the U.S. government for initiating an unprovoked attack on Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961?

Oh sure, there have been countless books and articles written about how the attack turned out to be a debacle for the U.S. government, specifically the CIA, one of the three main elements of the national-security branch of the federal government. But they never go after the CIA and the rest of the U.S. government for doing what Japan supposedly did — initiate an unprovoked attack on an independent country.

The U.S. national-security establishment has long maintained that it had the “right” to initiate its attack on Cuba because Cuba had established a communist government and a socialist system.

But since when does a disagreement with a country’s political and economic systems justify an unprovoked attack on that country? If Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor because of America’s New Deal system, which was characterized by both socialism and economic fascism, would that have made the attack justifiable? Does the U.S. government today have the “right” to attack Vietnam, China, North Korea, and, yes, Cuba because they have communist and socialist systems? Indeed, do communist regimes have the “right” to attack the United States because the U.S. has a “capitalist” system, or does the principle work only one way?

The CIA and its acolytes in the mainstream press have always maintained that Castro’s Cuba posed a grave threat to U.S. “national security” and, therefore, that their unprovoked attack was justified.

Really? How exactly was “national security” threatened by a communist regime and a socialist system in Cuba, no matter what definition is given to that nebulous and meaningless term? Was a communist regime and a socialist system in Cuba going to somehow cause the East Coast to fall into the ocean? Was the Cuban army somehow going to invade Florida, without a navy, and work its way up the East Coast and conquer Washington, D.C., and take control over the United States? Or was the danger that socialist ideas would seep into the minds of U.S. officials, the American people, and the mainstream press, inciting them to expand existing socialist programs, such as Social Security, public schooling, a central bank, progressive income taxation, and welfare, or adopt new socialist programs, such as Medicare and Medicaid?

And while we are on the subject of unprovoked attacks, it’s worth asking how the U.S. government justified its repeated attempts to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Even Lyndon Johnson referred to the CIA’s assassination program as “Murder, Inc.,” which is precisely what it was, especially given the CIA’s assassination partnership with the Mafia, the world’s premier criminal organization specializing in drug dealing, racketeering, and murder.

Why can’t the court historians and the mainstream press just accept the truth: The U.S. government initiated an unprovoked attack on Cuba in 1961 that was no different in principle from Japan’s supposed unprovoked attack on the United States in 1941? The real reason for the unprovoked attack on Cuba was that U.S. national-security state officials were furious that the Cuban revolution had succeeded in ousting from power the pro-U.S. Cuban leader Fulgencio Batista, who was one of the most brutal, crooked, and corrupt dictators in the world. U.S. officials were even more furious that Castro, unlike Batista, wished to establish a truly independent nation, one whose government refused to take orders from U.S. officials, especially those in the Pentagon and the CIA. It was that desire for Cuban independence that motivated the U.S. national-security state to do the same thing that Japan had supposedly done some 20 years earlier — initiate an unprovoked attack on another nation.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Commemorating Pearl Harbor, David Swanson’s analysis first published on December 7, 2010

One type of “defensive” war is one that follows a successful provocation of aggression from the desired enemy. This method was used to begin, and repeatedly to escalate, the Vietnam War, as recorded in the Pentagon Papers. Setting aside the question of whether the United States should have entered World War II, in either Europe or the Pacific or both, the fact is that our country was unlikely to enter unless attacked. In 1928 the U.S. Senate had voted 85 to 1 to ratify the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a treaty that bound — and still binds — our nation and many others never again to engage in war.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s fervent hope for years was that Japan would attack the United States. This would permit the United States (not legally, but politically) to fully enter the war in Europe, as its president wanted to do, as opposed to merely providing weaponry, as it had been doing. On April 28, 1941, Churchill wrote a secret directive to his war cabinet:

“It may be taken as almost certain that the entry of Japan into the war would be followed by the immediate entry of the United States on our side.”

On May 11, 1941, Robert Menzies, the prime minister of Australia, met with Roosevelt and found him ” a little jealous” of Churchill’s place in the center of the war. While Roosevelt’s cabinet all wanted the United States to enter the war, Menzies found that Roosevelt,

” . . . trained under Woodrow Wilson in the last war, waits for an incident, which would in one blow get the USA into war and get R. out of his foolish election pledges that ‘I will keep you out of war.'”

On August 18, 1941, Churchill met with his cabinet at 10 Downing Street. The meeting had some similarity to the July 23, 2002, meeting at the same address, the minutes of which became known as the Downing Street Minutes. Both meetings revealed secret U.S. intentions to go to war. In the 1941 meeting, Churchill told his cabinet, according to the minutes: ” The President had said he would wage war but not declare it.” In addition, “Everything was to be done to force an incident.”

Japan was certainly not averse to attacking others and had been busy creating an Asian empire. And the United States and Japan were certainly not living in harmonious friendship. But what could bring the Japanese to attack?

When President Franklin Roosevelt visited Pearl Harbor on July 28, 1934, seven years before the Japanese attack, the Japanese military expressed apprehension. General Kunishiga Tanaka wrote in the Japan Advertiser, objecting to the build-up of the American fleet and the creation of additional bases in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands:

“Such insolent behavior makes us most suspicious. It makes us think a major disturbance is purposely being encouraged in the Pacific. This is greatly regretted.”

Whether it was actually regretted or not is a separate question from whether this was a typical and predictable response to military expansionism, even when done in the name of “defense.” The great unembedded (as we would today call him) journalist George Seldes was suspicious as well. In October 1934 he wrote in Harper’s Magazine: ” It is an axiom that nations do not arm for war but for a war.” Seldes asked an official at the Navy League:

“Do you accept the naval axiom that you prepare to fight a specific navy?”
The man replied “Yes.”
“Do you contemplate a fight with the British navy?”
“Absolutely, no.”
“Do you contemplate war with Japan?”
“Yes.”

In 1935 the most decorated U.S. Marine in history at the time, Brigadier General Smedley D. Butler, published to enormous success a short book called “War Is a Racket.” He saw perfectly well what was coming and warned the nation:

“At each session of Congress the question of further naval appropriations comes up. The swivel-chair admirals…don’t shout that ‘We need lots of battleships to war on this nation or that nation.’ Oh, no. First of all, they let it be known that America is menaced by a great naval power. Almost any day, these admirals will tell you, the great fleet of this supposed enemy will strike suddenly and annihilate our 125,000,000 people. Just like that. Then they begin to cry for a larger navy. For what? To fight the enemy? Oh my, no. Oh, no. For defense purposes only. Then, incidentally, they announce maneuvers in the Pacific. For defense. Uh, huh.

“The Pacific is a great big ocean. We have a tremendous coastline in the Pacific. Will the maneuvers be off the coast, two or three hundred miles? Oh, no. The maneuvers will be two thousand, yes, perhaps even thirty-five hundred miles, off the coast.

“The Japanese, a proud people, of course will be pleased beyond expression to see the United States fleet so close to Nippon’s shores. Even as pleased as would be the residents of California were they to dimly discern, through the morning mist, the Japanese fleet playing at war games off Los Angeles.”

In March 1935, Roosevelt bestowed Wake Island on the U.S. Navy and gave Pan Am Airways a permit to build runways on Wake Island, Midway Island, and Guam. Japanese military commanders announced that they were disturbed and viewed these runways as a threat. So did peace activists in the United States. By the next month, Roosevelt had planned war games and maneuvers near the Aleutian Islands and Midway Island. By the following month, peace activists were marching in New York advocating friendship with Japan. Norman Thomas wrote in 1935:

“The Man from Mars who saw how men suffered in the last war and how frantically they are preparing for the next war, which they know will be worse, would come to the conclusion that he was looking at the denizens of a lunatic asylum.”

The U.S. Navy spent the next few years working up plans for war with Japan, the March 8, 1939, version of which described “an offensive war of long duration” that would destroy the military and disrupt the economic life of Japan. In January 1941, eleven months before the attack, the Japan Advertiser expressed its outrage over Pearl Harbor in an editorial, and the U.S. ambassador to Japan wrote in his diary:

“There is a lot of talk around town to the effect that the Japanese, in case of a break with the United States, are planning to go all out in a surprise mass attack on Pearl Harbor. Of course I informed my government.”

On February 5, 1941, Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner wrote to Secretary of War Henry Stimson to warn of the possibility of a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor.

As early as 1932 the United States had been talking with China about providing airplanes, pilots, and training for its war with Japan. In November 1940, Roosevelt loaned China one hundred million dollars for war with Japan, and after consulting with the British, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau made plans to send the Chinese bombers with U.S. crews to use in bombing Tokyo and other Japanese cities. On December 21, 1940, two weeks shy of a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, China’s Minister of Finance T.V. Soong and Colonel Claire Chennault, a retired U.S. Army flier who was working for the Chinese and had been urging them to use American pilots to bomb Tokyo since at least 1937, met in Henry Morgenthau’s dining room to plan the firebombing of Japan. Morgenthau said he could get men released from duty in the U.S. Army Air Corps if the Chinese could pay them $1,000 per month. Soong agreed.

On May 24, 1941, the New York Times reported on U.S. training of the Chinese air force, and the provision of “numerous fighting and bombing planes” to China by the United States. “Bombing of Japanese Cities is Expected” read the subheadline. By July, the Joint Army-Navy Board had approved a plan called JB 355 to firebomb Japan. A front corporation would buy American planes to be flown by American volunteers trained by Chennault and paid by another front group. Roosevelt approved, and his China expert Lauchlin Currie, in the words of Nicholson Baker, “wired Madame Chaing Kai-Shek and Claire Chennault a letter that fairly begged for interception by Japanese spies.” Whether or not that was the entire point, this was the letter:

“I am very happy to be able to report today the President directed that sixty-six bombers be made available to China this year with twenty-four to be delivered immediately. He also approved a Chinese pilot training program here. Details through normal channels. Warm regards.”

Our ambassador had said “in case of a break with the United States” the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor. I wonder if this qualified!

The 1st American Volunteer Group (AVG) of the Chinese Air Force, also known as the Flying Tigers, moved ahead with recruitment and training immediately and first saw combat on December 20, 1941, twelve days (local time) after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

On May 31, 1941, at the Keep America Out of War Congress, William Henry Chamberlin gave a dire warning: “A total economic boycott of Japan, the stoppage of oil shipments for instance, would push Japan into the arms of the Axis. Economic war would be a prelude to naval and military war.” The worst thing about peace advocates is how many times they turn out to be right.

On July 24, 1941, President Roosevelt remarked, “If we cut the oil off , [the Japanese] probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had a war. It was very essential from our own selfish point of view of defense to prevent a war from starting in the South Pacific. So our foreign policy was trying to stop a war from breaking out there.”

Reporters noticed that Roosevelt said “was” rather than “is.” The next day, Roosevelt issued an executive order freezing Japanese assets. The United States and Britain cut off oil and scrap metal to Japan. Radhabinod Pal, an Indian jurist who served on the war crimes tribunal after the war, called the embargoes a “clear and potent threat to Japan’s very existence,” and concluded the United States had provoked Japan.

On August 7th four months before the attack the Japan Times Advertiser wrote: “First there was the creation of a superbase at Singapore, heavily reinforced by British and Empire troops. From this hub a great wheel was built up and linked with American bases to form a great ring sweeping in a great area southwards and westwards from the Philippines through Malaya and Burma, with the link broken only in the Thailand peninsula. Now it is proposed to include the narrows in the encirclement, which proceeds to Rangoon.”

By September the Japanese press was outraged that the United States had begun shipping oil right past Japan to reach Russia. Japan, its newspapers said, was dying a slow death from “economic war.”

What might the United States have been hoping to gain by shipping oil past a nation in desperate need of it?

In late October, U.S. spy Edgar Mower was doing work for Colonel William Donovan who spied for Roosevelt. Mower spoke with a man in Manila named Ernest Johnson, a member of the Maritime Commission, who said he expected “The Japs will take Manila before I can get out.” When Mower expressed surprise, Johnson replied “Didn’t you know the Jap fleet has moved eastward, presumably to attack our fleet at Pearl Harbor?”

On November 3, 1941, our ambassador tried again to get something through his government’s thick skull, sending a lengthy telegram to the State Department warning that the economic sanctions might force Japan to commit ” national hara-kiri.” He wrote: ” An armed conflict with the United States may come with dangerous and dramatic suddenness.”

Why do I keep recalling the headline of the memo given to President George W. Bush prior to the September 11, 2001, attacks? “Bin Laden Determined To Strike in U.S.”

Apparently nobody in Washington wanted to hear it in 1941 either. On November 15th, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall briefed the media on something we do not remember as “the Marshall Plan.” In fact we don’t remember it at all.” We are preparing an offensive war against Japan,” Marshall said, asking the journalists to keep it a secret, which as far as I know they dutifully did.

Ten days later Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary that he’d met in the Oval Office with Marshall, President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Admiral Harold Stark, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Roosevelt had told them the Japanese were likely to attack soon, possibly next Monday. That would have been December 1st, six days before the attack actually came. “The question,” Stimson wrote, ” was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition.” Was it? One obvious answer was to keep the fleet in Pearl Harbor and keep the sailors stationed there in the dark while fretting about them from comfortable offices in Washington, D.C. In fact, that was the solution our suit-and-tied heroes went with.

The day after the attack, Congress voted for war. Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin (R., Mont.), the first woman ever elected to Congress, and who had voted against World War I, stood alone in opposing World War II (just as Congresswoman Barbara Lee [D., Calif.] would stand alone against attacking Afghanistan 60 years later). One year after the vote, on December 8, 1942, Rankin put extended remarks into the Congressional Record explaining her opposition. She cited the work of a British propagandist who had argued in 1938 for using Japan to bring the United States into the war. She cited Henry Luce’s reference in Life magazine on July 20, 1942, to “the Chinese for whom the U.S. had delivered the ultimatum that brought on Pearl Harbor.” She introduced evidence that at the Atlantic Conference on August 12, 1941, Roosevelt had assured Churchill that the United States would bring economic pressure to bear on Japan. “I cited,” Rankin later wrote, ” the State Department Bulletin of December 20, 1941, which revealed that on September 3 a communication had been sent to Japan demanding that it accept the principle of ‘nondisturbance of the status quo in the Pacific,’ which amounted to demanding guarantees of the inviolateness of the white empires in the Orient.”

Rankin found that the Economic Defense Board had gotten economic sanctions under way less than a week after the Atlantic Conference. On December 2, 1941, the New York Times had reported, in fact, that Japan had been “cut off from about 75 percent of her normal trade by the Allied blockade.” Rankin also cited the statement of Lieutenant Clarence E. Dickinson, U.S.N., in the Saturday Evening Post of October 10, 1942, that on November 28, 1941, nine days before the attack, Vice Admiral William F. Halsey, Jr., (he of the slogan “kill Japs, kill Japs!” ) had given instructions to him and others to “shoot down anything we saw in the sky and to bomb anything we saw on the sea.”

Whether or not World War II was the “good war” we are so often told it was, the idea that it was a defensive war because our innocent imperial outpost in the middle of the Pacific was attacked out of the clear blue sky is a myth that deserves to be buried.

David Swanson is the author of “War Is A Lie” http://warisalie.org from which this is excerpted.

http://warisalie.org
http://davidswanson.org

Connecticut pathologist Dr. Sin Hang Lee and Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) have petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to require accurate counts of COVID-19 cases in the Pfizer/BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine trial.

“Until an accurate count of COVID-19 cases in the vaccinated and placebo groups has been determined for vaccine efficacy evaluation, we are asking the FDA to stay its decision regarding the emergency use authorization for this vaccine,” said Dr. Lee, director of Milford Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory.

The major reason for petitioning the FDA for a stay of action is that the Phase 2/3 clinical trial of the Pfizer vaccine used a presumptive RT-qPCR diagnostic test. This test is acknowledged by the medical science community to generate high rates of false-positive results among qualified trial participants from the placebo group with minor symptoms such as a sore throat or a new cough. This is especially evident when a de facto unblinding among the trial participants has taken place, according to the petition.

The Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine trial primarily uses an RT-qPCR test that employs cycle thresholds possibly up to 44.9 to identify COVID-19 “cases.” Samples deemed positive that require high levels of amplification (cycle thresholds greater than 30 to 35) are usually false positives, said Dr. Lee.

A recent review of a COVID-19 PCR test, which was signed by 22 international scientists, emphatically stated:

“To determine whether the amplified products are indeed SARS-CoV-2 genes, biomolecular validation of amplified PCR products is essential. For a diagnostic test, this validation is an absolute must. Validation of PCR products should be performed by either running the PCR product in a 1% agarose-EtBr gel together with a size indicator (DNA ruler or DNA ladder) so that the size of the product can be estimated. The size must correspond to the calculated size of the amplification product. But it is even better to sequence the amplification product. The latter will give 100% certainty about the identity of the amplification product. Without molecular validation one cannot be sure about the identity of the amplified PCR products…”

A recent petition to the European Medicines Agency to stay their COVID-19 vaccine trials used similar arguments regarding the inaccuracy of the PCR tests being used and the need for confirmatory sequencing.

On Dec. 1, Switzerland’s medical regulator, Swissmedic, said it lacks the necessary information to approve three different coronavirus vaccines ordered by the government, including the Pfizer vaccine.

In a recent interview about the pending review of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn has promised, “we will make a determination regarding safety and efficacy based upon our very stringent criteria.”

As stated in the petition, if Pfizer is unable to perform the needed sequencing tests on the 180 RNA samples to confirm their stated vaccine efficacy rate of 95%, Dr. Lee has offered to re-test the residues of these samples in his laboratory.

Dr. Lee said his laboratory is located only one hour’s driving distance from Connecticut-based Pfizer Inc., and he will submit all the testing data to the FDA to support its vaccine evaluation based upon “very stringent criteria,” as promised by the FDA Commissioner.

Dr. Lee’s Sanger sequencing-based method for molecular diagnosis of SARS-CoV-2 was published in International Journal of Geriatrics and Rehabilitation.

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US Sanctions Have Caused Iranians Untold Misery – And Achieved Nothing

By Negar Mortazavi and Sina Toossi, December 08 2020

 

La Fema – Agenzia federale per la gestione delle emergenze, dipendente dal governo Usa – ha aggiornato le istruzioni alla popolazione su come comportarsi in caso di attacco nucleare. Le nuove istruzioni tengono conto del Covid-19, dei conseguenti lockdown e delle norme da seguire per proteggersi dal virus.

Per essere pronti quando viene lanciato l’allarme per un imminente attacco nucleare – avverte la Fema – dovete sapere che «a causa del Covid-19 molti posti, da cui passate per andare al lavoro e ritornare, possono essere chiusi o non avere regolari orari di apertura». Dovete quindi individuare prima «i migliori luoghi in cui ripararsi, che sono gli scantinati e i piani centrali di grandi edifici».

In tali istruzioni la Fema ignora quali sono gli effetti reali (scientificamente accertati) di un’esplosione nucleare. Anche se le persone in fuga sono abbastanza fortunate da trovare un posto non soggetto a lockdown per il Covid, in cui ripararsi, non hanno comunque scampo. Lo spostamento d’aria dell’esplosione, con venti di 800 km/h, provoca il crollo o lo scoppio anche degli edifici più solidi. Il calore fonde l’acciaio, fa scoppiare il cemento armato. Anche le persone che hanno trovato «i migliori luoghi in cui ripararsi» sono vaporizzate, schiacciate, carbonizzate.

GLI EFFETTI DISTRUTTIVI di una bomba nucleare da 1 megaton (pari alla potenza esplosiva di 1 milione di tonnellate di tritolo) si estendono circolarmente fino a circa 14 km. Se a esplodere è una bomba da 20 megaton, gli effetti distruttivi si estendono in un raggio di oltre 60 km.

In tale situazione la Fema si preoccupa di proteggere le persone dal Covid-19. Quando viene lanciato l’allarme nucleare, avverte, «informatevi con le autorità locali su quali rifugi pubblici sono aperti, poiché possono essere stati delocalizzati a causa del Covid-19»; al momento dell’evacuazione, «per proteggere voi e la vostra famiglia dal Covid-19, portate con voi due mascherine a persona e un igienizzante per le mani che contenga almeno il 60% di alcol»; all’interno del rifugio, «continuate a praticare il distanziamento sociale, indossando la mascherina e mantenendo una distanza di almeno 6 piedi (quasi 2 metri) tra voi e le persone che non fanno parte della vostra famiglia».

Tale scenario presuppone che, in caso di allarme nucleare, i 330 milioni di cittadini statunitensi non siano presi dal panico ma, mantenendo la calma, si informino su quali rifugi sono aperti, quindi si preoccupino anzitutto di proteggersi dal Covid-19 portando con sé mascherine e igienizzanti e, una volta nel rifugio, mantengano il distanziamento sociale col risultato che, in un rifugio capace di ospitare mille persone, ne verrebbero ammesse 200 mentre le altre resterebbero fuori.

AMMESSO PER ASSURDO che le persone seguissero le istruzioni della Fema per proteggersi dal Covid-19, esse sarebbero comunque esposte alla ricaduta radioattiva in un’area molto più vasta di quella distrutta dalle esplosioni nucleari. Un numero crescente di persone, apparentemente illese, comincerebbe a presentare i sintomi della sindrome da radiazioni.

Non esistendo alcun trattamento possibile, l’esito è inevitabilmente fatale. Se le radiazioni colpiscono il sistema nervoso, esse provocano forte emicrania e letargia, subentra quindi lo stato di coma, accompagnato da convulsioni, e la morte sopravviene entro quarantotto ore. In caso di sindrome gastrointestinale da radiazioni, la vittima è colpita da vomito e diarrea emorragica, accompagnati da febbre alta e muore nel giro di una o due settimane.

In tale scenario la Fema si preoccupa anche dello stato mentale delle persone. Essa avverte che «la minaccia di una esplosione nucleare può provocare ulteriore stress a molte persone che già oggi sentono paura e ansia per il Covid-19». Raccomanda quindi di seguire le istruzioni su come «gestire lo stress durante un evento traumatico». Fa quindi capire che, in caso di attacco nucleare, i cittadini Usa sarebbero assistiti da psicologi che, mentre esplodono le bombe nucleari, insegnano loro a gestire lo stress convincendosi che, grazie alla Fema, si sono salvati dal Covid.

Manlio Dinucci

Manlio Dinucci è ricercatore associato del Center for Research on Globalization.

President-elect Biden’s choice for Secretary of Defense has turned out to be one of the most controversial and difficult of his Cabinet appointments. The early front-runner, Michèle Flournoy, was originally seen as a shoo-in and was touted as a great breakthrough for women, but her hawkish views have provoked serious concerns. Biden now appears to be also considering two Black Americans promoted by the Congressional Black Caucus: Jeh Johnson and retired General Lloyd Austin.

All three are flawed candidates to anyone who wants to see an end to the endless wars and to stop the revolving door between the Pentagon and military contractors. They all sit on boards of companies that profit from militarism—Johnson at Lockheed Martin, Austin at Raytheon and Flournoy at Booz, Allen, Hamilton. All have supported most or all post-9/11 U.S. military interventions. None would be our preference.

But Biden is not going to appoint someone truly committed to peace and disarmament, like Congresswoman Barbara Lee or retired Colonel Ann Wright, a senior diplomat who resigned from the State Department to protest the Iraq War.

So who is the “least worst” choice? While General Austin has some good qualities—his experience in overseeing major troop withdrawals from Iraq and his opposition to further U.S. involvement in Syria—appointing a recently retired military officer would violate long-standing traditions and laws that stipulate that the Secretary of Defense must be a civilian.

The Republican-controlled Senate set a dangerous precedent when it approved a waiver of the National Security Act and confirmed General Mattis as Trump’s Defense Secretary in 2017. As Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, the Chair of the Senate Armed Services Subcommittee on Military Personnel, said at that time, “Civilian control of our military is a fundamental principle of American democracy, and I will not vote for an exception to this rule.” We agree.

That leaves Flournoy and Johnson. We are afraid that Flournoy would be an especially dangerous choice for America and the world. Given the additional time that President-elect Biden is taking over this decision, he, too, seems to have reservations about her.

As Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during Obama’s first term, Flournoy clearly did not see eye-to-eye with Vice President Biden on many of the Obama administration’s most fateful decisions. Biden opposed military escalation in Afghanistan, while Flournoy supported it. Flournoy also backed military intervention and regime change in Libya, while Biden insists that he argued strongly against it.

Flournoy has held a head-spinning number of revolving door positions—her board seat at Booz, Allen Hamilton, co-founding WestExec Advisors, the Center for a New American Security, and advising the private equity firm Pine Island Capital that is heavily invested in military industries, and other compromising jobs.

Even more problematic, however, is that Flournoy has repeatedly demonstrated throughout her career, both in her official Pentagon positions in the Clinton and Obama administrations and in her published writings and statements, that she actually believes in the normalization of war.

She was the main author of the Clinton administration’s 1997 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), which politically justified the unilateral use of U.S. military force all over the world. For Flournoy, normalizing war was just a matter of making a persuasive political case for the widespread use of military force, by defining things like “preventing the emergence of a hostile regional coalition” and “ensuring uninhibited access to key markets, energy supplies and strategic resources” as “U.S. vital interests” that justified the use of force.

In every U.S. dispute with other countries since the 1997 Defense Review, she has supported exactly the kind of threats and uses of force that she set out to ideologically legitimize in the QDR, from invading Iraq to attacking Libya to militarily confronting China to fighting “hybrid” wars—a mix of conventional war, insurgencies and cyber threats. “In the future,” she blithely says, “warfare may come in a lot of different flavors.”

So what about Jeh Johnson? From 2009 to 2012, under Obama, he served as General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense, where he was the senior legal official signing off on air strikes, drone strikes and other U.S. uses of force around the world. Johnson wrote the still secret legal memos that justified the targeted killing of people overseas by drones—a program that has killed many innocent civilians.

Legal experts were highly critical of both Obama’s policy and Johnson’s defense of it. We at CODEPINK repeatedly protested against Johnson, including projecting images of drone victims on his elegant home in Washington, D.C. We also opposed many of his policies as Secretary of Homeland Security in Obama’s second term.

But there are indications that Johnson would be more inclined toward restraint in the threat and use of force, reliance on peaceful diplomacy and compliance with U.S. and international law than Flournoy.

While Flournoy supported the 2011 US/NATO bombardment of Libya, Johnson did not. He advised Obama that the bombing constituted “hostilities” under the War Powers Act and must be ended by May 20, 2011. Tragically, Obama chose to ignore that advice from his top military lawyer and what Biden says were strong arguments against that war from his Vice President.

Johnson has also been quite unique among U.S. officials who have served the U.S. post-9/11 war machine in calling for the demilitarization of U.S. anti-terrorism policies and questioning the normalization of war that Flournoy worked to legitimize.

In 2012, while still at the Pentagon, Johnson made two ground-breaking speeches, one to the American Enterprise Institute and one to the Oxford Union debating society in the U.K., in which he discussed ending the U.S.’s militarized terrorism policy and once again treating terrorism as a crime to be dealt with by civilian law enforcement. He went on to say this:

“War must be regarded as a finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs. War permits one man – if he is a ‘privileged belligerent,’ consistent with the laws of war — to kill another. War violates the natural order of things, in which children bury their parents; in war parents bury their children. In its 12th year, we must not accept the current conflict, and all that it entails, as the ‘new normal.’  Peace must be regarded as the norm toward which the human race continually strives.”

Johnson went on to explain that, like Martin Luther King, Jr., he graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta. “I am a student and disciple of Dr. King,” he said, “though I became an imperfect one the first time I gave legal approval for the use of military force.”

For Johnson, war cannot be the “new normal,” and no clever political arguments can make it so. His actions at the Pentagon appear to weigh on his conscience and conflict with his moral compass. Whatever the political or legal justification, war is still a “finite, extraordinary and unnatural state of affairs.”

Johnson’s views echo what former President Jimmy Carter said when he accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, “War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

If, as reported, President Biden is trying to choose between Michèle Flournoy, General Austin and Jeh Johnson for Secretary of Defense, we urge him to choose the one out of the three who has upheld this basic principle that most Americans believe in, that war is “extraordinary and unnatural,” and peace is “the norm toward which the human race continually strives.”

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Medea Benjamin is cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran. She is a member of the writers’ group Collective20.

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

Featured image: CODEPINK protests killer drones at DC home of Jeh Johnson (Credit: CODEPINK)

Exclusive: Documents obtained by The Grayzone show that OPCW executives privately criticized the manipulation of a Syria chemical weapons probe, and supported a dissenting veteran inspector. One official, however, feared helping the “Russian narrative.” These private admissions further expose the public whitewash of the Douma cover-up, and undermine the ongoing attacks on the whistleblowers who challenged it.

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Since the explosive revelation that an investigation by the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) in Syria was manipulated, a smear campaign has been waged against a pair of veteran OPCW scientists who challenged the cover-up.

The two whistleblowers have been dismissed as rogue, uninformed, and duplicitous actors. Their detractors include the current OPCW director general; NATO member state ambassadors; and anonymous, self-described OPCW officials laundering fabricated claims through NATO member state-funded outlets.

OPCW documents and correspondence obtained by The Grayzone offer a stark contrast to these public attacks. Among several revelations, they show that before the attempts to discredit the whistleblowers, OPCW directors privately criticized the chemical watchdog’s suppression of the investigation, and supported the inspector who vocally protested it.

One of these executives, however, feared that raising alarm about the scientific fraud would help the “Russian narrative”— a tacit admission that the organization’s independence and impartiality have become subordinate to geopolitics.

The dissenting inspector, 16-year OPCW veteran Dr. Brendan Whelan, was a member of the OPCW Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) that investigated an alleged chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma on April 7, 2018. The team’s findings raised major doubts about allegations of Syrian government culpability, the pretext for a US-led bombing of Syria one week later.

But senior OPCW officials, in conjunction with a US attempt to influence the investigation, censored the evidence and released unsupported conclusions. A series of damning leaks later exposed the deception.

Rather than having their complaints addressed, Whelan and the other known dissenting inspector, 12-year OPCW veteran Ian Henderson, have been subjected to a second deceit: false claims about them and their investigation.

Whoever is behind these public attacks, the private OPCW emails and documents obtained by The Grayzone further undermine them. In addition to revealing initial praise by OPCW brass for Whelan’s attempt to protect the investigation, these leaks provide a new window into how other officials compromised it:

• One top official acknowledged the doctoring of the Douma evidence. But rather than order an investigation into how it occurred, this official sought to have an email protesting the censorship erased from the OPCW’s servers.
• Another executive, who appears to have been deeply involved in the scientific fraud, sidelined the inspectors who collected the evidence in Syria. This same OPCW official also engineered a delay that ensured that the most vocal dissenter, Whelan, would no longer be in the picture.
• By contrast, two senior directors praised Whelan’s opposition to the Douma probe subterfuge. (These directors are distinct from the Director General, whom they work under.) The first director criticized the censorship of evidence, and also signaled that it was politically motivated. Yet this same director was also hesitant to press the issue, out of fear that doing so would “feed… the Russian narrative.”
• The second director lauded Whelan’s contributions to the OPCW, as well as his effort to defend the Douma investigation from fraudulent behavior.

These documents show that internal concerns about the Douma cover-up went beyond members of the FFM team to even the highest levels of the organization.

To Read the Complete Grayzone Article Click Here

 

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

All images in this article are from The Grayzone unless otherwise stated

The Great Reset is basically aimed to “transform organization design and work design” as spelled out in section 1.1 of the White Paper Resetting the Future of Work Agenda: Disruption and Renewal in a Post-COVID World issued in October 2020 by the World Economic Forum (WEF) in collaboration with Mercer.

As a precondition to realize the Great Reset, a terror plan had to be set in motion and the people behind it came up with the notion that a pandemic was the most effective alternative. They capitalized on the idea of HYPING a common and seasonal infirmity – the flu – to control people by way of scaremongering or launching a worldwide fear campaign using the mainstream media all over the world. To heighten the terror to the level of paranoia, massive deaths numbering hundreds of thousands had to occur. To realize this, patients (or perhaps, victims is the better term) – most were elderly – had to be hospitalized where they would be administered with heavy doses of killer drugs (anti-malaria, anti-Ebola, anti-HIV) and be subjected to a killer procedure called intubation. Afterward, they invented a new jargon to describe the present circumstances: the new normal.

Now that we are already standing before the portal of the New Normal the Great Reset button is about to be pushed to inaugurate the New World Order. And it is no surprise that the people behind the Great Reset are the very ones in control of the post-industrial Information Technology systems because the New World Order will be organized, administered, managed, run, supervised, and controlled by these InfoTech helmsmen.

What we have been experiencing as we continue to be enslaved by the conditions that define the deceptive structure of this false pandemic called Covid-19 — which in reality is nothing but pure and simple hyped flu, i.e., HF-20 — is in reality, a necessary stage to inaugurate the realization of the New World Order in the mold of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World though not exactly according to the latter’s fictive algorithms.

The Great Reset is one heck of a deception. The “great resetters” are global economic programmers motivated by greed as they have determined once and for all that, their total economic and financial domination over the globe will only be achieved through the consolidation of their enormous wealth. To be more specific, these programmers are operating within the confines of the World Economic Forum (WEF). The radical change they have been dealing with and propagating around is against the interest of humanity. This Great Reset is therefore a large-scale project aimed to dehumanize humanity.

What we witness at this point in time is the omnipotence of the enormous power players behind this so-called pandemic: the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the global industrial titans that constitute it who have already issued even some four years back the blueprint of the New World Order called The Fourth Industrial Revolution (2016) which was later followed up in 2018 by Shaping the Future of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and capped this year with the issuance of another document called Covid-19:The Great Reset.

At the moment, they are on top of the game they have created and no strategy has yet been conceived on how to convince the victimized people of the world whom their minions have already brainwashed that we are in the present predicament because of the criminal acts of these controllers. For those who know the truth about the dynamics and mechanics of all these tragic circumstances that have engulfed the world, the mental trajectory leads only towards one direction and that is to make these criminals liable for their heinous deeds.

Now, the possibility of actually putting them on trial is another thing because such a matter is yet inconceivable considering the magnitude of power they hold. It doesn’t however change the reality that they are the culprits in starting and sustaining the catastrophe the world has been suffering from and they have to be prosecuted. When? We don’t know the answer as yet.

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

It is currently popular among those who make money writing media articles about politics, to argue that Boris Johnson will implode next year and be replaced as Tory leader by someone more rational and conventional. I very much doubt this: the most important reason for that doubt being the power of the atavistic English nationalist forces that Johnson has unleashed in British politics. Astonishingly, despite the UK government’s hideously inept performance in the Covid crisis, and the corruption and looting of the public purse on a massive scale for which the pandemic has been used, the Conservatives still lead Labour in the UK opinion polls.

Partly that is due to Sir Keir Starmer having no apparent policy other than to ensure that no party member ever criticises Israel. But it is mostly due to the fact that Johnson’s supporters do not care what happens to the country, as long as they can see news footage of black people being deported on charter planes and immigrant children washed up dead rather than rescued. The racist brand is very, very strong in England. Cummings and Johnson’s plan to appropriate it and target the areas of England with lowest levels of educational achievement as their new political base still holds up as a political strategy. Look at the polls.

Tory MP’s care about themselves. They will ditch Johnson extremely quickly if he becomes a perceived electoral liability and therefore a threat to their own jobs. But as long as the Tories are ahead in the opinion polls, then Johnson is secure. The idea that there is a norm to which politics revert is a false one. Many of the same pundits who are assuring us now that Johnson will depart, also assured us that his kicking out moderate and pro-EU Conservatives from his party, and removing Remainers from his Cabinet, was a temporary move to be reversed post-election. There is in fact no going back to the norm.

Even the dimmest Labour Party members must now realise that Starmer lied when he promised he would carry on with Corbyn’s radical economic policies if elected to the leadership of the Labour Party. The Corbyn phenomenon was interesting. It arose as a reaction to the massively burgeoning wealth inequality in UK society and the great loss of secure employment opportunity with rights and benefits available to the large bulk of the population. That situation continues to worsen. Brexit was in large part a cry of pain resulting from the same causes. But Brexit in itself is going to do nothing to improve the social position or economic prospects of the working class.

Whether the novelty of Brexit will in the long term continue to be enough to channel the desire for radical change away from actual programmes of redistribution of wealth and ownership, I doubt. I suspect the Starmer project will falter on public reluctance to yet again embrace a choice of two Tory parties, and Starmer will be ejected as Labour leader before he can become the third Blue Labour PM. In the meantime, I can only urge those in England to vote Green. I can certainly see no reason to vote Labour and validate the Starmer purge.

As a former professional diplomat, I am going to be astonished if there is not a Brexit deal announced very shortly. It is plainly highly achievable given the current state of negotiations. The EU have moved very far in agreeing that an independent UK body, as opposed to the European Court of Justice, can be responsible for policing UK compliance with standards regulation to ensure against undercutting. The “ratchet clause” sticking point, where a mechanism is needed to ensure the UK does not undercut future improved EU regulatory regimes, can be resolved with some fudged wording on the mutual obligation to comply with the highest standards, but which does not quite force the EU to simply copy UK regulation in the improbable event it becomes more demanding than the EU regime. By making the obligation theoretically mutual the “sovereignty” argument about UK subservience to EU regulations and standards is met, which is the ultra Tory Brexiteers biggest fetish. Fisheries is even simpler to solve, with obvious compromises on lengths of agreement periods and quotas within easy grasp.

It should not be forgotten that David Frost is not the plain loutish Brexiteer he has so spectacularly enhanced his career by impersonating domestically, but is the smooth and effective professional diplomat he shows when actually interacting with Barnier. It could only be an act of utter lunacy that would lead Johnson to eschew a deal that the Express and Mail will be able to trumpet as a massive victory over Johnny Foreigner. I expect we shall be seeing a union jacked apotheosis of saviour Johnson all over the media by a week from now at the very latest – another reason he will not be leaving office.

It is of course, all smoke and mirrors. By expectation management, a deal which is a far harder Brexit than anybody imagined when Theresa May set down her infamous red lines, will be greeted by a relieved business community as better than actually blowing your own brains out. As I have stated ever since the repression of the Catalan referendum, I can live with leaving the EU and live with abandoning its political and security pillars. I continue to view leaving the single market and losing the great advantage of free movement as disastrous.

One thing that has been very little publicised is that, deal or no deal, the UK is going to fudge the worst consequences by simply not on 1 January applying the new rules at the borders. There will not be immigration checks on the 86% of truck drivers entering the UK who are EU citizens, for the first six months. Otherwise the queues by mid January would scarcely be contained by Kent itself. Similarly, the UK side will not be applying the new customs paperwork on 1 January except on a “random sampling” basis. Those who are eagerly anticipating chaos on 1 January will thus probably be disappointed. In fact the deleterious economic effects of Brexit are quite probably going to take some time to show through in a definite way. I do not believe we will see either empty shelves or major price hikes in the first few weeks.

My prediction is this: Boris will agree his thin deal and at the end of January the Brexiteers will be gloating that the predicted disaster did not happen. Effects on economic growth and employment will take some time to be plainly identified, and it will be mortifying how readily the Tories will twist the narrative to blame the EU, and also to obtain English nationalist support for the notion that this gradual pain is worth it in pursuit of a purer country, with less immigration. That may sound crazy to you. But is it not crazy to you that the Tories are still ahead in UK polls after the last year? Mark my words; hope that Boris Johnson will simply vanish is very misplaced.

There is of course the possibility that Johnson is indeed completely bonkers and will not agree any deal at all, in which case 1 January chaos is unavoidable and all bets are off. I should be very surprised indeed. But then I did not think Trump would be mad enough not to concede the US Presidential election. Trying to predict the irrational mind is a pointless undertaking. I don’t think Johnson is that irrational; but I have been wrong before.

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Featured image: Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a press conference on 16 March, with Chief Medical Officer Prof Chris Witty and Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick Vallance. Picture by Andrew Parsons

Some Federal Reserve officials are calling for tougher banking regulations in order to prevent the Fed’s low interest rate policy from leading investors to take “excessive” risks that will create asset bubbles. The Fed is understandably worried that these bubbles will burst leading to another market meltdown. However, the boom-and-bust cycle will not end because regulators stop investors from taking “excessive” risks. Almost every bubble and economic downturn America has experienced over the past 107 years was caused by the Federal Reserve’s manipulation of the money supply.

The Federal Reserve’s actions artificially lower interest rates, thus distorting the signals sent by the rates, which are the price of money. Artificially low interest rates cause investments to be made in projects that are not supported by the real underlying market conditions. This results in a boom, inevitably followed by a crash, then by a new round of money creation and government bailouts restarting the cycle.

Increased regulations will not just fail to head off the next crash, they will make the next recession worse. Federal regulators are not capable of determining what is “excessive” risk. Instead, that determination is best left to market participants. Regulators are subject to having the same Fed-induced distorted view of the marketplace as nearly everyone else. Thus, regulators may mistake a growing asset bubble as a thriving sector of the economy that will serve as a long-term source of growth. This is especially the case if, as with the housing bubble, government policies such as the Community Reinvestment Act encourage the malinvestments. Also, regulators may impede the growth of businesses that are actually responding to real economic conditions instead of Fed-created illusions.

Support among the people, if not among the financial and political elites, for auditing and even ending the Fed, as well as for cryptocurrencies and precious metals, suggests we may soon reach what Ludwig von Mises referred to as the “crack-up.” The crack-up occurs when enough people realize that continuous expanding of the money supply, and the accompanying decline in a currency’s purchasing power, is a feature of central banking. Therefore, they spend their money as soon as they get it, accelerating the rise of hyperinflation.

Concerns over the effects of the US government’s debt, the precarious American economic condition, and growing resentment of US foreign policy have led to a decline in the dollar’s international value. Eventually, these factors will lead to a rejection of the dollar’s world reserve currency status.

Rejection of the dollar’s reserve currency status abroad and the crack-up at home will cause an economic meltdown worse than the Great Depression. Among the problems this will lead to is increased violence as some Americans who believe they are entitled to live off the stolen property of others cut out the government middleman and start stealing from their fellow citizens.

The only way to avoid this fate is to spread the ideas of liberty among the people. A strong liberty movement that can pressure politicians to cut spending, audit and end the Fed, legalize competing currencies, and stop promoting divisive identity politics is the key to peacefully transitioning away from the Keynesian welfare-warfare state to a free society.

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Featured image is from Shutterstock

One of the most common pro-mask arguments I’ve heard over the course of the past year, both from “public health experts” and your average citizen, sounds similar to the following statement:

“If only everyone would just wear a mask, we would be able to crush the virus and end the pandemic.”

This line of reasoning is frequently espoused by lockdown governors and “public health experts.” You see, the problem isn’t them, it’s you, the citizen, we’re told. Wear a mask, peasant. You’re the problem! You’re the reason why the pandemic is still a problem in this country.

Deaths up? Why aren’t you wearing a mask. Cases up? Wear a mask. Hospitals crowded? The problem is that not enough people are wearing masks, they claim.

Hospitalizations are going up.

Wear. A. Mask.

— Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) December 7, 2020

#COVID19 update:
-Positivity rate: 3.9%
-Daily case average: 6,719
-Hospitalizations: 36% increase
-ICU: 37% increase

We absolutely must take these increases seriously.

Wear your mask. Physically distance. Do not let your guard down.

Your actions could literally save lives.

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 13, 2020

NEW JERSEY #COVID19 UPDATE:
➡️6,046 new positive cases
➡️368,016 cumulative total cases
➡️16 new confirmed deaths
➡️15,485 total deaths

These numbers speak for themselves. Mask up. Social distance. Wash your hands. Avoid gatherings.https://t.co/JW1q8awGh7 pic.twitter.com/QcPTnaJVlu

— Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) December 6, 2020

"What we need to do is what we've been talking about for some time now, but really doubling down on it," Dr. Fauci tells @GMA as COVID cases soar.

"Universal and uniform wearing of masks; avoiding crowded, congregate situations; keeping physical distant." https://t.co/nCFBf7kv2C pic.twitter.com/Creg6E0Ci1

— ABC News (@ABC) November 12, 2020

The idea that not enough Americans are wearing masks is detached from reality. And we have the data to prove it.

The Delphi group at Carnegie Mellon University has developed a very informative, consistently updated mask compliance tracker. It shows that the overwhelming majority of Americans across the nation are wearing masks. And in virtually every major population center in the United States, especially in areas where COVID-19 cases are rising, mask compliance levels are off the charts high, with most major metro areas registering well over 90 percent compliance.

Early on in the pandemic, when the “new science” told us that masks could stop the virus in its tracks (after the science of early 2020, espoused by the likes of Fauci and many others, rightly pointed to the reality that masks are useless outside of a controlled setting), the CDC and other “public health agencies” claimed that we could essentially eliminate transmission if a large percentage of the population adopted universal masking.

When lockdowns failed to “stop the spread,” masking up at over 80% was hyped as a way to “do more to reduce COVID-19 spread than a strict lockdown.”

“Universal masking at 80 [percent] adoption flattens the curve significantly more than maintaining a strict lockdown,” a much-hyped, highly publicized study, which was treated by many in the scientific community as the gospel, proclaimed.

“We will not only be able to flatten the curve, we will be able to significantly reduce the spread of the virus and return to life as normal sooner rather than later,” De Kai, a research scholar at Berkeley who helped develop the COVID-19 universal masking model, proclaimed.

With the help of the CMU mask compliance tracker, let’s take a look at the current COVID-19 hotspots in the United States and the level of mask compliance within these areas.

San Francisco metro area: 97% mask compliance

New York City metro area: 97% mask compliance

DC metro: 97%

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington: 94%

Philly area: 96%

Chicago: 95%

Miami-Ft Lauderdale: 96%

Seattle: 96%

The data demonstrates very clearly that Americans have overwhelmingly exceeded the masking compliance percentages needed to supposedly “flatten the curve” and reduce transmission of the virus. The problem, of course, is that the models have not matched reality. Americans are wearing masks, but the hypothesis behind universal masking has not worked to stop the spread of COVID-19.

Americans have adopted the recommendations of the “public health experts,” but the “public health experts” have failed to follow the science, which now shows that masks are useless when it comes to stopping the spread of COVID-19. Now we’re left with an overwhelming majority of Americans wearing masks for no science-based reason whatsoever.

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Featured image is from howstuffworks

In the very month in which I read articles condemning the “cancel culture,” which some apply exclusively to the “left’s efforts to silence or shame views with which they disagree,” several disturbing incidents caught my attention.

A Palestinian American Congresswoman was called an anti-Semite because she greeted the announcement of President-elect Biden’s pick for Secretary of State with the hope that her right to support the movement to Boycott, Divest or Sanction Israel (BDS) would be recognised. An accomplished Arab American woman, of Palestinian descent, appointed to a position in Biden’s White House was condemned for an observation she made as a student, two decades ago, in which she pointed out how it must have been despair that drove young Palestinians to become suicide bombers. The California Board of Education removed Arab American studies from a model ethnic studies curriculum and eliminated any mention of Palestine. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the State Department will adopt a definition of anti-Semitism that conflates criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. As a result, he will designate the BDS movement as an anti-Semitic “cancer” and may also sanction respected human rights organisations because of their criticism of Israeli policies.

Though these incidents are different, they are examples of the pervasive “cancel culture” working to silence voices that are critical of Israel or supportive of Palestinian rights. Collectively, they raise several important concerns.

In the first place, silencing Palestinians and their supporters is born of bigotry. Denying Palestinians their fundamental right to express pain and to protest is to deny their very humanity.

Compounding this is the unprecedented use of state authority silence Arab Americans and those who advocate for Palestine. While it is shameful for the US State Department to consistently ignore Israel’s systematic violations of Palestinian human rights, it is beyond shameful to now seek to call Palestinians and their supporters anti-Semites for speaking out against these violations or calling for a non-violent boycott.

This is a violation of Palestinian human rights, the right to freely speak out and to act against injustice. But then, if the US officials in question can only see Israeli humanity and do not see Palestinians or Arabs as full human beings, then it follows that Palestinian rights should be subordinated to the concern that Israel be protected from criticism.

There is a clear double standard being applied here.

When Baruch Goldstein, an extremist Israeli settler, massacred 29 Palestinian worshipers in a mosque in Hebron, The Washington Post carried a feature article asking the question, “What happened to drive this Jewish doctor to do what he did?” There was no mention of the Palestinian victims. Nor were there interviews with the victims’ families or those who survived the mass murder. Goldstein, a troubled man, was the subject of the story. His victims were mere objects, an abstract body count, a number to be noted and then dismissed.

But when a 20-year-old Palestinian American attempted to understand why a young Palestinian would be in such despair that he would commit suicide in an act of terror, she is condemned today. She was no more justifying the Palestinian’s act than The Washington Post was justifying Goldstein’s. Her’s was an effort to understand what could have led any young person to commit such an atrocity. That this involved speaking about a Palestinian as a person, albeit one who was deeply disturbed, was deemed unpardonable.

It is also important to note that many groups who are quickest to denounce Arabs as anti-Semitic for legitimately condemning Israeli policies are the very ones who will accept the view of Palestinians and Arabs as prone to violence because of their culture or religion. This, without question, is also bigotry.

What is equally disturbing about the effort to silence criticism of Israel by conflating it with anti-Semitism is the damage it does to the battle waged against real anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism is bigotry. It is hatred of or prejudice against Jews based on stereotypes that portray Jewish people, not as individuals, but part of a collective, sharing the same attributes, physical or cultural, or participating in nefarious activity because of their “Jewishness”.

Since the 1970s, however, some pro-Israel groups have been campaigning to equate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. They argue that since, as they see it, Israel is the “Jewish State”, then excessive criticism of Israel is by extension an attack on all Jews, as a group.

To be sure, there are instances where criticism of Israel can be anti-Semiti,  when it attributes Israeli behaviours to negative stereotypes of Jews, as a collective.

But to go from this to seeing all criticism of Israel as anti-Semitic not only strains logic, it distorts the meaning of the word. It is also a crude effort to shield Israel from criticism, while at the same time rendering people powerless to oppose the crimes Israel commits daily against the Palestinian people.

To rebut this charge, advocates of this expansion of the definition of anti-Semitism say that they will allow for “legitimate criticism.” What concerns them, they say, are critics who focus exclusively on Israel or those whose criticism is “excessive”.

That same degree of discernment is necessary when one considers critics of Israel and its policies. Otherwise, the blanket determination that criticism of Israel or its policies as anti-Semitism should be seen as nothing more than a crude effort to silence such criticism.

The expanded definition of anti-Semitism includes those who condemn the injustice to the Palestinians resulting from the foundation of the State of Israel. But when we rightly welcome a discussion of the injustices done to the indigenous peoples of America or the crimes of slavery and Jim Crow, how can we deny Palestinians the right to protest their expulsion and dispossession? And if we entertain a discussion about compensation to Native Americans or African Americans, why would we deem it anti-Semitic for Palestinians to demand repatriation and compensation? Unless, of course, we view Palestinians as less worthy of rights or inherently dangerous.

Even before this current campaign to conflate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, some major Jewish organisations made a determined effort to silence Arab Americans. Groups like the Anti-Defamation League, AIPAC and the American Jewish Committee published reports warning of the danger posed by “pro-Palestinian” or “Arab propagandists”. As a result of this campaign, Arab Americans, myself included, were denied jobs, harassed, had speaking engagements cancelled and received threats of violence. Much the same is being done today by the likes Canary Mission and Campus Watch.

In other words, “cancel culture” is nothing new. It has been around for decades, with Arab Americans and Palestinian human rights supporters as the main victims. And now with over 30 states passing legislation criminalising support for BDS, the Departments of State and Education adopting the conflation of criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism, the effort to silence pro-Palestinian voices is escalating.

Caution and discernment are required when we speak about Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Arabs. Thoughtful proponents of reasoned discourse, in particular among progressive Arab Americans and American Jews, must make a determined effort to convene a respectful conversation to challenge this dangerous slide toward repression and incivility.

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James J. Zogby is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.

Featured image is from PressTV

“Look! You fools! You’re in danger! Can’t you see? They’re after you! They’re after all of us! Our wives…our children…they’re here already! You’re next!”—Dr. Miles Bennell, Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

It’s like Invasion of the Body Snatchers all over again.

The nation is being overtaken by an alien threat that invades bodies, alters minds, and transforms freedom-loving people into a mindless, compliant, conforming mob intolerant of anyone who dares to be different, let alone think for themselves.

However, while Body Snatchers—the chilling 1956 film directed by Don Siegel—blames its woes on seed pods from outerspace, the seismic societal shift taking place in America owes less to biological warfare reliant on the COVID-19 virus than it does to psychological warfare disguised as a pandemic threat.

As science writer David Robson explains:

Fears of contagion lead us to become more conformist and tribalistic, and less accepting of eccentricity. Our moral judgements become harsher and our social attitudes more conservative when considering issues such as immigration or sexual freedom and equality. Daily reminders of disease may even sway our political affiliations… Various experiments have shown that we become more conformist and respectful of convention when we feel the threat of a disease… the evocative images of a pandemic led [participants in an experiment] to value conformity and obedience over eccentricity or rebellion.

This is how you persuade a populace to voluntarily march in lockstep with a police state and police themselves (and each other): by ratcheting up the fear-factor, meted out one carefully calibrated crisis at a time, and teaching them to distrust any who diverge from the norm.

This is not a new experiment in mind control.

The powers-that-be have been pushing our buttons and herding us along like so much cattle since World War II, at least, starting with the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor, which not only propelled the U.S. into World War II but also unified the American people in their opposition to a common enemy.

That fear of attack by foreign threats, conveniently torqued by the growing military industrial complex, in turn gave rise to the Cold War era’s “Red Scare.” Promulgated through government propaganda, paranoia and manipulation, anti-Communist sentiments boiled over into a mass hysteria that viewed anyone and everyone as suspect: your friends, the next-door neighbor, even your family members could be a Communist subversive.

This hysteria, which culminated in hearings before the House Un-American Activities Committee, where hundreds of Americans were called before Congress to testify about their so-called Communist affiliations and intimidated into making false confessions, also paved the way for the rise of an all-knowing, all-seeing governmental surveillance state.

The 9/11 attacks followed a similar script: a foreign invasion mounts an attack on an unsuspecting nation, the people unite in solidarity against a common foe, and the government gains greater war-time powers (read: surveillance powers) that, conveniently enough, become permanent once the threat has passed.

The government’s scripted response to the COVID-19 pandemic has been predictably consistent: once again, in order to fight this so-called “foreign” foe, the government insists it needs even greater surveillance powers.

As we’ve seen since 9/11 and more recently with the COVID lockdowns, those in power have always had a penchant for enacting extreme measures to combat perceived threats. However, unlike the modern America police state, the American government circa the 1950s did not have at its disposal the arsenal of invasive technologies that are such an intrinsic part of our modern surveillance state.

Today, we are watched and tracked 24/7; data is collected on us at an alarming rate by governmental and corporate entities; and with the help of powerful computer programs, American domestic intelligence agencies sweep our websites, listen in on our telephone calls and read our text messages at will.

Now with the COVID pandemic and its offshoots such as contact tracing and immunity passports, the governmental landscape is even more invasive.

Yet no matter the threat, the underlying principle remains the same: can we hold onto our basic freedoms and avoid succumbing to the soul-sucking dredge of conformity that threatens our very humanity?

This conundrum is at the heart of the 1956 classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, which was based on a 1954 science fiction novel by Jack Finney (and later remade into an equally chilling 1978 film by Philip Kaufman).

Body Snatchers not only captured the ideology and politics of its post-war era but remains timely and relevant as it relates to the worries that plague us today. Filmed with only seven days of rehearsal and 23 days of actual shooting, Body Snatchers is considered one of the great science fiction classics.

Body Snatchers is set in a small California town which has been infiltrated by mysterious pods from outer space that replicate and take the place of humans who then become conforming non-individuals. Miles Bennell, the main character, is a local doctor who resists the invaders and their attempts to erase humanity from the face of the earth.

At the very least, the film conveys a double meaning, serving as both a mirror of a particular moment in history and a compass pointing to a growing societal illness. Following World War II with the emerging military empire, the atomic bomb and the Korean War, Americans were confused and neurotically preoccupied with domestic threats, the polio pandemic and international political events, not much different from today’s populace preoccupied with domestic and international political drama, terrorism and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Yet Siegel’s film delves beneath the surface to confront an even more sinister threat: the dehumanization of individuals and the horrifying possibility that humanity could become infused as part of the societal machine.

Central to the film is one key speech delivered by Bennell while hiding from the aliens:

In my practice, I see how people have allowed their humanity to drain away…only it happens slowly instead of all at once. They didn’t seem to mind…. All of us, a little bit. We harden our hearts…grow callous…only when we have to fight to stay human do we realize how precious it is.

As Siegel makes clear, it is not Communists or terrorists or even viral pandemics that threaten our well-being. The real enemy is invasive governmental measures—something we now see happening across the country—and, thus, totalitarian conformity. And resistance must be against all government measures that threaten our civil liberties and against all kinds of conformity, no matter the shape, size or color of the package it comes in.

When all is said and done, however, the real threat to freedom (in the fictional world of Body Snatchers and in our present-day America) is posed by an establishment—be it governmental, corporate or societal—that is hostile to individuality and those who dare to challenge the status quo.

The mob hysteria, sense of paranoia, fascist police and the witch hunt atmosphere of the film mirror the ills of a 1950s America that is frighteningly applicable to present American society.

Acknowledging that Body Snatchers portrayed the conflict between individuals and varied forms of mindless authority, Siegel stated, “I think the world is populated by pods and I wanted to show them.” He explained:

People are pods. Many of my associates are certainly pods. They have no feelings. They exist, breathe, sleep. To be a pod means that you have no passion, no anger, the spark has left you…of course, there’s a very strong case for being a pod. These pods, who get rid of pain, ill-health and mental disturbances are, in a sense, doing good. It happens to leave you in a very dull world but that, by the way, is the world that most of us live in. It’s the same as people who welcome going into the army or prison. There’s regimentation, a lack of having to make up your mind, face decisions…. People are becoming vegetables. I don’t know what the answer is except an awareness of it.

All of the threats to freedom documented in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American Peoplecame about because “we the people” stopped thinking for ourselves and relinquished control over our lives and our country to government operatives who care only for money and power.

While the specific game plan for turning things around is complicated by a police state that wants to keep us at a disadvantage, the solution is relatively simple: Don’t be a pod person. Pay attention. Question everything. Dare to be different. Don’t follow the mob. Don’t let yourself become numb to the world around you. Be compassionate. Be humane. Most of all, think for yourself.

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Featured image is from Global Look Press / Jaap Arriens

US generals and admirals aren’t doves. 

They earn stars and medals by waging preemptive wars to advance the nation’s imperial aims.

Throughout the post-WW II period — from North Korea in the early 1950s to the present day — US wars have always been against invented enemies.

The common thread behind attacking them is for being unwilling to subordinate their sovereign rights to US interests.

According to Defense News and establishment media reports, Biden/Harris chose retired four-star Army general Lloyd Austin as regime war secretary.

He requires a congressional waiver to serve in the post because of his recent military service, likely to be gotten.

If confirmed as expected, he’ll be the third former US military official to serve as war secretary — George Marshall and James (“mad dog”) Mattis the other two.

Austin will be the first African American to serve in the post.

A West Point graduate, he headed three Army airborne commands, US forces —Iraq, was Army vice chief of staff and CENTCOM head.

He’s a global war OF terror veteran, in charge of US aggression in Afghanistan and Iraq — nonbelligerent countries threatening no one, invented enemies, not the real thing.

The American Academy of Diplomacy described him as follows:

He “culminated his military career serving as the 12th Commander of US Central Command from 22 March 2013 to 30 March 2016.”

“In this capacity, he was responsible for military strategy and joint operations throughout the Middle East and Central and South Asia.”

“He also served as the Combined Forces Commander, overseeing the military campaign to defeat the terrorist organization, ISIL in Iraq and Syria (sic).”

ISIL (aka ISIS, the Islamic State) was made-in-the USA to serve as Pentagon proxy fighters in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.

The same goes for al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra spinoff, and likeminded terrorist groups.

Like other Pentagon commanders, Austin deployed ISIS fighters to areas in US war theaters to combat their defense forces and civilians.

He didn’t defeat them. He used them to advance US imperial interests.

He currently heads the Austin Strategy Group, along with serving as a board member of United Technologies, NUCOR Steel, and Tenet Health Care.

When Obama withdrew US forces from Iraq in December 2011 (a temporary move as things turned out), Austin defied reality with the following remarks:

“What our troops achieved in Iraq over the course of nearly nine years is truly remarkable (sic).”

“Together with our coalition partners and corps of dedicated civilians, they removed a brutal dictator and gave the Iraqi people their freedom (sic).”

From GHW Bush’s preemptive 1991 Gulf War — to over a dozen years of genocidal US/Western sanctions — to Bush/Cheney’s 2003 aggression — to Trump’s rape and destruction of Mosul…millions of Iraqis were liberated from their lives.

Millions more lost access to near-universal healthcare and one of the region’s best educational systems to the highest levels — provided free to Iraqis by Saddam Hussein.

He ruled despotically but wasn’t all bad.

Iraqis today endure rampant corruption, high unemployment, impoverishment affecting millions, and the absence of essential to life social services.

What Austin, Trump’s first war secretary Mattis, and other US commanders did to Iraq over the past 30 years was and continues to be one of history’s great crimes.

Similar ones were — and are still — committed against numerous other countries, by hot war and other means.

US generals like Austin are charged with transforming sovereign nations into US vassal states by brute force and other hostile tactics.

When likely confirmed as Biden/Harris war secretary, Austin will be charged with directing all US hot wars and foreign occupations.

His mission will be to smash targeted countries into compliance with Washington’s interests and control them.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image: Vice President Joe Biden, Austin, and Command Sergeant Major Earl Rice, at an event marking the award of the Iraq Commitment Medal in December 2011 (Source: Public Domain)

“My young cousin passed away last week,” an Iranian Twitter user recently lamented. “She needed medication for her cancer that doctors said can’t be found.”

The tweet tragically went on: “Maybe she’d be alongside her little daughter now if she had this medicine and not under a pile of cold dirt.”

These heartbreaking words are from journalist Katayoon Lamezadeh, one of thousands of Iranians who have taken to social media to speak of how sanctions have upended their lives. Their stories reflect the devastating human costs of US economic sanctions that are often ignored by Washington’s foreign policy elite and largely unknown to the American public.

The assassination of Iranian scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh is the latest in a long-running pressure campaign against Iran by the US and its allies such as Israel. However, in the case of sanctions, it is ordinary Iranians who are paying the biggest price.

The onslaught of sanctions and covert actions on Iran during the Trump era has not elicited concessions from the Iranian government, but it has caused immense pain inside Iran. Today, Iran’s population is being crushed by the twofold blows of US sanctions and the Covid-19 crisis, all while under the yoke of an increasingly repressive government.

The Trump administration imposed new sanctions after it pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018, crippling an economy that supports over 83 million lives. And despite the harrowing toll of the pandemic in Iran, the epicentre of the virus in the Middle East, Trump is bent on increasing sanctions all the way up to President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration on 20 January. The administration has ignored a wide range of calls from world leaders and the United Nations to provide sanctions relief amid the coronavirus outbreak.

Recently, 75 Democrats in Congress also sent a letter to the Trump administration to demand measures to ensure that all countries can get essential medical equipment during the pandemic despite ramped-up US sanctions.

A humanitarian crisis

In recent weeks, many Iranians have begun documenting the humanitarian crisis unleashed by sanctions using the hashtag, Ravayat-e Tahrim (روایت_تحریم#) meaning “the story of sanctions”. The personal accounts corroborate the dismal economic data coming out of Iran, which show striking declines in the consumption of even staple goods such as red meat and rice.

The suffering and helplessness of the Iranian people today underscores the callous nature of President Trump’s approach to Iran, and the moral and strategic need for relieving pressure on the Iranian people and rethinking America’s sanctions policy under the incoming Biden administration.

Many of the stories Iranians have shared online relate to a loss of access to life-saving medicines. While humanitarian goods such as food and medicine are technically exempt from the US sanctions regime, groups such as Human Rights Watch have documented how the blanket economic and financial sanctions have deterred foreign firms and banks from facilitating humanitarian trade with Iran, including for “vital medicines and medical equipment”.

The outcome of this policy has harmed Iran’s most vulnerable, especially patients suffering from chronic and rare diseases such as multiple sclerosis, haemophilia, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, and cancers. For many Iranians, their lives now depend on scrounging for increasingly scarce medicine.

One Iranian Twitter user wrote how he searched for his father’s diabetes medication at “seven or eight” pharmacies to no avail. Then, at a pharmacy in Tehran’s Ferdowsi square, he saw a woman who was searching for but could not find the blood thinner medication Plavix. “I forgot my own troubles and stared at her as she left the pharmacy hopeless,” he wrote. “I felt ashamed that we had Plavix at home for my father who suffered a stroke.”

Rapid decline

The firsthand reports of the desperation wreaked by US sanctions are made even bleaker by the overall economic picture in the country.According to the Statistical Centre of Iran, from March 2016 to March this year, GDP per capita decreased by roughly 10 percent. The price of basic foodstuffs such as butter and beans has more than doubled over this period, while housing and automobile prices have skyrocketed to an extent that they are unaffordable for all but the wealthiest citizens.

As the incomes of Iranian households have decreased, so too have domestic consumption patterns, even for vital foodstuffs. The statistics in this regard show how shockingly impoverished Iranians have become: from 2011 to 2020, red meat consumption has declined by 51.6 percent, rice by 34.7 percent, and dairy products by 35.3 percent. Notably, the previous round of sanctions imposed by the Obama administration was only beginning to lift in 2016 before being reimposed with greater severity by President Trump in 2018.

While perennial corruption and domestic mismanagement have long played a role in Iran’s economic malaise, Iran experienced 13 percent growth in 2016, the year the nuclear deal went into effect, and was on the path to further growth.

The rapid economic decline of recent years is directly attributable to the Trump administration’s so-called “maximum pressure” campaign, which has slashed Iran’s oil exports, cut the value of its currency by two-thirds, and resulted in rampant inflation. The Iranian people have been subject to great misery with no discernable dividends for US national security interests or regional stability.

US sanctions have also helped crush Iran’s civil society, which has already been under immense pressure from the state. Over the last several years, Iranian civil society activists, like other Iranians, have grown poorer, sicker, and more hopeless.

“Being poorer means that many engaged in this sector as volunteers are no longer able to continue their activism, as they have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet. As such, Iranian civil society is losing its most valuable asset: its volunteer activists,” said Sussan Tahmasebi, a prominent women’s rights activist and civil society leader.

However, the sad reality is that Iran’s civil society that once advocated rights is now shifting gears to meet basic demands such as for food and medical care. “It will take years for Iranian civil society to recover from these setbacks, just as it will take years for Iranians to recover from the economic setbacks of the last few years,” Tahmasebi added.

Restoring Iranians’ trust

The Trump administration’s sanctions on Iran become an end unto themselves. They have triggered a humanitarian disaster while failing to meet any reasonably defined US objectives towards Iran.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit today rejected the Trump administration’s approval of the first offshore oil-drilling development in federal Arctic waters.

Hilcorp Alaska received approval in 2018 to build and operate the controversial Liberty project, an artificial drilling island and underwater pipeline that would risk oil spills in the sensitive Beaufort Sea and threaten polar bears and Arctic communities.

The lawsuit was brought by the Center for Biological Diversity, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Defenders of Wildlife and Pacific Environment, all represented by Earthjustice.

“This is a huge victory for polar bears and our climate,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This project was a disaster waiting to happen that should never have been approved. I’m thrilled the court saw through the Trump administration’s attempt to push this project through without carefully studying its risks.”

The court ruled that the Trump administration had failed to properly consider the climate impacts of the project, as required by the National Environmental Policy Act. Specifically, the court rejected the administration’s improper use of economic modeling to reach the conclusion that this project would benefit the climate.

“I’m pleased that the court today rejected the administration’s inaccurate and misleading analysis of this project’s impact to the climate,” said Earthjustice attorney Jeremy Lieb. “In the face of a worsening climate crisis, the federal government should not be in the business of approving irresponsible offshore oil development in the Arctic. The world cannot afford to develop new oil prospects anywhere, but especially in the Arctic where warming is already taking such a significant toll.”

The court also held that the Fish and Wildlife Service had violated the Endangered Species Act by failing to adequately analyze the effects of the project on polar bears —specifically, that the agency arbitrarily relied on uncertain mitigation measures in concluding the project would not adversely modify polar bear critical habitat and failed to properly consider the harm to them from noise disturbance.

“Today’s news is a victory for Alaska’s imperiled polar bears that are threatened by oil and gas development throughout virtually all of their terrestrial denning critical habitat ─ in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, and in the nearshore marine environment as well,” said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Alaska program director at Defenders of Wildlife. “Defenders will continue our fight against destructive oil and gas drilling and for the survival of polar bears in the Arctic.”

The Liberty project would involve construction and operation of a nine-acre artificial island, with a 24-acre footprint, in about 20 feet of water and a 5.6-mile pipeline under Arctic waters to send the oil into onshore pipelines.

“Today’s decision is a victory for the planet and its people. The ruling affirms that the U.S. must take steps to transition off of oil and gas if we are to have any hope of halting the climate crisis,” said Tim Donaghy, senior research specialist at Greenpeace. “If we are going to create a just, green, and peaceful future, it must start with rejecting destructive projects like Liberty. Climate action must happen now and the Biden administration needs to keep its promise to halt any new oil and gas leasing on federal lands and waters.”

The court vacated approval of the project and remanded the matter to the agency.

“We applaud the court’s decision to reject the Trump administration’s rush to drill for oil in Alaska’s pristine Arctic coastlines,” said Marcie Keever, legal director with Friends of the Earth. “Thankfully, the court put the health of our children and our planet over oil company profits. We will continue to fight against future oil and gas projects in the Arctic.”

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China is about to accomplish a historic act in Colombia. In 1942, when Bogotá had 380,000 inhabitants, a project was launched to build the urban metro. After more than 75 years and with 8 million people, the work finally seems real, thanks to Chinese efforts, already valued at more than 3.5 billion dollars. The Bogota metro is one of the most important infrastructure works in Latin America today. A promising business that begins to materialize after seven decades of broken promises and unfinished projects. The work was attributed to two Chinese companies and the first line is expected to start operating in the second half of 2028. This line will be 24 kilometers long and will directly benefit almost 3 million inhabitants. The first line will be elevated and will go from the city of Bosa, a popular area of more than 600,000 inhabitants, to the southwest, crossing the city diagonally to Avenida Caracas with Calle 78 to the north.

Bogotá is one of the five megacities in Latin America along with Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Lima, and Mexico City. And it is precisely the only city on the list without a metro system or any other form of public transport. As expected, public service is not enough, congestion in the Colombian capital is kilometers long and environmental pollution due to the emission of gases has reached intolerable levels. Currently there are 1,315,000 cars in the country’s capital, as well as 410,778 vans and 514,947 motorcycles. The public transport system consists of articulated buses known as Transmilenio or TPR. Such buses, when inaugurated – in 2000 – were considered a great innovation and received several awards, but with the exponential increase in the number of passengers, congestion and obstruction of city traffic, the system has become obsolete and scrapped, receiving today several criticisms.

The consortium chosen for the metro construction was the APCA Transmimetro, formed by two Chinese companies, China Harbor Engineering Company Limited (Chec) and Xi’An Metro Company Limited, which have already participated in the construction of this type of transport in several cities around in the world, such as Caracas, Dubai, and Malaga. The selection process lasted 15 months, with the Chinese consortium being chosen due to the fact that it presented the most favorable economic conditions. Although the project is old and these Chinese companies have already participated in similar operations in different regions of the planet, it is undeniable that such work represents something far beyond mere business for Beijing. Colombia is Washington’s largest South American ally, being a NATO partner country and a true American military base in the South, serving as a center of operations for the Pentagon’s strategic programs for the entire South American region. Therefore, in a context of increasingly intense trade war, the approach of a major American partner to Beijing must be carefully analyzed. Every form of business between China and an American ally currently represents much more than mere trade or agreement of interests, being a real geopolitical maneuver. This becomes even more evident when we consider the US domestic political and social context.

With an uncertain political future, turbulent elections, accusations of fraud and judicialization, American democracy is truly in crisis. More than that, Washington’s entire strategy to secure American global power is also in crisis. While the US is sinking into an internal crisis, China, with its political and economic stability and its well-defined international strategy, seeks to expand its ties with nations historically allied with Washington, gradually reducing the area of American influence. By guaranteeing the completion of a Colombian project of seventy years, Beijing is taking space in South America and, consequently, taking a great geopolitical leap towards overcoming American hegemony.

With Trump, Washington adopted a strategy of global retraction and greater regional focus. Trump’s foreign policy can be defined as a “new Monroe doctrine”, or, in other words, greater attention to the consolidation of American power on its own continent. This was evident, for example, with Trump’s attitudes towards Venezuela, while he sought to significantly decrease the number of American soldiers in the Middle East. With Biden, this situation can change. The new president-elect openly has a focus of attention in the East, promising to increase American troops in Iraq and Syria again, while the American continent does not appear so frequently in his speeches.

China will certainly take advantage of this moment. Beijing already has a strong influence in Central America, where it makes heavy investments in infrastructure and guarantees its space in the center of the American continent. Now, the way is open for the Chinese occupation of the South. Attracting Colombia, Beijing removes the main American ally from Washington’s sphere of influence and opens the way to a new horizon of possibilities for Bogota and the entire South America.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) and the Coalition of Canadian Palestinian Organizations (CCPO) are urging the Canadian government to vote in support of an upcoming resolution on the status of Jerusalem at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The resolution rejects Israel’s unilateral annexation of Jerusalem, and calls for the concerns of both Palestinians and Israelis to be considered when negotiating the final status of Jerusalem. The resolution is expected to be considered by the plenary later this week, alongside the final votes on a series of related annual resolutions.

From 2000 to 2010, Canada voted “Yes” on the Jerusalem resolution, before radically reversing its position in 2011. During preliminary voting at the committee stage, Canada has already maintained its anti-Palestinian habit by voting “No” or abstaining on 11 related motions which affirmed Palestinian human rights, with the exception of Canada’s lone vote in favour of Palestinian self-determination.

The upcoming resolution on Jerusalem is expected to reflect Canada’s existing foreign policy positions: condemning Israel’s occupation of East Jerusalem as illegal, calling for a just and lasting solution that takes into account the legitimate concerns of both Israelis and Palestinians, and calling on all parties to respect the historic status quo in regard to holy places. “This vote is an opportunity for Canada to demonstrate that it stands by its own position on a shared Jerusalem,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “It would be highly cynical for Canada to continue to vote against what it believes to be true, for the sole purpose of defending Israel from legitimate criticism,” said Bueckert.

“The status of Jerusalem is a significant issue for Palestinian Canadians, who want to see their government speak out against dangerous moves on the ground, such as Israeli annexation and Trump’s decision to move the US Embassy,” said Mousa Zaidan, National Coordinator for the CCPO. “We hope to see Canadian politicians start listening to their constituencies on important issues like these, and to stop taking them for granted.”

To help make sense of Canada’s voting record at the UN, CJPME recently launched the UN Dashboard, a new resource which allows Canadians to explore how Canada has voted on 16 resolutions about Palestinian human rights from 2000-2020. An EKOS poll from June 2020 found that 82% of Canadians support a shared Jerusalem, and that they reject proposals to recognize Jerusalem as the exclusive capital of Israel.

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On Sunday, Venezuelans voted to elect 277 National Assembly members for five-year terms from January 5, 2021 to January 5, 2026.

An unprecedented total of 14,400 candidates from 107 political parties ran for office.

Two Bolivarian blocs were heavy favorites to win a majority of seats — the ruling United Socialist Party (PSUV) and PPT Homeland for All Party/together with the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV).

For the first time, the Popular Revolutionary Alternative (APR) competed for seats.

The PPT Homeland for All Party called APR “a historic necessity which has come out of the coming together of all of us who struggle to defend the victories of the revolution.”

The above parties support Bolivarian social democracy, wanting it preserved.

US-designated puppet/usurper in waiting Guaido and many opposition parties boycotted Sunday’s process because of no chance to win a controlling majority.

On January 5, his time in office ends when polls show his support is a rock-bottom 3%.

Bolivarian social democracy is the world’s gold standard of how governments should operate — serving all Venezuelans, not just the privileged few as in the US, West and most other countries.

US war by other means on Venezuela since Hugo Chavez’s December 1998 election continues without letup.

Harsh Trump regime policies imposed on the country exceeded the worst of its predecessors since the Clinton co-presidency.

Much of the same will surely continue under Biden/Harris — how the US punishes all nations unwilling to subordinate their sovereign rights to a higher power in Washington.

Unlike elections in the US and West, Venezuela’s process is open, free, and fair, international monitors observing things.

Representatives from the UN, CARICOM, African Union, Council of Latin American Electoral Experts (CEELA), Russia, Iran, and other countries were in Venezuela on Sunday.

Former regional presidents Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, and Manuel Zelaya were involved as observers.

In deference to US imperial interests, the EU rejected an invitation to send monitors.

Venezuela’s Bolivarian National Electoral Council (CNE) handles things smoothly and efficiently whenever Venezuelan elections are held.

The Trump regime, Biden/Harris, and Brussels only recognize governments that are subservient to Western interests — at the expense of their own people, targeting independent ones for regime change.

Early Monday, AP News reported the following:

“Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro’s political alliance claimed a sweeping victory” in Sunday’s National Assembly elections, adding that:

The US and other Western countries called the results fraudulent (sic) — because Bolivarianism triumphed overwhelmingly over fascist dark forces.

In a nationally televised address at 1:45 AM local time, Maduro said “(w)e have recovered the National Assembly with the majority vote of the Venezuelan people.”

“It’s a great victory without a doubt for democracy.”

“Starting today, a new era is born in Venezuela, and we are giving ourselves the opportunity to start a truly democratic process for the recovery of our beloved homeland.”

“I call on all the opposition to abandon the extremist route.”

“We ask in one voice for the new United States government to lift all sanctions.”

“We restore all national dialogue mechanisms and are preparing an electoral agenda.”

“Today’s vote is a vote of rebellion, of independence, to tell the world that Venezuela is nobody’s colony, that Venezuela is a free, sovereign and independent country.”

Telesur called Sunday’s process “orderly and calm.”

Maduro’s PSUV coalition won 67% of National Assembly seats, Telesur reported — voter turnout light at around 31%.

In response to Sunday’s process, Pompeo reacted as expected.

Turning truth on its head, he tweeted the following:

“Venezuela’s electoral fraud has already been committed (sic).”

“The results announced by the illegitimate Maduro regime will not reflect the will of the Venezuelan people (sic).”

“What’s happening today is a fraud and a sham, not an election (sic).”

The above remarks reflect reality about US fantasy democracy.

Venezuelans have the real thing.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Credits to the owner of the featured image

India: Largest Strike in World History : Over 200 Million Workers and Farmers Protest against Poverty and Unemployment Triggered by Covid Lockdown

By Global Research News, December 06 2020

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Joe Biden announced last week that he will nominate Avril Haines to the position of Director of National Intelligence. Haines provided legal cover for CIA agents and worked closely with Barack Obama and CIA Director John Brennan on Obama’s tenfold expansion of drone killings.

A new chapter in the scandals of the Netherlands’s involvement in supporting terrorist organizations in Syria is unfolding in front of the world public opinion after Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte has recently admitted that he personally intervened to obstruct parliamentary investigations into his government’s provision of millions of dollars to terrorists, which shows the blatant hypocrisy in the policies of the Netherlands and the West regarding the allegations of fighting terrorism and protecting human rights.

The new development in the Dutch scandals file came after Rutte had been forced a few days ago to admit that he had obstructed the investigations by a fact-finding committee formed at the Dutch Parliament two years ago after Dutch media published files revealing the Dutch government’s involvement in supporting terrorists in Syria over several years and supplying them with technical equipment, especially for communication, military and logistical equipment, and hundreds of trucks and various vehicles.

At the time, the Dutch investigators did not reach any conclusion due to Rutte obstruction of the work of this committee and his deliberate concealment of secrets that prove his direct involvement with terrorists and his flagrant violation of the international and Dutch laws as the organizations that he supports financially and logistically in Syria are classified as terrorist organizations by the Dutch Public Prosecution itself.

The Parliamentary Investigation Committee was formed in the Netherlands after two media outlets revealed in a special documentary in 2017 the Dutch government’s support for about 22 terrorist groups, including the so-called “Levantine Front” organization, which is classified as terrorist even by Dutch institutions.

Rutte’s obstruction of the investigations has been met with great indignation by the Dutch people, as the media there has focused on his government’s involvement in providing millions of dollars, foodstuffs, medicines and telecommunication equipment to terrorists, while Dutch and European parties started to raise this issue at the public opinion platforms, calling for transparency and the truth while wondering about the benefit of democracy if it is not reflected on the ethical dimensions of the international policies.

The Dutch support for armed terrorist groups has continued throughout the years of the war on Syria, despite the pledges of the Amsterdam government to its parliament that only the organizations it described as “moderate” would receive support  in harmony with the hypocrisy adopted by the United States of America, which has always claimed that it provides support and training to those whom it describes as “moderate opposition”, but later many  reports have refuted these claims and confirmed that “Washington’s moderates” are nothing but terrorists who joined the ranks of terrorist organizations, including al Qaeda and Daesh “ISIS”.

The Dutch government has claimed that the reason behind its illegal interference to obstruct the investigations into the scandal is that the investigation would lead to the disclosure of secret information, in addition to exposing the alleged international coalition which had been formed under the pretext of fighting Daesh “ISIS” and the crimes committed by the Western states which are members of this coalition against Syrian civilians and the Syrian infrastructure under the pretense of fighting terrorism, while the facts on the ground confirm the involvement of this coalition in protecting Daesh.

The Netherlands, which is on the top of the European countries that export terrorists to Syria and Iraq, and the Dutch government’s support for terrorist organizations in the context of its submission to the American decision, makes it the last to have the right to talk about democracy and human rights in Syria or elsewhere and its government should be held accountable at the International Court of Justice.

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Featured image is from SANA

What Happened: A new study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health has, according to the authors, discovered that vaccinated children require far more healthcare than unvaccinated children. At least that’s what they found from the group of children used to collect the data.

This type of study is interesting to see given the fact that studies comparing unvaccinated children to vaccinated children are lacking, there aren’t many of them. These studies are, as the authors state, “rarely conducted.”

None of the post licensure-vaccine safety studies have included comparisons to groups completely unexposed to vaccines.

The study concludes that “the unvaccinated children in this practice are not, overall, less healthy than the vaccinated and that indeed the vaccinated children appear to be significantly less healthy than the unvaccinated.

The data source for this study was all billing and medical records of Integrative Pediatrics, a private pediatric practice located in Portland, Oregon.

The study emphasizes the need for more research given the fact that, again, there is hardly any in this area. They concur with Mawson et al., 2017 , who reported: “Further research involving larger, independent samples is needed to verify and understand these unexpected findings in order to optimize the impact of vaccines on children’s health” and with Hooker and Miller 2020, who wrote: “Further study is necessary to understand the full spectrum of health effects associated with childhood vaccination”.

These studies mentioned above also had similar findings.

According to the authors,

Vaccines are widely regarded as safe and effective within the medical community and are an integral part of the current American medical system. While the benefits of vaccination have been estimated in numerous studies, negative and nonspecific impact of vaccines on human health have not been well studied. Most recently, it has been determined that variation exists in individual responses to vaccines, that differences exist in the safety profile of live and inactivated vaccines, and that simultaneous administration of live and inactivated vaccines may be associated with poor outcomes. Studies have not been published that report on the total outcomes from vaccinations, or the increase or decrease in total infections in vaccinated individuals.

This is important because, although vaccinations in some cases may protect against the target disease, what else might they be doing not only on the short term, but in the long term? It’s also important to point out that in other cases, like the HPV vaccine, there is no evidence that they do protect against the target disease.

Another great example comes from a study published in 2017 that examined the introduction of the diphtheria-tetanus-pertussis vaccine (DTP) in an urban community in Guinea-Bissau in the early 1908s. They found that the DTP vaccine was associated with 5-fold higher mortality than being unvaccinated. The authors state the following:

All currently available evidence suggests that DTP vaccine may kill more children from other causes than it saves from diphtheria, tetanus or pertussis. Though (this) vaccine protects children against the target disease it may simultaneously increase susceptibility to unrelated infections.

This new study points out,

Pre-licensure clinical trials for vaccines cannot detect long-term outcomes since safety review periods following administration are typically 42 days or less. Long-term vaccine safety science relies on post-market surveillance studies using databases such as the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC’s) Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) and the Vaccine Safety Datalink. VAERS is a passive reporting system in which, according to Ross 2011 , “fewer than 1% of vaccine adverse events are reported.” The Vaccine Safety Datalink (VSD) can, in principle, according to the Institute of Medicine (IOM, 2013), be used to compare outcomes of vaccines and unvaccinated children. Based on the IOM’s recommendation, in 2016, the CDC published a white paper (CDC, 2016; Glanz et al., 2016) on studying the safety of their recommended pediatric vaccine schedule. Unfortunately, to date, no studies have been published comparing a diversity of outcomes of vaccinated and unvaccinated children.

Below is one of many interesting graphs from the study. The orange line represents the vaccinated children, and the blue one represents the unvaccinated.

For methods used, limitations, and more please refer to the study.

The parents that I work with in New York, that I see around the country are very concerned that their rights are being taken away, that their knowledge about the science is being pushed away by an agenda that only says, unvaccinated children are a problem.

No study has every been done in this country, appropriately, to address the health outcomes of children who are vaccinated versus the children who are unvaccinated. I have been seeing families in my practice for over 20 years, that have opted out of vaccination, they are the healthiest children I’ve ever seen. – Dr. Lawrence Palevsky, a NY licensed paediatrician

Why This Is Important: Given the fact that the  National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) has paid out approximately $4 billion dollars to families of vaccine injured children, there are clearly, in my opinion, some valid points here, especially against compulsory vaccinations. Again, as mentioned above, VAERS only accounts for an estimated 1 percent of vaccine injuries, this one percent is what is recorded.

A 2010 HHS pilot study by the Federal Agency for Health Care Research (AHCR) found that 1 in every 39 vaccines causes injury, a shocking comparison to the claims from the CDC of 1 in every million.

Take the MMR vaccine for example, if you search on VAERS, as of 2/5/19, the cumulative raw count of adverse events from measles, mumps, and rubella vaccines alone was: 93,929 adverse events, 1,810 disabilities, 6,902 hospitalizations, and 463 deaths. Again, don’t forget about that 1% figure cited in the study.

There are a number of legitimate concerns about vaccine safety that would require quite a long and very in-depth article, but I just wanted to let the reader know here briefly. Aluminum for example, is another concern I’ve written quite a lot about.

These are a few reasons as to why vaccine hesitancy is at an all time high, even among many physicians and scientists. This has actually been observed for a while. For example, one study published in the journal EbioMedicine  in 2013 outlines this point, stating in the introduction:

Over the past two decades several vaccine controversies have emerged in various countries, including France, inducing worries about severe adverse effects and eroding confidence in health authorities, experts and science. These two dimensions are at the core of vaccine hesitancy (VH) observed in the general population. VH is defined as delay in acceptance of vaccination, or refusal, or even acceptance with doubts about its safety and benefits, with all these behaviours and attitudes varying according to context , vaccine and personal profile, despite the availability of vaccine services VH presents a challenge to physicians who must address their patients’ concerns about vaccines and ensure satisfactory vaccination coverage.

At a 2019 conference on vaccines put on by the World Health Organization this fact was emphasized by Professor Heidi Larson, a Professor of Anthropology and the Risk and Decision Scientist Director at the Vaccine Confidence Project. She is referenced, as you can see, by the authors in the study above. At the conference, she emphasized that safety concerns among people and health professionals seem to be the biggest issue regarding vaccine hesitancy.

She also stated,

The other thing that’s a trend, and an issue, is not just confidence in providers but confidence of health care providers, we have a very wobbly health professional frontline that is starting to question vaccines and the safety of vaccines. That’s a huge problem, because to this day any study I’ve seen… still, the most trusted person on any study I’ve seen globally is the health care provider…

Is there not enough information here alone to warrant informed consent? I have a hard time understanding how someone who would take the new COVID-19 vaccine, for example, would be worried about me contracting the virus if they are protected?

Why have we given governments the ability to mandate such actions? Why have we given them so much power to dictate what we do and how we want to live? Is this really how we want to live, is this really the kind of world we want to create?

A Deeper Discussion. What Do We Do About The Increasing Vaccine Pressure? 

So many are concerned about mandatory vaccination. Further, many are starting to see that mandated vaccines may not be the future, but that services and options will be denied unless you can prove you have been vaccinated. Is it still the time to point the blame? Or is there a radical new approach we must take? A shift in our worldview, re-examining who we think we are, why we are here and what world we want to create is where we will begin to find the answers we are looking for. Has the dualistic fight the enemy method worked in the past? Are we not still here regardless of having used this method in the past? Maybe it’s time for a new conversation, one that looks at ourselves in a whole new light. This perhaps is how we will solve our ongoing challenges at their core.

Below is a deeper discussion about it from CE Founder Joe Martino.  You can follow me, Arjun, here on Instagram.

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A commonly heard presumption is that healthcare workers should be vaccinated first.  But what if…….

……….the vaccines induce immediate or latent adverse reactions that sideline these first responders and frontline workers?  It could be a catastrophe.  And if for some reason the vaccines spread COVID-19 rather than quell it (there is such a thing as vaccine-induced infection), what a way to create an out-of-control pandemic.  Some of the vaccines are just weakened (attenuated) COVID-19.  Just what is in the vaccine if COVID-19 hasn’t been shown to exist and the test for it is so unreliable it has created pseudoepidemics?  No one can fathom just how fraudulent this pandemic is.  Everything related to COVID-19 is a false prop.

Regardless of how “safe” or effective a vaccine is among healthy Americans, only 12% of Americans are metabolically healthy.  One study reveals 45% of American adults have chronic disease and are at increased risk for complications associated with COVID-19 and vaccination.

Every doctor, nurse and laboratory technician becomes a Trojan horse as they go back home and spread the virus, or whatever else is in the vaccine.  These are experimental vaccines, rushed to market.  The immunized are guinea pigs.

The US Code, the Helsinki Agreement and the Nuremburg Code protect citizens from forced vaccination by codifying the right to consent to or refuse vaccination when experimental vaccines like COVID-19 are being employed.  The public won’t be informed of these legal protections.

What we have today is coerced consent (no travel, no job, no money).  Are healthcare workers going to keep their jobs if they object to vaccination?

Are frail, mentally impaired residents at nursing homes who can no longer take care of their own affairs, able to understand a vaccination consent form?

According to a December 1, 2020 issued recommendation, both healthcare workers and residents of long-term care facilities should be “prioritized” to receive immunization against COVID-19, under the presumption healthcare workers and nursing home residents will plead for the vaccine.  But health authorities anticipate 4 out of the first 7 licensed COVID-19 vaccines will fail.

About 29% of patients with COVID-19 are health-care workers and were assumed to have acquired their infection in the hospital.

Polls indicate 37% of healthcare workers themselves would be hesitant toward COVID-19 vaccination.  Another study reveals only 27% of healthcare workers would accept a COVID-19 vaccine when it becomes available.

What if……… mass vaccination in nursing homes results in deaths among the frail elderly?  The first time Medicare covered the cost of flu shots in nursing homes in 1993 there was a flu epidemic in care homes that killed thousands.

Residents and staff of long-term care facilities account for 6% of COVID-19 cases but 40% of the deaths.  This is due to the advanced age and weak immunity of nursing home patients.

Healthcare workers and nursing home patients represent about 24 million people.

Because vaccine effectiveness depends on the quality of the immune response, persons with weak immune systems, such as very young infants and elderly persons, are likely to be insufficiently protected even with the best vaccines. For example, protection against influenza virus strains is only 29%–46% in persons aged older than 75 years, compared with 41%–58% in persons 60–74 years of age.

What if…….. vaccination creates a problem called immune enhancement whereby a person is vaccinated against one disease and later is exposed to that same pathogen (virus or bacterium) again and develops more severe disease than they would have if not vaccinated.

What if a vaccine produces more cases of COVID-19 than less?  Don’t say that is impossible – – more polio cases are now caused by vaccination than by a wild virus in the community.

What if…….. a post-vaccination inflammatory syndrome occurs in large numbers?  Certain vaccines may produce brain inflammation that result in symptoms of fever, restlessness, anorexia and out-of-control emotions (acute crying).

What if……. There are so many severe side effects emanating from vaccination that these cases fill up hospital wards and are mistakenly reported to represent cases of COVID-19, which is largely diagnosed by symptoms, not a lab test.

Don’t think this isn’t a problem.  The National Academies of Science produced an 865-page book on the problem of vaccine-induced side effects.

What if just 1% of 325,000,000 vaccinated Americans experience a severe or lasting side effect, or God forbid, get added to the mortality numbers. We are talking about 32,500 deaths.  Americans won’t learn of any of this till months later because mortality data takes months to tabulate and verify.  These deaths will be blamed on the virus, not the vaccine or the vaccination process.

Just admit frail elderly Americans to the hospital and the ordeal (isolation, antibiotic resistance, medication errors, malnutrition, what is called iatrogenic damage or hospital-induced trauma) may lead to the premature demise of many.

Why the elderly won’t develop antibodies after vaccination

The strong line of internal defense against infectious disease in the elderly is comprised of T-cells produced in the thymus gland.  The thymus gland of elderly Americans has shriveled up and no longer efficiently produces T-cells, especially memory T-cells that produce long-lasting immunity.

The trace mineral zinc is required for maintenance of the thymus gland.  Zinc supplementation is generally not practiced by American medicine.  Instead of a mandate to fortify the diet of nursing home residents with zinc, we have a mandate to vaccinate feeble patients who can’t possibly benefit from vaccination.

Instead, we get more ineffective anti-viral drugs

Blockbuster (get-rich) medicines like remdesivir (Velkury) and Tamiflu (oseltamivir) are promoted in pandemics.

One report says:  “It is inexplicable that despite the lack of scientifically robust data on efficacy and safety of Tamiflu (oseltamivir), reputed organizations like World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), US FDA not only recommended the drug in question for treatment and prophylaxis of influenza but its stockpiling as well.”

These are the same organizations responsible for protecting you and your family from COVID-19.

Remdesivir and oseltamivir are “ivir” anti-viral drugs.  Big Pharma withheld data showing Tamiflu is a problematic anti-flu drug.  “There is no good evidence Tamiflu saves lives,” said an expert reviewer.

But here we are once again with a re-run of another “ivir” drug – – remdesivir.

The end game: mass vaccination

The grim part of this is that the U.S. may be preparing to administer the COVID-19 vaccine house-to-house.

Without a proof of vaccination card, you won’t be able to travel, eat at a restaurant, get a job, etc.  I would call that “coerced consent,” not “informed consent.”

US law says Americans have the right to refuse vaccination because these are experimental vaccines.  Mass vaccination of the entire population, for which government agencies are already practicing for, is upon us.  Vaccine ID cards are in the making.  Just how long does immunity against COVID-19 last?  Maybe yearly vaccination will be required.  And what if the virus mutates?  Then what?

Expect the cure to be worse than the disease.

The so-called life saving vaccines will be used to quell a viral pandemic that official counts show 281,000 Americans have died from as of the first week of December 2020, which amounts to 0.00084% or 8.4 deaths in 10,000, of which 94% are deaths from other diseases counted as COVID-19, which leaves 16,860 deaths that are probably cases of tuberculosis which is a similar lung disease being re-categorized as COVID-19, which represents 0.00005% or 5 in 100,000 deaths.  Out of 66.7 million cases that have been confirmed by the notoriously inaccurate PCR test, among which 42.9 million have recovered on their own without need of a vaccine, or 65% recover without vaccines.  So, vaccination will not be beneficial to these people.  Many millions more Americans were never tested, experienced symptoms and recovered.  The natural recovery rate exceeds the effectiveness of the vaccine, which will only be about 7%.  It would be better to treat the severely ill rather than over-vaccinate the entire population.

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To track COVID vaccine recipients, Operation Warp Speed has resurrected a program devised after the September 11 attacks that was quickly defunded following public backlash over privacy concerns.

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Operation Warp Speed, a joint operation between U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Defense (DOD), continues to be shrouded in secrecy, but little by little information is emerging that long-term monitoring of the U.S. public is part of the plan.

At face value, OWS is a public-private partnership tasked with producing therapeutics and a fast-tracked COVID-19 vaccine — 300 million doses’ worth that are intended to be made available starting in January 2021.

But it appears the involvement doesn’t end there. Rather than just ensuring a vaccine is produced and made available for those who want it, Moncef Slaoui, the chief scientific adviser for Operation Warp Speed, dubbed the coronavirus vaccine czar, said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal that the rollout will include “incredibly precise … tracking systems.”

Their purpose? “To ensure that patients each get two doses of the same vaccine and to monitor them for adverse health effects.” In an interview with The New York Times, Slaoui described it as a “very active pharmacovigilance surveillance system.”

What will the vaccine monitoring system entail?

This is the number one question, and one that hasn’t been answered, at least not officially. “While Slaoui himself was short on specifics regarding this ‘pharmacovigilance surveillance system,’” news outlet Humans Are Free reported, “the few official documents from OWS that have been publicly released offer some details about what this system may look like and how long it is expected to ‘track’ the vital signs and whereabouts of Americans who receive a Warp Speed vaccine.”

One of the documents, “From the Factory to the Frontlines: The Operation Warp Speed Strategy for Distributing a COVID-19 Vaccine,” was released by HHS. It also mentions the use of pharmacovigilance surveillance along with Phase 4 (post-licensure) clinical trials in order to assess the vaccines’ long-term safety, since “some technologies have limited previous data on safety in humans.”

The report, which lays out a strategy for distributing a COVID-19 vaccine, from allocation and distribution to administration and more, continues:

“The key objective of pharmacovigilance is to determine each vaccine’s performance in real-life scenarios, to study efficacy, and to discover any infrequent and rare side effects not identified in clinical trials. OWS will also use pharmacovigilance analytics, which serves as one of the instruments for the continuous monitoring of pharmacovigilance data.

“Robust analytical tools will be used to leverage large amounts of data and the benefits of using such data across the value chain, including regulatory obligations. Pharmacovigilance provides timely information about the safety of each vaccine to patients, healthcare professionals, and the public, contributing to the protection of patients and the promotion of public health.”

Similar language was reiterated in an October 2020 perspective article published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), written by Slaoui and Dr. Matthew Hepburn.

Hepburn is a former program manager for the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he oversaw the development of Profusa an implantable biosensor that allows a person’s physiology to be examined at a distance via smartphone connectivity. Profusa is also backed by Google, the largest data mining company in the world.

In NEJM, the duo writes, “Because some technologies have limited previous data on safety in humans, the long-term safety of these vaccines will be carefully assessed using pharmacovigilance surveillance strategies.”

‘Traceability’ a key tenet of operation warp speed

Humans Are Free also references an OWS infographic, which details the COVID-19 vaccine distribution and administration process. One of the four key tenets is “traceability,” which includes confirming which of the approved vaccines were administered regardless of location (public or private), reminding recipients to return for a second dose and ensuring that the correct second dose is administered.

That word — pharmacovigilance — is used again, this time as a heading inferring that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will be involved in “24-month post trial monitoring for adverse effects/additional safety feature.” Pharmacovigilance, also known as drug safety, generally refers to the collection, analysis, monitoring and prevention of adverse effects from medications and other therapies.

Passive reporting systems for adverse events, like the Vaccines Adverse Event Reporting System, already exist and are managed by the FDA and CDC.

However, a report released by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Health Security suggests that passive systems that rely on people to send in their experiences should be made into an “active safety surveillance system directed by the CDC that monitors all vaccine recipients — perhaps by short message service or other electronic mechanisms — with criteria based on the World Health Organization Global Vaccine Safety Initiative.”

What’s more, according to Humans Are Free, “Despite the claims in these documents that the ‘pharmacovigilance surveillance system’ would intimately involve the FDA, top FDA officials stated in September that they were barred from attending OWS meetings and told reporters they could not explain the operation’s organization or when or with what frequency its leadership meets.” STAT News further reported:

“The Food and Drug Administration, which is playing a critical role in the response to the pandemic, has virtually no visibility into OWS — but that’s by design … The FDA has set up a firewall between the vast majority of staff and the initiative to separate any regulatory decisions from policy or budgetary decisions.

“FDA officials are still allowed to interact with companies developing products for OWS, but they’re barred from sitting in on discussions regarding other focuses of OWS, like procurement, investment or distribution.”

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for Health Security, by the way, has ties to Event 201, a pandemic preparedness simulation for a “novel coronavirus” that took place in October 2019, along with Dark Winter, another simulation that took place in June 2001, which predicted major aspects of the subsequent 2001 anthrax attacks.

Hepburn also reportedly “ruffled feathers” during a June 2020 presentation to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices because he offered no data-rich slides, which are typically part of such presentations, and, STAT News reported, “Several members asked Hepburn pointed questions he pointedly did not answer.”

Google and Oracle contracted to collect vaccine data

Google and Oracle, multinational computer technology corporations headquartered in California, in the heart of Silicon Valley, have been contracted to “collect and track vaccine data” as part of OWS’ surveillance systems, a partnership Slaoui reportedly revealed in his Wall Street Journal interview. According to Humans Are Free:

“If the Warp Speed contracts that have been awarded to Google and Oracle are anything like the Warp Speed contracts awarded to most of its participating vaccine companies, then those contracts grant those companies diminished federal oversight and exemptions from federal laws and regulations designed to protect taxpayer interests in the pursuit of the work stipulated in the contract.

“It also makes them essentially immune to Freedom of Information Act requests. Yet, in contrast to the unacknowledged Google and Oracle contracts, vaccine companies have publicly disclosed that they received OWS contracts, just not the terms or details of those contracts. This suggests that the Google and Oracle contracts are even more secretive.”

In an interview with investigative journalist Whitney Webb, it’s also revealed that Slaoui, a long-time head of GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division, is a leading proponent of bioelectronic medicine, which is the use of injectable or implantable technology for the purpose of treating nerve conditions.

The MIT Technology review has referred to it as hacking the nervous system. But it also allows monitoring of the physiology of the human body from the inside.

Slaoui is also invested in a company called Galvani Bioelectronics, which was cofounded by a Google subsidiary. “So, you have Google being contracted to monitor this pharmacovigilance surveillance system that aims to monitor the physiology and the human body for two years,” Webb says.

“And then you have the ties to the Profusa project,” she adds, “which oddly enough is supposed to work inside the human body for 24 months — the exact window they’ve said will be used to monitor people after the first [vaccine] dose.”

The conflict of interest is massive, in part because Google owns YouTube, which has been banning our videos, a majority of which are interviews with health experts sharing their medical or scientific expertise and viewpoints on COVID-19, since June 2020. As noted by Humans Are Free:

“With Google now formally part of OWS, it seems likely that any concerns about OWS’s extreme secrecy and the conflicts of interest of many of its members (particularly Moncef Slaoui and Matt Hepburn) as well as any concerns about Warp Speed vaccine safety, allocation and/or distribution may be labeled ‘COVID-19 vaccine misinformation’ and removed from YouTube.”

Is total surveillance set to become the new normal?

OWS, rather than being directed by public health officials, is heavily dominated by military, technology companies and U.S. intelligence agencies, likening it to a successor for TIA, a program managed by DARPA that sprang up after the September 11 attacks.

At the time, TIA was seeking to collect Americans’ medical records, fingerprints and other biometric data, along with DNA and records relating to personal finances, travel and media consumption. According to Webb:

“We now know, for example, that the NSA and the Department of Homeland Security are directly involved in Operation Warp Speed, But there are some indications as to what they could be involved with.

“And the fact that Silicon Valley companies that have been known to collaborate with intelligence [agencies] for the purpose of spying on innocent Americans — Google and Oracle, for example — are going to be involved in this surveillance system … for everyone that gets the vaccine.

“It’s certainly alarming, and it seems to point to the fulfillment of an agenda that was attempted to be pushed through or foisted on the American public after September 11, called Total Information Awareness, which was managed, originally, by DARPA.

“It was about using medical data and non-medical data — essentially all data about you — to prevent terror attacks before they could happen, and also to prevent bioterror attacks and even prevent naturally occurring disease outbreaks.

“A lot of the same initiatives proposed under that original program after September 11 have essentially been resurrected, with updated technology, under the guise of combating COVID-19.”

A key difference is that TIA was quickly defunded by Congress after significant public backlash, including concerns that TIA would undermine personal privacy. In the case of OWS, there’s little negative press and media outlets are overwhelmingly supportive of the operation as a way to resolve the COVID-19 crisis.

But what if it’s not actually about COVID-19 at all, but represents something bigger, something that’s been in the works for decades? As Humans Are Free puts it:

“The total-surveillance agenda that began with TIA and that has been resurrected through Warp Speed predated COVID-19 by decades.

“Its architects and proponents have worked to justify these extreme and invasive surveillance programs by marketing this agenda as the ‘solution’ to whatever Americans are most afraid of at any given time. It has very little to do with ‘public health’ and everything to do with total control.”

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Featured image is from CHD

The US under both right wings of the one-party state is waging a long war on Russia by other means — and all other nations unwilling to bow and scape to its imperial demands.

US aggression includes endless smashing of Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and at times Iraq.

US war by other means rages endlessly against China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Somalia, and all the above-named countries.

Thats how the scourge of imperial lawlessness operates.

That’s what the US is all about no matter who runs things.

That’s why the country is unsafe and unfit to live in, its ruling regimes waging war on humanity at home and abroad.

Why don’t Russia and China because of their prominence on the world stage refuse to deal with a nation seeking their demise?

Why do they maintain diplomatic relations with US regimes going all out to undermine them politically, economically, technologically and militarily?

Trump is a geopolitical know-nothing — surrounded by hardliners Hermann Goring, Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and the guy with the mustache would have been proud to call allies.

Diplomatic outreach to their modern-day US counterparts achieves betrayal every time — why trying to foster cooperative relations consistently fails.

The US considers the above-named countries mortal enemies, wanting their sovereignty replaced by servitude to a higher power in Washington.

One of many examples of US war on Russia by other means is its all-out efforts to undermine completion of its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany — a diabolical scheme doomed to fail but it continues anyway.

Amendments to House and Senate versions of the US FY 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) include more sanctions that aim to sabotage the pipeline’s completion.

They aim to deter European banks from financial involvement in its construction.

They threaten other entities with sanctions for providing services or facilities for vessels that engage in pipe-laying for both Nord Stream 2 beneath the Baltic Sea to Germany and TurkStream’s extension across the Black Sea to Turkey.

Both pipelines will supply low-cost Russian natural gas to these and other European countries.

When completed, Nord Stream 2 — the world’s longest underway pipeline — will be able to deliver 55 billion cubic meters of gas per year, 110 cubic meters of gas annually together with the initial Nord Stream pipeline.

Turkstream will annually be able to deliver 31.5 billion cubic meters of natural gas — 15.75 billion cubic meters “per each of the two strings,” Gazprom explained.

Completion is expected in January. Yet the Trump regime and Congress aim to halt the progress of both pipelines by the threat of sanctions on entities and individuals involved in its construction.

The same scheme applies to successor projects if undertaken.

NDAA legislation calls for sanctions on enterprises, organizations, and individuals the secretary of state declares have knowingly:

Provided underwriting services or insurance or reinsurance for vessels engaged in the construction of the pipeline projects.

Provided services or facilities for technology upgrades or installation of welding equipment for, or retrofitting or tethering of such vessels.

Provided services for the testing, inspection, or certification necessary for, or associated with the operation of, Nord Stream 2 and TurkStream’s extension.

Section 232 of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) authorizes sanctions on entities and individuals involved in supporting Russian energy pipelines.

In October 2017, the State Department applied Section 232 to Russian energy pipeline projects agreed to on or after August 2, 2017.

Since July 2020, the Trump regime applied Section 232 to Nord Stream 2 and TurkStream.

Under the provision, US sanctions will not be imposed on entities and individuals involved in their construction prior to July 2020 if steps are taken to end their operations as soon as possible.

On Friday, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stressed that Russia will do “everything possible to protect its interests and the interests of its commercial projects,” adding:

This applies “to all the other sanction aspirations of the US side.”

“In the context of Nord Stream 2, we see this as nothing but a manifestation of the unfair competition.”

“Of course, we firmly believe that these steps contradict the principles of international trade and even international law.”

A Final Comment

The European Commission criticized Trump regime sanctions on Nord Stream 2 and intention to expand them.

A bloc plan to strengthen the “economic and financial sovereignty of Europe” is being prepared.

Whether this step will be significant is unclear. Most often, Brussels bends to Washington’s will. Whether this time is different is for the bloc to prove.

According to head of Germany’s Bundestag Committee on Economic Affairs and Energy, Klaus Ernst:

“(T)he US now wants to exempt European governments and their bodies from (Nord Stream 2) sanctions.”

In further talks with Washington on this issue, Berlin must “unambiguously indicate…that the sovereignty of Germany and the EU are not up for discussion.”

Actions by Brussels and bloc countries need to follow the above rhetoric.

Otherwise what’s said is meaningless.

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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Featured image is from Asia Times

It comes as no surprise that simultaneous with President Donald Trump’s declaration that the voter fraud election of 2020 was a coordinated Democratic jihad, the next ‘dark winter’ of Covid 19 “outbreaks” arrived just in time to distract the American public from the details of an obviously counterfeit election.

Just as former Vice President Sleepy Joe, impersonating a President-elect, promised one hundred days of mandatory 24-7 face masks, most Democratic States tightened their restrictions for renewed Lockdowns with increasingly severe legal consequences.  At the same time as an ‘emergency’ distribution of an experimental vaccine was expected, many disenfranchised voters throughout the country, especially in States where election results were little more than hypothetical aspirations, took to the streets in massive car/pedestrian “parades” of support for Trump.  Thus inspired, a multitude of Sheriffs, in citing the Constitution, announced their opposition to enforcing Lockdown arrest penalties as small business owners, especially restaurants, announced they would maintain an open door policy to serve their patrons.

With a seething unrest below the surface, an increasing number of Americans have caught on that humanity is experiencing a political crisis under the guise of a health crisis.   Some are newly aware that the misguided over-reach mandating face masks, social distancing and a limit on gatherings have done nothing to reduce the spread of Covid and that compliance  with mandatory face masks is only a beginning stage for what the future holds.  Is it reasonable to expect that a cotton mask offers protection from an engineered viral pathogen that escaped from a high risk Level IV Bio-Safety lab?  In addition, there is no coincidence that Covid 19 has occurred just as the obsolete material world fights for existence as a Quantum shift of reality is occurring.

Here is the current experience of small town Durango, Colorado when forced to confront a Covid  ‘outbreak’  just prior to Thanksgiving.  Initially designated a Level Orange of reduced capacity from 50% to 25% for non essential businesses and reduced social interaction, the ‘outbreak’ then moved on to a Level Red which is essentially a stay-at-home designation, restriction on indoor restaurant dining and limiting social interaction within one household.

In a nutshell, the ‘outbreak’ increase provided the rationale for the City Council to adopt a more stringent ordinance as the tyrannical Director of San Juan Basin Health took the lead enforcing the ill-considered consequences by issuing a ‘cease and desist’ warning to CJ’s Diner, a long time popular haunt.  CJ’s has a thirty day period in which to request an administrative hearing.  As a result of the cease and desist, the Durango City Manager suggested a meeting of all the parties (including the restaurant association) in an attempt to reach a compromise.  The suggestion was immediately rejected by the SJBH’s Cruella de Vil citing that ‘the law is the law’.  The community responded with standing room only diners from early breakfast until its 1:30 pm closing for the next several days.

Violating a public health order and thwarting the Lockdown’s mask and social distancing requirement is considered a Misdemeanor charge.

As CJ’s resisted the intimidation, the SJBH, which has the authority to enforce State public health laws, filed an ‘emergency’ motion  with Colorado’s Sixth Judicial District Court for non-compliance with the ‘cease and desist.’  SJBH told the Durango Herald that indoor dining is among the most dangerous activities contributing to the spread of Covid 19 because customers remove their masks to eat and drink.  One wonders if the Durango High School football team, which just won a state championship, wore face masks and observed social distancing during their game.  The SJBH has provided no science or forensic evidence to support its contention.

SJBH’s emergency motion was granted by Sixth Judicial District Judge William Herringer who promised that either law enforcement would be instructed by Friday night to make sure that CJ’s stops offering indoor dining by ‘whatever means necessary.”   The next morning, the community responded to the threat when the diner filled to capacity with another crowd of about fifty who stood guard outside from the crack of dawn for several hours protecting the front door from law enforcement access. (see photo)

Source is the author

Instead of allowing the cease and desist order to play out within the thirty day appeal timeline, the SJBH Director who is charged with protecting the public health and safety, has created a potentially dangerous crisis and further created a wedge to split the community.

As CJ’s continues to serve in-person meals despite a Red Alert public health order, the Court Order remains in effect for two weeks with a hearing scheduled for Tuesday, December 9^th.

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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found at [email protected].

Washington’s China bashing started with Obama through his Asia Pivot policy, reinforced by Trump and Biden might go even further than Trump. 

So far, China bashing does not seem to be beneficial to Washington. Even in the long run, there is no guarantee that it will bring any positive results. In fact, it will hurt not only the economies of the two rivals but also the global economy.

The humanity is threatened by pandemics, climate change and other global enemies. It is not the time to engage in counterproductive China bashing. It is not too early that the two super powers show leadership for the difficult fight against these enemies.

In this paper, I am asking why Washington is so eager to continue its China bashing policy. Then, I will discuss the means deployed in order to carry out the policy. Finally, I will examine the probability of its success.

The Objective of China Bashing

For last thirty years, China has been the global factory where the American firms made large profit owing to the low cost hardworking and well disciplined Chinese workers. The imports of low priced Chinese goods allowed Americans to avoid inflation and save money and finance the education of their children and pay a part of medical bills.

Then, we ask why the China bashing? Politicians, think tank people, the media have been warning about China’s threats. But, what threat? We know that China is no military match with the U.S. military might. We know that China cannot be a political threat to America, for Washington controls the U.N. the E.U. and countless alliances. China cannot be an economic threat to the, U.S., because China’s economic success is beneficial to the American economy, as it has been so for last thirty years.

Is China threatening the U.S. to leave Asia? Well, President de la Chine, Xi Jinping does not want it. Xi Jinping says that there is no such threat.

“The vast Pacific Ocean must have enough space to accommodate both China and the Unites States. (Feng Zhang and  Richard Ned Lebow. Taming the Sino-American Rivalry, Oxford University Press 2020. p.111)

What seems to be China’s threat to Washington is the ideological threat. We can see this in the statements of major national and international decision makers in the U.S. and the West.

President Obama made the following statements about the Trans Pacific Economic Partnership (TPP). I will come to TPP later.

“The TPP puts American workers first and make sure we write the rule of road in the country…Other countries should play by the rule that America and our partners set and not the other way around.”

“With the TPP, we can rewrite the rules of trade and benefit American middle class… If we don’t, the competitor who does not care our value, like China, will step in fill the void.”

Stephen K. Bannon, former chief strategist for Trump’s government said this.

“If we blink, we’re heading on a path of the war (with China) to a kinetic war, if we don’t stop it right now…this is not a cold war. This is a hot war information and economic war, sliding rapidly. We are inexorably going to be drawn into an armed conflict, if we don’t stop it now”

“I think ultimately, success is regime change“, adds Bannon.

On the other hand, Mike Pompeo the U.S. Secretary of State said:

“Beijing poses a new kind of challenge: an authoritarian regime that’s integrated in to the West in ways that the Soviet never was…”

On his part, Vice-President Mike Pence said:

“So far, it appears the Chinese Communist Party resists a true opening and converge on globalization”

The China Research Group in UK made this statement:

“The cost of doing business with autocratic regimes is that you don’t just import technology. You also import their values and make yourself dependent on their policies.”

Jens Stoltenberg, former NATO General Secretary had this to say:

“The focus is no longer on technology and economics…It is now China’s threat to the Western way of life.”

What these statements of some of the key decision makers in the West are saying is that the Chinese socialism with Chinese characteristics are threatening the Western values and the Western free-market democracy.

This is really incredible, because this indicates that the West is not convinced of the superiority of its own political and economic system over Chinese hybrid regime of the socialist governance cum the free-market economy.

If the Chinese values are threatening the western values, the best way to counter them would be the improvement and the strengthening of the western values instead of allocating time and resources to China bashing. Another possible approach would be the creation of better global values through cooperative integration of the western values and the Chinese values.

Strategic measures of China Bashing 

China bashing of Washington is based on the assumption that the undermining of the Chinese economy is the best way of forcing China to abandon its hybrid regime and to integrate more into the rules and laws determined by Washington. The anti-China economic measures of Washington include those which are designed to damage the production system of Chinese goods and services on the one hand and, on the other, those measures which are intended to curtail the exports of Chinese gods and services.

The measures designed to restrict China’s capacity to produce goods and services include the prevention of China’s access to advanced technology of the West, the promotion of re-shoring of American firms in China and the possible sanctions on Chinese imports of raw materials and intermediate goods.

For the time being, the U.S. has taken some measures to prevent the technology transfer. The Department of Commerce prohibits American companies to provide services to selected Chinese telecommunication companies including Huawei, ZTE Corporation. The Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) has a black list of Chinese firms, research centers and universities which are involved in the development and trade of telecommunication technology. The black list has 140 entries.

The Justice Department punishes those who steal strategic information related to technologies. Washington limits the number of Chinese Americans who work for government-run establishments. Washington limits the number of Chinese students who come to study. In addition, the number of Chinese news reporters working in the U.S.is limited. These measures may not have created major problems for China for the time being. But the government of Biden may go further and China is likely to react more strongly.

Trump has launched the process of bringing back American firms from China to the U.S. But the possibility of success does not look promising. The American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai has conducted, recently, a survey with 200 American firms in China. Only 3% of them have shown their plan to come back to the U.S. This is understandable, for the re-shoring is costly and it would not be easy to handle high labour cost in the U.S.

For the time being, the most visible anti-China policy is the trade war designed to curtail exports of Chinese goods and services. In 2018, the value of U.S. exports to China was USD 120.3 billion, whereas that of Chinese exports to the U.S. was USD 539.5 billion resulting in U.S. trade deficit of USD 419.2 billion.

In 2018, Trump declared a trade war against China. Trump imposed a tariff rates varying from 10% to 25% on Chinese goods worth of about USD 400 billion. This policy was successful in cutting the inflow of Chinese goods by 16%. And, the U.S. trade deficit with China fell to USD 160 billion. Thus, as far as the deficit is concerned, Trump got what he wanted.

But, did this harm China? The answer is no. It is true that Chinese exports to the U.S. fell by 16%. What is surprising is this. Chinese exports to other trade partners in Asia rose by 26%. Thus, the loss of the American market was offset by the increased access to alternative markets.

Besides, the increased tariffs on imported Chinese goods lead to increased price of these goods thus increasing the burden of family budget. Moreover, the decrease of imports of Chinese goods means the loss of great number of jobs related the distribution of these goods.

Moreover, Washington should know that American deficit with China has special implication. A great part of Chinese exports to the U.S. is products of American firms in China. Hence, the cut in Chinese exports to the U.S. means a cut in the exports of goods produced by American firms in China. A decrease in exports from China to the U.S. means a profit reduction for American firms in China.

Washington has indirect ways of undermining Chinese economy. It is the policy of putting pressure on the Chinese economy through its alliances. There are bilateral alliances with Asian countries which include Australia, India, Japan, Malaysia, South Korea, the Philippines and Vietnam.. There are multilateral alliances including U.S.-Japan alliance, the Korea-U.S. alliance and the trans-pacific partnership (TPP) composed of 12 countries. There is the four- country alliance (Quad) composed of Australia, India, Japan and the U.S.

The function of these alliances is to serve the interests of Washington in return for Washington’s assistance for trade and security. Most of these alliances have assisted Washington’s China containment policy.

However, as the Sino-American conflict intensifies, these alliances will be asked to play more active role of undermining the Chinese economy reducing the trade with China and even participating in economic sanctions against China. When this happens, some of these allies, especially South Korea, will find themselves in a very difficult situation where it has to find a balance between the American security guarantee and trade interests for which they rely on China. This could undermine the effectiveness of the alliances as China bashing tool.

The alliance on which Obama relied heavily is the TPP. It is supposed to be free trade organization (FTA). As it was shown above, it is composed of 12 nations (before the Trump withdrew). It appears that Joe Biden, President-elect of the U.S. might come back to it. If the U.S. rejoins it, it will have, as member countries, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the U.S. and Vietnam.

The effectiveness of TPP as instrument of China bashing is limited because its four members (Brunei, Malaysia, Singapore and Vietnam) are member of ASEAN (Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam) which depends much on China for trade and investments.

There is the regional multilateral trade organization which just started to operate. It is the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). RCEP composed of the 15 member countries including of ASEAN members plus Australia, China, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. We must know that all of the 10 members of ASEAN and the five additional member countries all depend much on trade with China. Moreover, RCEP will be led by China.

Therefore, RCEP will further weaken TPP as a China bashing weapon. Besides, the regional economy of Asia will depend much more on RCEP than on TPP. RCEP has much better prospect for economic growth than on TPP. The TPP with the U.S.as member accounts for only 10% of global population although it represents 40% of global GDP. By contrast, the RCEP represents 30% of global GDP and 30 % of the world population. Although RECP has a lower GDP compared to TPP, it has the population of countries which have much more dynamic economies.

Will it succeed? 

The foregoing discussion seems to indicate that, in the short run, economic war does not seem to be a great weapon of China bashing. Even in the long run, there is no guarantee that Washington’s China bashing will bring regime change in China.

The long-run prospect of the Sino-American economic war depends on the global economic and political environment which is expected to change because of the corona-virus crisis. The post-pandemic world is likely to have these characteristics.

First, the scope and the space of globalism will be limited. There will be more regional or sub-regional globalism and multilateral trade organization. This will not help China bashing.

Second, in order that the China bashing works, Washington must satisfy two conditions. On the one hand, the American economic must grow sufficiently so that it can provide moral, economic and security assistance to allies which participate. On the other hand, the growth of the American economy must contribute to the welfare of all Americans, not just the elite groups. To justify China bashing, Washington must prove the superiority of the American values and this requires a fair distribution of the fruits of economic growth to all Americans.

The prospect of the American economy does not look optimist

Up to now, the American economy has grown so much that its per capita GDP is USD 63,000. There is a limit in the growth of GDP because of declining working force, depletion of material resources, declining productivity of technologies and other factors. It is estimated that the rate of the potential growth of the American economy is about 1.5% as against 6% for the Chinese economy.

The American economy being the most neo-liberal economy has produced extremely unequal income distribution, loss of full-time jobs, decreasing consumer spending and the un-development or under-development of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The growth of the American economy has not been able to distinguish itself as the provider of welfare to the American people.

The pandemic has rendered more difficult the growth of the American economy and the provision of the public welfare. The first wave of the pandemic is not over yet; the second wave is there; the third wave may soon come. Soon, 400 thousand lives may be lost; more than 15 million people may be infected.

The disastrous impact of the pandemic on the American economy could be so great that we can’t have a realistic estimate of the damage it would cause. But, what is worrisome is the future of SMEs which are the major job creating sector in the American economy. They create 66% of jobs in the U.S. It is possible that more than half of them may have closed the business for good. The recovery of the American economy depends, before anything else, on the recovery of SMEs. The American government has injected more than USD 2 trillion, but only 25% of these funds is allocated to SMEs, the rest being given to big firms. Surely, this is not the best way to recover the economy.

All these long-run factors are likely to prevent Washington’s China bashing from succeed.

In short, even in the long run, the American economy is unlikely be strong enough to make China to change its regime.

It is more than likely that the Biden government will continue China bashing to change the Chinese regime.

But, why is China’s regime change so important to Washington?

There seem to be two reasons. The first reason is a sort of quasi religious fanatic belief in the predestined mission of the U.S. to enlighten the world with “American values”. It seems to be inspired by the Project for New American Century (PNAC) initiated in 1997 by 25 individuals. It embraces two central ideas. To begin with, it believes that American leadership is good both for America and the World. Moreover, it argues that America should have strong military might to impose American values on the world.

The second reason is the willingness of the military to actively participate in China bashing. China bashing justifies the additional injection of financial resources into national defence, which means more benefits for the oligarchy composed of the defence industry, the intelligence circle and the military group (simply the oligarchy). So, the oligarchy wants China bashing.

The strategy of regime change proceeds by steps. If the diplomacy does not work, Washington provokes internal division to weaken the regime; if this fails, then send the military force to conquer. What is alarming is that such perception is shared by the intellectuals, media, politicians and even the general public.

The Washington’s policy of regime change has started with President George W. Bush. But, the Bush government focused regime change wars in the Middle East and Africa. It was the Obama government which applied the regime change policy in Asia. The principal weapon was the Asia Pivot which consisted in transferring 60% of naval and air forces to the Asia-Pacific region in addition to 50,000 troops and other measures. As for TPP, Obama wanted to use it not only for trade promotion but also, especially, for the change of Chinese economic regime into the American model of neo-liberalism.

The headache of Washington is this. If China bashing is to succeed in changing the Chinese regime, China must accept such change. But in all probabilities, China is unlikely to do so. Even if it does, there will be a limit in its regime change.

There are reasons for China’s refusal to change its political and economic regime.

First, for Chinese, the American regime is not necessarily more valuable than the Chinese regime. The ultimate raison d’être of a regime is to provide reasonable welfare to all citizens. It is possible that China thinks that Washington has failed. The credibility and the attractiveness of the U.S. democracy has been lost for two reasons To begin with, their economic growth has failed to provide fair income distribution, offer public goods such as housing,, education, public health, public safety service, The American society is one of the most racist countries. The American society is the most violent society, mass killing happens more than once every day.

Furthermore, since the imposition of neo-liberalism on democratic countries, democracy in general has lost much of its authenticity and legitimacy. To be sure, neo-liberalism has brought unprecedented GDP growth but it has fallen into the trap of boundless competition and technology development. Competition is governed by the rule of the fittest; competition ends up by the survival of the most powerful. It is far from being the democracy of the people, by the people and for the people. I presume that it is still of the people, but surely it is neither by the people nor for the people.

Democracy has lost much of its attractiveness. According to Democracy Index, in the period, 2005-2019, the number of countries where democracy improved declined from 83 to 57. On the other hand, in the same period, the number of countries where democracy deteriorated rose from 52 to 64 countries. The global demographic distribution of political regimes in 2019 was as follows: true democracy (4.5%), false democracy (43.2%), hybrid regimes (16.7%) and authoritarianism (35.6%).

Thus, 52.3 % of humanity live in hybrid or authoritarian regimes, while 47.7 % in democratic regimes. But, only 4.5% live in true democracy. One can debate about the reliability of these data. But, one thing sure is that democracy has been declining, because it has not been able to meet the people’s needs.

Second, even if the government of China wished to change its present regime into something similar to American regime, there is a limit to what can be done. It is so because of the fact that the Chinese regime is a result of Chinese system of thoughts cherished for thousands of years.

Values which inspire China’s political and economic regime are Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism.

In Daoism, there is no absolute truth; truths are relative. Chinese are not dogmatic; it is neutral to rigid ideology. The communist structure of governance is chosen because it is effective in the Chinese cultural context. Here, we have the source of Chinese pragmatism.

Buddhism teaches peace, respect for living things and sympathy for others. China developed gun powder not for canon but for the joy of festivity.

Confucianism defines the relations between the governor and the governed. According to Confucianism, the interests of collective entity are superior to those of individuals. Here, we see the origin of collectivism. The head of state should behave as the father of the citizens by providing citizens’ welfare; the citizens must behave like children respecting and obeying the head of the state.

To be sure, the impact of traditional systems of thoughts has been much diluted. But, the core of Daoism, Buddhism and Confucianism is still in the mind and soul of Chinese people. If we understand these three systems of thoughts, we have an idea why Den Xiaoping and Xi Jinping have adopted the socialism with Chinese characteristics (Chinese way of thinking) in which authoritarian central government led by the Chinese Communist Party coexists in coordinated way with open free capitalist private market.

We have seen why the China’s regime change which Washington tries to impose by means of China bashing is just not realistic policy. Remember that since China joined to WTO in 2001, it has been trying to adopt rules and norms developed and imposed by the U.S. But, China can never accept the whole of American political and economic regime.

To sum up, there is little need to change Chinese regime, because China is not interested in imposing its values on other countries. China was for centuries the largest economy n the world, but it did not have the ambition to change the regime of the world. Besides, China is now too big and too powerful to be manipulated by external forces.

The world is now facing unprecedented challenges. The survival of the mankind is threatened by climate change, pandemics, wars, terrorism, worsening natural disasters and poverty of billions of people.

These challenges can be met only through concerted leadership efforts of the two superpowers. It is not too early to stop counterproductive China bashing.

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Professor Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics and co-director of the Observatoire de l’Asie de l’Est (OAE) of the Centre d’Études sur l’Intégration et la Mondialisation(CEIM), Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is Research Associate of the Center of Research on Globalization (CRG).

French protesters clashed with police in Paris and other cities including Marseille, Lyon, Rennes and Nantes yesterday as tens of thousands took to the streets in further mass demonstrations against an authoritarian new security law.

The weekly rallies each Saturday are developing into the third huge wave of street unrest against President Emmanuel Macron since he took office, following the Yellow Vests movement of 2018-19 and the giant trade union demos against railway privatisation in 2019. Many at the demos wore yellow high-vis jackets to indicate their continuity with the Yellow Vests.

Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin praised police for tackling “very violent individuals” who pillaged a bank, set fire to cars and threw projectiles — including a Molotov cocktail in Nantes — at officers.

But the mass rallies denounced police violence, with the demos calling for the government to drop its Global Security Law imposing prison sentences of up to a year and fines of up to €45,000 (£40,000) on individuals who publish photographs showing police officers’ faces with “harmful intent.”

Demonstrators carried banners saying “Police mutilate, police kill” and chanted: “Everyone hates the police.”

The French Communist Party called its supporters out on demonstrations against police violence and poverty.

Leader Fabien Roussel joined marchers in both Lille and Valenciennes against “both poverty and for the revocation of the Global Security Law. France, the country of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, must not become a country of poverty and authoritarianism,” he tweeted.

France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon also linked the issues, saying the government should recognise “there is hunger in France” and tying Mr Macron’s increasing authoritarianism to the need to quash social unrest.

“This is not just about Article 24,” he said, referring to the police photography clause of the Global Security Law. “It’s the whole ‘liberty-cide’ project that must be binned!”

The French government offered to rewrite Article 24 of the law last week because of the scale of opposition, which ranges from the political left to the editors of Establishment newspapers such as Le Monde, who say it will have a chilling impact on freedom of the press.

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Paranoia, disregard for evidence and over-the-top rhetoric to encourage hate. And I’m not talking about Donald Trump’s Republicans.

Progressive Canadian should counter a wave of McCarthyite Sinophobia sweeping this country’s politics.

The over-the-top reaction to a recent “Zoom to Free Meng Wanzhou” highlights the issue. The event was labelled “Chinese Communist Party propaganda” in the House of Commons and criticized by numerous media. When interviewing Paul Manly about his participation in the event journalist Evan Solomon repeatedly accused the Green MP of being “used by Chinese authorities” and for “Chinese propaganda”.

What’s going on? As China became more prosperous, the US military began a “pivot” towards Asia a decade ago. More recently, some important US capitalists have become increasingly unhappy with the terms imposed by the Chinese government on their operations there. Simultaneously, labour costs in China have risen sharply in recent years, taking some of the shine off the country as a low-wage assembly hub.

Alongside these broader economic and geopolitical trends, Donald Trump has been railing against the “China disease” for months. This xenophobia is shaping Canadian politics as well. Most of the front-page of a February Vancouver Province read: “Second China Virus Case in BC” while in April Conservative leadership candidate, Derek Sloan, said Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam was working for China and advancing “Chinese Communist propaganda”. Polls show a sharp rise in insults, threats and assaults targeting Canadians of Chinese descent since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

China bashing is central to new Conservative leader Erin O’Toole’s political messaging. He harps on about standing up for “Canadian values” against the Communist Party of China. In April O’Toole called for a “new Cold War” with China and recently said there’s “no greater threat to Canada’s interests than the rise of China”. (Greater than the climate crisis, COVID-19 pandemic, species collapse, opioid crisis, nuclear holocaust, economic inequality?)

To counter the Chinese “threat” the Conservatives openly appeal to British empire settler solidarity. In criticizing the “Free Meng Wanzhou” event in the House of Commons Conservative Shadow Minister for Diversity, Inclusion and Youth Raquel Dancho said, “all Canadian MPs need to stand with our Five Eyes partners and other like-minded allies to push back on Beijing’s intimidation tactics.” For his part, O’Toole recently declared, “Canada should work very closely with our Five Eyes allies” on countering the world’s most populous nation.

Settler colonialism and empire unite the Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and US Five Eyes alliance that excludes wealthier non-white nations (Japan and South Korea) or those with more English speakers (India and Nigeria). It’s not a coincidence that the only four countries that originally voted against the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in 2007 are part of the Five Eyes.

There is a long history of stirring up Sinophobia in Canada as part of US/British conflict with that country. During the US-led Korean War in the early 1950s Canadian troops denigrated the “yellow horde” of North Korean and Chinese “chinks” they fought. At a time when a small number of Canadians helped the British suppress the boxer rebellion in 1900 newspapers labeled China the “sick man of Asia,” which threatened European social mores. In opposing voting rights for “Chinamen” in 1885, Prime Minister John A. MacDonald said he feared their enfranchisement would lead to officials who “represent Chinese eccentricities, Chinese immorality, Asiatic principles altogether opposite to our wishes.” He concluded, “the Chinese has no British instincts or British feelings or aspirations.”

Progressives should resist the current ‘Yellow peril’ rooted in geopolitical competition and racism. To do so we should be clear eyed about Chinese power, which is significant and often authoritarian though somewhat exaggerated. That country’s global influence has yet to reflect its share of the world’s population. In 2019 the country’s GDP per personwas $10, 000 – equal to Mexico – while US GDP was $60, 000. The US has over 800 military bases in 80 countries around the world while the UK has 145 military facilities in 42 countries. China has one international base in Djibouti. The US and UK have bases in numerous countries bordering China. (In June 2012 the Canadian Press reported, “Canada is seeking a deal with Singapore to establish a military staging post there as part of its effort to support the United States’ ‘pivot’ toward Asia to counter a rising China.”) How many bases does China have in Canada or Mexico?

Additionally, China rarely deploys troops internationally. The US, Canada and UK, on the other hand, have been involved in recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, etc.

As the oldest and most populous nation, a prosperous and united China unquestionably threatens the US Empire’s dominance. Decision-makers in Washington have been concerned about that since at least 1949, which is part of the reason they invaded Korea after Mao’s nationalist/communist victory.

The military and large sections of the ruling classes in those countries integrated into the US Empire want to prevent China from taking its rightful place in world affairs. They are pushing economic, political and military means to “contain” China.

But those of us who believe in equality for all people, who fight racism and xenophobia, must say no. Progressives need to resist the logic of empire and oppose the wave of Sinophobia sweeping Canadian politics.

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According to a report from the House of Commons Public Accounts Committee (PAC), decommissioning the UK’s civil nuclear sites will cost £132bn of public money, and will not be completed for a further 120 years.

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The report blamed a “sorry saga” of failed contracts, poor government oversight, and “perpetual” lack of knowledge of the state of civil nuclear sites. It said that decommissioning of retired nuclear power stations had been an “afterthought” when the UK’s nuclear industry was established.

This has led to decades of poor record-keeping about the conditions and locations of hazardous materials, the report said, leaving the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) with a legacy of knowledge gaps about the condition of sites it is responsible for ensuring are safe. The NDA acknowledged that it still does not have a complete understanding of the 17 sites across its estate, including the 10 former Magnox power stations.

“The UK went from leading the world in establishing nuclear power to this sorry saga of a perpetual lack of knowledge about the current state of the UK’s nuclear sites,” said Meg Hiller, chair of the PAC. “With a project of this length and cost we need to see clearer discipline in project management.”

In 2018, the PAC condemned the NDA for having “dramatically underestimated” costs with regards to the Magnox procurement and original contract, with lack of knowledge a major factor in this failure. It estimates that the cost of getting Magnox sites to the “care and maintenance” stage of decommissioning has increased by £1.3-3.1bn since 2017 to £6.9-8.7bn today; the PAC warned that costs may increase further. The timetable for completing this work is uncertain, with a current estimate of 12-15 years.

According to the NDA’s most recent estimates, the cost of decommissioning the UK’s civil nuclear sites will cost current and future generations of taxpayers £132bn and take another 120 years to complete.

The PAC said that the NDA had not done enough to harness technical skills and new technologies in the nuclear industry.

Deputy chair Sir Geoffrey Clifton-Brown added:

“Although progress has been made since our last report, incredibly, the NDA still doesn’t know even where we’re currently at, in terms of state and safety of the UK’s disused nuclear sites. The NDA, with stronger, better oversight from government, must make a clear break with the incompetence and failures of the past and step up to maximise these assets and the astronomical sums of taxpayers’ money it has absorbed.”

An NDA spokesperson said:

“We welcome the [PAC]’s report and the scrutiny it brings on our work to provide value for money for the taxpayer. We are pleased that the committee recognises the inherent uncertainties and challenges involved in our mission to clean up 17 of the UK’s oldest nuclear sites and the progress being made. This includes increased learning on our sites, their facilities, and the nature of the waste within them.

“Safety is our priority and we do not accept the committee’s suggestions that we may not understand the safety of our sites. Our work is tightly and independently regulated to ensure we uphold the highest standards of safety.

“Our focus remains on ensuring that we deliver this work of national strategic importance safely, effectively, and efficiently. We will be looking carefully at the PAC’s recommendations.”

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An idea that’s simple as an abstraction–vaccine ID cards–turns out to be extremely difficult once real-world operational realities must be dealt with.

Authorities around the world have made it clear that they will do “whatever it takes” to vaccinate their citizenry with one of the first available vaccines. Authoritarian states may mandate universal vaccinations while less authoritarian states will favor a “carrot and stick” approach of offering benefits to the vaccinated and exclusions from employment, education, travel and most of everyday life for those who refuse to be vaccinated.

To identify the vaccinated and unvaccinated, many nations are planning to issue ID cards or “vaccine passports.” As an abstraction, this seems straightforward, but if we start digging into the actual operational requirements of this mass ID card issuance and distribution, a number of common-sense issues arise.

Vaccination cards will be issued to everyone getting Covid-19 vaccine, health officials say (CNN)

First and foremost, it’s unknown how long the immunity offered by the vaccines will last. It’s still early days, so there is conflicting evidence: some claim the vaccines will be longer-lasting than the natural immunity of those who caught the virus and recovered, while other evidence suggests the immunity might decay after six months. Despite claims that natural immunity is long-lasting, a non-trivial number of people who had Covid have been re-infected.

Nobody knows how long either natural or vaccine immunity will last because not enough time has elapsed to collect sufficient data.

Given these intrinsic unknowns, how long will the ID card be valid? It’s easy to imagine variations in individual responses such that the vaccines’ effectiveness decays more rapidly in 20% of the vaccinated. This variability would introduce tremendous unknowns that no ID card could reflect: is the holder of the card at Month 10 still immune or not?

If the duration of the vaccine’s effectiveness is variable, then an ID card could be misleading. In other words, being vaccinated with a variable-duration vaccine tells us nothing about the individual’s actual immunity down the road.

Given these unknowns, the vaccinated may need booster shots in the future, and the ID cards would have to be re-issued. The task of keeping track of hundreds of millions of vaccination records, identities and then issuing ID cards is a non-trivial task.

To thwart black-market fake-ID cards, the security measures will have to be equivalent to a driver’s license or passport. Have you applied recently for either of these forms of ID? The process is painfully slow. The systems in place to process state drivers’ licenses and U.S. passports are already strained, and which agency is prepared to verify the identity of 280 million adult citizens, confirm the validity of their vaccine and then issue ID cards–and then repeat this process in a year?

If the procedures for issuing vaccine ID cards are slapdash due to time constraints–for example, downloading a digital record from the vaccine distributor or a printed card–these will likely be vulnerable to being duplicated or spoofed. Fake vaccine distributors will pop up issuing bogus digital records, hackers might download and sell digital records from trusted sources, and so on.

Then there’s the extra burdens being placed on the staff of airlines, cruise lines, etc. to scan these documents and deal with rejected cards. Who will have the legal authority to deal with claims that a rejected card is actually valid? How many smaller establishments simply won’t have to staff to do more than glance at the card?

Do authorities have the means to issue hundreds of millions of absolutely secure vaccine ID cards and then monitor all the attempts to find loopholes and weaknesses in the process? If authorities think that strict penalties will limit this activity, they underestimate the difficulty in getting such penalties enforced by overloaded court systems.

In nations with strong traditions of civil liberties, there will be pushback against mandatory vaccinations with essentially untested vaccines and against national databases tying identity to vaccination cards–a situation ripe with potential for abuse.

Authorities don’t seem to grasp that many of those hesitating to get vaccinated are not anti-vaxxers; they simply see the vaccine approval process as deeply flawed for common-sense reasons: for example, there is simply not enough data on safety, duration and real-world efficacy.

Authorities are counting on the “carrot” of air travel, cruises and concerts to persuade skeptics to get vaccinated despite their concerns. What authorities don’t seem to realize is that a great many people value their health, privacy and agency far more than they crave air travel, cruises or concerts. They will gladly forego all these activities until more reliable data is collected, peer-reviewed and distributed for analysis.

The more draconian the measures designed to pressure people into getting the vaccines, the greater the reluctance of skeptics who see the draconian measures as additional evidence the vaccines are half-measures being forced on the populace as a means of imposing a false assurance that all is well and “normal” will return as soon as the skeptics cave in and get vaccinated.

There’s also the possibility that the virus could mutate in ways that moot the vaccines’ effectiveness. While this is widely considered unlikely, it’s not impossible, either. If a mutated virus arises that evades the vaccine, then what value will the vaccine ID card have?

An idea that’s simple as an abstraction–vaccine ID cards–turns out to be extremely difficult once real-world operational realities must be dealt with. The fact is the first vaccines have been rushed to approval with virtually none of the testing demanded of previous vaccines raises common-sense concerns which cannot be dissolved with force or carrots and sticks.

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Featured image is from Health Impact News