Global Research

We have have been discussing how writers, editors, commentators, and academics have embraced rising calls for censorship and speech controls, including President-elect Joe Biden and his key advisers. The erosion of free speech has been radically accelerated by the Big Tech and social media companies. The level of censorship and viewpoint regulation has raised questions of a new type of state media where companies advance an ideological agenda with political allies.  The state media criticism was never more compelling than in the announcement of YouTube this week that it would now remove videos that question the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.  The election is over but YouTube will now scrub away any dissenting views that the election was marred by fraud. It now appears to be protecting history itself from things deemed disinformation — the ultimate calling of the corporate censor.

YouTube (which is owned by Google) announced “We will start removing any piece of content uploaded today (or anytime after) that misleads people by alleging that widespread fraud or errors changed the outcome of the 2020 US Presidential election.” The company used the end of the “safe harbor” period for counting votes to justify censor those with lingering doubts or those who want to post explanations of why the count remains suspicious, including presumable an array of members of Congress who have called for investigations.

For free speech advocates, the move is a raw example of corporate censorship but Democrats and many liberals applauded the action. Indeed, the Columbia journalism dean has lamented that these companies are not cracking down on free speech to a greater extent and blaming their own greed for not being greater censors.  It appears that Big Brother is now being embraced as a protector of truth.

Like the “false facts” removed by China’s censors, the Biden victory is treated like a state fact that cannot be challenged or questioned. As someone who has stated for weeks that Biden is the president-elect and criticized conspiracy theories, I do not subscribe to the view that the election was stolen. However, millions of votes — both Republican and Democrat — hold that view. Indeed, some polls show up to 90 percent of Republicans believe that election was not fair and honest.  Roughly half of the country voted for President Donald Trump and many of them hold this view.

The best way to address such views is to expose them to debate and challenge. That is the value of free speech. Otherwise, you end up on a slippery slope of censorship of any views that you deem harmful or misleading.

This action notably occurs just weeks after companies blocked discussion of the Hunter Biden story. It was only after the election that the CEOs then said it was a mistake.  Biden is now under federal investigation and the laptop and its disturbing emails now appear to be legitimate.  Yet, Democratic Senators demanded more censorship as the CEOs were apologizing for spiking a legitimate news story that was damaging to Biden. Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal declared that he was “concerned that both of your companies are, in fact, backsliding or retrenching, that you are failing to take action against dangerous disinformation.” Accordingly, he demand an answer to this question:

“Will you commit to the same kind of robust content modification playbook in this coming election, including fact checking, labeling, reducing the spread of misinformation, and other steps, even for politicians in the runoff elections ahead?”

YouTube has eagerly embraced the call for censorship by Blumenthal and others. It is now protecting not the election but history from what it considers disinformation.  It is the very Chinese model embraced directly or indirectly by some American academics and journalists.  We are watching free speech drain away to the applause of those eager for less freedom.

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The Republican and Democrat leaders of the US Senate Intelligence Committee have issued a joint statement of intense hostility towards China. This posture is a threat to Australia’s national security… and the world. An attempt to tear China down will be unsuccessful. To follow paths to antagonise China will eventually reap hostile responses and darken global affairs at a time when global cooperation is essential.

As I write on 7 December, there seems to have been no mention in Australian media of a joint statement by the acting chairman Rubio and deputy chairman Warner (Republican and Democrat) of the Intelligence Committee of the US Senate on 4 December, attacking China. It is couched in terms of support for an opinion piece in the (Murdoch) Wall Street Journal on 3 Decemberby the Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Ratcliffe was nominated to that position in 2019 and his nomination was swiftly withdrawn because as a little known rural Texas Trumpist congressman his slender bio was padded and because even among many Republicans he was seen as too conservative. Trump nominated him again and secured approval in May 2020. Ratcliffe’s opinion piece was accompanied by an anticommunist video. The WSJ article is partly paywalled. A summary was published by The Hill. Ratcliffe’s opinion piece reads like a personal opinion. He will not be intelligence chief after Biden is sworn in.

The statement by Senators Rubio and Warner is remarkable in several ways. There is no acknowledgment that there is an incoming Democrat Administration. There is no divergence between the Republican and the Democrat. Is Warner talking for Biden or shaping confrontation in the Democratic Party? Is it a price for nominations to new cabinet posts to be approved by the Senate. The language is extravagant, and religious in its fervid hostility to communism and China. Ideological is hardly an adequate attribute.

This is the joint statement as released by Senator Rubio. Because it is important I quote in full.

“Dec 04 2020

“Washington, D.C.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Acting Chairman Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Vice Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) released the following joint statement regarding the challenge posed to the United States by the Chinese government and Communist Party:

“We agree with DNI Ratcliffe that China poses the greatest national security threat to the United States. Our intelligence is clear: the Chinese Communist Party will stop at nothing to exert its global dominance.

“Beijing’s infiltration of U.S. society has been deliberate and insidious as they use every instrument of influence available to accelerate their rise at America’s expense.

“Our democratic values are threatened by China’s attempts to supplant American leadership and remake the international community in their image. The Chinese Communist Party’s authoritarian leaders seek to threaten our free speech, politics, technology, economy, military, and even our drive to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Unfortunately, the United States’ challenge with China is not unique as Beijing seeks to infiltrate and subvert other nations around the world, including our allies.

“This is our watershed moment and we must stand our ground. The United States must not and cannot accept Beijing’s quest to exert dominance, while dismissing international legal norms and committing egregious human rights abuses to further their goals.

“We have made considerable progress in rebalancing the U.S.-China relationship and laying a clear marker for U.S. policy going forward, and we will not stand idly by as the Chinese Communist Party attempts to undermine our economic and national security.

“The message to Beijing and the world is that China’s behavior will not be tolerated and will be contested by democratic values, in close partnership with our allies and partners.”

China could probably write a declaration reading much the same, about the United States, should it wish to do so. But there is no sign that China wants war with the United States. What do these American gentlemen mean when they bluster: “This is our watershed moment and we must stand our ground.” Australia must make clear, especially to those two Senators, that we will not support aggressive activity directed at China. (To which the reader here might reasonably comment “aren’t we already doing that ourselves?”)

It would be normal for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade now to be drafting, in collaboration with the Washington embassy, a high level message to the incoming US Administration, a message of warmth and support, also expressing the view that Australia has its views to advance especially on regional affairs. This is an opportunity to influence not just agree with US policy… The role of a really helpful ally.

Australia cannot support a view of us-or-them as regards China. Nor can we deny the reality of China’s growth and power. We see that in parity purchasing power China is now the biggest economy. China (or Japan, or India) will be different in character and power expression and expectations. These are realities to recognise. An attempt to tear China down will be unsuccessful. To follow paths to antagonise China will eventually reap hostile responses and darken global affairs at a time when global cooperation is essential.

It is important that we restore ruptured multilateralism. It is particularly important that the US and China collaborate on public health, environment, climate, arms control and war avoidance. That is the only way in which the United States might regain leadership—by engagement and collaboration. Without the US and China working together there will be no solutions to the global climate crisis. Without US-China collaboration, the COVID-19 pandemic will not only continue to kill and kill, it will destabilise developed and developing countries and create more wars.

We need to end wars that have ceased to have strategic value and are not being won. We have to avoid ‘waiting for the right moment’.

Australia has entered into a quadrilateral understanding for security consultation with the US, Japan, and India. It is not clear how this will proceed given the diverse views and interests of the participants. As framed it appears to be anti-China. It would be sensible also to engage with China. Japan and South Korea will inevitably and separately lean towards China. So should Australia… and there is nothing to be gained from military clashes between China and India.

Nothing in the business of building friendship, understanding and commerce need diminish national security. In all our countries there are piles of angry people ready to shout at China, shout about China. We should not be pushed by the loudest and most angry.

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Dennis Argall’s degrees were in anthropology and defence studies. his governmental work in foreign, defence and domestic departments and for the Australian parliament. His overseas postings included Beijing as ambassador, and Washington. He regrets the extent of his personal experience with disability but it has perhaps sharpened his desire that the future be a better country.

Featured image: Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in a file image. Image: Youtube

Government and media propaganda has firmly convinced most of the citizenry of the West that Russia invaded Crimea, and the truth has dissolved in the swirling miasma that the anti-Russia movement has dubbed as history.

In March 2014 the ethnically Russian province of Crimea declared itself to be separate from Ukraine. There was a referendum on sovereignty by its 2.4 million inhabitants, and there was not a single case of bloodshed in the entire process. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) was asked by the government of Crimea to send representatives to monitor the referendum but refused to do so, and the development was strongly condemned by the United States. 90 percent of the inhabitants of Crimea are Russian-speaking, Russian-cultured and Russian-educated, and they voted to “dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another” in order to rejoin Russia. It would be strange if they did wish accession to a country that not only welcomes their kinship, empathy and loyalty but is economically benevolent concerning their future.

Nevertheless, the surge of propaganda continues, and the most recent waves have been created by an intriguing policy paper titled NATO 2030; United for a New Era, which makes it clear that the U.S.-Nato military alliance is now intent on:

“Strengthening NATO’s political role and relevant instruments to address current and future threats and challenges to Alliance security emanating from all strategic directions.”

This wide-ranging objective opens the gates for Nato to meddle even more deeply in the affairs of nations that have nothing to do with the North Atlantic and continue its confrontation of Russia by intensifying the military build-up around its borders and escalating provocative operations by land, sea and air.

There is prominent assertion in the “United for a New Era” paper that “NATO stands as history’s most successful alliance” which deserves comment and mirth. This is the military grouping that is now stumbling and fumbling its way out of Afghanistan where it has achieved precisely nothing in the way of establishing stability. On November 17 Secretary General Stoltenberg tried to put the best face on the shambles of Nato’s humiliating retreat by declaring “We now face a difficult decision. We have been in Afghanistan for almost 20 years, and no NATO ally wants to stay any longer than necessary. But at the same time, the price for leaving too soon or in an uncoordinated way could be very high.” What he didn’t say was that President Trump had not spoken with him or any Nato member about his decision to initiate precipitous withdrawal of U.S. troops and that the country is, as noted by the Council on Foreign Relations, in a state of civil war that is “worsening”. The place is approaching anarchy, with, for example, The New York Times recording that in the period 22-26 November, “At least 19 pro-government forces and 33 civilians were killed in Afghanistan in the past week. The deadliest attack took place in Bamiyan, considered one of the most secure provinces in Afghanistan, killing 18 people and wounding 59 others in blasts in the provincial capital. In Kabul, the capital, 10 civilians were killed and 51 others were wounded when 23 rockets were fired by a small truck. The rockets hit different areas all over the city.”

And Stoltenberg boasts that Nato is “history’s most successful alliance encompassing nearly a billion people and half of global GDP”. But after twenty years in Afghanistan it can’t stop a few bands of raggy-baggy guerrillas from firing rockets at the nation’s capital city.

Later in the 67-page Nato 2030 there is a reference to Libya. And it is notable that it mentions the country only once in the entire document, stating that “Instability in Libya, Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan continues to generate illegal migration that is felt acutely throughout Europe, but especially by those Allies bordering the Mediterranean.” While this is certainly true, there is no mention made of how and why Libya became unstable, and what part Nato played in destroying the country and thus generating the massive suffering now being experienced by countless innocent people in the region.

On March 19, 2011 the United States and other Nato nations (Germany refused to join the jamboree) began their blitz of aircraft and missile strikes against the government of Muammar Gaddafi. In the seven months until Gaddafi’s revolting murder on October 20 there were 9,658 air attacks on the country which then dissolved into civil war. It may be recollected that a pair of ninnies, Ivo Daalder, the U.S. Permanent Representative on the NATO Council from 2009 to 2013, and Admiral James G Stavridis, the U.S. Supreme Allied Commander Europe (the military commander of NATO) in the same period, informed the Atlantic Council and the world in February 2012 that “NATO’s operation in Libya has rightly been hailed as a model intervention. The alliance responded rapidly to a deteriorating situation that threatened hundreds of thousands of civilians rebelling against an oppressive regime. It succeeded in protecting those civilians and, ultimately, in providing the time and space necessary for local forces to overthrow Muammar al-Qaddafi” (which interpretation of his assassination is some what at variance with the giggling observation by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that “We came; we saw; he died”).

According to the independent online media organization Fanack, the situation in Libya at the moment is that “ . . . the country is disintegrating. Libya is becoming a mosaic of stateless regions, city-states, and tribe-controlled areas. The country is also a base for the smuggling of weapons and human beings, narcotic traffickers, and other outlaws . . . For the European Union, Libya, once attractive for its abundance of natural resources, is now a major concern because of the possibility of attacks on European ships or coastal cities, the risk of infiltration into the continent’s countries, and the prospect of massive waves of refugees — Arabs and Africans alike — making their way through Libya to the south of Europe and beyond.”

Thank you “history’s most successful alliance” for reducing a country to a state of anarchic mayhem. What can we expect next in the Nato playbook?

Russia and China, of course.

The Nato 2030 travesty alleges that “After the end of the Cold War, NATO attempted to build a meaningful partnership with Russia” without mentioning that in 1999 Nato added Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic to help surround Russia. Then in 2004 came Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. To increase the net-drawing round Russia’s borders, Albania and Croatia were added in 2009 and lastly came the jokes of Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in March this year. Stability, anyone?

The world has been warned that although the U.S.-Nato military conglomerate has been an incompetent and calamitously destabilising force in its military fandangos, it is searching for threats and challenges to justify its existence. It won’t find them — because they don’t exist — but that won’t stop it looking and blustering, and thus creating even more instability around the globe while Nato stands “United for a New Era.”

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Brian Cloughley is a British and Australian armies’ veteran, former deputy head of the UN military mission in Kashmir and Australian defense attaché in Pakistan.

Featured image is from public domain

Interview with Prof. Dr. iur. et phil. Alfred de Zayas, international law expert and former UN mandate holder

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Thomas Kaiser: Zeitgeschehen im Fokus Professor de Zayas, you are an American citizen. What do you think about the course of the election and Joseph Biden’s victory?

Prof. Dr. Alfred de Zayas: First of all, I would like to say that I have been a member of the Republican Party since 1968. At that time I was a student at Harvard University, and my political persuasion aimed at a social, ethical market economy. Times have changed, and of course I am no longer a “Republican”, although I have not formally abandoned my membership in the Republican Party. I no longer feel any necessity to “root” for any political party. In my opinion, the 2020 campaign was undemocratic, undignified, and spiteful. It was accompanied by a very high level of disinformation, fake news and skewed media coverage. It resembled a football match – and I mean American football (rugby) and not European football (soccer).

TK: What is your position on the Republican and Democratic Party today?

AdZ: I am beyond both – beyond right wing or left wing. Sometimes I agree with the Republicans, sometimes with the Democrats – and often I am enough against the policies of both. I am happy Donald Trump lost. I am not at all excited about Biden’s victory. The next four years will be Obama redux, a disaster in the making. You can’t teach an old dog new tricks – and here I include the whole Democratic Party Old Guard.

TK: Did you participate in the 2020 election?

AdZ: Yes, I voted – but not for Trump, whom I by no means consider a true Republican – nor for Biden, whom I consider incompetent. I consider Kamala Harris to be extremely dangerous. I took the opportunity to vote for a “write-in candidate” – as provided for on the ballot itself.

TK: Who did you vote for then?

AdZ: Actually for a female Democrat – member of the House of Representatives for Hawaii – Tulsi Gabbard, who is genuine and speaks her mind. That is why the mainstream media marginalized her.

TK: With this you have expressed something…

AdZ: …yes, I wanted to express my dissatisfaction with the two-party system and with both candidates. I took a similar approach in 2016, when I voted for neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton. I am tired of the fact that our “democracy” only allows for a choice between plague and cholera.

TK: What do you expect from a Biden/Harris presidency in terms of foreign policy?

AdZ: A continuation of many of Trump’s policies. In fact, Trump and Biden converge on the essential points – both advocate militarism, unilateralism, big banks, economic sanctions against rivals, arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and blind support for Israel. Biden will hardly bring the US Embassy back to Tel Aviv. And the unjust treatment of the Palestinians will continue.

TK: What will the relationship with Russia and China be like?

AdZ: I expect as much agitation and war propaganda against China and Russia as during the Trump administration. We will be served with 4 years of vulgar xenophobia, Putin-bashing, Xi-bashing. I also expect even more corrupt of borderline corrupt actions that will enrich the president and his cronies. Joe Biden and his son were already involved in an affair in Ukraine and have (corrupt) relationships there. Further provocations, aggressions and “false flag” productions (for example, first staging the fake use of chemical weapons by the Syrian army and then using this to justify an illegal bombardment) against the governments of Syria, Lebanon and Iran are also to be expected. Let us hope that there will be no major military interventions like in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011, and hopefully no flagrant “regime change” aggressions or coup d’états in Latin America like in 2019 against Bolivia, and the ridiculous 2019 “Guaidó riots” in Venezuela. Nevertheless, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) will no doubt continue financing opposition parties in countries where the US wants regime change and will continue subverting and destabilizing other countries. Maybe the danger of a third world war has become a little smaller, but we will see.

TK: What do you expect in terms of domestic policy?

AdZ: I fear even more corporate corruption, white-collar crime and leftist populism, especially in socio-political developments. I expect a deterioration of the situation regarding freedom of opinion – also in the universities, a systematic domestic indoctrination on socio-political issues and total intolerance towards traditional values, Christian ethics, the family and the Catholic Church. The power of the mainstream media will grow, and Orwellian National Security Agency’s citizen monitoring will be intensified. We remember Edward Snowden and his warnings of 2013. His book, Permanent Record, published in 2019, reminds us of our slippery slope into the arms of Big Brother.[1]

TK: Where do Trump and Biden differ?

AdZ: Trump is an elephant in a porcelain shop. He pursues a personality cult – narcissistic, impulsive, megalomaniac. Biden is more moderate and boring. Trump thought he could afford to break several international treaties, to advocate blatant militarism. Biden – like Obama in his days – does imperialist politics with a smile. But under Biden, the exploitation of the world by the US will certainly continue. Only not as blatant and brazen. The “default position” among Trump and Biden is imperialism. Biden will continue meddling in the internal affairs of other states, will continue bullying trade “partners”, try to impose US products on Europe, sabotage Russia’s Nordstream 2, will continue building pipelines through indigenous territory, fracking, etc.

TK: What else can we expect from Biden except a continuation of imperialist policies?

AdZ: In Biden’s case, political correctness in the USA will reach truly Orwellian levels and lead to a weakening of the traditional values and ethical foundations of Christian culture. Censorship practices with Google, Twitter and Amazon will be intensified. Self-censorship will become the “New Normal”. Biden also wants to continue the war against whistleblowers in general – not only against Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.

TK: If you take stock, can you see anything positive in Trump’s policy?

AdZ: His fight against the mainstream media, which he has lost, was an important signal against the omnipotence of the media. They get away with everything, even cutting off a president’s microphone in a discussion. Today people know more about the manipulation by the press. Many in America today know that CNN, the “New York Times” and “Washington Post” are spreading fake news and suppressing crucial information – only few people dared to say this before Trump took on the media. This is certainly something that can be seen as a positive development. He has also placed three excellent judges on the Supreme Court and helped expose the corruption in the “woke” word, including at “Planned Parenthood”.

TK: Where do you see Trump’s biggest foreign policy mistakes?

AdZ: He has continued and even intensified the inhumane and illegal practice of imposing crippling economic sanctions on countries where he wanted “regime change”. Here we should mention the severely affected states such as Cuba, Venezuela, Syria and Iran. But also against Russia and all companies that cooperate with these mentioned states. It is a terrible weapon that Trump operated with. Sanctions kill people! And judging by the hundreds of thousands of victims in the world, this clearly amount of crimes against humanity for purposes of article 7 of the Statute of Rome of the International Criminal Court.

TK: How do you judge his Middle East policy?

AdZ: It is much influenced by the disregard for all international legal foundations and UN resolutions concerning the Middle East. The absurd “Deal of the century” between Israel and the Palestinians – which must therefore be rejected – as well as the recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights are part of Trump’s arbitrariness, just like the new treaties between the United Arab Emirates and Israel – whereby the rights of the Palestinians are completely disregarded. The so-called “Abraham Accords” or “normalization agreements” are anything but benevolent.

TK: With Trump and his predecessors of every hue we have seen that democratic principles are hardly respected. How could this respect be achieved?

AdZ: The citizens must demand the right to have greater control over policies, such as budgetary priorities, the sale of arms to Saudi Arabia, the sanctions policy, etc. The Swiss state model is much better – the people have the right of initiative, and they practice it, as well as the right of referendum on federal and cantonal laws and projects. This can be introduced without changing the US Constitution. Unfortunately there is no direct democratic tradition in the USA. A referendum culture would first have to be developed, at the municipal and state levels, before it could be introduced nationwide.

TK: Shouldn’t we also change something about the electoral system?

AdZ: We should finally abolish the so-called “Electoral College”. The election should be direct. It was hardly democratic when, for example, Al Gore had many more votes than George W. Bush, and yet Bush became president. The same happened in 2016, when Hillary Clinton had more votes than Trump.

TK: One has the impression that many wars were fought in the last decades of the US presidency. – Is this true?

AdZ: Yes, both parties are militaristic and interventionist. For example, two Democratic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, are responsible for the Vietnam War. The aggressions against Grenada and Nicaragua are on Republican Ronald Reagan’s conscience. The Republican George H.W. Bush pushed the “regime change” in Panama, killing 6,000 civilians and staged the 1991 war against Iraq with at least a hundred thousand deaths among the overwhelmed Iraqis. The Democrat Bill Clinton carried out the aggressions in the Balkans, especially the NATO attacks against Yugoslavia, and the mainstream media helped with disinformation and fake news. The Republican George W. Bush is responsible for the genocidal aggression against Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003. The Democrat Barak Obama has his hands full of blood because of Libya and Syria, the “regime changes” in Ukraine and a constant drone war against “terrorists”, which countless civilian have fallen victims to.

TK: Were there no American presidents in recent decades who wanted peace?

AdZ: Although the system always strives for hegemony, some presidents have also tried to promote peace. On the Republican side, President Dwight Eisenhower stopped the aggression of England and France against Egypt in 1956. Eisenhower also recognized the danger to democracy in the “military-industrial complex”. In fact, in his farewell address to the nation in January 1961, he formulated the dire warning and thus coined the term we all use today.[2]

TK: With the Democrats there was none?

AdZ: On the democratic side, Jimmy Carter tried to enable a just peace between the Israelis and the Arabs. He also wrote two books about this: “We Can Have Peace in the Holy Land” and “Palestine Peace, not Apartheid”. The fact that he was not 100% on the Israeli side probably cost him re-election in 1980. I have had the opportunity to discuss many international law crises with Carter personally at the Carter Center in Atlanta. I consider him ethically the best US president in the last 100 years.

TK: What kind of policy would a president of the USA have to pursue?

Image on the right: Jimmy Carter and Alfred de Zayas. “I consider him ethically the best US president in the last 100 years.” (picture zvg)

AdZ: He should adhere to Christian ethics and fundamental Christian values, the US Constitution, the UN Charter and international treaties. In terms of foreign policy, this means reviving multilateralism and working with the UN to protect future generations from constant wars, as stated in the preamble of the UN Charter. He should respect the sanctity of life, not instigate wars, but resolve conflicts peacefully through negotiation and compromise. The inviolability of treaties must also be upheld. And when treaties become obsolete, they should be replaced by international negotiation.

TK: Which treaties do you have in mind?

AdZ: This is particularly important in the case of the treaties on the limitation of nuclear weapons. In fact, this applies to all military programs, including conventional weapons. In 2013 the US signed the UN “Arms Trade Treaty”, but never ratified it. In 2019 President Trump rescinded the US signature. What we need is a treaty to limit the production of weapons, not just their sale. We need to revive START, the Open Skies Treaty and other agreements that Trump threw in the bin. We need total nuclear disarmament and general disarmament so that life-enhancing policies can be pursued, especially in the health sector. In the USA we were totally unprepared for the Covid 19 crisis, partly because the budget priorities in the USA were wrong and research funds were spent on the development of terrible weapons, the so-called lethal autonomous weapon systems or “killing robots” etc. In contrast, research on pandemic prevention, hospital modernization, etc., lagged behind.

TK: What kind of policy would Europe have to adopt towards the USA?

AdZ: Europe itself should not pursue imperialist or neo-colonial policies in the world. Europe should adhere more to the UN Charter and international law. It should stop applying international law selectively and arbitrarily, stop provoking Russia, stop financing “color revolutions” and stop trying to integrate Ukraine or Georgia into NATO. Europe should lift its own sanctions against Russia, Belarus and Syria. If Europe does so, it will have more credibility in advocating retortion against the USA. Europe should take retaliatory measures if the US presumes to apply US laws extra-territorially, if German or Swiss companies are threatened or punished by the US when doing business with Russia or when building Nordstream 2.

TK: What role can international organizations play here?

AdZ: The International Court of Justice (ICJ) should issue one or more Advisory Opinions on the illegality of US and EU sanctions policies under international law, and on the responsibility of the US and EU to make reparation to the victims. A resolution would first have to be adopted in the UN General Assembly (according to Article 96 of the UN Charter). The questions of international law must finally be clearly defined, and one must act accordingly.

TK: What possibilities do you see with regard to sanctions policy that is contrary to international law?

AdZ: The International Criminal Court should initiate an investigation in accordance with Art. 7 of the Rome Statute to ascertain that the economic sanctions against Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Syria and Venezuela constitute crimes against humanity because they have already caused hundreds of thousands of deaths – through a lack of food and medicine and through the weakening of the health systems of these states, especially today with regard to Covid-19.

TK: This is a loss of all human foundations…

AdZ: Yes, these economic sanctions can be compared to the murderous siege of cities during the Thirty Years War or the Nazi siege of Leningrad from 1941 to 1944. President Biden should properly finance and participate in good faith in the multilateral activities of the UN specialized agencies including the World Health Organization, Unesco, etc. And the United States should return to the Human Rights Council – because we need the voice of the United States, too. Trump wanted to “make America great again” – I say: To make America respected and maybe even loved again, one would have to revitalize the initiatives and examples of Eleanor Roosevelt and adhere to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There are enough decent human rights activists and experts in America – including Professors Noam Chomsky, Jeffrey Sachs, Dan Kovalik, John Quigley, Francis Boyle, among others – but they are not likely to be consulted and certainly not appointed by Biden. I expect “business as usual” – or continued exploitation of the world by Biden and his neo-conservative or neo-liberal team.

TK: You nevertheless see possibilities to improve the coexistence of the peoples?

AdZ: Yes, that is why the UN and the special organizations were established. Humanity has created countless instruments that could guarantee peaceful coexistence among peoples. We only have to implement them and bring them to bear, and then we could move into a more peaceful future. Europe and the USA have a responsibility to promote and adequately finance these bodies.

TK: What can Trump do until the end of his term?

AdZ: To make a dignified exit, Trump could immediately stop the persecution of Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers. An amnesty for all whistleblowers would be the Christian thing to do. I cannot help but think of Richard Strauss’ opera “Der Rosenkavalier” (The Knight of the Rose with a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal), where in the third act the scandalous Baron von Lerchenau loses everything and must exit empty-handed. There the Marschallin tells him: “try to keep your dignity and leave quietly … only thus can you remain a person of rank  — so to speak.”

TK: As an independent UN expert for the promotion of a democratic and just international order, you have worked hard for a more peaceful coexistence of peoples. Your speeches before the UN General Assembly and the UN Human Rights Council were received with applause, which is highly exceptional. What personal feedback was there from States, and how did the USA, your country of origin, behave?

AdZ: When I was Special Rapporteur (2012-2018), I was in constant contact with many ambassadors in Geneva, especially ambassadors from Latin America, Africa and Asia. There was a mutual, even friendly exchange of ideas and initiatives, and I always insisted on my independence. I constantly tried to inform my ambassador from the United States, and regularly provided the US Mission in Geneva with reports and suggestions. I also tried to maintain good contacts with the European ambassadors as well as with the ambassadors of Switzerland, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, etc., among others at social events and panel discussions. It was clear to me, of course, that the European Union did not quite appreciate my independence. They would have liked me to sing their song.

TK: What were the reactions when your mandate ended?

AdZ: After I had ended my mandate, I was encouraged by many ambassadors to make myself available for other UN assignments. I did this twice, my candidacy was put on the first short list, I was interviewed by 5 ambassadors for 50 minutes each time. The interviews went well – but I was not appointed. This is understandable, because I am not a “blank slate” anymore and my reports to the Human Rights Council and the General Assembly have not only garnered applause. Of course I remain closely attached to the office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, where I entertain many friendships, and I am ready to serve the cause again. But, as I said, the independence of the experts is hardly in demand in many states.

TK: Professor de Zayas, thank you for the interview.

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2009 H1N1 Vaccine Caused Brain Damage in Children. Dr. Anthony Fauci on “Vaccine Safety” Issues

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 10 2020

A lawsuit against the Trudeau Government for its handling of the COVID-19 Crisis has been launched. What is at stake is the violation of fundamental rights of Canadians.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD): Life-Threatening Allergic Reactions to Pfizer COVID Vaccine

By Lyn Redwood, December 10 2020

In August, CHD asked regulators to investigate the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in COVID mRNA vaccines, which could have caused the severe allergic reactions reported this week by two of the first UK recipients of Pfizer’s vaccine.

A Nasty Shot in the Arm: RT-PCR Kits and Vaccines Unlicensed by the MHRA

By John Goss, December 10 2020

Aware of the forthcoming vaccine roll-out aimed, it is said, to protect against a disease (COVID-19) that reached its apex almost nine months ago, I emailed the MHRA (Medical and Healthcare Regulatory Authority) on 20 November 2020. The response was mind-blowing.

Will Joe Biden “Revise” U.S Agenda in Syria? Use Terrorism Pretext to “Keep Boots on the Ground”?

By Ahmad Salah, December 10 2020

The mayhem of the presidential elections left the American policy-makers locked in heated arguments about the future of the US domestic and foreign policy alike. One of the most pressing issues on the agenda is the Middle East developments, especially the U.S. role in Syria.

Biden’s Defense Secretary Pick Shows the Revolving Door for Military Contractors Remains

By Sarah Lazare, December 10 2020

All three top con­tenders for the posi­tion — Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion alum Michèle Flournoy, for­mer Home­land Secu­ri­ty Direc­tor Jeh John­son and Austin — have direct finan­cial ties to the mil­i­tary indus­try, and none can be described as even nom­i­nal­ly pro­gres­sive on for­eign pol­i­cy. Austin, arguably, is not the worst among them.

Net Worth of US Billionaires Has Soared by $1 Trillion to Total of $4 Trillion Since Pandemic Began

By Americans for Tax Fairness and The Institute for Policy Studies, December 10 2020

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.

The Blockade: Qatar and Saudi Arabia Approach Historic Breakthrough

By Steven Sahiounie, December 10 2020

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.”

Lawsuit Filed to Halt Voter Suppression in the Runoff Senate Elections in Georgia

By Abayomi Azikiwe, December 10 2020

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.

Israel’s Honeymoon with the United Arab Emirates Is Grotesque

By Belén Fernández, December 10 2020

Since normalizing relations in September, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have teamed up to do what both do best: trample on democratic freedoms, commit atrocities, and whitewash occupation.

Palm Oil Giant Wilmar Unfazed as Watchdogs Cry Foul over Papua Deforestation

By Hans Nicholas Jong, December 10 2020

An area of natural forest the size of 1,500 football fields has been cleared since January in an oil palm concession in Indonesia’s easternmost region of Papua by a company that ultimately supplies major traders and global brands.

 

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Visit our Asia Pacific Research website at asia-pacificresearch.com

Providing coverage of the Asia-Pacific Region

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A lawsuit against the Trudeau Government for its handling of the COVID-19 Crisis has been launched. What is at stake is the violation of fundamental rights of Canadians.

“The mass and indiscriminate containment of citizens, the restriction of access to parliament, the courts, medical and educational services, the destruction of local economies and livelihoods, and the requirement to physically distance, along with the forced use of non-medical masking are extraordinary measures that have never before been imposed on the citizens of Canada.”

“Vaccine Choice Canada has made numerous formal requests of the Government of Canada and various provincial governments to provide evidence that justifies the declaration of an emergency, the imposition of unscientific and unwarranted measures, and the violations of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to no avail.”

The Lawsuit against the Federal and Ontario governments is now in the Ontario Superior Court.

Canadians should support this legal initiative, which has barely been acknowledged by the mainstream media.

Remember the 2009 H1N1 Pandemic. It turned out to be Fake. Lots of people in Canada fell sick after receiving the H1N1 ArepanrixTD vaccine.

And that vaccine killed a little girl called Amina Abu, which then led to a ten year lawsuit against GSK. That legal procedure is still ongoing.

It was a criminal undertaking on behalf of Big Pharma. There was ample evidence of corruption at the WHO and at the highest levels of government.

Today’s COVID-19 pandemic is far more serious. Governments are using the virus as pretext to close down a large part of the global economy, with devastating economic and social consequences.

Politicians are either stupid or totally corrupt. They believe in their own lies. And the lie has become the truth. That’s worse than the Spanish inquisition.

The legal action against the Trudeau government is not an object of media attention.

Let us not be under illusions. The lockdown, the fear campaign, social engineering not to mention “corrupt science” and “fake data” constitute a criminal undertaking which has resulted in mass unemployment, poverty, famine, and despair. And much more.

Let us be under no illusions. Things are not going to “go back normal” unless people across the land, nationally and internationally confront the architects of this diabolical project (including the governments, the financial elites as well as the WHO).

Michel Chossudovsky, July 15, 2020

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In 2009, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci was firmly in support of a multibillion dollar H1N1 vaccine project

Today he is an avid supporter of  a COVID-19 vaccine. 

What he fails to acknowledge is that the 2009 H1N1 Vaccine caused brain damage in children.

It was developed by Glaxo Smith Kline which today is at the forefront of the COVID-19 vaccine initiative. 

Dr. Faucy addresses the H1N1 Vaccine Safety Issue in this video (starting at 6′.5o”).

Scroll down for the reports on H1N1 vaccine scam.

NIAID Director Fauci supported the H1N1 2009 vaccine which turned out to be a multibillion dollar scam.

According to  International Business Times UK in a 2014 report

Patients who suffered brain damage as a result of taking a swine flu vaccine are to receive multi-million-pound payouts from the UK government.

GSK’s H1N1 PandemrixTD vaccine

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Glaxo Smith Kline was involved in developing the H1N1 Pandemrix vaccine:

3. To date, how many people/children in Canada have reported developing narcolepsy after getting vaccinated with Arepanrix? What provinces do they reside in Canada?

GSK reports all cases of adverse events which the company is aware of in accordance with national and regional regulations. We respectfully defer to the Public Health Agency of Canada to address this question in more detail.

4. We read that there is currently a Canadian study sponsored by GSK to assess the risk of occurrence of narcolepsy following the administration of Arepanrix – Why did you sponsor that study? When will the results of that study be published?

We are currently supporting a study that is being conducted in Quebec where Arepanrix™ (H1N1) was used. Further research is needed to evaluate the potential association between GSK`s adjuvanted H1N1 pandemic flu vaccine and narcolepsy in a country where a similar vaccine to Pandemrix™ (H1N1) was used, and where a more robust assessment of the potential association could be conducted, using a design aimed at limiting the impact of biases. The preliminary results of this study are anticipated to be published by early 2014.

 

Flash Forward to 2020

GSK Was ordered to Withdraw its PandemrixTD Vaccine in the UK.

The same companies involved in 2009 are at it again.

“Swine flu could strike up to 40 percent of Americans over the next two years and as many as several hundred thousand could die if a vaccine campaign and other measures aren’t successful.” (Official Statement of Obama Administration, Associated Press, 24 July 2009).

“The U.S. expects to have 160 million doses of swine flu vaccine available sometime in October”, (Associated Press, 23 July 2009)

Wealthier countries such as the U.S. and Britain will pay just under $10 per dose [of the H1N1 flu vaccine]. … Developing countries will pay a lower price.” [circa $40 billion for Big Pharma?] (Business Week, July 2009)

But the H1N1 pandemic never happened.

The H1N1 pandemic was a scam endorsed by the CDC and the NIAID headed by Dr. Fauci

There was no pandemic affecting 2 billion people…

Millions of doses of swine flu vaccine had been ordered by national governments from Big Pharma. Millions of vaccine doses were subsequently destroyed: a financial bonanza for Big Pharma, an expenditure crisis for national governments.

There was no investigation into who was behind this multibillion fraud. 

Several critics said that the H1N1 Pandemic was “Fake”

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), a human rights watchdog, is publicly investigating the WHO’s motives in declaring a pandemic. Indeed, the chairman of its influential health committee, epidemiologist Wolfgang Wodarg, has declared that the “false pandemic” is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” (Forbes, February 10, 2010)

According to the British  Medical Journal:

The World Health Organization’s handling of the swine flu pandemic was deeply marred by secrecy and conflict of interest with drug companies, a top medical journal said Friday.

The British Medical Journal, or BMJ, found that WHO guidelines on the use of antiviral drugs were prepared by experts who had received consulting fees from the top two manufacturers of these drugs, Roche and GlaxoSmithKline, or GSK.

In apparent violation of its own rules, the WHO did not publicly disclose these conflicts when the guidelines were drawn up in 2004, according to the report, jointly authored by the London-based non-profit Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

The WHO’s advice led governments worldwide to stockpile vast quantities of antivirals, and its decision to declare a pandemic in June 2009 triggered the purchase of billions of dollars worth of hastily manufactured vaccines.

Much of these stocks have gone unused because the pandemic turned out to be far less lethal than some experts feared, fueling suspicion that Big Pharma exerted undue influence on WHO decisions.

The report also reveals that at least one expert on the secret, 16-member “emergency committee” formed last year to advise the WHO on whether and when to declare a pandemic received payment during 2009 from GSK.

Announcing that swine flu had become a global pandemic automatically triggered latent contracts for vaccine manufacture with half-a-dozen major pharmaceutical companies, including GSK. The WHO has refused to identify committee members, arguing that they must be shielded from industry pressure. “The WHO’s credibility has been badly damaged,” BMJ editor Fiona Godlee said in an editorial.

AFP June 4, 2010 (emphasis added)

 

Aware of the forthcoming vaccine roll-out aimed, it is said, to protect against a disease (COVID-19) that reached its apex almost nine months ago, I emailed the MHRA (Medical and Healthcare Regulatory Authority) on 20 November 2020. My main concern is that people will unwittingly subject themselves to an experimental vaccine that has not been licensed by the MHRA, the ingredients of which have not been made public. Diagnosis of COVID-19 is made on the basis of a test, the RT-PCR test, the results of which are frequently flawed. I questioned if the MHRA had approved the RT-PCR test and copied in a medical doctor friend of mine.

“Since the reliability of the RT-PCR test has been questioned . . . it is important to know that the MHRA has done its duty in protecting the public from potentially harmful health-care products. Please reassure me that procedures have been followed and that this product the (RT-PCR test) has been approved by the authority. Thank you.”

The response was mind-blowing.

“There are literally 100s of CE marked Covid RT-PCR tests available on the EU market.

Such tests require a self-declaration process undertaken by the manufacturer with no review of performance data by any EU Government Body or Notified Body and that MHRA does not approve such products.

However, I can confirm that all PCR kits used by government laboratories or their subcontractors have been subject to rigorous validation by them before use.”

How can anyone possibly confirm that rigorous validation has taken place if these tests are not monitored? It raised an alarm to think results from all the “100s” of RT-PCR tests which the UK government, and other governments of the world, use in checking for COVID -19 are reached using kits that are self-regulated “by the manufacturer”. It is more than disturbing. There is no authority reviewing the tests and no authority reviewing results from the tests. It was necessary to delve further.

“Who is checking how positive tests are arrived at? How many amplifications are being used in tests? Is this consistent across all testing stations?”

The answer, which did not address the questions, raised even more concerns, including the competency of the MHRA.

“There is no relation to vaccinating human volunteers and the use of an RT-PCR test.

I can also confirm that trials of the vaccines was approved by the normal rigorous processes.”

Whether intentionally, or through ignorance, both these sentences are blatantly false.

Within the last week the Assets Publishing Service of the UK government issued a document to Healthcare professionals on how to administer the PfizerBioNTech vaccine.

It quite clearly states that there is now, and since trials began always has been, a relationship between “vaccinating human volunteers and the use of an RT-PCR test.” In section 5.1 which discusses results from trials it explains the two criteria which were, and still are, being adopted:

“Confirmed cases were determined by Reverse Transcription-Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) and at least 1 symptom consistent with COVID-19 disease*.

*Case definition (at least 1 of): fever, new or increased cough, new or increased shortness of breath; chills, new or increased muscle pain, new loss of taste or smell, sore throat, diarrhoea or vomiting.”

As to confirmation that vaccine trials were “approved by the normal rigorous processes” the whole document disproves any such claim. Approval has been granted on the basis of a measure only normally used in extreme emergencies, for example during the spread of “pathogenic agents, toxins, chemical agents or nuclear radiation.” It is called REG 174 (Regulation 174) a regulation which has recently been updated. Right at the start of the Assets Publishing Service document it states that:

“This medicinal product [REG 174] does not have a UK marketing authorisation but has been given authorisation for temporary supply by the UK Department of Health and Social Care and the Medicines & Healthcare products Regulatory Agency for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 virus in individuals aged16 years of age and over.”

Whatever it is, it is not “normal rigorous” procedure. This vaccine is being rushed through in a process that can normally take up to ten years to complete. Even today no approved vaccine exists for SARS-COV from the 2003 epidemic, and indeed, no approval exists for any of the SARS/MERS family of viruses.

What is happening is a human experiment with a vaccine that has had minimal testing, of which the full recipe of ingredients is being kept secret.

That, in itself, ought to raise alarm – but the only alarms being raised seem to be of the nature whether people are wearing masks, obeying lockdown restrictions, washing their hands and social distancing.

We should really be really worried about the PfizerBioNTech vaccine, and other vaccines, which contain ingredients designed to sterilize volunteers or change our DNA in a government-promoted scheme, the adverse results of which may not be known for decades.

Thanks to a GlaxoKlineSmith whistleblower whose evidence was presented on the David Knight Show (taken down by YouTube) we know that GKS was (is?) planning to use an ingredient in its COVID-19 vaccine, an anti-human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG) antigen, which causes infertility in women and in men. In men their testicles shrink, testosterone levels fall, the sperm is chemically attacked and dead sperm goes on to make women infertile too. In women. it:

“. . . produces antibodies which combine with HCG to render it biologically inactive . . . Out of 63 women they ][GSK] tested with HCG 61 of them became infertile. . . “

It would seem also that Pfizer BioNTech’s vaccine has life-threatening contents.

The last email I received from the MHRA confirmed my suspicion that this is a sensitive subject which the MHRA chooses to nip in the bud.

“I am sorry John but I do not have the time to deal with repeated communications with you as I am dealing with 100s of emails a day. This will be my last email to you.

The trials regarding vaccines have not been rushed through in terms of the MHRA’s involvement and we have applied the same level of scrutiny as it has historically done so for others.

The evidence that the vaccine is working or not depends on how many people contract the virus who have had the vaccine to those who have not been given it.”

His last sentence took me back full circle to my initial question about the reliability of the RT-PCR test which the MHRA has consistently neglected to monitor for accuracy, and which, despite assurance to the contrary, is being used in vaccine tests. The whole process reminded me of the plight of Daniel Doyce from Charles Dickens’ Little Dorrit.

Doyce was an engineer who tried to get his invention patented. For years he went backwards and forwards to the Circumlocution Office being sent from department to department without ever being given any constructive advice. Unable to make progress Doyce eventually took his creation abroad where he and it were a success. The trouble is with today’s regulatory authorities there is nowhere abroad to take our worries since the European Medicine Agency (EMA) is as complicit with Big Pharma’s aims as our own MHRA.

As the employee at MHRA did not have time “to deal with repeated communications” I emailed back to see if there was somebody else who could address my concerns. Previous correspondence had been answered quickly but it is two weeks now since I had a response to my last and I am not expecting another. When members of the public are worried about the safety and accuracy of medical products it is the MHRA’s duty to act.

Attempts to elicit the truth can be frustrating. It is in the interests of our families and friends, and their families and friends, to find out why the MHRA is not doing its job with regard to the RT-PCR test. Without doubt my questions have rattled the authority’s cage. Although it refuses to engage with me further I like to think there are others, concerned enough for their families and friends’ welfare and future on this beautiful planet of ours, who might wish to know why the RT-PCR test has not been given full scrutiny.

Close ties between big pharmaceutical conglomerates and their regulatory authorities raise suspicions as to their impartiality. In its questions and answers section the MHRA attempts to put these suspicions quietly to bed.

8. Why does the MHRA accept money from pharmaceutical industry? Isn’t this a conflict of interest?

Companies have to pay a fee for their marketing authorisation but we don’t seek business from them. Any complex licensing decisions are referred to the Agency’s independent advisory committees. These members must register any interests they have in the industry. They must declare any specific ones and take no part in discussions on that subject.

The agency’s independent advisory committees are another matter altogether and serious concerns have been raised as to how independent they really are. For example, in a June meeting of the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the minutes of which are still in draft form, we note that the Medical Advisor is Professor Jonathan Van Tam – a recent spokesman on the BBC promoting the virtues and safety of Pfizer BioNTech’s new vaccine while at the same time attempting to ameliorate public concern that these untested vaccines might indeed be dangerous.

Unlike most of the others on the committee Van Tam provides no conflict of interest details that are specific to COVID-19 vaccines. That does not mean he has none and contravenes a basic tenet of the MHRA’s dos and don’ts. University of Oxford Senior Associate Tutor, Tom Jefferson, exposed in 2017 the revolving door nepotism which saw the promotion of figures like Professor Van Dam and Sir Patrick Vallance to their present positions. Van Tam is one of three Deputy Chief Medical Officers to Professor Christopher Whitty, and it is not unusual for him to play down or choose not to mention his connections with pharmaceutical groups. As Jefferson notes: “Professor Van Tam’s track record as an ex-employee of Roche, Aventis Pasteur MSD and SmithKline Beecham (now GSK) has been excluded from the official DH press release . . .”

The “independent” CEO of the MHRA, Dr. June Raine, issued a statement on 19 November 2019, espousing the virtues of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine trials.

She outlines the two routes available in approving a vaccine for use, namely, the emergency route (REG 174) which is now being made operational and the proper route which normally takes years. In these “new normal” days the MHRA has committed itself to “rigorously assess the data in the shortest time possible, without compromising the thoroughness of our review” regardless of which route is adopted. She fails to mention the RT-PCR test which is being used to determine results.

In the dangerous and untested vaccine experiments the unmonitored RT-PCR test is possibly the MHRA and the government’s weakest link. Interested parties can email the authority in the first instance at: [email protected]

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, All the Goss.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

On December 4, Russian border guards prevented an attempt by 3 armed men to cross the Russian border from Ukraine. The gunmen resisted detention and opened fire on Russian personnel. As a result of the armed clash, one of the gunmen was eliminated, while two others fled back to Ukraine.

So far, the Border Service of the Russian FSB has provided few details of the incident. However, the intercepted group was likely a subversive reconnaissance unit affiliated with the Ukrainian (and thus Western) intelligence services. The neutralized unit was well equipped and, according to reports, received fire support from the territory of Ukraine during the incident. Over the past years, Ukraine with help from its ‘’democratic partners” has repeatedly tried to stage terrorist and sabotage attacks in Russia.

Russian media revealed some details of the armed clash indicating that the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces continue to  plan and conduct active operations (even if they are not very successful) on the territory of Russia.

In particular, according to the version shared by Russian media, the armed clash erupted during an attempt by the Ukrainian unit to kidnap a Russian citizen from the territory of Russia. The report claims that the target of the operation was a former member of the self-defense forces of the region of Donbass – Denis Kharitonov.

The kidnapping attempt was reportedly a continuation of the SBU provocation that led to the temporary detention of Russia-linked private military contractors (some of them were previously members of the forces of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics) in Belarus. At that time, the SBU staged a provocation luring this group of people onto the territory of Belarus, as a supposed transport point under a fake security contract to protect Rosneft facilities in Venezuela. At the same time, Kiev informed Minsk that these people were allegedly preparing to stage an armed coup in Belarus and after their detention, requested their extradition. The operation failed, when the entire SBU plot was revealed due to multiple contradictions in the version of events provided by the Ukrainian special services.

This development was just one of an entire series of SBU attempts to kidnap or eliminate people on the territory of Russia. Just in August 2020, the FSB already prevented an SBU plot to kidnap one of the leaders of the Eastern Ukraine’s people’s militia in Russia and to take him to the Kiev-controlled part of Ukraine.

Additionally with multiple other reports about the increase of SBU attempts to conduct aggressive actions on the territory of Russia, these developments demonstrate the new trend. The special services of Ukraine with support from their NATO partners are not even hiding their active planning and employing of sabotage and other activities against Russia. This activity has slowly but steadily become a permanent factor of life in the Russian border regions. So far, SBU-sponsored plots have successfully been repelled by Russian special services. However, in the long run, this threat will continue to grow.

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In October, British Education Secretary Gavin Williamson ordered universities in the country to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of antisemitism. They are to do so by Christmas or face government sanctions.

It is worth remembering that when the Tories passed the Counter-Terrorism and Security Act in 2015, it mobilised funding bodies to implement Prevent in schools, universities and across the charity sector. Opposition from campaigners, students and academics about this assault on freedom of speech, civil liberties and academic freedom fell on deaf ears.

The comparison might seem surprising, yet the parallels are striking. Indeed, the adoption of the IHRA definition will do little in the fight against antisemitism – in fact, it will likely harm the ability of anti-racist campaigners to fight back effectively – while instead targeting Palestine activists and delegitimising opposition to Zionism.

Limiting criticism of Israel 

The IHRA’s non-legally binding working definition – this exact status is often forgotten, yet it shines an important light on its nature – is extremely vague, describing antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”. Its danger lies in the 11 accompanying examples, such as “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” or “applying double standards by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation”.

This is an extraordinary definition of antisemitism, attempting to impose specific limits on the discussion of Zionism and Israel’s crimes in Palestine. For the millions of Palestinians expelled during the creation of Israel in 1948, besieged in Gaza or under military occupation in the West Bank, or for those who live within Israel’s borders and are targeted by more than 65 discriminatory laws, the idea that Israel is a democratic nation is, at best, laughable.

In an academic context, the imposition of a definition that describes these facts about the history of Zionism in Palestine as antisemitic is a direct assault on the academic freedom of those working on these issues, as well as on the civil rights of all those campaigning for solidarity with the Palestinian people.

While Israel is further institutionalising its structural racism and the second-class status of its Palestinian citizens through measures such as the 2018 nation-state law, the IHRA’s working definition is attempting to silence international criticism.

Widespread condemnation

The IHRA definition has been widely condemned, with 122 Palestinian and Arab academics, journalists and intellectuals recently publishing an open letter noting that it undermines both the struggle against antisemitism and the right of Palestinians to name their oppression and fight against it. Even the original author of the working definition, Kenneth Stern, has made similar arguments about how the definition has been weaponised.

This past July, Professor Rebecca Ruth Gold published an excellent overview of the debate surrounding the IHRA definition. She cites the opinion of an eminent jurist who believes that universities who apply the definition to censor speech critical of Israel “may find themselves in breach of UK and EU laws pertaining to academic freedom”.

Given all of the above, it should not come as a surprise that the definition has also been criticised for being an ineffective tool in the struggle against antisemitism. David Feldman, director of the Pears Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, wrote in 2016 that the definition was “bewilderingly imprecise” and failed to link antisemitism with other forms of racism. He recently reiterated his criticisms, saying the government should not impose a “faulty definition” on universities.

In fact, the definition does much to disarm the struggle against antisemitism in any institution where it would be used. It fails to identify structural factors that impose and reproduce it, focusing instead on interpersonal relations. This ignores the centrality of identifying and challenging both structural and institutional power in the struggle against racism.

The Health Minister of Ontario in Canada has stoked controversy by suggesting that people who do not take the coronavirus vaccine will face restrictions on where they can travel and spend time.

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When asked by reporters about how the government intends to go about convincing people to get the vaccine, Health Minister Christine Elliott warned that those who refuse it will face difficulties reintegrating into society.

“That’s their choice, this is not going to be a mandatory campaign. It will be voluntary,” Elliot said, but adding that “There may be some restrictions that may be placed on people that don’t have vaccines for travel purposes, to be able to go to theatres and other places.”

When another reporter asked if the government would be introducing ‘immunity passports’, or proof of vaccination cards, Elliot said

“Yes, because that’s going to be really important for people to have for travel purposes, perhaps for work purposes, for going to theatres or cinemas or any other places where people will be in closer physical contact.”

Proof of vaccination will be "essential for people to have" – Health Minister, Christine Elliott pic.twitter.com/F40QhdwynM

— CrasHTalk (@CrasTalk) December 9, 2020

1/Ontario Health Minister @celliottability: “If people choose not to get the vaccine they may not be able to do certain things, but that will be their choice”@fordnation govt is HIGHLY unethical/unlawful—violating Nuremberg Code in UN’s international lawpic.twitter.com/K1F1hZzJMs

— Your Ontario Doctors (@OnCall4ON) December 7, 2020

Following up on Elliot’s comments, The Toronto Sun spoke to her press secretary, who confirmed that the government is exploring several options for vaccine “tracking and surveillance.”

“This includes exploring developing tech-based solutions while also providing for alternative options to ensure equitable access to any potential ‘immunity passport,’” Alexandra Hilkene said.

Sun reporter Brian Lilley notes “That phrase will set off alarm bells and it should, not just for anti-vaxxers, but for anyone who is concerned about Charter rights and governments running roughshod over them.”

Ontario Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. David Williams has also said that a COVID-19 vaccine may be required for “freedom to move around”.

“What we can do is to say sometimes for access, or ease, in getting into certain settings, if you don’t have vaccination then you’re not allowed into that setting without other protection materials,” Williams said.

The comments of these Canadian officials add to the litany of other governmentand travel industry figures in both the US, Britain and beyond who have suggested that ‘COVID passports’ are coming, in order for ‘life to get back to normal’

In an essay in The Wall Street Journal on Saturday, former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Tom Frieden noted that he expects the so called ‘immunity passports’ will come into widespread use despite any ethical, legal or operational challenges, and despite the fact that it hasn’t at all been determined whether the vaccine equates to immunity.

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Since normalizing relations in September, Israel and the United Arab Emirates have teamed up to do what both do best: trample on democratic freedoms, commit atrocities, and whitewash occupation.

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Back in 2010, the New York Times’ Thomas Friedman issued the following complaint: “Destructive critics dismiss Gaza as an Israeli prison, without ever mentioning that had Hamas decided — after Israel unilaterally left Gaza — to turn it into Dubai rather than Tehran, Israel would have behaved differently, too.”

Never mind that Israel never “left” Gaza — or that even if Hamas had managed to transform the diminutive Palestinian coastal enclave into the capital of Iran, international law would not have authorized the Israelis to then convert it into the “world’s largest open-air prison.” It’s also unclear how any territory could be turned into Dubai while under siege and frequent bombardment, or how Gazans would go about building malls with ski slopes — or building anything, for that matter — when Israel intermittently blocks construction materials from coming into the narrow strip of land.

Now, courtesy of the September normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates — the culmination of a long-standing clandestine love affair — it seems the Palestinians will finally get to experience a taste of Dubai. (And Emirati alcohol consumers will get a taste of Israeli-made wine from the illegally occupied Golan Heights.)

In a recent CNN dispatch titled “The UAE and Israel’s whirlwind honeymoon has gone beyond normalization,” correspondent Ben Wedeman writes of the “mutual enthusiasm” infecting the Israeli government and the federation of Arab sheikhdoms, so much so that the UAE “appears to have dropped, in practical terms, any objections to Israel’s occupation of Arab lands.” That’s no accident. Disappearing the occupation is a primary function of normalization, fitting right in with the Friedmanite approach to Middle East peace, which posits that, if the Palestinians would just stop bitching about being occupied and massacred and get on with their lives, they, too, could be Dubai — the equivalent of telling a person in a burning house to simply ignore the flames.

Wedeman catalogues the perks of the overzealous Emirati-Israeli honeymoon: mutual visa exemption, the aforementioned wine, an excursion to the UAE by Israeli settler leaders from the West Bank, direct flights between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi scheduled to start early next year, and an arrangement where the UAE will “finance with the US and Israel a project to ‘modernize’ Israeli checkpoints in the West Bank used to control and monitor the movement of Palestinians.”

Presumably, “modernization” does not mean that Israeli soldiers will stop beating, killing, detaining, and otherwise abusing Palestinians at checkpoints. But perhaps the Emiratis can help install state-of-the-art mobile maternity wards to deal with the Palestinian women forced to give birth there.

To be sure, it’s not like the checkpoints aren’t “modern” enough already. As NBC News reported last year, Microsoft has “invested in a startup that uses facial recognition to surveil Palestinians throughout the West Bank, in spite of the tech giant’s public pledge to avoid using the technology if it encroaches on democratic freedoms.”

That’s no turnoff for the UAE, where democratic freedoms are entirely absent and the slightest criticism of the government is grounds for detention, torture, or disappearance. And what do you know: Emirati-Israeli collaboration regarding surveillance far predated the official unveiling of amorous bilateral relations. In 2015, a Middle East Eye article quoted a description of Abu Dhabi’s Israeli-installed mass civil spying system: “Every person is monitored from the moment they leave their doorstep to the moment they return to it. Their work, social and behavioral patterns are recorded, analyzed and archived.”

Call it modern barbarism — a right-wing neoliberal dream where basic rights are supplanted by skyscrapers, artificial islands, the annual Dubai Shopping Festival, and other distracting obscenities built on the backs of a migrant work force toiling in “virtual slavery.”

For their normalization efforts, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abu Dhabi crown prince Mohammed bin Zayed have been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. Perverse, unless you recall that former US president Barack Obama, the man who ordered the dropping of at least 26,171 bombs on seven Muslim-majority countries in 2016 alone, also received the prize. “Peace,” meanwhile, is not currently an option for Palestinians, Yemenis, and other regional inhabitants whose lives are sacrificed in the interest of arms industry profits and similar fixtures of “modernity” — all with US backing, and an imperial narrative that insists Iran is the one causing all the trouble.

So the honeymooners are getting off scot-free, whether for killing 2,251 people in Gaza in a matter of fifty days or for helping oversee the sexual torture of Yemeni detainees and mass starvation of Yemeni children as part of the Saudi-led coalition. And as normalization forges ahead, it’s nothing short of terrifying that anyone finds this normal.

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Israel is making hay while the sun of the Trump administration continues to shine. Fearing incoming President Joe Biden will not be as tolerant as his predecessor, Israel is busy creating unreported facts on the ground in Palestine as well as those well publicised faits accompli in the diplomatic realm.

Last week, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres spoke of a “a deep sense of worry about the grim realities” faced by Palestinians, notably in Gaza. His remarks followed a report by the UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) which stated that Gaza’s economy is on the brink of collapse. In a report to the UN General Assembly, UNCTAD estimated the cost to Gaza at $16.7 billion due to Israel’s imposition of a strict blockade in 2007, when Hamas seized control, through 2018.

By 2017, the strip’s poverty rate had soared to 56 per cent due to the blockade and three Israeli wars. UNCTAD said,

“The result is the near collapse of the regional Gaza economy while trade is restricted from the rest of the Palestinian economy and the world.” Lifting the blockade is necessary to “restore the right to free movement for business, medical care, education, recreation and family bonds. Only by fully lifting the debilitating closure, in line with Security Council resolution 1860 (2009), can we hope to sustainably resolve the humanitarian crisis”.

UNCTAD described the situation:

“Effectively, nearly 2 million people are mostly confined to a 365 square kilometre enclave with one of the highest population densities in the world. The entry of goods into the Gaza Strip has been reduced to only basic humanitarian products.” UNCTAD points out that Israel’s military assaults on Gaza have “resulted in the destruction of the productive base, while the ensuing severe crisis has transformed [it] into a humanitarian case and condemned it to profound aid-dependency”.

UNCTAD continued,

“The vast majority of the population has no access to clean water, electricity or a proper sewage system, and the Gaza Strip experiences major environmental deterioration.”

The UN has repeatedly predicted that if conditions are not reversed, Gaza would be unlivable in 2020. This year has come and gone and there has been no pressure on Israel to ease the blockade of Gaza’s vulnerable population. This policy amounts to “collective punishment” which is a crime in under international law.

Conditions have been made worse by COVID. The authorities in Gaza contained the spread from March, when travellers brought it to the strip, until it ballooned in August. World Health Organisation director in Gaza Abdel Nasser Soboh told Al Monitor, “The infection rate in the Gaza Strip exceeds the health-care system’s capacity, as it needs a lot of external support in order to be able to provide the necessary services.” Gaza has reported more than 14,000 cases and at least 70 deaths among 2 million people.

The economy of the West Bank and its 2.8 million inhabitants has been hit hard by the Palestinian Authority’s boycott of Israel and the US following Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, shift of the US embassy to Jerusalem, cancellation of funding to UNRWA, the UN agency that cares for Palestinian refugees, and legitimisation of illegal Israeli colonisation which continues apace and without international intervention.

Due to the global preoccupation with COVID, Israel has escalated its violations of Palestinian rights, accelerated colonisation and deepened its military occupation while the virus has swept through Palestinian communities and stunned the weak economy of the West Bank.

Due to the Palestinian Authority’s refusal of Israeli-collected tariffs and taxes in protest against US and Israeli policies, the cash-strapped government has been forced to halve salaries of 180,000 civil servants struggling to make ends meet while COVID has locked down cities, towns and villages. Although Israel last week released the accumulated $1 billion in funds, the shortage of cash from March through November has harmed the economy.

Israel has continued its crack-down on Palestinian protests and demolitions of Palestinian homes and rural shelters in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Jordan Valley. Israel has also stepped up its land grab in the West Bank by legalising the reclassification of Palestinian private land as public land so that settler outposts can be declared legitimate. Until now, outposts are considered illegal under Israeli law as well as international law.

Israeli settler organisations are exerting pressure to force out Palestinian residents of the strategic Silwan neighbourhood in East Jerusalem and Middle East Eye reports that the Israelis are trying to close down and clear Palestinian shop keepers from Bab Hutta, near Herod’s Gate and the entrance to the Haram Al Sharif, the mosque compound. Israeli income, property and value added taxes have been levelled on shops and intelligence, police, the Environment Protection Authority and the Consumer Protection Agency have made simultaneous moves against the traders. This pressure has been stepped up, allegedly, because Palestinian youths have harassed settlers living in or passing through the quarter.

In the rural West Bank, Israeli settlers, protected by armed Israeli soldiers, have continued to rob olives and uproot olive trees in Palestinian orchards. During the first 11 months of 2020, 919 Palestinians have lost their homes, in comparison with 677 during 2019. This is a four year record during a pandemic, reported Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem. Just ahead of the November 3rd US electons, Israel destroyed the shelters of the community of Khirbet Humsah in the Jordan Valley. B’Tselem called this action, seen as a tool of Israel’s policy of forcible transfer, “The largest demolition in a decade”. The aim of this effort is to force Palestinian herders and farmers off their land, out of their villages, and into the West Bank’s isolated urban centres where they have no roots, no employment and no future.

In B’Tslem’s view, Israel’s recent retreat from formal annexation of the West Bank following an international outcry does not count. Israel long ago de facto annexed the West Bank where 400,000 Israelis dwell illegally in 250 colonies in violation of international law. “By engineering the space, Israel has radically changed the map of the West Bank to suit its interests, creating contiguity for the settlements and pushing Palestinians into scores of isolated, crowded enclaves.”

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Featured image is from Just World Educational

A presentation by the chief of the US military’s Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) and a report drafted by the US Army War College’s chief expert on Latin America have been issued back-to-back in the last two weeks, both making dire warnings of growing Chinese influence in the region. Together, they amount to a brief submitted to an incoming Biden administration, arguing that Washington must escalate its drive to assert imperialist hegemony over the lands to its south as part of its preparations for a global confrontation with China.

The head of SOUTHCOM, Admiral Craig Faller, told Pentagon reporters Wednesday that US imperialism’s “competitive edge [in the region]…is eroding, particularly when it comes to the Chinese influence.”

Faller presented this challenge largely as a matter of China’s failure to “play by global rules,” by which he means the rules imposed over the course of the 20th century underpinning US global hegemony.

“I think what they’re doing [in the region] matches what they’re doing globally. It’s a full court press to have China become the world’s dominant power,” said the admiral.

“They’ve come in with the same type of infrastructure deals, loans, that they have used globally to gain influence,” he said. “[T]hey come in with deals that no one can compete with because US industry has to compete fairly by law.”

Who does he think he is kidding? US corporations have used criminal methods to dictate terms to Latin American countries—and helped overthrow governments that failed to accept them—since the beginning of the last century, from the United Fruit Company in Guatemala in 1954, to ITT and Anaconda Copper in Chile in 1973, to the role of Big Oil and US finance capital today in the drive for regime change in Venezuela.

Faller acknowledged that, while four years ago only one government in the region had signed on to the Belt and Road Initiative—Beijing’s huge global infrastructure program aimed at linking China’s markets to Eurasia and beyond by land and sea—now, 19 have.

China has become Latin America’s foremost lender and investor and is poised to overtake the US as its chief trading partner. It is already the number-one partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and is the second largest for many other countries

Total trade between China and the region has increased from $17 billion in 2002 to almost $315 billion in 2019. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the recovery of China’s economy has led to a continuation of this growth, even as trade with the US, Europe and Japan has fallen off sharply.

In addition to insinuating that the growth of China’s economic influence in Latin America could be chalked up to fraud, bribery and extortion, Admiral Faller insisted that Beijing’s primary interest was in developing “seaport infrastructure” and “deep water ports,” noting that China had “signed 40 commercial port deals in SOUTHCOM’s area of operations.” These deals, he charged, were primarily of military significance.

“What does it look like if China has a strategic control of the Strait of Magellan, or the Panama Canal, the approaches to the Gulf of Mexico through a Caribbean port? What does that look like in a global conflict?” Faller asked. “The Panama Canal is a significant global choke point. We were concerned as we watched China working port deals on either side of the canal.”

“Certainly in a global Chinese fight, that would be one of the key considerations: how do we defend that canal?” Faller said.

The SOUTHCOM commander also denounced the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for providing Latin American armed forces “free equipment, free gear and free training with no strings attached.” He took particular umbrage at the PLA’s failing to provide human rights training, “the things important to us.”

What hypocrisy! US “human rights training” did nothing to stop the Colombian military—granted $448 million in US aid this year alone—from murdering tens of thousands in its so-called “false positive” campaign of deliberately targeting civilians and then claiming that they were armed insurgents. Over the past half century, similar crimes and worse have been carried out across Latin America with the direct aid of the Pentagon.

“We’ve even found them teaching a course on why the US is not a partner of choice for the military taught by the PLA to partner nation militaries here in the hemisphere,” Faller added. “That I find alarming and shocking.” Shocking! As if the Army’s School of the Americas did not offer decades of courses in anti-communism, reinforcing and legitimizing the fascist ideology of Latin American military officers who led CIA-backed coups and murderous dictatorships.

An even more chilling expression of the way in which the Pentagon perceives Chinese influence in Latin America was provided by the US Army War College’s expert on the Western Hemisphere, Evan Ellis, in a paper published two weeks after the November 3 presidential election by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a Washington-based think tank with close ties to the US military and intelligence apparatus.

Ellis placed the question squarely within the context of the Pentagon’s preparations for a new world war between the US and China, both nuclear-armed powers.

“In the context of large-scale hostilities with the United States…PRC military relationships in the region would likely be used in all stages of the global-scope campaign necessary to wage that conflict,” Ellis writes.

He continues:

“In the event of a prolonged fight in Asia, the PRC could persuade or intimidate one or more actors in Latin America to permit the PLA to use its ports, air fields, or other facilities in support of operations against the United States. Although difficult to imagine today, such permission could be less unthinkable in a future scenario in which the continuing growth, quality improvement, and operational experience of the PLA causes some Latin American and Caribbean governments to question the ability of the United States to prevail or to sustain a costly conflict. … If some Latin American governments decided to ‘bet against the United States’ and permit the PRC to use their facilities for military purposes, the accumulated PLA knowledge of Latin American military leaders, forces, organization, infrastructure, and operating environment would increase the speed and effectiveness with which it could establish a wartime presence to conduct operations against the United States.”

Underlying this grim perspective is the protracted attempt by US imperialism to offset the erosion of its global hegemony by means of escalating militarism. This drive will only continue under an administration led by Biden and the Democrats, who campaigned against Trump on the basis that he has been too “soft” on Russia and China.

The Pentagon sees Latin America as a battlefield in a coming World War III and is preparing accordingly. It is seeking to shore up its ties to the region’s armed forces, including, as in the 1960s and 1970s, through the promotion of military coups and dictatorships to confront the rising revolutionary challenge from the working class.

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The mayhem of the presidential elections left the American policy-makers locked in heated arguments about the future of the US domestic and foreign policy alike. One of the most pressing issues on the agenda is the Middle East developments, especially the U.S. role in Syria.

After his ultimate defeat in the national vote Donald Trump handed down his successor a controversial legacy of multiple unresolved issues coupled with the badly damaged image of the White House. This is true especially for Syria, where despite repeated claims of total victory over ISIS, the terrorists continue to carry out sporadic attacks throughout the eastern part of the country Syria. The activity of sleeper cells became a pretext for rejecting the idea of a complete U.S. military withdrawal from Syria.

It is widely believed that the Biden administration intends to make use of the terror threat to keep boots on the ground in Syria in order to ensure the security of oil and gas fields. Indeed, the fight against international terrorism constitutes the basis of Washington’s foreign policy in the Middle East. However, the U.S history in the region has shown that the White House primarily regards terror groups as an opportunity to benefit from seizing previously inaccessible resources.

In pursuit of economic and political goal human rights are sidelined, as is the case in Al-Hawl camp, where refugees suffer from miserable conditions living side by side with captured ISIS terrorists. The camp that was initially established in 1991 by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for Iraqi citizens fleeing from the Persian Gulf War, started to host ISIS terrorists and their families in late 2018. The camp originally designed for 11,000 people currently counts about 70,000 – more than six time over of its capacity – the majority of whom are women and children of various nationalities. Camp dwellers blame the overcrowding and poor management for a shortage of water, lack of food and inadequate medical care.

The American leadership persistently ignores this humanitarian catastrophe, a byproduct of the neglectful approach to the civilian population applied by the U.S.-backed Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). By doing this Washington possibly violates the Geneva Convention of August 12, 1949, under which the U.S. is obliged to ensure the safety of civilians in northeast Syria.

Another worrying tendency is the increase in cases of riots and escapes from the SDF-controlled prisons that hold around 10,000 detainees. The most serious incidents of this kind took place in October 2019, when several hundred prisoners broke out of the Ain Issa jail. The Americans did not pay sufficient attention to these developments and chose not to investigate human trafficking networks used to smuggle militants out of jail and ultimately out of Syria despite the risk of reappearance of armed groups and rise in subversive activities. This deliberate ignorance will persist until the armed groups pose a threat for U.S. military bases located in the energy-rich areas of Hasakah and Deir Ezzor provinces.

This is yet another reminder that the U.S. is not a reliable ally for the Kurdish autonomous administration. As Ankara continues to strengthen its positions in the region there has been growing speculation about Turkey planning another military operation in northern Syria. Earlier, the Turkish leadership had abused the buffer zone agreement with the SDF that was brokered by the U.S. to evict the Kurds from these areas. Back then the Turks faced no obstacles in implementing their plan as the American troops withdrew from the buffer zone on the very eve of the Turkish Peace Spring operation. During the Turkish offensive a number of massive escapes that let dozens of terrorists out of SDF jails took place. Keeping in mind the U.S. practical approach to its geopolitical interests, the new American administration will likely prefer not to obstruct its NATO ally and the Kurds will be again hit by the Turkish artillery and UAVs.

The U.S. foreign policy under the Donald Trump’s presidency has been dominated by the pursuit of economic benefits under the pretext of promoting democracy and protecting civilians, a perfect representation of the “world leader’s” disregard for the interests of any state, be it ally or enemy, whose resources fall in the White House’s sphere of interests. Double standards have become a defining trait of the international relations with civilians whose interests are supposedly protected by the U.S. military reduced to a bargaining chip.

The upcoming transition of the U.S. leadership and the inauguration of President Joe Biden have to determine whether the United States is capable of being a guarantor of security and stability, or Washington’s economic ambitions come first.

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Ahmad Salah is a freelance Syrian journalist focused on the Middle East, especially the Levant.

Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden has tapped retired Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III for the pow­er­ful role of defense sec­re­tary, news out­lets revealed Decem­ber 7. Spec­u­la­tion over who Biden would pick had been brew­ing for weeks. All three top con­tenders for the posi­tion — Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion alum Michèle Flournoy, for­mer Home­land Secu­ri­ty Direc­tor Jeh John­son and Austin — have direct finan­cial ties to the mil­i­tary indus­try, and none can be described as even nom­i­nal­ly pro­gres­sive on for­eign pol­i­cy. Austin, arguably, is not the worst among them: Flournoy comes with an espe­cial­ly hawk­ish record, the most mil­i­tary indus­try ties, and an ide­o­log­i­cal pro-war gus­to that sets her apart. But it’s dif­fi­cult to breathe a sigh of relief about the advance of a retired gen­er­al who over­saw wars in Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq and Syr­ia, and who is on the Board of Direc­tors for the pow­er­ful weapons com­pa­ny Raytheon.

Austin is still list­ed by Raytheon, one of the largest weapons com­pa­nies in the world, as a mem­ber of its board. Raytheon is a major sup­pli­er of bombs to the U.S.-Saudi coali­tion that began wag­ing war on Yemen dur­ing the Oba­ma-Biden admin­is­tra­tion (a war Austin over­saw), and the com­pa­ny has aggres­sive­ly lob­bied against any curbs on U.S. weapons sales to the coali­tion. In just one exam­ple, an Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al report deter­mined that Raytheon man­u­fac­tured the bomb that killed six peo­ple, chil­dren among them, at a home in Yemen’s Ta’iz gov­er­norate in June 2019. Mark Esper, who served as Don­ald Trump’s Sec­re­tary of Defense before he was fired last month, was a for­mer lob­by­ist for Raytheon — a record for which he, right­ly, attract­ed con­sid­er­able flak.

But Austin’s mil­i­tary indus­try ties don’t stop there. As was first report­ed by The Amer­i­can Prospect, Austin — along with Flournoy — is also a part­ner at Pine Island Cap­i­tal Part­ners. Here’s how the New York Times described the firm in an arti­cle pub­lished on Novem­ber 28: ​“Pine Island Cap­i­tal has been on some­thing of a buy­ing spree this year, pur­chas­ing the weapons sys­tem parts man­u­fac­tur­er Precin­mac and a com­pa­ny until recent­ly known as Meg­gitt Train­ing Sys­tems and now known as InVeris, which sells com­put­er-sim­u­lat­ed weapons train­ing sys­tems to the Pen­ta­gon and law enforce­ment agen­cies.” The same day, The Dai­ly Poster report­ed that the com­pa­ny has boast­ed that its team’s inclu­sion of for­mer gov­ern­ment and mil­i­tary offi­cials will help boost profits.

Austin, who served in pow­er­ful mil­i­tary roles under Oba­ma, is known for not hog­ging the spot­light, and fol­low­ing orders (like­ly war crimes among them) when Oba­ma dealt them out. In a world of larg­er-than-life, pro-war per­son­al­i­ties like Jim Mat­tis and Stan­ley McChrys­tal, this has caused some to hope he is not the most harm­ful option. But when it came to his actu­al posi­tions — things that mat­ter when you’re sec­re­tary of defense — Austin often found him­self to the right of a pres­i­dent who, despite his 2008 cam­paign trail image, was no dove. In 2010, as the top com­man­der of U.S. forces in Iraq, Austin advised Pres­i­dent Oba­ma against with­draw­ing troops from Iraq, and said he should instead leave 24,000 troops in the coun­try (there were about 45,000 at the time). Oba­ma, how­ev­er, over­rode this rec­om­men­da­tion, and Austin end­ed up pre­sid­ing over a sig­nif­i­cant troop with­draw­al. As head of Cen­tral Com­mand, which over­sees the Mid­dle East, Austin would go on to rec­om­mend in 2014 that Oba­ma send a ​“mod­est con­tin­gent of Amer­i­can troops, prin­ci­pal­ly Spe­cial Oper­a­tions forces, to advise and assist Iraqi army units” in the fight­ing of ISIS, as para­phrased by the Wash­ing­ton Post. Oba­ma also ini­tial­ly reject­ed this rec­om­men­da­tion, deploy­ing 475 troops, osten­si­bly to pro­vide train­ing, intel­li­gence and equip­ment, and ini­ti­at­ing an air war on ISIS that con­tin­ues to kill civil­ians to this day.

Austin would pre­side over an expan­sion of this war, which by his retire­ment in 2016 saw 3,600 U.S. troops deployed to Iraq, and U.S. Spe­cial Forces to Syr­ia (although this did not pre­vent him from being crit­i­cized from the right for not doing enough to esca­late mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Syr­ia). He led Cen­tral Com­mand dur­ing the war in Afghanistan, as well as when the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion ini­ti­at­ed U.S. par­tic­i­pa­tion in the war on Yemen, which erupt­ed under his charge into a full-blown human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis that has esca­lat­ed under Pres­i­dent Trump.

And then, of course, there is the fact that Austin is a retired gen­er­al who has been tapped to over­see an agency that is sup­posed to be run by civil­ians (although, when oth­er can­di­dates are so close­ly tied to the mil­i­tary indus­try, the line between civil­ian and non-civil­ian is blurred across the board). Because Austin has only been out of the mil­i­tary for four years, he will need a con­gres­sion­al waiv­er to serve in the role of defense sec­re­tary, as did Mat­tis, the first defense sec­re­tary under Pres­i­dent Trump. If approved, Austin will be the first Black defense sec­re­tary in U.S. history.

That Austin was cho­sen to head the Pen­ta­gon shows that the U.S. polit­i­cal imag­i­na­tion around war and mil­i­tarism remains trapped with­in Washington’s revolv­ing door of weapons indus­try con­trac­tors and gov­ern­ment offi­cials. And it shows that the sta­tus quo of the Oba­ma years — which brought us drone wars around the world, pro­tract­ed occu­pa­tion in Afghanistan and cat­a­stro­phe in Yemen — lives on with the incom­ing Biden administration.

It’s worth also tak­ing note of the oth­er top con­tenders who, even though they didn’t make the slot, nonethe­less are close to the Biden admin­is­tra­tion and are almost cer­tain to con­tin­ue exert­ing some influ­ence. For­mer Sec­re­tary of Home­land Secu­ri­ty Jeh John­son is on the board of direc­tors for weapons com­pa­ny Lock­heed Mar­tin. Like Raytheon, Lock­heed Mar­tin has prof­it­ed con­sid­er­ably from the U.S. war in Yemen, even as the war has fall­en out of favor among the main­stream of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. That com­pa­ny infa­mous­ly man­u­fac­tured the bomb that killed 26 chil­dren when it struck a school bus in north­ern Yemen in August 2018.

Under the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, John­son presided over a sig­nif­i­cant esca­la­tion in raids and depor­ta­tions, as well as the prac­tice of incar­cer­at­ing chil­dren in immi­gra­tion deten­tion cen­ters. In an open let­ter writ­ten to John­son in August 2016, 22 moth­ers held with their chil­dren at the Berks Fam­i­ly Res­i­den­tial Cen­ter in Penn­syl­va­nia plead­ed for their free­dom. ​“Our chil­dren, who range in age from 2 to 16, have been deprived of a nor­mal life,” they wrote.

But it is Flournoy whose record attract­ed the lion’s share of con­cern from many anti-war activists. In addi­tion to Pine Island Cap­i­tal Part­ners, she is also on the board of mil­i­tary con­trac­tor Booz Allen Hamil­ton, which ​“paid her about $440,000 in the last two years, much of it stock awards,” accord­ing tothe New York Times. She also cofound­ed Cen­ter for a New Amer­i­can Secu­ri­ty (CNAS) — a hawk­ish cen­ter-left think tank that receives sig­nif­i­cant fund­ing from the weapons indus­try, includ­ing Raytheon and Lock­heed Mar­tin, where Austin and John­son are respec­tive­ly affil­i­at­ed. Flournoy is also co-founder and man­ag­ing part­ner of Wes­t­Ex­ec Advi­sors, a con­sult­ing firm that includesmil­i­tary con­trac­tors among its clients. Antony Blinken, Biden’s pick for sec­re­tary of state, is also one of WestExec’s cofounders, and the orga­ni­za­tion is a ​“strate­gic part­ner” of Pine Island Cap­i­tal Partners.

Beyond these defense indus­try ties, Flournoy’s hawk­ish track record has earned her sig­nif­i­cant ire from anti-war activists. While this record can be traced back all the way to the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion, it was the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion where she exert­ed con­sid­er­able influ­ence, as Under Sec­re­tary of Defense for Pol­i­cy from 2009 to 2012, as well as through her role at CNAS. Flournoy pushed to esca­late the war in Afghanistan, strong­ly pressed for the 2011 mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion in Libya, opposed the com­plete with­draw­al of troops from Iraq, and as recent­ly as 2019 opposed a ban on sell­ing weapons to Sau­di Ara­bia. In a recent let­ter to Pres­i­dent-elect Joe Biden, pro­gres­sive groups, includ­ing the Yemen Relief and Recon­struc­tion Foun­da­tion and Yemeni Alliance Com­mit­tee, stat­ed, ​“We are con­cerned that Ms. Flournoy has a record of ill-advised for­eign pol­i­cy posi­tions that have often con­flict­ed with your own, and has an opaque his­to­ry of pri­vate-sec­tor activ­i­ty — includ­ing ​‘shad­ow lob­by­ing’ for mil­i­tary con­trac­tors — which has raised ques­tions about poten­tial con­flicts of interest.”

Flournoy has her defend­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly among ​“nation­al secu­ri­ty pro­fes­sion­als” who cel­e­brat­ed the poten­tial high-lev­el advance­ment of a woman, infu­ri­at­ing the anti-war fem­i­nists I spoke to. And some groups that con­sid­er them­selves lib­er­al or pro­gres­sive on for­eign pol­i­cy expressed ret­i­cence about oppos­ing her. Although she did not get the posi­tion, it will be impor­tant to keep an eye on Flournoy, who will no doubt con­tin­ue to exert influ­ence from CNAS.

If one believes, as I do, that the U.S. mil­i­tary is not a force for good in the world, it is doubt­ful that there is such a thing as a ​“good” sec­re­tary of defense. There is, how­ev­er, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of reduc­ing — even mar­gin­al­ly — the harm the U.S. mil­i­tary inflicts across the globe. The field of poten­tial nom­i­nees was, from an anti-war per­spec­tive, dis­mal: None of Biden’s picks for sec­re­tary of defense were going to be pro­gres­sive, even accord­ing to Washington’s stan­dards. His occa­sion­al rhetoric around end­ing ​“for­ev­er wars” aside, Biden nev­er real­ly gave us any rea­son to think he’d steer a course that veers very far from the wars and inter­ven­tions he sup­port­ed — either overt­ly or tac­it­ly — dur­ing the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion, not to men­tion dur­ing his long polit­i­cal career before that. While one must not flat­ten dif­fer­ences between can­di­dates, it is also impor­tant not to sound a note of tri­umph when the absolute worst is avoid­ed but an unac­cept­able sta­tus quo remains, as some have done with respect to the president-elect’s oth­er appoint­ments. Espe­cial­ly when it comes to for­eign pol­i­cy — where the pres­i­dent has the most pow­er to act with­out Con­gress, and where Biden’s appoint­ments have uni­form­ly avoid­ed mean­ing­ful con­ces­sions to the Left — sug­ar­coat­ing real­i­ty is ill-advised.

It’s not too much to ask, at the very least, that ​“pub­lic ser­vants” ele­vat­ed to the high­est ech­e­lons of pow­er not take over agen­cies that reg­u­late and patron­ize the cor­po­ra­tions they were well-com­pen­sat­ed board mem­bers of weeks before tak­ing office, and will like­ly be again once they leave office in a few years. Even set­ting aside ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­si­tion to U.S. empire or the iner­tia of vio­lence that defines U.S. mil­i­tarism across the globe, basic good gov­ern­ment types can see the inher­ent con­flicts of inter­est in the revolv­ing door between indus­try and gov­ern­ment. This revolv­ing door was sim­ply tak­en for grant­ed in Biden’s defense sec­re­tary sweep­stakes. Cer­tain­ly, there has to be some­one in the ​“nation­al secu­ri­ty” world not drown­ing in the largesse of Raytheon, Booz Allen or Lock­heed Mar­tin. And if there isn’t, what does this say about the fun­da­men­tal nature of the U.S. war machine and who it serves?

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Sarah Lazare is web edi­tor at In These Times. She comes from a back­ground in inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism for pub­li­ca­tions includ­ing The Inter­cept, The Nation, and Tom Dis­patch. She tweets at @sarahlazare.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Pro-Yemeni activists hope that Biden will stay true to his prior promise to stop funding the GCC’s War on Yemen, but even if he does what’s arguably the morally right thing, he’ll probably be doing it for geopolitical reasons even if he tries to pass it off as a matter of principle for soft power sake.

In August, CHD asked regulators to investigate the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in COVID mRNA vaccines, which could have caused the severe allergic reactions reported this week by two of the first UK recipients of Pfizer’s vaccine.

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Media outlets are reporting that two individuals who received the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 mRNA vaccine developed severe anaphylactic reactions following the injection.

England’s National Health Service (NHS) warned Wednesday that people “with a history of a significant allergic reaction to a vaccine, medicine or food” should not be given the COVID-19 vaccine developed by U.S. pharmaceutical giant Pfizer and Germany’s BioNTech. UK’s Medical and Health products Regulatory Agency, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, reminded health-care workers that vaccinations should only be carried out in facilities where resuscitation measures are available.

These warnings came after two National Health Service employees who were part of the first tranche to receive the vaccine on Tuesday suffered adverse reactions.

NHS England said in a statement that both of the medical workers who experienced anaphylactoid reactions to the Pfizer vaccine had a “strong past history of allergic reactions.”

According to these news reports, documents published by the two companies showed that people with a history of severe allergic reactions were excluded from the clinical trials.  Therefore, this life-threatening adverse safety signal did not appear in their clinical trial safety data.

On Aug. 26, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) sent a letter to Dr. Jerry Menikoff, director office for Human Research Protections Dept. of Health and Human Services regarding the Phase III Moderna mRNA-1273 vaccine. The letter requested the Office for Human Research Protections investigate the use of polyethylene glycol (PEG) in Moderna’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Pfizer’s COVID vaccine, which also uses mRNA technology, also contains PEG.

Approximately 8% of the U.S. population has highly elevated levels of anti-PEG antibodies. The concerns we laid out in our letter about the Moderna vaccine were related to the fact that injecting a PEG-containing vaccine into individuals with pre-existing PEG antibodies could lead to life-threatening anaphylaxis.

Such was the case with a member of CHD, Harold Gielow, a retired military Lt. Col USMC who suffers with severe anaphylactic response to polyethylene glycol. In fact, the last time Gielow was exposed to an injected drug that contained PEG, he went pulseless, requiring an injection of epinephrine. His PEG allergy was diagnosed by Johns Hopkins.

Gielow has voiced outrage that PEG is classified by U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as biologically inert/inactive.

“It is anything but that,” Gielow said. “The incidences of hypersensitivity reactions to PEG are, understandably, increasing, although many with PEG hypersensitivity go undiagnosed, thus presenting an unreasonable hazard to administering these vaccines to a population, the vast majority of which is proven by science to have anti-PEG antibodies.”

In fact, investigators who once assumed that the polymer was largely “inert” are now questioning its biocompatibility and warning about PEGylated particles’ promotion of tumor growth and adverse immune responses that include “probably underdiagnosed” life-threatening anaphylaxis. These undesirable responses have, on occasion, halted clinical trials. As a result, some scientists argue that it is time to develop alternatives to replace PEG. American and Dutch researchers declared in 2013:

“[T]he accumulating evidence documenting the detrimental effects of PEG on drug delivery make it imperative that scientists in this field break their dependence on PEGylation.”

Dr. Menikoff recommended that our concerns be sent to Dr. Steven Hahn, director of the FDA and Dr. Marks, director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research. On Sept, 25, the letter was sent and included with a cc to Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National  Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

On Dec. 2, we received a response from Dr. Hahn and Dr. Marks with a recommendation that we reach out directly to the mRNA vaccine manufacturers regarding our concerns with the use of PEG in their vaccines.

What is concerning about the response is the fact that in the letter we acknowledge that we had already reached out to Moderna’s scientists regarding the use of PEG and lack of informing vaccine trial recipients about the use of PEG in the vaccine, soliciting a history of PEG allergies and testing blood antibody levels to PEG.

Did the FDA officials actually read the letter?

CHD’s concerns about PEG stem from the fact that PEG-specific immune responses can actually reduce the efficacy of vaccines and increase the occurrence of adverse events.

A 2016 study in Analytical Chemistry reported detectable and sometimes high levels of anti-PEG antibodies (including first-line-of-defense IgM antibodies and later stage IgG antibodies) in approximately 72% of contemporary human samples and about 56% of historical specimens from the 1970s through the 1990s. Of the 72% with PEG IgG antibodies, 8% had anti-PEG IgG antibodies > 500ng/ml., which is considered extremely elevated. Extrapolated to the U.S. population of 330 million who may receive this vaccine, 16.6 million may have antibody levels associated with adverse effects.

The researchers confessed that the results were entirely unexpected. The authors concluded that:

“…sensitive detection and precise quantitation of anti-PEG Ab levels in a clinical setting will be essential to ensuring the safe use of PEGylated drugs in all target patient populations going forward.”

On July 28, Gielow wrote to CovPN citing the 2016 study’s conclusions and asked the following question:

“As Moderna’s mRNA-1273 candidate vaccine uses a PEGylated LNP vector, what procedures are included in the trial to mitigate this risk?”

The response from CovPN was as follows:

“Thank you so much for this scientific question. I consulted with several of the physician scientists working on the Moderna study, and they have provided me with this response to send on to you:

“Pre-existing antibody levels, along with various genetic polymorphisms, may impact the safety profile of a biomedical intervention in a variety of populations. If there are significant safety signals from the CoVPN clinical trials, all efforts will be made to understand the mechanisms that may have contributed to these signals. Pre-screening populations based on hypothesized biomarkers, such as anti-PEG antibodies, is not a strategy currently employed in our clinical trials.”

While the Moderna scientists allege that PEG antibody development is purely hypothetical, the scientific literature clearly documents that the immune system can and does form antibodies against PEG (anti-PEG Abs) in both animals and humans. The existence of anti-PEG antibodies threatens patient safety through possible anaphylaxis reactions and re-exposure to PEG-containing drugs may greatly increase the chance for adverse effects due to B cell memory of anti-PEG Abs. Thus, screening for and monitoring the levels of anti-PEG antibodies in blood before and during treatment with PEG-containing drugs are of particular importance to improve safety and maintain therapeutic efficacy.

The 2016 Analytical Chemistry findings and other studies indicate the widespread occurrence of anti-PEG Abs in the general population due to daily exposure to PEG-containing products. The population’s increased exposure to PEG-containing products makes it “natural to assume” that anti-PEG antibodies will continue to be widespread.”

If high-titer anti-PEG Abs are present in blood, even people without known allergies may have severe hypersensitivity reactions when receiving PEG-containing therapeutics for the first time.

Moderna documents and publications indicate that the company is well aware of safety risks associated with PEG and other aspects of its mRNA technology. In the corporate prospectus supporting Moderna’s stock market launch in late 2018, the company was frank that its technical approach has numerous risks.

Specifically, Moderna acknowledged the potential for its proprietary lipid nanoparticles and PEG to produce “systemic side effects,” given the scientific literature’s documentation of these types of side effects for other LNPs. In comments not generally seen by the public, Moderna stated (p. 33):

[T]here can be no assurance that our LNPs will not have undesired effects. Our LNPs could contribute, in whole or in part, to one or more of the following: immune reactions, infusion reactions, complement reactions, opsonization reactions, [links added] antibody reactions . . . or reactions to the PEG from some lipids or PEG otherwise associated with the LNP. Certain aspects of our investigational medicines may induce immune reactions from either the mRNA or the lipid as well as adverse reactions within liver pathways or degradation of the mRNA or the LNP, any of which could lead to significant adverse events in one or more of our clinical trials.

Instead of expressing concern over clinical trial participants’ welfare, that section of the prospectus concluded that any one of these problems “could materially harm [the company’s] business, financial conditions and prospects.”

As the excerpts from the Moderna prospectus illustrate, Moderna scientists are fully aware of PEG-related safety concerns. In the prospectus, Moderna admits that “unacceptable health risks or adverse side effects” could make it difficult to recruit or retain clinical trial participants and also that an “unfavorable benefit risk ratio could inhibit market acceptance” if their product proceeds to market.

Addressing the efficacy side of the equation, a mid-2019 study by authors who “are or have been employees of Moderna, Inc. and receive salary and stock options from Moderna, Inc.” further admitted that anti-PEG antibodies “present significant challenges to the clinical efficacy of PEGylated therapeutics and will require strategies to overcome [their] effects.”

In light of the recent acknowledgement of anaphylactic reactions to Pfizers’ PEG-containing COVID-19 vaccine, CHD continues to have grave safety and efficacy concerns about the use of PEG in vaccines due to the high percentage of the population having preexisting antibodies to PEG. While it’s unlikely that everyone with pre-existing PEG antibodies will have a severe reaction to a vaccine containing PEG, it is dangerous to assume that none will.

While vaccine manufacturers and federal agencies providing oversight on COVID vaccine development are quick to point out that the clinical trials did not identify safety concerns with the vaccine, they fail to mention the fact that the trial participants were excluded from the study if they had a history of severe allergic reactions and those in the trial were never screened for PEG antibodies.

Multiple previous studies regarding the prevalence of anti-PEG antibodies in the population have stated that pre-screening should be done prior to any administration of a PEG-containing medication. Screening  is likely to be even more important in the case of a vaccine intended for parenteral administration to as many people as possible that contains a substance to which the majority of the population unknowingly has antibodies.

Not characterizing trial participants’ adverse reactions in relation to anti-PEG antibody presence and levels eliminates insights into these interactions is a missed opportunity to prevent harmful adverse events.

Now we are left in a situation where life-threatening adverse events are occurring after widespread use of the vaccine has begun. A finger needs to be pointed squarely at the vaccine manufacturers and regulatory agencies who buried their heads in the sand to legitimate safety concerns in their rush to approve a COVID vaccine. Unfortunately, the public is now left to bear the burden of exposing these lapses in safety.

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Lyn Redwood, R.N., M.S.N., is a Nurse Practitioner who became involved in autism research and advocacy when her son was diagnosed with autism.

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Well planned in advance brazen fraud decided US Election 2020 — not voters.

The manipulated outcome for Biden/Harris over Trump was the latest example of US fantasy democracy, the real thing prohibited throughout the country’s history by its ruling class.

Throughout new millennium years, Grand Theft Elections have been facilitated by corporate owned and controlled electronic voting machines.

Cyber security expert Stephen Spoonamore earlier explained that they’re “brilliantly designed (to) steal elections.”

Losers can be declared winners and not just for president.

Time and again, US dark forces get away with election theft because corporate-controlled establishment media conceal it.

The 2020 process was a fantasy election, a coup d’etat by other means — losers Biden/Harris selected over winner Trump to deny him the second term he won.

When losers are declared triumphant over winners, democracy is a mirage, the real thing nowhere in sight.

Make no mistake. If it ever emerged for real in the US, it would be banned.

As long as corporate-controlled electronic voting machines are used in the US, dark forces will decide elections, not the will of the people.

On Tuesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued swing states Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin in the US Supreme Court.

Calling results in these states “unconstitutional,” he argued that these states “flooded their people with unlawful ballot applications and ballots while ignoring statutory requirements as to how they were received, evaluated and counted.”

They “destroyed…trust in the integrity of (the) election” process in their states by unlawful shenanigans.

They breached “statutes enacted by their duly elected legislatures, thereby violating the Constitution.”

Rules governing absentee ballots were changed by “non-legislative actors.”

By so doing, they “preclude(d) knowing who legitimately won the 2020 election and threaten to cloud all future elections.”

Paxton called on SCOTUS “to correct this egregious error (aka brazen fraud)” by ordering the above scofflaw states to suspend their electors until nine High Court justices rule on this issue.

Seventeen (17) states joined the Texas lawsuit: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia.

When disputes between or among states occur, SCOTUS has original jurisdiction to rule on them under the Constitution’s Article III, Section 2, Clause 1.

It gives the Supreme Court exclusive judicial power to rule on “controversies between two or more States…between a State and Citizens of another State; between Citizens of different States…between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects.”

The Texas complaint argues that Pennsylvania Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar “without legislative approval, unilaterally abrogated” PA statutes that require “signature verification for absentee or mail-in ballots.”

The same complaint applies to Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin.

SCOTUS original jurisdiction power is why it accepted the Texas lawsuit without first having to be ruled on at the district and appeals court levels.

According to Paxton, the above four states breached  Constitution’s Article II, Section 1, Clause 2 — the Electors Clause.

It vests “state legislatures with plenary authority regarding the appointment of presidential electors.”

Other state political and judicial officials have no constitutional authority to circumvent legislatively enacted state laws.

The Texas complaint also accuses the above four states of treating voters in their counties differently.

It states that “more favorable treatment (was) allotted to votes (in areas) administered by local government under (Dem) control.”

In so doing, Paxton argued that these states breached the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause.

In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled for Bush over Gore, citing the 14th Amendment that “prohibits the use of differential standards in the treatment and tabulation of ballots within a state.”

In addition, the one-person, one-vote principle “requires counting valid votes and not counting invalid votes.”

In its High Court complaint, Paxton argued that Texas was damaged because in “the shared enterprise of the entire nation electing the president and vice president, equal protection violations in one state can and do adversely affect and diminish the weight of votes cast in states that lawfully abide by the election structure set forth in the Constitution.”

Paxton also claimed that the above four states breached “substantive due process” requirements, saying:

They “fail(ed) to follow state election law(s)” enacted by their legislators.

“(U)unauthorized acts (were engaged in) by state election officials and their designees in local government (to the extent) of patent and fundamental unfairness.”

The states “acted unconstitutionally to lower their election standards…with the express intent to favor their candidate for president.”

Their unconstitutional actions changed Election 2020’s result by circumventing their own laws.

The Texas suit joined by 17 other states calls on the High Court to order the above four states to “conduct a special election to appoint presidential electors.”

If already appointed in one or more of these four states, the Texas lawsuit calls for the Supreme Court to order their legislatures “to appoint a new set of presidential electors in a manner that does not violate the Electors Clause and the Fourteenth Amendment, or to appoint no presidential electors at all.”

Paxton’s lawsuit is unprecedented in US history, his arguments strong and persuasive.

As things now stand, it appears that nine High Court justices will have final say over Trump v. Biden in Election 2020.

Will they uphold the rule of law or swim with the tide, most always following the latter practice.

Momentum at this stage favors leaving things as they now stand, regardless of how unfair and contrary to the rule of law.

If a High Court majority rules for Trump over Biden/Harris — and by its action changes the election’s result — perhaps a national convulsion could follow, what the justices clearly want avoided.

At the same time, failing to reverse brazen fraud will virtually assure that open, free and fair US federal elections no longer exist.

As things now stand, that’s the disturbing reality about US fantasy democracy — the real thing prohibited.

Election 2020 is Exhibit A.

A Final Comment

I’m not encouraged about what’s likely coming.

My sixth sense suggests no change in longstanding dirty business as usual, no High Court ordered reversal of brazen election fraud.

I surely hope the rule of law will triumph over the illegitimate Election 2020 result.

Explaining long odds against things turning out this way, Law Professor Jonathan Turley said the following:

Trump is “running out of runway.” Turning things around in his favor would be like successfully “land(ing) a jumbo jet on a postage stamp.”

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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.

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

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?

The “Great Reset” or the “Great Pretext” … for Dystopia.

By Diana Johnstone, December 09 2020

In the current atmosphere of confusion and distrust, the glee with which economists Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret greet the pandemic as harbinger of their proposed socioeconomic upheaval suggests that if Covid-19 hadn’t come along by accident, they would have created it (had they been able).

How to Get Saved from COVID-19 Under Nuclear Bombs

By Manlio Dinucci, December 09 2020

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. 

Whistleblower: FDA Failed to Address ‘Biohazard Nightmare’ at Merck Vaccine Plant

By Children’s Health Defense, December 09 2020

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.

The U.S. ‘War on Terror’ Has Displaced 37 Million People

By David Vine, December 09 2020

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.

Trump’s Pernicious Military Legacy: From the Forever Wars to the Cataclysmic Wars

By Michael T. Klare, December 09 2020

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.

Beef, Banks and the Brazilian Amazon

By Global Witness, December 09 2020

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.

China Shoots the Moon

By Philip J Cunningham, December 09 2020

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.

Central Africa and South Asia: World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Knew About Rights Abuses by Park Rangers, but Didn’t Respond Effectively

By Ashoka Mukpo, December 09 2020

The reports sent shock waves through the conservation industry, depicting out-of-control eco-guards enforcing the boundaries of protected wildlife reserves through the torture, rape and murder of people living in nearby communities.

Celebrated Artist Mira Lehr Confronts 2020 with New Planetary Visions

By William Spring, December 09 2020

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.

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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Featured image is from CHD

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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Featured image is from CHD

US Sanctions Have Caused Iranians Untold Misery – And Achieved Nothing

By Negar Mortazavi and Sina Toossi, December 08 2020

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.

Bolivarian Social Democracy Triumphs in Venezuelan National Assembly Elections

By Stephen Lendman, December 08 2020

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).

Canada, India Mudslinging over Sikh Farmer Protests

By Sumit Sharma, December 08 2020

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s comments in support of Sikh farmers protesting against new farm laws in India have been met with an unusually sharp rebuff from New Delhi.

Sorry, Boris Johnson Will Not Disappear

By Craig Murray, December 08 2020

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.

OPCW Executives Praised Whistleblower and Criticized Syria Cover-up, Leaks Reveal

By Aaron Mate, December 08 2020

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.

Everyone Is Already Wearing a Mask. They Just Don’t Work.

By Jordan Schachtel, December 08 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.

The Crack-Up at the Federal Reserve Is Coming. Decline of US Dollar, Rejection of Its World Reserve Currency Status

By Rep. Ron Paul, December 08 2020

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 COVID-19 Vaccine; Is the Goal Immunity or Depopulation?

By Mike Whitney, December 08 2020

This is the state of affairs in America today. All real power has been conceded to a globalist oligarchy that operates behind the curtain of corrupt government officials and public health experts. This begs the question of whether the hoopla surrounding the Coronavirus emerged as a spontaneous and appropriate reaction to a lethal and fast-spreading pandemic or whether the hysteria has been greatly exaggerated to implement a transformational political-social agenda.

Palestinians: Victims of ‘Cancel Culture’

By James J. Zogby, December 08 2020

To be sure, there are instances where criticism of Israel can be anti-Semitic, 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.

Federal Court Rejects Trump’s Approval of Offshore Oil-drilling Project in Arctic

By Center For Biological Diversity, December 08 2020

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.

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