On Nov 22, 2019, we, a group of more than 60 medical doctors, wrote to the UK Home Secretary to express our serious concerns about the physical and mental health of Julian Assange.1 In our letter,1 we documented a history of denial of access to health care and prolonged psychological torture. It requested that Assange be transferred from Belmarsh prison to a university teaching hospital for medical assessment and treatment. Faced with evidence of untreated and ongoing torture, we also raised the question as to Assange’s fitness to participate in US extradition proceedings.
Having received no substantive response from the UK Government, neither to our first letter1 nor to our follow-up letter,2 we wrote to the Australian Government, requesting that it intervene to protect the health of its citizen.3 To date, regrettably, no reply has been forthcoming. Meanwhile, many more doctors from around the world have joined us in our call. Our group currently numbers 117 doctors, representing 18 countries.
The case of Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, is multifaceted. It relates to law, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, journalism, publishing, and politics. It also, however, clearly relates to medicine and public health. The case highlights several concerning aspects that warrant the medical profession’s close attention and concerted action.
We were prompted to act following the harrowing eyewitness accounts of former UK diplomat Craig Murray and investigative journalist John Pilger, who described Assange’s deteriorated state at a case management hearing on Oct 21, 2019.4,5 Assange had appeared at the hearing pale, underweight, aged and limping, and he had visibly struggled to recall basic information, focus his thoughts, and articulate his words. At the end of the hearing, he “told district judge Vanessa Baraitser that he had not understood what had happened in court”.6
We drafted a letter to the UK Home Secretary, which quickly gathered more than 60 signatures from medical doctors from Australia, Austria, Germany, Italy, Norway, Poland, Sri Lanka, Sweden, the UK, and the USA, concluding: “It is our opinion that Mr Assange requires urgent expert medical assessment of both his physical and psychological state of health. Any medical treatment indicated should be administered in a properly equipped and expertly staffed university teaching hospital (tertiary care). Were such urgent assessment and treatment not to take place, we have real concerns, on the evidence currently available, that Mr Assange could die in prison. The medical situation is thereby urgent. There is no time to lose.”
On May 31, 2019, the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, Nils Melzer, reported on his May 9, 2019, visit to Assange in Belmarsh, accompanied by two medical experts: “Mr Assange showed all symptoms typical for prolonged exposure to psychological torture, including extreme stress, chronic anxiety and intense psychological trauma.”7
On Nov 1, 2019, Melzer warned, “Mr. Assange’s continued exposure to arbitrariness and abuse may soon end up costing his life”.8
Such warnings and Assange’s presentation at the October hearing should not perhaps have come as a surprise. Assange had, after all, prior to his detention in Belmarsh prison in conditions amounting to solitary confinement, spent almost 7 years restricted to a few rooms in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Here, he had been deprived of fresh air, sunlight, the ability to move and exercise freely, and access to adequate medical care. Indeed, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention had held the confinement to amount to “arbitrary detention of liberty”.9The UK Government refused to grant Assange safe passage to a hospital, despite requests from doctors who had been able to visit him in the embassy.10
There was also a climate of fear surrounding the provision of health care in the Embassy. A medical practitioner who visited Assange at the embassy documented what a colleague of Assange reported: “[T]here had been many difficulties in finding medical practitioners who were willing to examine Mr Assange in the Embassy. The reasons given were uncertainty over whether medical insurance would cover the Equadorian Embassy (a foreign jurisdiction); whether the association with Mr Assange could harm their livelihood or draw unwanted attention to them and their families; and discomfort regarding exposing this association when entering the Embassy. One medical practitioner expressed concern to one of the interviewees after the police took notes of his name and the fact that he was visiting Mr Assange. One medical practitioner wrote that he agreed to produce a medical report only on condition that his name not be made available to the wider public, fearing repercussions.”11
Disturbingly, it seems that this environment of insecurity and intimidation, further compromising the medical care available to Assange, was by design. Assange was the subject of a 24/7 covert surveillance operation inside the embassy, as the emergence of secret video and audio recordings has shown.12
He was surveilled in private and with visitors, including family, friends, journalists, lawyers, and doctors. Not only were his rights to privacy, personal life, legal privilege, and freedom of speech violated, but so, too, was his right to doctor–patient confidentiality.
We condemn the torture of Assange. We condemn the denial of his fundamental right to appropriate health care. We condemn the climate of fear surrounding the provision of health care to him. We condemn the violations of his right to doctor–patient confidentiality. Politics cannot be allowed to interfere with the right to health and the practice of medicine. In the experience of the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture, the scale of state interference is without precedent: “In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic states ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law.”7,12
We invite fellow doctors to join us as signatories to our letters to add further voice to our calls. Since doctors first began assessing Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy in 2015, expert medical opinion and doctors’ urgent recommendations have been consistently ignored. Even as the world’s designated authorities on arbitrary detention, torture, and human rights added their calls to doctors’ warnings, governments have sidelined medical authority, medical ethics, and the human right to health. This politicisation of foundational medical principles is of grave concern to us, as it carries implications beyond the case of Assange. Abuse by politically motivated medical neglect sets a dangerous precedent, whereby the medical profession can be manipulated as a political tool, ultimately undermining our profession’s impartiality, commitment to health for all, and obligation to do no harm.
Should Assange die in a UK prison, as the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture has warned, he will have effectively been tortured to death. Much of that torture will have taken place in a prison medical ward, on doctors’ watch. The medical profession cannot afford to stand silently by, on the wrong side of torture and the wrong side of history, while such a travesty unfolds.
In the interests of defending medical ethics, medical authority, and the human right to health, and taking a stand against torture, together we can challenge and raise awareness of the abuses detailed in our letters. Our appeals are simple: we are calling upon governments to end the torture of Assange and ensure his access to the best available health care before it is too late. Our request to others is this: please join us.
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Notes
1. Doctors for Assange
First letter to the UK Government. Concerns of medical doctors about the plight of Mr Julian Assange. https://medium.com/p/ffb09a5dd588 Date: Nov 25, 2019
Date accessed: February 13, 2020
2. Doctors for Assange
Second letter to the UK Government. Re: medical emergency – Mr Julian Assange. https://medium.com/p/d5b58bca88 Date: Dec 4, 2019
Date accessed: February 13, 2020
3. Doctors for Assange
First letter to the Australian Government. Re: medical emergency – Mr Julian Assange. https://medium.com/p/e19a42597e45 Date: Dec 16, 2019
Date accessed: February 13, 2020
5. Pilger J
John Pilger – Julian Assange could barely speak in court!. https://youtu.be/GLXzudMCyM4 Date: Oct 23, 2019
Date accessed: February 13, 2020
Nel 75° anniversario del bombardamento atomico di Hiroshima e Nagasaki, il presidente della Repubblica Sergio Mattarella ha ribadito che «l’Italia sostiene con forza l’obiettivo di un mondo libero da armi nucleari». Gli ha fatto eco il presidente della Commissione Difesa della Camera, Gianluca Rizzo (M5S): «Faccio mie le parole del presidente della Repubblica per una politica che punti ad un mondo libero da armi nucleari». Massimo impegno istituzionale dunque, ma in quale direzione? Facciamo parlare i fatti.
L’Italia ha ratificato nel 1975 il Trattato di non-proliferazione delle armi nucleari (Tnp), che stabilisce: «Ciascuno degli Stati militarmente non nucleari, parte del Trattato, si impegna a non ricevere da chicchessia armi nucleari, né il controllo su tali armi, direttamente o indirettamente». Violando il Tnp, l’Italia ha concesso proprie basi per lo schieramento di armi nucleari Usa: attualmente bombe B61, il cui numero è stimato in alcune decine ma non è verificabile. Sono installate nelle basi di Aviano, insieme a caccia Usa F-16C/D, e a Ghedi-Torre dove Tornado PA-200 dell’Aeronautica italiana sono pronti all’attacco nucleare sotto comando Usa.
L’Italia – conferma la Nato – fa parte dei paesi che «forniscono all’Alleanza aerei equipaggiati per trasportare bombe nucleari, su cui gli Stati uniti mantengono l’assoluto controllo, e personale addestrato a tale scopo». La B61 sarà sostituita tra non molto dalla B61-12: una nuova bomba nucleare, con una potenza selezionabile al momento del lancio, che si dirige con precisione sull’obiettivo ed ha la capacità di penetrare nel sottosuolo per distruggere i bunker dei centri di comando.
Il programma del Pentagono prevede la costruzione di 500 B61-12, con una spesa di 10 miliardi di dollari. Il programma è nella fase finale: nei poligoni nel Nevada sono in corso test di lancio della nuova bomba (senza testata nucleare). Tra gli aerei che vengono certificati per il suo uso vi sono il Tornado PA-200 e il nuovo F-35A, in dotazione all’Aeronautica italiana. Non si sa quante B61-12 verranno schierate in Italia e altri paesi europei. Esse potrebbero essere più delle precedenti B-61 ed essere installate anche in altre basi. Quella di Ghedi, ristrutturata, può accogliere fino a 30 caccia F-35A con 60 B61-12. Alle nuove bombe si aggiungono le armi nucleari della Sesta Flotta di stanza in Italia, il cui tipo e numero sono segreti. Inoltre, stracciato il Trattato Inf, gli Usa stanno sviluppando missili nucleari a gittata intermedia con base a terra, che, come gli euromissili degli anni Ottanta, potrebbero essere installati anche in basi italiane.
L’Italia, ufficialmente Stato non-nucleare, svolge così la sempre più pericolosa funzione di base avanzata della strategia nucleare Usa/Nato contro la Russia e altri paesi. Quale membro del Consiglio Nord Atlantico, l’Italia ha respinto nel 2017 il Trattato Onu sulla abolizione delle armi nucleari. Nello stesso anno oltre 240 parlamentari italiani – in maggior parte del Pd e M5S, gli attuali partiti di governo – si sono impegnati, firmando l’Appello Ican, a promuovere l’adesione dell’Italia al Trattato Onu. In prima fila l’attuale presidente della Commissione Difesa, Gianluca Rizzo, e l’attuale ministro degli Esteri Luigi Di Maio.
Tre anni dopo, alla prova dei fatti, il loro solenne impegno si rivela un espediente demagogico per raccogliere voti. Per attuare in Italia «una politica che punti ad un mondo libero da armi nucleari», come declama Gianluca Rizzo, non c’è che un modo: liberare l’Italia dalle armi nucleari, come prescrive il Tnp, e aderire al Trattato Onu, attuando quanto stabilisce: «Ciascuno Stato che abbia sul proprio territorio armi nucleari, possedute o controllate da un altro Stato, deve assicurare la rapida rimozione di tali armi». I firmatari dell’Impegno Ican richiedano quindi agli Stati uniti di rimuovere qualsiasi arma nucleare dall’Italia. Se in Parlamento c’è qualcuno che voglia un mondo libero da armi nucleari, lo dimostri non a parole ma con i fatti.
It would seem a logical step, at least from an existential perspective: to ban something so utterly horrendous to life; to forbid its use in any circumstances, whatever rationale employed to justify its use. But the nuclear weapon has its admirers. There are those who continue to worship its sovereign properties, and those who leave gifts at the shrine of extended deterrence. Be wary, they say, of the abolitionists.
The 75th anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings should have encouraged much reflection on current attitudes to the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Passed on July 7, 2017, it has become a focal point for advocates of a nuclear-weapons free world, and a source of irritation for nuclear weapons states who are not only dragging their feet but going in the opposite direction.
Increased interest in the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty is not accidental. Jayantha Dhanapala, the second director of the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, considered the document as arising from an unruly environment. “In the nuclear field, we are almost back to the years immediately after the Second World War, when rules for the nuclear age had yet to be developed.” He warned that humanity risked deluding itself into thinking “that war between nuclear-weapon states is a malady of the past, no longer deserving attention.”
Dhanapala sketches the fault line in the nuclear disarmament debate. Nuclear Weapons States (NWS) and their allies face non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS), both camps supposedly harbouring the same objective of eliminating nuclear weapons. Both, however, make off from different stations: the NWS group insisting on “first achieving security and then nuclear disarmament”; the NNWS group preferring to reach an agreement to banning nuclear weapons “followed by its gradual implementation.” The outcome of such different positions is clear: not a single nuclear weapons power has joined the regime, as they remain in love with their nukes, while all 43 ratifying states, to date, lack them.
The strangest spectacle in this disagreement is provided by those powers lacking nuclear weapons but relieved about those powers in guardianship that do. The security argument prevails, formally under that fanciful but dangerous notion that an “umbrella of extended nuclear deterrence” exists to provide comfort. For that reason Japan, despite being a noisy voice regarding the non-use and eventual elimination of nuclear weapons, has refused to endorse the weapons ban. Hiroshima’s Mayor Kazumi Matsui will have none of it, and took the commemorative occasion to encourage the Japanese government to abandon that position.
“Hiroshima considers it our duty to build in civil society a consensus that the people of the world must unite to achieve nuclear weapons abolition and lasting world peace.”
At Nagasaki, similar sentiments were expressed by Mayor Tomihisa Taue, who found it “incomprehensible” that Japan’s treaty signature had been withheld. He noted his concern that the appetite for nuclear disarmament had apparently been lost in recent years. Both the United States and Russia had placed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty on the rubbish tip of history. “As a result, the threat of nuclear weapons being used is increasingly becoming real.” Despite the sterling efforts of the atomic bomb survivors (the hibakusha) to make Nagasaki the final place of such a tragedy, “the true horror of nuclear weapons has not yet been adequately conveyed to the world at large”.
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has dismissed the treaty as pie in the sky nonsense, showing that the abolition of nuclear weapons remains a dream kept symbolically necessary but practically unrealisable. This serves ceremonial relevance, the sort of cant that has governed disarmament policies since the race for the nuke got away.
While essential to the cult of Japanese victimhood as the only country whose citizens suffered such bombings, nuclear weapons remained valuable even as these commemorations took place.
“The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons,” Abe explained dismissively, “was adopted without taking into consideration the reality of the harsh national security environment.”
Japan continued to face the threats posed to modernised nuclear weapons programmes from “neighbouring countries in the region.”
Foreign Minister Taro Kono, in justifying Japan’s continued refusal to append its signature, emphasised the divisions between the various schools of thought. There were those testing disagreements between nuclear weapons states and non-nuclear nations. There were those within non-nuclear states. Rather deviously, Kono suggested that Japan might play a bridging role, seeking “common ground” between the camps that would lead to nuclear disarmament and abolition.
Australia, ever willing to deputise for the US in the Asia Pacific, has also shown marked reluctance to stigmatise the nuke. Few can forget its role as foiled spoiler in the UN working group on nuclear disarmament in 2016. Australian diplomats made it clear that they had no interest in seeing any document banning nuclear weapons emerge from what they hoped would be a futile talking shop. The attitudes of Australian officials in the group was exposed in documents obtained under Freedom of Information by the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN). “So long as the threat of nuclear attack and coercion exists,” states one document from foreign ministry officials, “US extended deterrence will serve Australia’s fundamental national security interests.” Wishing to be the vibrant dissenters at the party, they promised “a strong alternative viewpoint, notably against those states who wish to push a near-term ban treaty.”
During the course of negotiations, Australian officials thought it necessary to remain in “close contact” with Washington “about our shared concerns” on the working group’s disturbing move towards recommending “negotiations on a ‘ban treaty’”. It was good of them, seeing as the United States had boycotted the talks. At stages, concerns were noted about the “humanitarianism” being pursued in the discussions – because you would not want that when discussing weapons of extermination.
In 2017, John Quinn, Australia’s ambassador for Disarmament and Permanent Representative of Australia to the United Nations, delivered a classic display of repudiation and approbation on nuclear weapons. There was the mandatory mention: Australia shared “the widespread commitment to achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.” But the nuclear weapons prohibition treaty was not the way to go about it. The humanitarian impulses behind the document had deepened division (that word again), “created damaging ambiguities” and creating a rival forum on disarmament. The significance of Australia’s rejection of the treaty – and here, the gloves come off – is that it “seeks to delegitimise extended deterrence. The ban treaty will not advance nuclear disarmament or security.”
This is not a position that shows any sign of altering. “Australia does not support the ‘ban treaty’ which we believe would not eliminate a single nuclear weapon,” states the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Sounding much like Abe, it mocks the document for rejecting “the realities of the global security environment”. The treaty lacks the security assurances found in traditional mechanisms supplied by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and “would be inconsistent with our US alliance obligations.”
It follows that those claiming a normative shift in the ban treaty towards stigmatising the use of such weapons have their work cut out for them. In some cases, the more vigorous opposition has not even come from the expected quarter. Nuclear weapons states have simply refused to abandon their crown jewels, leaving the loudest barking against the ban treaty to their faithful, deluded allies who cling, desperately, to the fable of extended nuclear deterrence.
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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 the Union of Concerned Scientists
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In Sweden, there’s no masks, no lockdown, no vaccine, and most importantly, no problem.
Life has largely returned to normal in Sweden, and it all happened without the economy-destroying non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) demanded by the “public health expert” class, who guaranteed that chaos would come to every country that disobeyed their commands to hit the self-destruct button for their nations.
Rather than hold the line against peaceful protests that morphed into rebellion after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis on May 25th, enfeebled Democratic officials on the front lines appeared to stand docile against the mob rule when, in reality, their impotence was more of a well honed strategy of acquiescence. In a display of massive hubris threatening disintegration of the country’s sovereignty, those Elected continue to play a ruthless partisan game abstaining on the ultimate destruction of their own country and the municipality for which they are legally responsible.
The Establishment explanation for what occurred in Beirut’s port on August 5th is that the horrific series of explosions that killed hundreds, injured thousands and left hundreds of thousands homeless was a terrible accident that came about due to a multi-faceted failure by Lebanon’s corrupt and incompetent government. Or at least that is the prevalent narrative in the international media, but a more critical examination of what took place is a bit like peeling an onion only to discover that there are layers and layers of alternative possibilities that just might place the catastrophe in a broader context.
Michael J. Matt takes a look at some good news regarding the Covid recovery rate before exploring what’s really going on with the global pandemic.
To understand this, he takes us to Switzerland—to the World Economic Forum—where the movers and shakers of the world have been meeting on a regular basis, especially since January 2020, to plan ‘The Great Reset’ at the Davos 2021 Summit in January.
What we have to realize is that the global, country-by-country destruction – happening simultaneously – is not a coincidence.
It has been planned for decades. Thousands of pages were written alone for the preparation of such documents, like the 2010 Rockefeller Report and the preparation of Event 201 in NYC on October 18, 2019, as well as “studies” for WHO to justify calling the new corona virus (SARS-2-2019 / COVID-19) a pandemic that eventually prompted a worldwide lockdown around mid-March 2020.
Dr Amir Khan appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain today, suggesting men – who are notionally at increased risk of coronavirus infection – should take a contraceptive pill filled with oestrogen. His theory, which he did not support with research, is that the oestrogen will boost the male immune system.
Hormone treatment is a big deal, potentially dangerous and seriously life-changing. To suggest its use to treat a disease which is harmless in over 95% of cases is borderline insanity, especially with no research to back it up. We tweeted about at the time, but GMB’s twitter account has since deleted the video.
The two state of the art weapons released over the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki constituted the most devastating blasts of all time.
According to the best estimates of anti-nuclear weapons scientists, anywhere from 110,000 to 210,000 people died in the twin holocausts. Two thirds of the city of Hiroshima were wiped out in a single attack, the equivalent of 15,000 tons of TNT.
The explosion in the port of Beirut in early August that caused thousands of casualties became a trigger point for the further development of the already existing crisis in Lebanon.
In the following week days after the August 4 explosion, a series of large-scale protests took place in Beirut. Protesters clashed with police, hung cardboard figures of Lebanese politicians, like President Michel Aoun and Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, and stormed government buildings, including the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of the Economy, the Ministry of the Environment, the Association of Banks and the Ministry of Energy and Water. As of August 10, a few dozen people have already been injured and protests continue.
A number of Lebanese politicians, who are known to be close to the West, announced their resignation from the country’s Parliament. The Lebanese Minister of Information, Manal Abdel Samad, also resigned along with the Environment Minister Damianus Qitar. According to the Lebanese media, a number of other ministers are planning to announce their resignation soon. The Lebanese government is about to end its existence in its current form.
The protests received wide coverage in Israeli media, which painted the crisis as a ‘popular resistance’ against Hezbollah and political parties that cooperate with it. Various pro-Israeli sources actively speculate that the entire tragedy was likely caused due to the ‘destructive Hezbollah actions’ if not a Hezbollah weapon depot explosion. The Hezbollah political wing is an official political party in Lebanon and its Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc has 13 seats. The movement itself through its social, economic and security programs has strong popular support across the country. Slogans and chants known to be allies of the U.S. expectedly received less coverage.
The deepening crisis in Lebanon also caused a notable reaction on the international level, in particular with the United States and France actively offering their assistance. US President Donald Trump, who already declared that the explosion may have been an attack, was especially active in calling about the need to find the party behind the Beirut explosions. Taking into account the general course of the Trump administration aimed at the confrontation with the Iranian-led bloc in the Middle East and its unconditional support to Israel, it’s easy to suggest whom the White House will find guilty in the crisis.
At the same time, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) continued their military buildup on the contact line with southern Lebanon and in the occupied area of Syria’s Golan Heights. On August 9, Lt. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Chief of the General Staff of the IDF, came with new accusations against Iran claiming that the shelling of Israeli forces on the separation line with the Syrians was linked with Iran. In his speech, Lt. Gen. Kochavi set the Israeli goals in what he called the “battle between wars” as follows:
The Iranian nuclear program.
Preventing the “radical axis” [Iran and its allies] from establishing a presence in Syria.
Denying Israel’s enemies on all fronts, especially in the north, from obtaining precision-guided missiles and munitions.
IDF troops in northern Israel have been on a high alert since July 20, when a series of Israeli strikes on the Syrian capital, Damascus, killed a fighter of Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
In fact, the Beirut port explosions became a gift for the Israeli political leadership and its supporters giving them a chance to use the crisis to achieve their goals in Lebanon. The observed diplomatic and media activity demonstrates that Tel Aviv and Washington have already started a campaign to undermine positions of Hezbollah, at least on the political level, and fuel tensions between supporters of the group and the relatively pro-Western part of the population. Clandestine actions to fuel chaos in Lebanon are likely to follow.
The main problem of this approach is that in the case of success, it may lead to a new cycle of violence and civilian casualties in Lebanon, first of all in Beirut and may even trigger the resumption of clashes on the Lebanese-Israeli contact line. Nonetheless, this is the price that the pro-Israel bloc is ready to pay to achieve its political goals and deny the Lebanese the ability to protect its national sovereignty from foreign actors in any foreseeable future.
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Wang Yunfei, a recently retired Chinese naval officer announced online that U.S. President Donald Trump could launch a “controlled” military conflict with China in the South China Sea to increase his chances in the upcoming presidential election. Some analysts are so confident that they can say with precision that an armed conflict between the U.S. and China in the South China Sea will be specifically at Scarborough Shoal.
Armed conflict could erupt in any part of the South China Sea, but because American and Chinese warships and aircraft carriers pass dangerously close together here, this is the most cited location of a conflict between the two countries. U.S. intrusions into the space above the South China Sea has been steadily increasing, with 35 reconnaissance missions in May, 49 in June and 67 in July. Undoubtedly the reconnaissance missions are increasing in number as hostilities continue to build month on month as we approach the U.S. presidential elections in November.
Trump cannot simply declare a war on China as congressional approval would be required. Although many former U.S. presidents have declared war without congressional approval, media and rival politicians will jump on the fact that Trump declared war without approval, which could lead to an impeachment – a risk Trump is unlikely to take. Military leaders would also be against any war with China knowing that to declare victory they would have to occupy much of mainland China, including Beijing, a near impossible task. The belligerent rhetoric of Trump and his administration however is welcomed by the powerful U.S. industrial-military complex that will massively profit from any escalation, but this will not be enough for Washington to declare war.
The American President received considerable support among American voters in the 2016 election campaign because of his anti-Chinese position, blaming China as the reason for joblessness in the U.S. and a downturn in the economy. The American people have heard endlessly that China is doing illegal manoeuvres in the South China Sea, that Beijing violates human rights in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet, and that China created the COVID-19 pandemic.
It is with little surprise that anti-China sentiment has grown out of control in the U.S., with a recent Pew poll finding that 73% of Americans have a negative view of China. This is by far the worst index for China in 15 years and was a 26-point increase from 2018. Faith in Chinese President Xi Jinping to “do the right thing in world affairs” has also deteriorated, with 77% of Americans having little or no confidence in him, up 6 percentage points since March and 27 points since last year.
This large distrust the American public has against China is largely due to an intense campaign to portray the Asian country in the most negative light possible. A common tactic to unite voters behind a presidential candidate is to create a common enemy to pin problems too, including domestic issues. For Trump, China is an easy adversary to blame for the U.S.’ continued economic decline and COVID-19 getting out of control. Trump has certainly succeeded in making China the main enemy of the U.S., but will this be enough to secure his re-election against Democrat Candidate Joe Biden?
Voters see the Trump administration’s action against Beijing as an expression of American strength. By manipulating and provoking China to the verge of conflict, Trump hopes to receive support from U.S. voters in the upcoming presidential election. However, there is still a strong element in the U.S. who says that although China may be at fault for spreading COVID-19 globally, despite some theories that the virus did not actually begin in China, Trump is entirely at fault for the U.S. having over 5 million total cases and 160,000 deaths attributed to the virus.
Although Yunfei fears that the U.S. will begin a conflict with China over the South China Sea, it is highly unlikely that a conflict, which is impossible for either side to win, will ensue. Such a drastic action could in fact turn the U.S. public against Trump, especially as the death toll of American soldiers will rapidly rise in such a conflict. Having a so-called soft hostility with China via sanctions and a fake news campaign is sufficient to portray Trump as the only one who can protect America’s interests against supposed Chinese aggression. It is highly unlikely that provocations in the South China Sea will result in a conflict, especially on the eve of the presidential elections.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.
Here in the United States, we have become inundated with tales of COVID-19 doom and gloom. In America, the mainstream narrative is rife with hopelessness.
We are told that there is simply no way to stop this virus without repetitive lockdowns, healthy quarantine, even of asymptomatic individuals, and universal mask mandates.
And even with all of those extreme policy measures put in place, the politicians and public health officials tell us that we will have to wait for a vaccine for the country to even think about our “new normal” following the COVID-19 pandemic.
There’s one country that they don’t seem to want to talk about – Sweden. And for good reason. Sweden debunks the hysteria. Sweden shows how unnecessary all of the interventions to “fight” the virus are. Sweden shows us that a rational, evidence-based approach to the pandemic is now thriving.
In Sweden, there’s no masks, no lockdown, no vaccine, and most importantly, no problem.
Life has largely returned to normal in Sweden, and it all happened without the economy-destroying non-pharmaceutical interventions (NPI) demanded by the “public health expert” class, who guaranteed that chaos would come to every country that disobeyed their commands to hit the self-destruct button for their nations.
The Swedish government has provided its advanced metrics on the COVID-19 pandemic to the public, and the data includes the ever-important statistics on actual day of death, and other useful information. I ran the numbers month by month so you can get a very clear picture of Sweden’s downward trend.
In August, Sweden has registered just one death (!) with/from the coronavirus. Yes, you read that correctly. One death so far.
For the month of July, Sweden reported 226 deaths. They’ve accounted for 805 June deaths, 1646 in May, and 2572 in April. The deaths attributed to COVID-19 went from about a 50% reduction to falling off of a cliff.
The story is the same in the hospitals. COVID-19 is hardly registering as a blip on the radar. Sweden has reported just 4 new COVID-19 patients in their ICUs in August. The month of July saw only 52 COVID-19 patients in ICUs.
It doesn’t take a math whiz to come to the conclusion that the epidemic appears to have been wrapped up in Sweden for months. It’s unclear whether this is a result of having achieved the herd immunity threshold, or if the seasonality of the virus is providing indefinite relief. But it’s become absolutely clear that Sweden’s long term pandemic strategy is working.
Sweden did not do everything perfectly. Stockholm, like much of the West, failed to protect its nursing home population. The majority of the COVID-19 deaths in Sweden have come from the senior care population, with the average age of death (82) being the same as the average lifespan in the country. But remember, people in nursing homes are not mobile. They live in their own ecosystems and are not particularly impacted by COVID-19 policies. It was Sweden’s general population that was supposed to be plagued by their open society model to respond to the virus. We were told that the hospitals would be overrun, and that bodies of all ages would be dropping in the streets. This dystopian pandemia projection never came to fruition. Even during the worst months of the pandemic, Sweden’s general population never pressed their healthcare system. The same is true in the United States, but for whatever reason, many U.S. officials and “public health experts” have pushed the idea that everyone is equally impacted, which could not be further from the truth.
For this pandemic, the global public health expert class threw the pandemic playbook out the window, disregarding hundreds of years of proven science on herd immunity, in order to attempt to assert human control over a submicroscopic infectious particle. It hasn’t worked, to say the least. There is no evidence anywhere in the world that lockdowns or masks have *stopped* the spread of the virus. Sweden was one of the few places where cooler heads prevailed, and the scientists realized that attempts to stop the virus would be worse than the disease itself, in the form of economic and social ruin.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has proposed the next multi-trillion dollar “coronavirus relief” spending bill that will support testing, tracing, treatment, isolation, and mask policies that have been part of a “national strategic plan” she has been advocating. The Trump administration is not opposing Pelosi’s plan on principle. Instead, it is haggling over the price.
But, even if the strategic plan could be implemented at little or no monetary cost, it would still impose an unacceptable cost in lost liberty.
Pelosi’s plan will lead to either a federal mask mandate or federal funding of state and local mask mandate enforcement. Those who resist wearing masks could likely be reported to the authorities by government-funded mask monitors. We can label this the “Stasi” approach to health policy, after the infamous East German secret police force.
Contact tracing could lead to forcing individuals to download a tracing app. The app would record where an individual goes and alert authorities that an individual has been near someone who has tested positive for coronavirus.
The strategic plan could eventually include Bill Gates’ and Anthony Fauci’s suggestion that individuals receive “digital certificates” indicating they are vaccinated for or immune to coronavirus. A certificate would be required before an individual can go to work, to school, or even to the grocery store. The need to demonstrate vaccination for or immunity to coronavirus in order to resume normal life would cause many people to “voluntarily” receive a potentially dangerous coronavirus vaccine.
The Trump administration has already spent billions of dollars to support efforts of companies to develop a coronavirus vaccine. Policymakers have stated that once a vaccine is developed it will be rushed into production and onto the market. Supporters of expediting production and use of a vaccine should remember the 1976 swine flu vaccine debacle. The swine flu vaccine was rushed into production in response to political pressure to “do something.” The result was a vaccine that was more of a danger than the flu.
Unfortunately, those who raise legitimate concerns regarding the safety of vaccines are smeared as “conspiracy theorists.” This is the equivalent of stating that anyone who dares criticize our interventionist foreign policy “hates freedom” and is probably a “terrorist sympathizer.”
The coronavirus panic has given new life to the push for a unique patient identifier. The unique patient identifier was authorized in 1996, but appropriations bills since 1998 have contained a provision forbidding the federal government from developing and implementing the identifier. Unfortunately, two weeks ago, the House of Representatives voted to repeal the ban. The unique patient identifier would aid government efforts to track and vaccinate every American, as well as to infringe in other ways on liberty in the name of “health.”
Politicians and bureaucrats cannot eliminate a virus any more than they can eliminate terrorism. What they can do is use terrorism, a virus, and other real, exaggerated, or manufactured crises to expand their power at the expense of our liberty.
Politicians will never resist the temptation to use crises as excuses to gain more power. Therefore, it is up to those of us who know the truth to spread the message of liberty and grow the liberty movement, A strong liberty movement is the only thing that can force the politicians to stop stealing our liberty while promising phantom security from terrorists and viruses.
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In case you missed it, not one member of the Democratic hierarchy: not the DNC Chair, not one Democratic Member of Congress, Governor or Mayor, has spoken out to criticize the myriad of riots occurring across US cities or to call on Antifa/BLM to halt the violence. And in case you might have missed the depth of the widespread revolts, try this sampling of domestic terrorist attacks which occurred in major US cities in recent days.
Rather than hold the line against peaceful protests that morphed into rebellion after George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis on May 25th, enfeebled Democratic officials on the front lines appeared to stand docile against the mob rule when, in reality, their impotence was more of a well honed strategy of acquiescence. In a display of massive hubris threatening disintegration of the country’s sovereignty, those Elected continue to play a ruthless partisan game abstaining on the ultimate destruction of their own country and the municipality for which they are legally responsible.
To suggest that these Elected are simply following the current Democratic Party line to defeat Donald Trump is to miss the ideological revolution that is occurring as a result of the coronavirus panic. Government take over of its citizens personal lives has always been identified as fascistic as Democratic Governors and big city Mayors behavior has stoked the fear and anxiety to justify a tyrannical political revolution that could never have been accomplished otherwise.
Historically, a totalitarian – fascist ideology gives the State the right to take charge of all aspects of life with the State monitoring and dictating what is acceptable thought and action. The ultimate goal is to impose a uniformity of thought, word and deed as a rationale to “protect” the common good, whether that imposition is by legal mandate or social pressure.
Clearly, Lockdown requirements have allowed the Elected to capitalize on their power grab, to block the American’s celebrated individual rights and liberty, revealing a strategy of total control over the American population. With the Quantum World at the door to initiate a world of peace and compassion free of corruption and violence, the Elected have exhibited a gross lack of consciousness to the welfare of the country as those same Elected owe their allegiance to the ruling Globalists more than the Stars and Stripes.
Senate Subcommittee Hearing
As if to prove the point during a recent hearing of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution regarding “The Right of the People Peaceably to Assemble: Protecting Speech by Stopping Anarchist Violence,” Democrats on the panel were eager to deplore violence by white supremacist groups. As apologists for the political insurgency of Antifa/BLM, there was no willingness to condemn all violence from any source, as if living where violence and peace are Orwellian contradictions.
What those Senators missed was that there has been no white supremacist backlash when such an irrational response might have easily occurred. While two Republican Senators spoke unequivocally in favor of free speech, the First Amendment and against all violence no matter who the perpetrators, neither Trump nor GOP stalwarts are protecting the Rule of Law any better or resisting the oppression that came with COVID. They are dutiful accomplices.
While defunding local law enforcement promises to invite more criminal malfeasance, the reality is that the violent rebellions and criminal uprisings are too well organized to have been spontaneous or organized by amateurs. The ‘riots’ were never random events but well coordinated to exploit Floyd’s death and have served as a major diversion from the stalled-out Durham investigation into the origins of Russiagate which has dwindled into a nothing burger.
According to Subcommittee testimony, the violence has been organized by the Antifa-affiliated local chapter of the Youth Liberation Front which uses Twitter to communicate with its cells across the country. It is Twitter that provides the means for YLF to espouse violent acts to destabilize the country and announce their next act of rebellion. Twitter has yet to ban the YLF for violating its community guidelines.
The subcommittee heard testimony that as the insurrections and violence intensified into a war zone in Portland and elsewhere, an alarming sophisticated display of armaments have been used including encrypted radio communications, use of unencrypted chat applications like Signal, the use of brass knuckles hidden under gloves, metal pipes and incendiary projectiles, molotov cocktails to firebomb the Federal courthouse, commercial grade lasers weaponized to target law enforcement eyes and AK 47’s as militants attacked police headquarters in residential neighborhoods.
Scrawled across the Federal Courthouse in Portland was “Until the police and ICE are abolished, we will burn this city down piece by piece.”
Dems Lack Legal Authority to Enforce Lockdowns
Just as there is an argument that local Elected have no Constitutional legal authority via Executive Orders to violate Amendments to the US Constitution, there is also an argument that those Elected resolve the utter mess they themselves have created by their own dysfunctional politics and not rely on Federal funding to offset the costs of the sedition they themselves have encouraged.
Here are a few egregious examples that show the Democratic establishment beholden to authoritarian principles straight out of the totalitarian – fascist play book:
On June 15th, New York CityMayor Bill di Blasiodisbanded the city’s plainclothes anti crime unit of 600 detectives, immediately spawning a dramatic 205% increase in shootings, more than all of 2019. More recently, offering no science or justification, di Blasio announced the establishment of armed checkpoints with plainclothes agents along the perimeter of NYC to enforce NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s mandatory quarantine list. DiBlasio gave no details about how the quarantine would be enforced although a $10,000 fine would be imposed by those who ‘flout’ the quarantine.
In a karmic twist of irony, NY Governor Andrew Cuomo has been openly pleading (“Come over, I’ll cook”) with New Yorkers who have fled the City. Cuomo needs those wealthy residents to return so the City can collect their surcharge tax to offset State/city COVID shutdown costs. On the other hand, diBlasio said he ‘was not going to beg’ and does “not make decisions based on the wealthy few” but that “we must build our policies around working people.”
In referring to the success of Los Angeles’s Lockdown measures, LA Mayor Erik Garcetti said “this has really been marvelously embraced by 99.9% of people but “we will hunt down the last .1% to obey the rules.” As if flaunting his fascist tendencies, Garcelli has authorized the city to “shut off Los Angeles Department of Water and Power service in egregious cases in which business and homes and other venues are hosting unpermitted large gatherings.“
Then there was CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) Summer of Love until it wasn’t – when protesters marched onMayor Jenny Durkan’s 5,000 sq ft mansion. Seattle Councilor Kshama Sawant called for Durkan’s impeachment with the Mayor requesting a Council investigation into Sawant’s relationship with BLM.
Oath of Office
In a nutshell, it is no exaggeration to assert that those State/City Elected who continue to allow an excess of violence and terrorism to threaten the local peace are in violation of their Oath of Office. Where each Elected swore to uphold not only the Constitution and its laws but to preserve the civil order and to protect the fiduciary assets of their constituency; to act ethically, in good faith and trust, those Elected, in some of the country’s most Democratic leaning states, have failed to do so.
It is a given that, upon election and prior to assuming Office, every Elected takes an Oath that is substantially the same regardless of the political jurisdiction:
“I will support the US Constitution and the laws of the State/City of ______ and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Office of ______ to the best of my ability.”
If, in fact, State/City Elected are unwilling or unprepared to fulfill their Oath of Office, they should be removed from office by either a voter recall petition or, to preserve what is left of their integrity and honor, and resign from office.
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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She can be found at [email protected].
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called last week for “a new alliance of democracies” to fight what he called “the tentacles of the Chinese Communist Party”. In a speech delivered at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California, Mr Pompeo bluntly called for “the freedom-loving nations of the world” to band together to oppose it.
Some regard the remarks as being recklessly confrontational. Others point out that there are plenty of countries that do not wish to choose between the US and China, and need to remain on civil terms with both countries.
I would agree with both statements; but here I wish to concentrate on Mr Pompeo’s view that the world is divided into two camps.
“The challenge of China demands exertion, energy from democracies,” he said, “those in Europe, those in Africa, those in South America, and especially those in the Indo-Pacific region.”
Such a putative alliance of democracies makes little sense. For Mr Pompeo is making a category error. He is attempting to corral a hugely disparate cohort of countries together on the supposition that all democracies are essentially alike and share the same interests and values. And on this he could not be more wrong.
Some democracies are liberal democracies, of course; and it is implicit in Mr Pompeo’s speech that this model – as practised in North America and western Europe – is what he has in mind. There are also states whose populations have freely voted for a more conservative, even explicitly “illiberal”, direction, most notably Hungary and Poland, but which nevertheless remain democracies.
But there is a third class of countries, possibly the majority in Africa and Asia, and certainly in the Indo-Pacific region that Mr Pompeo underlined, that have such different cultures and values that it makes no meaningful sense to say that they have the same political systems as those of France or America.
Some more perceptive western analysts are aware of this. On a Twitter discussion about Mr Pompeo’s speech, Professor Patrick Porter of Birmingham University pointed out that with states such as India or Indonesia, “labelling them liberal democracies is glib”. I would go further and state unequivocally that Indonesia has never been a liberal democracy, and that under Narendra Modi neither is India.
There is a problem of long-term perception here, that I explored at length in a despatch from Asia published by the Erasmus Forum earlier this year.
On independence, or on achieving freedom from dictatorship, many developing states looked like liberal democracies. No wonder. As James Chin, Director of the Asia Institute at the University of Tasmania, has written:
“More often than not, local elites simply imported and modified the political systems of their European overlords. Thus, former British colonies Singapore and Malaysia adopted the Westminster system, while the Philippines took on the US system.” Indonesia and Thailand embraced aspects of both, he said.
Newer constitutions, such as those established in 1993 in Cambodia and 2008 in Myanmar, have made sure to mention key liberal democratic concepts such as separating the legislative, executive and judicial powers.
But the high visibility of westernised and frequently western-educated elites often obscured the fact that many of these countries were never truly “liberal” as Europeans understand the term. Religion occupied too prominent a space in politics and cultural norms for that to be so, as did a tendency towards both authoritarianism – dictators such as Indonesia’s General Suharto and the Philippines’ Ferdinand Marcos are celebrated by many of their countrymen to this day – and majoritarianism.
It was those countries’ right to take these courses; but they diverged significantly from the western liberal democratic model.
The idea of universal rights is shared with the West. But documents such as the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam (1990) and the Bangkok Declaration (1993) stress their own versions, requiring accordance with Islamic Sharia in the first instance, and “national and regional particularities and various historical, cultural and religious backgrounds” in the second.
The late Malaysian intellectual Noordin Sopiee mentioned another difference. In Asian societies, he wrote, there was “dramatically less importance attached to: ‘thinking for oneself’, ‘free expression’, ‘open debate’, and ‘individual rights’.” More important, he said, were: “hard work, respect for authority, the ethic of the community rather than the individual, love of consensus and harmony, an orderly society.”
In these countries, I concluded in my Erasmus Forum despatch: “Outsiders see the facade of liberal democracy. They do not realise that inside many of the furnishings – including overriding attachments to liberal values and individual rights – are missing.”
Sheikh Zayed, the Founding Father, meets citizens in Ghayathi in 1976. Mike Pompeo fails to take account other forms of democratic consultation, such as the majlis in the Arabian Gulf.
The facade is sometimes deeply misleading. When the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia finished its post-civil war mandate in 1993, the country was supposed to be a flourishing democracy with ample room for civil society. But this was all a “mirage on the Mekong”, according to Sebastian Strangio, author of the excellent forthcoming book Cambodia: From Pol Pot to Hun Sen and Beyond. The iron grip of long-time leader Hun Sen has rarely wavered.
Cambodia is an extreme example, and cannot be considered a democracy of any kind. And to be clear, far from criticising developing countries that are not liberal democracies, I believe in their right to develop systems of government that make sense locally, and which draw on their own values, culture and history. These were all too often suppressed under colonial rule and their re-emergence may constitute a more authentic representation of national identities.
Mr Pompeo misses all this. He appears to think that democracy is one-size-fits-all. He also fails to take account other forms of democratic consultation, such as the majlis and shura council tradition in parts of the Arab world.
So a true “alliance of democracies” would be so all-encompassing that it would include many states that are not very “liberal” and see no reason to pick a fight with China. If Mr Pompeo wants to get together a group of liberal democracies to gang up on Beijing, that is a different thing, and he should say so. Meanwhile there will be a host of other healthy democracies that will not want to.
Saying that all democracies are the same is a tired old habit that ignores the different value systems that animate the practice of democracy around the continents. By this point in the 21st century, America’s top diplomat should certainly know better.
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Sholto Byrnes is a commentator and consultant in Kuala Lumpur and a corresponding fellow of the Erasmus Forum.
Featured image: Chinese President Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump in a file image. Image: Youtube
As the Coronavirus rages uncontrolled in the United States and elsewhere, in education we are once again relying on online delivery of courses. That of course is really the only sensible alternative we have. However, as we ramp up for another school year online, it behooves us to pause just for a moment to reflect on the serious downside of overplaying this emphasis on technology as a long-term educational method.
Over the past twenty years, Western culture in particular has become technology-addicted. We rely almost exclusively today on our cell phones and computers to tell us what we want to know, in quick-answer bursts of information bits. But with the Coronavirus, Western culture at large has been thrust overnight and headfirst into an almost-exclusive world of reliance on online and in particular video information. While there are many—especially the tech giants such as Facebook, Google, and Microsoft—who celebrate this radical change and support it, what we are not seeing are some clear warning signs about its negative impacts on our culture. These have been argued for the last twenty years, but now perhaps we should pay more attention to the warnings, since we are now in the video world. Generally, there are two issues that we can discuss when warning against becoming too immersed in the online and video culture. (Both of these categories online cognitive decline have been empirically documented since at least 2014, and have been discussed in philosophy more intensely since Jacques Ellul started writing on it in the late 1960’s. This issue is now becoming more intensely discussed, as in the documentary “ Stare into the Lights My Pretties. Gayle Green also has a great article demonstrating the overplay of technology in education and its effects, in her article “ Ed Tech Cashes in on the Pandemic”).
Given that there are good grounds for taking seriously the deleterious effect of too much online and video “learning,” for this purposes of this essay we will hold that there is both a reading and comprehension issue involved in tech learning. First, the reading issue.
1) Unless you are good at spending your online time seeking in-depth articles and sorting through the chaff, the online reading experience tends to be of writing that is quickly finished and impressionistic: you must get to your point quickly, and provide any salient detail you have, and end it. That’s why Twitter, for example, has such a stringent limit on texts, and while many online websites also limit response inputs and also limit articles about what they will publish (many requires limits are at 1,000-2,000 words. That is also what makes Global Research unique: its limit is 3,000 words, but even that can be flexible). But one can’t exactly develop any significant knowledge or a full argument with Twitter and other website limitations.
2) More in-depth reading, such as we engage in the formal classroom setting, is reading that involves more depth and directed thinking about ideas contained in the depth analyses. Electronic technology does not do this. For example, watching a video about a book instead of reading the book is actually worse than reading sparks notes instead of reading the book, because at least with sparks note your brain is taking in cognitive information that inherently involves thinking to sort and remember information in the process of reading. At best, that type of cognitive use is superficial on online media.
3) I have seen it happen over and again where some student will watch a video or read an online snippet on a topic, and others read the entire book chapter or article, or a transcript of a video or about the reading assigned, and immediately afterward take a memory test of what they took in. Under the assumption of average memory capacities of each party, whom do you think would have a better grasp of the content of what they took in? Why? Because one’s mind doesn’t have to be fully involved when you watch something on a screen, as opposed to when you have to read a longer text that connects a series of thought together in an extended argument or prosed, or even literature. The screen is cold; the text is hot: the screen you scroll; the text you flip. In both cases, mind-drift is inevitable, but in which case is it easier and does it occur more often? If the screen is cold, it’s the screen that encourages the mental drift, especially a video.
4) Without reading extensively and studying what one reads, the complexity and details of actual events and social issues are ignored and dismissed. In its place, simple pictorial and “sound bite” information leads to a “one-issue answer” to any complex problem. This “simple issue” fallacy is directly encouraged by reliance on electronic media alone. But as anyone who studies any issue or event knows, one answer explanations of events hardly captures the true depth of any issue. Yet that is precisely what reading, critical thinking, and analysis does: captures the depth. Video clips and quick answers in Twitter postings can never do this.
As a result of this, electronic media relegates input to limited time through limited bits, limited characters permitted, and limited time video clips (not necessarily by policy, but by the demands of the medium for minimal effort to grasp its content before losing attention). This inherently shortens the attention span of those who consume information largely or exclusively through video or limited input platforms such as Twitter. As circumstantial evidence, as the use of cell phones became more and more prominent among my students, I heard increasing complaints about our class text being “too wordy,” and “taking too much to read;” in other words, the text is too thorough and too detailed in investigating an issue or topic. This is in sharp contrast to electronic media (video in particular), where the end game is either to obtain a computer bit of information or to be entertained, and the means is to get it quickly and passionately, the latter in partial fulfillment of unexpressed assumptions and expectations, particularly when it comes to real world events. Not so in reading books or articles. This leads to the second category.
The second issue is the cognitive one:
5) A whole cultural movement into the online and video-based world, and more critically, the move of academic classes to online format represents is quite likely the end of an era in which detailed knowledge and logical and formal rigor die out and are replaced by the image and impression; in which memory and critical thought ,with evidence sought to support views, becomes instead more a matter of visceral reaction to what stimulates the eyes and ears.
Opposed to that, the defenders of the tech move say it is just a move to a different way of learning, a different way of communication. Defenders will always try to show its more pragmatic advantages, such as ease of access to information and the speed of access to any info bits one wants. However, the evidence, although incomplete, does show that a much more deleterious effect occurs as the price to be paid for such ease and speed: it is a move to a more superficial way of thinking and learning, and with it comes the erosion of the ability to interact in the flesh and in verbal conversation, or at least in reading what someone has thought out over time and rehearsed. You can’t know an issue in detail if all you have are visceral images of it and/or informational bits about it. The images and info-bits should both express and support an already attained and prior in-depth knowledge and analysis, not replace it. Are scientists going to create a vaccine for the Coronavirus by watching YouTube videos on biology?
6) Technological information can reduce the intellect because it encourages simple absorption of “information bits” and at best stringing those bits together. No critical analysis; no fact-checking; just pure sensory bombardment and consumption of bits, and even absorbing and processing less information in the case of video bits. It encourages the belief that “it must be true because my senses took it in through this (magical) electronic device!” In the case of the world of ideology, news is the same way: reporting has no real analysis and videos are carefully edited to sway the viewer, and both are engaged with a certain point of view in mind, and a visual and speedy manipulation of opinion. This directly encourages consumers to watch news and videos based on desire-fulfillment rather than a need to know, be informed, and critically and thoughtfully analyze the visual information. These all require reason and tools of analysis to be done. Contrary to the video world, the more you think critically about information, the more you want to do so, and the sharper your tools are with which to deal with the information you do take in. The online world does not encourage this, being a visceral world and the world of the info bit. In fact, the degree to which analysis is done is proportional to the amount it time it takes for a viewer to click it off.
While the objection to this view is that the same manipulation occurs in print, the response to that is that reading, being closer to engagement with thinking, is also a far more decisive way to avoid being manipulated. Reading encourages thought, and that encourages pursuit of what is true. Video watching does not engage those capacities—or at least only engages them superficially, and not necessarily in an easy and natural way, either.
7) Videos in particular and the image-input method in general have to keep moving—no time to stop and think about what one is taking in; no space for immersion in it; no detailed look or examination of what one sees, because the medium by its nature eschews detail: it is impressionistic on all levels.
8) Visual and electronically-oriented media has to be visually stimulating, not prosaic; not precise; not even necessarily true to facts. This also makes it limited in depth. Rather, videos, being titillating by nature, reduce news, politics, and even the brutality of war not only to moving images that have visceral appeal or disdain, evoking, not arguing for, approval or disapproval, but in particular reduces them all to the level of sports. This is especially true of war, where “shock and awe,” Donald Rumsfeld’s term for what we would see in the Iraq invasion, captures nicely what we now desire and expect to see and hear—i.e. be entertained by—in our war-viewing.
All of this concerns just the effects of electronic (especially video) media on the human mind (not brain). However, we have so far missed the most important point of all regarding this technology: through the use of the same electronic technological immersion, we can now create our own realities, with no inherent or necessary connection to facts or “real world” reference. Creating a shocking video that is produced simply on someone’s computer and posted as “news,” frequently gets taken as “true,” without questioning its source in the facts, events, or the creator and his/her intent.
As we begin another school year, we would do well to keep some of these points in mind, so as not to fall prey to the capitalist culture-vultures, who are pushing hard to replace classroom education with tech-ed—especially Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and Mark Zuckerberg, all of whom have their “tech ed” solutions, even though none of them has studied education. Many of these programs attempt to replace the teacher and the classroom with their own version of “education,” which is anything but that.
Those with a depth of knowledge, expertise, and analytic capabilities will always be with us, but in an online and video culture they will be alienated from the masses of superficially-informed people who “saw it on YouTube” but don’t know much more detail about “it” than that. You will be unlikely to find the knowledge experts doing a daily podcast, or at least relying on it as the primary way of expressing or engaging others in their studied views. Rather you will have to read what they have to say by going to the other institution that is dying in its traditional form: the library! It is important to resist a full reliance on online and video technology before we do lose what’s left of an informed and thoughtful citizenry. Or, as Thomas Jefferson put it: “In a republican nation, whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance.”
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Dr. Robert Abeleis a professor of philosophy at Diablo Valley College, located in Pleasant Hill, California in the San Francisco Bay area. He is the author of four books: A User’s Guide to the USA PATRIOT Act (2005); The Anatomy of a Deception: A Logical and Ethical Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq (2009); Democracy Gone: A Chronicle of the Last Chapters of the Great American Democratic Experiment (2009); and eleven chapters for the International Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Global Justice. He and has written numerous articles and done interviews on politics and U.S. government foreign and domestic policies.
The Establishment explanation for what occurred in Beirut’s port on August 5th is that the horrific series of explosions that killed hundreds, injured thousands and left hundreds of thousands homeless was a terrible accident that came about due to a multi-faceted failure by Lebanon’s corrupt and incompetent government. Or at least that is the prevalent narrative in the international media, but a more critical examination of what took place is a bit like peeling an onion only to discover that there are layers and layers of alternative possibilities that just might place the catastrophe in a broader context.
The story, which is generally being accepted, is that a Russian-leased but Moldovan flagged ship the Rhosus carrying nearly 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate from Batumi in Georgia to Mozambique wound up unexpectedly in Beirut’s port in November 2013 due to a leak in the hull and mechanical problems. It was then impounded and blocked from exiting due to alleged general unseaworthiness as well as its inability to pay disputed debts and docking fees. The dangerous cargo was offloaded and stored in a Hanger number 12 in the port a year later. Ammonium nitrate can be used to make fertilizer but it also can also be used in explosives. The two ton “fertilizer bomb” used to destroy the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 killing 168 people was, for example, primarily ammonium nitrate.
The ship and cargo, which was supposedly destined for a Mozambican company that produced commercial explosives, was then de facto abandoned by its lessee and sat in the port with its Russian captain and three Ukrainian crewmen while the issue was being largely ignored by the Lebanese government. The crew were basically being held as hostages by the port authorities, unable to leave the ship and, it was claimed, frequently on the verge of starvation. They were eventually released and allowed to fly home in 2014 while the Rhosus itself, emptied of its cargo, reportedly sank in an unused corner of the port in 2018.
Both the crew and the port authorities were aware of how dangerous the offloaded cargo was, but the Lebanese government, which was having its own problems, did nothing to address the issue. Shafik Merhi, director of the Lebanese Customs Authority, wrote to government officials no less than six times between 2014 and 2017 requesting “urgent” steps be taken to secure the explosives, but he received no response.
The first explosion may have been started by a welder or even a smoker who somehow ignited fireworks or possibly even a storage site for munitions which then somehow caused the ammonium nitrate to explode. The second explosion has already been described as the largest ever that did not involve a nuclear weapon, though some have been suggesting that it did indeed involve an Israeli tactical nuke. If there is any residual radiation at the site surely that possibility will again be raised.
The blast devastated the port and the surrounding residential area and was felt as far as 120 miles away in Cyprus. Grain silos near the explosion were heavily damage, destroying an estimated 80% of the country’s grain supply at a time when there is already widespread hunger due to a deepening economic crisis that has produced many bankruptcies, a failure of health services and sharply declining standards of living. The problems have all been exacerbated by U.S. unilaterally imposed sanctions and Israeli meddling.
The narrative that the explosion had been a horrible accident was almost immediately widely accepted, but President Donald Trump was quick to describe it as an attack, saying “I’ve met with some of our great generals and they just seem to feel that . . . this was not some kind of a manufacturing explosion type of event. They seem to think it was an attack. It was a bomb of some kind.” However, the Defense Department subsequently refused to confirm Trump’s speculation and Secretary of Defense Mark Esper observed that “Most believe that it was an accident.”
Others also had some problems with the narrative. A cui bono? “who benefits” analysis inevitably suggests that Israel, which has been increasing its pressure both on Lebanon and particularly on Hezbollah recently, might well consider a totally wrecked Lebanese economy to be a gift insofar as that would increase political turmoil and could produce a reaction against Hezbollah. Israel is heavily involved in destabilizing neighboring Syria as well as Iran and has been specifically targeting Hezbollah as the connecting link in the frequently touted Shi’a “land bridge” extending from Iran to the Lebanese Mediterranean coast.
To be sure Israel has officially expressed shock and has denied any connection with the blast. It’s top government officials and Foreign Ministry have offered their condolences. It has even sought to send humanitarian aid to assist in the recovery, but, of course what governments say and do does not necessarily mean anything if there is a hidden agenda or policy. When governments say one thing and do another thing secretly, they frequently hide their actions, a practice which is described using the intelligence expression “plausible denial.”
Israel has not hesitated to attack Lebanon in the past, inflicting enormous damage on the country’s infrastructure and killing thousands of civilians during two major incursions and an actual occupation in 1982 and 2006. Over the past year, Israeli warplanes have flown repeatedly into Lebanese airspace to attack Syrian and alleged Iranian positions and has also staged ground attacks along the border. There has been considerable speculation that war between the two states is coming, particularly as it is widely believed that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu needs a war as a distraction from the many scandals that he has been associated with.
Lebanese party of government Hezbollah, which is by invitation using its military wing to help Damascus, has become increasingly an Israeli target of choice as it is seen as an Iranian proxy. If indeed it was storing weapons at the port they might plausibly have been identified for destruction by Israel, but reliable sources in Lebanon insist that Hezbollah had no access to the area. Beyond that, at the end of July the Israeli defense minister specifically threatened to destroy Lebanese infrastructure. As the port of Beirut is the country key’s economic lifeline, it constitutes the primary infrastructure target.
Israel is known to have numerous intelligence agents operating in Lebanon, so it has the means to get into the port and set off an explosive intended either to ignite the ammonium nitrate or destroy Hezbollah weapons, if they actually exist. That would avoid having to send a bomber or a missile to do the job, though some have claimed that one video of the bombing shows an incoming missile.
Israel has long espoused the so-called Dahiya Doctrine, named after a suburb of Beirut that was devastated by the Israel Defense Forces in 1982-3. It endorses the employment of maximum lethal force against civilians and infrastructure to teach the “enemy” a lesson. It has been used in both Lebanon and more recently in Gaza with Operation Cast Lead and Operation Protective Edge.
Several observers of developments in the Middle East believe that Israel did in fact arrange for the explosion. Shortly after the blast a general in the Lebanese Army stated that the explosion had been caused by a tactical nuclear device intended to bring down the Lebanese government and ignite a civil war with Hezbollah. Indeed, aerial photography shows an enormous crater, at least several hundred yards across. American anti-Zionist Richard Silverstein also blamed Israel, writing on his Tikun Olam blog that “A confidential highly-informed Israeli source has told me that Israel caused the massive explosion at the Beirut port earlier today [when] Israel targeted a Hezbollah weapons depot at the port and planned to destroy it with an explosive device. Tragically, Israeli intelligence did not perform due diligence on their target… It is, of course, unconscionable that Israeli agents did not determine everything about their target including what was in its immediate vicinity. The tragedy Israel has wreaked is a war crime of immense magnitude.”
Silverstein clearly has a good high-level source in Israel but the information he obtains has sometimes been challenged. Some believe that he is being fed information that the Israeli government wishes to make public without having to admit to anything. If that is true in this case, the Israelis might want to be sending a message to the Lebanese and to Hezbollah, suggesting that the second explosion had not been intended and warning them against retaliation that would escalate the fighting. It would also warn Hezbollah that Israel is willing and able to strike anywhere in Lebanon and it might also turn ordinary Lebanese against Hezbollah because the suggestion would be that its actions had invited a devastating attack from Israel.
There have also been suggestions that something had to be done to the ammonium nitrate to make it explode like it did. Ammonium nitrate is not an explosive by itself, but serves as an oxidiser, drawing oxygen to a fire and making it rage faster and further. British security specialist Robert Emerson is speculating that the “…ammonium nitrate got something added to it accidentally, possibly oil or some other flammable compound. Ammonium nitrate smoke is more yellow, this is rather red. An investigation would ascertain if that is the case and where contamination took place.”
Other speculation is perhaps more sinister with a local journalist in Beirut claiming that security-agency sources revealed a routine check three months ago that discovered military-grade explosives together with tons of the chemical in Hanger 12 while a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency officer, Robert Baer, told CNN that certain aspects of the explosion “suggest the combustion of military-grade material along with the ammonium nitrate.”
One of the better-quality videos of the explosions would appear to show a first explosion that might consist of fireworks or munitions going off followed by the huge explosion of the ammonium nitrate, which would more-or-less support the emerging standard narrative. Beirut residents, who have been demonstrating against the government since the incident, seem mostly to believe that it was no more than an accident due to bureaucratic incompetence. But that does not rule out that it was an inside job carried out covertly by the Israelis to weaken Lebanon and its arch-foe Hezbollah. If recent history has anything to teach us it is that whatever actually happened, the cover-up will begin right away. Likely no one will be punished in Lebanon and no one will seriously look into a possible Israeli role. The real losers will be the people of Lebanon who have lost their lives and homes in a horrific incident that never should have occurred.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice is rumored to be near the top of Joe Biden’s short list for vice presidential candidates. A new letter attacking Rice’s “poor judgment” is being widely circulated among delegates to the Democratic National Convention, calling Biden’s inner circle of foreign policy advisors a “horror show” with track records supporting “disastrous” U.S. military interventions. The letter hasalready received more than 275 signatures from delegates, almost all of whom had been pledged to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
The letter highlights Biden’s long-time chief aide on foreign affairs Antony Blinken as well as several other prominent former members of the Obama Administration who would likely hold cabinet-level appointments in a Biden administration, HuffPost reports. Blinken co-founded a company called WestExec Advisors, that aided a Pentagon effort to enhance drone warfare.
The presumptive Democratic nominee is relying on former Obama aides and Libya war cheerleaders Samantha Power and Jake Sullivan, as well as a bevy of other military-industrial complex beneficiaries, including former Defense Department official Michèle Flournoy, who worked several years for the Boston Consulting Group, while the firm accrued multi-million dollar contracts with the military, and Avril Haines, a former CIA deputy director reviled on the left for her role in making redactions to a report on President George W. Bush’s use of torture and her assistance in President Barack Obama’s extra judicial drone strikes.
“We ask you not to rely on foreign policy advice from those who may have a conflict of interest as a result of their relationships and lobbying on behalf of merchants selling weapons and surveillance technology,” the letter HuffPost obtained reads. “We ask you to appoint top foreign policy advisors whose records reflect good judgment and an understanding of the importance of diplomacy and international cooperation, particularly in the face of global climate catastrophe.”
The organizers of the letter hope to amass more delegates’ signatures before the start of the convention on August 17. They have so far succeeded in gathering approximately a third of the signatures of Sanders’ delegates. A Sanders aide declined to comment to HuffPost.
Biden is known to rely on long-term personal relationships, so the letter is unlikely to dislodge any of these former Obama administration officials from his side. But his team may have to reckon with the more left-wing side of the party that supported Sanders and have been adamantly opposed to U.S. interventions abroad.
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Barbara Boland is TAC’s foreign policy and national security reporter. Previously, she worked as an editor for the Washington Examiner and for CNS News. She is the author of Patton Uncovered, a book about General George Patton in World War II, and her work has appeared on Fox News, The Hill, UK Spectator, and elsewhere. Boland is a graduate from Immaculata University in Pennsylvania. Follow her on Twitter @BBatDC.
Proposals to use the tracking capabilities of our cell phones to help fight COVID-19 have probably received more attention than any other technology issue during the pandemic. Here at the ACLU, we have beenskeptical of schemes to use apps for contact tracing or exposure warnings from the beginning, but it is clearer than ever that such tools are unlikely to work, and that the debate over such tracking is largely a sideshow to the principal coronavirus health needs.
We have said from the outset that location-based contact tracing was untenable, but that the concept of “proximity tracking” — in which Bluetooth signals emitted by phones are used to notify people who may have been exposed — seemed both more plausible and less of a threat to privacy. Indeed, a number of serious institutions began working on this concept early in the pandemic, most notably Apple and Google, which have already implemented a version of the concept in their mobile operating systems.
Some of the problems with tech-assisted contact tracing have been apparent from the beginning, such as the social dimensions of the challenge. Smartphone ownership is not evenly distributed by income, race, or age, threatening to create disparate effects from such schemes. And even the most comprehensive, all-seeing contact tracing system is of little use without social and medical systems in place to help those who may have the virus — including access to medical care, testing, and support for those who are quarantined. Those systems are all inadequate in the United States today.
Other problems with technology-assisted contact tracing have become more apparent as the pandemic has played out. Specifically, such tracing appears to be squeezed from two directions. On the one hand, a tool shouldn’t pick up every fleeting encounter and swamp users with too many meaningless notifications. On the other, if it is confined to reporting sustained close contacts of the kind that are most likely to result in transmission, the tool is not likely to improve upon old-fashioned human contact tracing. Those are the kinds of contacts that people are likely to remember. And those memories, relayed to human contact tracers, are more likely to identify a patient’s significant past exposures than an automated app that can’t determine, for example, whether two people were separated by glass or a wall.
A difficult disease to trace
The first problem — the danger of generating far too many “exposure notifications” — is considerable. As one commentator put it, “actual transmission events are rare compared to the number of interactions people have.” Swamping users with false notifications would be useless and annoying at best, and seriously disruptive and counterproductive at worst. Ultimately, people will stop taking the notifications seriously, or just uninstall the app.
That problem is made worse by the fact that COVID-19 is a more difficult disease to trace than many. As a group of prominent epidemiologists from the University of Minnesota explained in a report on contact tracing, contact tracing is less effective when:
1. Contacts are difficult to trace, such as when a disease is transmitted through the air. Respiratory transmission appears to be the primary way COVID-19 is transmitted. Compared to the kind of contact tracing that has long been done with HIV, where transmission takes place through sex or blood, the virus that causes COVID-19 is much harder to track. One cough or sneeze from a stranger may be enough to infect an unlucky passerby — as can sharing an interior space with a “super-spreader” who is on the other side of a large room.
2. The infection rate in a community is high. In the United States, as of this writing (July 2020), there are currently around 50,000 new coronavirus cases being identified every day. As the Minnesota report puts it, “contact tracing is most effective either early in the course of an outbreak or much later in the outbreak when other measures have reduced disease incidence to low levels.” The U.S. may someday reach the point where cases are once again sporadic rather than widespread, but for now expertsrecommend concentrating contact tracing on contacts within households, healthcare and other high-risk settings, and case clusters — an approach much more amenable to manual contact tracing.
3. A large proportion of transmissible infections are from people without symptoms. In May the CDC estimated that 40 percent of new COVID-19 infections come from asymptomatic carriers.
The Technology is Not Reliable Enough
These factors increase the risk of generating too many exposure notifications to be useful. Serious technical challenges with using smartphones for contact tracing also increase that risk. One of the biggest questions has always been how to use Bluetooth to judge which encounters are worthy of being recorded as potential transmission events. Judgments have to be made about how close a person needs to be, and for how much time, to meet the warning threshold. That becomes even trickier since Bluetooth can’t reliably measure distances. The strength of a Bluetooth signal varies not only with distance, but also from phone to phone, and from owner to owner. The frequency at which Bluetooth operates (2.4 GHz) is one that is easily absorbed by water, including the water in the human body, which means that signal strength can vary significantly depending upon whether a person has their phone in their front or back pocket, and how much that person weighs.
Complicating matters is the fact that existing contact-tracing apps are being thrown together very quickly. Google and Apple moved from concept to a finalized product in less than 12 weeks. They should be commended for stepping up in an emergency, but we shouldn’t expect it to work well anytime soon. As is clear to any experienced software developer, their product is basically an early prototype that’s being pushed into production. In a normal world, they would be testing their app on groups of hundreds and then thousands of people in cities and a variety of other real-world situations. Through no fault of Apple and Google, there simply hasn’t been the opportunity to do the kind of engineering development and refinement that a project like this really needs.
And of course, what is true of software developed by Apple and Google is even more true of apps developed in a rush by state governments like North Dakota and Rhode Island, or other nations like South Korea. South Korea has been lauded for its high-tech coronavirus response. But the quarantine app the country has been using put people’s names, locations, and other private information at risk by failing to follow basic cybersecurity practices.
Compliance
While effective technology-assisted contact tracing apps must avoid generating too many exposure notifications, they must also establish that they can improve upon or significantly augment old-fashioned human contact tracing.
Epidemiologists emphasize that contact tracing has always been a tricky and sensitive job. Getting people to trust any official enough to open up about their potentially privacy-sensitive whereabouts and contacts is a skill — one that requires“training and development of a specialized skill set” as well as “consideration of local contexts, communities, and cultures.”
That is especially true since those who are identified as having been exposed to the coronavirus are asked to self-quarantine for two weeks — putting much or all of their life on hold, and possibly risking the loss of a job or income, necessitating the finding of new caregivers for dependents, and imposing various other costs. That’s something that a friend will be reluctant to impose upon another friend by giving their name — especially where no social support is provided to those asked to self-quarantine. As the Minnesota report warned, “If people perceive the economic, social, or other costs of compliance with contact tracing are greater than its value, it won’t be successful.”
There are many reasons to doubt that these tricky issues can be navigated better through technology. As report co-author Michael Osterholm put it, “Having been in public health for 45 years, and having cut my teeth in surveillance in many different ways — I don’t think most people would comply. If I got notifications that I’d been exposed to [someone] with COVID, would I self-isolate for 14 days at home, because I got a text on my phone?”
The sensitive privacy and trust issues that human contact tracers face are likely to be amplified in the technology realm. People who are reluctant to tell contact tracers where they’ve been are likely to be even more reluctant to let an app carry such information. By building tools with very strong, cleverly constructed privacy protections, Apple, Google, and others have created the best possible chance of engendering trust in those apps, but those protections still have gaps. People who refuse to wear a mask are unlikely to deliberately install tracking software on their phone, whatever privacy assurances they are given. Nor are many members of Black, Brown, and immigrant communitiesfor whom “trust in the authorities is non-existent.”
Some experts have estimated that at least 60 percent of a population would have to run an app for it to become effective. Others think apps can be modestly helpful even with much smaller adoption rates. But aside from trust issues, the number of people willing to participate seems to have gone down since the first months of the outbreak, as “social distancing fatigue” has set in and public panic over the virus has given way to a more measured caution (and in too many cases, an abandonment of all caution whatsoever).
The bottom line is that there are too few reasons to think that apps will prove more helpful than human memories elicited by experienced contact tracers. The promise of exposure notifications lies in the space between the large pool of incidental contacts that people have, and the smaller number of significant contacts that they remember. The apps promise to track contacts that are close and sustained enough to pose a serious risk of exposure yet beyond the subject’s memory. For most people, that space may simply not be large enough to be useful.
Real-World Experiences in States and Other Countries
Unsurprisingly, given these problems, the states and countries that have experimented with using technology-assisted contact tracing have not met with much success. The use of technology by China and some other Asian countries has received a lot of attention, but as the Minnesota epidemiologists point out, “we don’t know exactly what methods were used, how many cases were involved, and what the estimated impact was in reducing transmission since other mitigation strategies were employed at the same time” in those countries.
That lack of measurement is true throughout the world. An MIT survey of global digital contact-tracing efforts found 43 countries in some stage of offering a product. Ten of those countries are relying on the privacy-preserving Apple/Google protocol, with the rest a jumble of different architectures and policies. It may not be quite true, as UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared on June 24, that “No country in the world has a working contact tracing app” — Germany has launched an app that has been downloaded over 14 million times so far, and India claims 131 million downloads for its app and 900,000 users who have been contacted and told to self-isolate. But we don’t know if those numbers represent a high enough proportion of the populations to actually have an impact on slowing the disease in Germany and India, let alone in countries with lower adoption rates. We also don’t know how effective it is to simply tell people to self-isolate, in the absence of social support for them to do so.
It’s also worth noting that in some countries such as China and India, digital tracking is imposed in authoritarian ways that would cause most people who value civil liberties to recoil.
In the U.S., a few states have attempted to launch apps, including Utah, where things went so badly that one program was shut down within 72 hours of its launch, and another one had not led to any contract tracing a month after its launch. An app in North and South Dakota ran into trouble quickly when it was revealed to be sharing data with a private location-data company. Overall, state efforts so far have been plagued by “technical glitches and a general lack of interest by their residents.” A survey by Business Insider found that only three states planned to use the Apple/Google technology. Others had not decided, but 17 states reported that they had no plans to use smartphone-based contact tracing at all.
Those who have worked on privacy-preserving exposure notification apps should be commended for stepping up. They have dedicated their skills toward trying to save lives and restore people’s freedom, and they did a very good job creating a privacy-preserving approach that was not only the most likely to be trusted and effective, but also the least likely to permanently change our world for the worse.
Nevertheless, it does not appear to be working out. “A lot of this is just distraction,” Osterholm concluded of all the talk over digital contact tracing. “I just don’t see any of this materializing.” Given what we know about the technology, we are inclined to agree.
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Michael J. Matt takes a look at some good news regarding the Covid recovery rate before exploring what’s really going on with the global pandemic.
To understand this, he takes us to Switzerland—to the World Economic Forum—where the movers and shakers of the world have been meeting on a regular basis, especially since January 2020, to plan ‘The Great Reset’ at the Davos 2021 Summit in January.
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Using multiple video clips, Michael shows how everyone from Soros, to Gates, to Schwab, to Al Gore and the Secretary-General of the United Nations are only too eager to admit that Covid offers them a rare opportunity to reset the world economy, population control, global commerce, climate change regulation, education and the UN Sustainable Development Goals in order to “reorder,” “reimagine” and fundamentally transform every aspect of life as we know it.
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The folks at Davos want a New World Order, and the only thing standing in their way at the moment is US.
What we have to realize is that the global, country-by-country destruction – happening simultaneously – is not a coincidence.
It has been planned for decades. Thousands of pages were written alone for the preparation of such documents, like the 2010 Rockefeller Report and the preparation of Event 201 in NYC on October 18, 2019, as well as “studies” for WHO to justify calling the new corona virus (SARS-2-2019 / COVID-19) a pandemic that eventually prompted a worldwide lockdown around mid-March 2020.
To come up with these and more decision-making tools, leaders of the “deep state” and their henchmen had to sieve through volumes of countless pages and sit through dozens of secret meetings. Now, the unnamed people of the financial establishment and the Deep State have the world living – or dying? – in lockstep, precisely as predicted in the 2010 Rockefeller report (p.18, The Lockstep Scenario) (see below) and confirmed by Event 201.
References to the 2010 Rockefeller Report and precursor drafts, as well as those that led to the “pandemic” and “lockdown” decisions were easily available only a few weeks ago. Today, the internet has been largely “cleaned” by Google, or debunked, declaring everything that points to the diabolical intentions of this “evil plan” as “fake news”.
Event 201, organized by John Hopkins with Gates and WEF consisted in a simulation exercise of the pandemic which we are living now:
“The Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation hosted Event 201, a high-level pandemic exercise on October 18, 2019, in New York, NY. The exercise illustrated areas where public/private partnerships will be necessary during the response to a severe pandemic in order to diminish large-scale economic and societal consequences.”
Emerging from all this were documents over documents of instructions and scenarios, on how to control humanity – reduce the population – eugenics at their best – and how the small “Deep Dark Elite” will eventually have all of us under a mask, social distancing, avoiding that we talk to each other and unite.
It’s fear from an invisible enemy –a virus – that threatens our lives, so they make us believe – and divide the believers from the non-believers, and propaganda demonizes the non-believers into hate objects – getting a disparaging hate-look by masked passers-by… yes, the old divide to conquer and rule. That’s what’s happening.
Destruction of the World Economy
In the meantime, the world economy is crumbling, bankruptcies abound – and related unemployment soars into unknown dimensions – unknown in mankind’s history – by far surpassing the so far worst crisis of 1929-33. And we haven’t even seen the tip of the iceberg yet.
After six months-plus into covid, ILO (International Labor Office) reports worldwide about half a billion people unemployed or under-employed. Of that, a staggering 267 million young people (aged 15-24) are not in employment, education or training, and many more endure substandard working conditions.
In the Global South – or the so-called developing countries, 60% to 70% of the labor force is informal, no social safety net, no social benefits – no contractual obligations by employers. The people are on their own. Locked away in quarantine? – How could they, they have to look for work, earning a daily meal for themselves, and often also for their families. Famine is already rampant. And death by famine is not reported, or simply ascribed to Covid-19, ”improving” the statistics for the diabolical masters.
At the height of the 2020 and-onwards-crisis – ILO predicts up to 2 billion people – 58% of the world’s total labor force might be unemployed or underemployed (world total labor force 2019: 3.46 billion). What does that say about poverty, about famine, about misery and despair – about death by a myriad of diseases, other than Covid, but rather related to lack of nutrition and health services, despair and ultimately suicide?
Peter Koenig and Michel Chossudovsky. Dialogue on the Economic Impacts
According to the World Food Program about 9 million people die annually from famine and hunger-related causes. This figure may – and likely will – skyrocket to 1.5 to 2.0 billion famine-vulnerable people, many of whom may die. Can you imagine – up to a quarter of the world population that may perish from lack of nutrition – due to the covid hoax, or rather due to the propaganda-driven Covid fear – followed scrupulously by all the governments of the globe – which is truly no coincidence. A wanton mismanagement of a fabricated crisis – that may bring about a quantum change in our civilization.
A team of ten renowned German medical doctors and professors, virologists and immunologists, were commissioned by the German Interior Ministry last May to analyze all facets (medical, economic, social) of the Covid crisis. They concluded that the German Government grossly mismanaged the corona-virus. The medical team called it benignly a “False Alarm” (document in German). Some of the report key passages are:
The dangerousness of Covid-19 was overestimated: probably at no point did the danger posed by the new virus go beyond the normal level.
The people who die from Corona are essentially those who would statistically die this year, because they have reached the end of their lives and their weakened bodies can no longer cope with any random everyday stress (including the approximately 150 viruses currently in circulation).
Worldwide, within a quarter of a year, there has been no more than 250,000 deaths from Covid-19, compared to 1.5 million deaths [25,100 in Germany] during the influenza wave 2017/18.
The danger is obviously no greater than that of many other viruses. There is no evidence that this was more than a false alarm.
A reproach could go along these lines: During the Corona crisis the State has proved itself as one of the biggest producers of Fake News.
They proposed an emergency session with the German Government to take immediate correcting actions, to revamp the economy, employment and re-establish social normalcy. From what it looks like, the German Government did not respond to this sensible proposal.
Germany is symptomatic for most governments in the Global North as well as in the Global South. They follow strict orders, from which they are not allowed to deviate, and few countries did. One of them is Sweden. The Swedes didn’t close down the country and the economy, but were especially careful with the elderly and other vulnerable groups. They didn’t do worse than other European countries. To the contrary. The Swedes feel less depressed, less despair, thus, they are healthier and their economy has not been dismantled.
Will Sweden be able to maintain their “exceptional” concept of dealing with Covid? – Or will orders from above insist on changing their approach? – Now, what would happen if a government wants to save its economy and people and dared to not obey these orders? – What’s the extent of the pressure or threats? Or what’s the “carrot” for obeying?
The plan as it unfolds, will continue to use the media for heavy propaganda, day-in-day out, Covid is number one. There is not one newscast that does not have Covid in the headline. And that always in a scary way – so-and-so many new infections since the day before- a new record for this month. Death rates are propagated. They never talk about how many people had recovered, let alone how these statistics are made, and on what criteria a person is considered covid-infected or not.
Every country, or even every “sub-country’ – every State in the US – has its methods, and no independent authority checks upon these methods and figures. Every so often, some medical doctors or virology scientists step out from their lockstep frame and divulge their doubts and experiences. Mostly those who don’t depend on holding on to their jobs, but to be fair, also some whose conscientiousness is inclined towards humanity rather than a corrupt system.
After loosening of restrictions, government decisions are reversed (based on an increase of new cases which nobody checks!), reintroducing a mask obligation – threatening with stricter means, if people don’t adhere. In Spain, where after a long quarantine, restrictions were eased. People were rejoicing, dancing in the streets. Now the already foreseen punch-back comes. people have to wear masks again, in public places, in the street and even at the beach. Those who disobey risk a fine of 100 euros. A mental setback. Back into despair.
There will be waves of loosening and tightening the covid restrictions, with always more severe controls and lesser freedoms – and all under heavy fear propaganda – it’s for the good health of civilization. Imagine, a pandemic of which more than 97% of the infected recover and were the death to infection rate is on average about 0.7%, very similar to the common flu!
The Vaccine
This will go on until a vaccine is ready – and people will be so sick and tired of this “game” -that they will voluntarily submit to the vaccine, no matter how untested and dangerous these vaccines may be. No matter that these vaccines will most likely introduce a DNA-altering protein, and come possibly laced with some kind of nano-chips that can be remote controlled and remote-manipulated. That’s the main reason for 5G electromagnetic waves, the dangers of which may be much worse than of Covid.
DNA-altering vaccines – that’s genetically modifying the human genome. It has never been tested on humans. It is what Monsanto does to plants and food crops, makes them Genetically Modified Organisms – GMOs. GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, created and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Glaxo-Smith-Klein – one of the foremost vaccine producing pharmaceuticals, supported by WHO, are planning to GMO – “Monsanto-nize” – our genome, for the sake of better controlling humanity – not for better health, to be sure. Can you imagine what Bill Gates’ Big Money is up to? – Will you allow being monsanto-nized?
From that follows full digitization of our lives – a cashless society, digital money only – controlled by the banks, your health records available to whomever authority likes to know – your bank accounts vulnerable for any outside interference – digital of course. Many people, especially young people, think digital money, “so cool” – just swiping a card and the purchase is made. They have no clue of the ulterior implications of digital-only money. No cash. Your sovereign control of your money, your income, your savings – is gone.
Most people hope with the vaccine “normalcy” as they know it, or knew it, will return. It will not return. Only if people step out of the realm of fear, turn off their radios, TVs and mainstream media fear propaganda – there is a chance that people will regain control of their lives and be able to rebuild our universe as a sovereign effort of humanity – and abolish the psychotic dream of a Dark Deep State elite that is nominating itself as the rulers of a New World Order.
This is the actual plan. We can stop it. Don’t fall for the lies, don’t fall for the propaganda – especially don’t fall for the FEAR that they want to indoctrinate you with. There is NO REASON FOR FEAR. RESIST!
Rebuilding Society
Our thoughts should now concentrate not on the disease, covid, corona – or whatever you want to call this Virus of Fear, but on rebuilding our society, our community, our economy, our social fabrics – our social systems of cohesion. We are healthy. Isolation makes us sick. Living behind a mask makes us sick. Fear makes us sick. It brings desolation – and desolation makes us sick. We, mankind, have to take care of our common future. Don’t let the invisible Deep Dark State pretending taking care of you, manipulate you into their New World Order.
The strength of our health – which is at least as strong as before the onset of covid – can power our ingenuity to build a new society, one that corrects the aberration that our old civilization has slithered into over the past decades, especially since the ascent of neoliberalism. We can build a civilization of more equilibrium, of more justice, do away with unfettered capitalism, with the boundless profit-thinking, with endless consumerism, wasting resources, many of which are never renewable and gone forever.
The Foreign Debt Machine
To restart and rebuild Covid-destroyed economies, governments have to rescue productive sectors and subsidize citizens for survival. To do so, local money, debt, is mostly used, in all countries, south or north, where rescue government interventions occur.
In the rich and industrialized north it is normal that local debt is managed locally by a nation’s sovereign monetary and economic development policies, as well as by policies guiding social safety nets- unemployment, health, pension benefits -and more. There is hardly a country in the Global North asking for an IMF “rescue package”.
In the Global South, it’s also governments that are supposed to step in with local money to rescue citizens and the national economy. It’s a sovereign internal affair, it’s a local debt, like in the north. However, in the south for some “strange reasons” the IMF and the World Bank come in with foreign money to “rescue” the countries. In other words, these governments give up their sovereign rights to manage their local debt locally. Instead they apply willingly – perhaps under pressure, to the IMF / WB for foreign loans.
They monetize local debt into foreign debt, thereby increasing their foreign debt and creating not only a foreign exchange and foreign debt service dependence, but also accepting a number of conditions they would not be subject to, if they managed their local debt internally. The same as the rich sovereign industrialized Global North does – except for those European countries which got themselves enslaved by the Eurozone (mostly Greece and other Southern European countries), having given away their financial and economic sovereignty to the European Central Bank (ECB) and their political sovereignty to the European Commission in Brussels.
A few months ago, the IMF set up a special Covid rescue fund of about a trillion dollars – probably higher by now, and at least 60 countries from the Global South had already applied for such “rescue packages”. These rescue operations all come with the usual strings attached – massive privatization of public assets and services, as well as concessions for exploitation of natural resources, like hydrocarbons, minerals. Most importantly, the latest semi-clandestine corporate takeover and conversion from a public good into a privately owned commodity – is WATER. Water to be privatized by western corporations, water on which all life depends. Privatization of water is the final blow to a population, especially the poor segments of a country.
Alternatives to Foreign Debt – Use of Local / National Debt instead of Foreign Debt
Most debt resulting from the corona crisis is local debt that is created locally (the FED calls it QE – Quantitative Easing, a complex term for a simple concept, “printing new money”), by sovereign nationally owned central banks and national public banks. They are in charge of bailing out local industries, the local work force – building or rebuilding social safety nets, public health plans and more. The autonomous national government sets the lending conditions, not the IMF or the WB, nor a Wall Street-connected private bank that works for profit for its shareholders – rather than for the government it is supposedly “rescuing”.
Foreign debt is most often linked to foreign trade. Some of it may be necessary for imports of crucial goods – food, medication, spare parts and more. However, before increasing foreign debt, a country may want to use to the extent possible her foreign currency reserves.
To better control the use of foreign currencies, a sovereign central bank may introduce a temporary dual monetary system – a local currency for the local economy, and a higher-valued international currency to be used for foreign trade (and to promote import substitution) – thus, controlling the use of foreign exchange – i.e. potentially foreign debt. A good example for applying this concept is China, using the dual system until 1984.
A simple concept to rebuild and boost the local economy is local production for local consumption, through a local public banking system with local / national money, monitored by a national autonomous central bank that works for the national economy and the wellbeing of the people – to achieve self-sufficiency. The three key pillars for national autonomy are – food, health and education. – Foreign trade to be concluded with friendly nations that share the same ideology, ALBA-style.
All of this may not be easy, and may not happen overnight. However, the only way of rebuilding an autonomous national economy – is deglobalization and de-dollarization, moving out of the reach of the dollar dominion. There is life after Covid – and especially after the fall of the dollar hegemony.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; New Eastern Outlook (NEO); RT; Countercurrents, Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; Greanville Post; Defend Democracy Press; The Saker Blog, the and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance.
Peter Koenig is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.
Activists, the UN, and even mainstream news outlets expressed dismay at the Trump administration’s decision to appoint regime-change champion Elliot Abrahams to the role of Special Representative for Iran.
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The Trump administration has appointed disgraced neoconservative hawk Elliott Abrams to the new position of chief advisor on Iran after former insider Brian Hook handed in his resignation earlier this week.
“Special Representative Hook has been my point person on Iran for over two years and he has achieved historic results countering the Iranian regime,” said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo yesterday, “Following a transition period with Brian Hook, Elliott Abrams will assume the position of Special Representative for Iran, in addition to his responsibilities as Special Representative for Venezuela.”
Anger and disbelief appeared to be the chief emotions stirred by the decision.
“Elliott Abrams appointment as Special Representative for Iran is as ludicrous as his failed career as Venezuela envoy,” reacted United Nations Special Rapporteur Alfred de Zayas.
“Convicted war criminal Elliott Abrams gets to try and destroy Venezuela and Iran at the same time. He certainly does have a great track record in dealing with Iran and Latin America all at once,” wrote journalist Anya Parampil, referencing his participation in the Iran-Contra scandal.
Activist group CODEPINK was equally condemnatory, claiming the appointment was “another low point for the Trump administration’s disastrous policy towards Iran.”
“The dangerous conflict resulting from Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement will be exacerbated by a man committed to Washington’s failed policies of regime change, including in his present-day position as Trump’s representative for Venezuela,” they added.
Even mainstream, corporate-funded outlets could not hide their skepticism at the decision. “Elliott Abrams, convicted of lying about Iran-Contra, named special representative for Iran,” read CBS News’ headline.
Killy Elliott
Abrams’ first day on the job in the Reagan administration as Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Humanitarian Affairs could hardly have been more conspicuous. The previous day, a U.S.-backed and trained death squad in El Salvador had conducted a massacre in the village of El Mozote, killing at least 800 people and raping girls as young as 10. Survivors testify that the soldiers threw a three-year-old boy in the air and impaled him on their bayonets. Abrams immediately led a cover-up, telling the Senate that eyewitness reports were “not credible” and the massacre was being “significantly misused as propaganda against their side. In total, around 75,000 people were killed in what is misleadingly described as a “civil war,” but was, in reality, a campaign of extermination directed at anyone who dissented against the U.S.-backed dictatorship. Abrams lauded what happened in El Salvador as a “fabulous achievement” for democracy. Investigative journalist Jon Schwarz described Abrams as “supporting Latin American democracy pretty much like [serial killer] Jeffrey Dahmer supported all the people that he brought to his apartment.”
Throughout the 1980s, Abrams was a chief architect of the genocides and dirty wars plaguing the region. In Guatemala, he pushed for arms sales to the dictatorship of General Efrain Rios Montt, claiming he had “brought considerable progress” to human rights in the region. “We think that kind of progress needs to be rewarded and encouraged,” he said. While General Rios Montt was later convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity, Abrams faced no consequences for his role in the killing over 200,000 people, nor did he suffer serious repercussions for his role in the Iran-Contra Affair, where government organizations sold weapons to Iran in order to fund far-right death squads in Nicaragua. Abrams pled guilty to lying to Congress about the affair but was quickly pardoned by George H.W. Bush.
New regime change opportunities
“The failure of Trump’s obscure government hawk character, Elliott Abrams, was evident in the U.S. Senate today. His criminal record and his arrogant vision of the Cold War has caused him to crush the dignity and courage of a free people time and again,” wrote Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, on hearing the news about Abrams’ new position. Since January 2019, Abrams has been tasked with overthrowing the Venezuelan government, constantly encouraging the country to rise up, and placing crippling sanctions on others who trade with the Caribbean nation. Yesterday, he confirmed that he has been attempting to bribe military generals to rebel and overthrow the country’s elected leader.
The appointment of perhaps the most hardline neoconservative hawk to the new position of Special Representative for Iran is the latest in a long line of escalatory measures the Trump administration has taken. In the last two years, the president has abandoned the nuclear deal, greatly increased sanctions on the country, supported anti-government protests in Tehran, assassinated Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, and prevented the importation of COVID-19 medicines and supplies. Given his record, it is doubtful whether many in Iran will be celebrating the return of Elliott Abrams.
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The current geopolitical position of France is shaped by a variety of factors. As one of the key actors in the Mediterranean region, Paris is now primarily a European leader in countering Turkey’s expansionist policy. Relations between the two countries are complicated by the necessity to reckon with the activation of significant global processes, the destruction of the system of international law, the diminishing role of the Washington establishment in particular in the Mediterranean region and to a greater extent in the Middle East, while the influence of Turkey and Russia increases in the region.
The changing balance of power in the entire Mediterranean region encourages regional players to actively integrate into the current geopolitical agenda. So Macron, in his turn, decided to gain the moment and go on a geostrategic offensive. First of all, such a turn towards an active independent foreign policy, largely aimed at deterring Turkey, is observed in the framework of the Libyan conflict, where Paris tends to support the Tobruk government in the framework of an international coalition that includes Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. Moreover, France has a security cooperation agreement with Cyprus, which entered into force on August 1. Egypt and Greece also signed an agreement in Cairo on Thursday to demarcate their maritime borders and establish an exclusive economic zone. Given the close cooperation between members of the emerging Egypt-Greece-France trilateral Mediterranean partnership, it can be assumed that Turkey risks remaining isolated in the next few years. It follows that Ankara will strengthen the opposition and will make a major effort to destabilize a potential alliance.
The new second vector of French foreign policy in the region is largely determined by Macron’s opportunistic policy and represents an unprecedented increase in influence in Lebanon.
Lebanon has historically had close ties with France. After the First World War and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations approved in 1923 the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon. Despite the fact that the mandate was valid only until 1943, the French military left the territory of Syria and Lebanon only in 1946. Of course, France retains a great influence in Lebanon, which in turn alarms regional actors such as Egypt.
The large explosions that took place in the port of the Lebanese capital, Beirut, on August 4, led to horrific consequences in the country, including further deterioration of the economic situation, which was already significantly weakened, inter alia by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before the outbreak of the pandemic and the explosions in Beirut, about 50% of the country’s population lived below the poverty line, and the unemployment rate reached 35%. The terrible accident was a kind of trigger that marked not only the need to change the political course, but also a new round of geopolitical confrontation between regional actors.
On August 7, Macron flew to visit Beirut, which was destroyed by the explosion. After a demonstrative visit to the most affected areas, the French President met with Lebanese President Michel Aoun.
In his statement, Macron not only expressed his condolences to the entire population of Lebanon, specifying that at least 50 French citizens were also injured by the explosion, but also announced the humanitarian assistance provided to Lebanon.
“As always, France will be here to help as we have the relationships of solidarity and friendship that we have maintained with the Lebanese people for decades,” said Prime Minister Jean Castex. This “tragedy of exceptional magnitude” touches “a friendly country, a country that is also in difficulty”.
French aid is delivered by three military aircraft cantaining food and medical aid to the Lebanese capital. These aircraft carry a civil security detachment (55 people, 15 tons of equipment) and a mobile health post including 6 tons of equipment and allowing the care of 500 wounded, accortding to the Elysée.
In addition, France apparently plans to take patronage over the delivery of international humanitarian aid to the affected areas. According to the French head of State, “an international conference of support” will soon be organized to mobilize international funding for Lebanon.
“France will also be there to organize international aid alongside the European Union, the United Nations and with the support of the World Bank. In the next few days we will organize – and the Minister of Europe and Foreign Affairs has already begun to make the first contacts and mobilize his teams-an international conference of support to Beirut and the Lebanese population,” said the French leader.
However, heading to Beirut, Macron was carrying not only humanitarian aid, but also a “new political pact.” French President said he would pitch a “new political deal” to the Lebanon leadership.
“Strong initiatives are needed to fight corruption against the opacity of the banking system”. He also called for “the initiation of an IMF program” and the continuation of “the CEDRE plan”. The economic conference for the development of Lebanon through reforms and with companies (CEDRE), which took place on April 6, 2018 in Paris, aimed to support the development and strengthening of the Lebanese economy, through a comprehensive plan of reforms and infrastructure investments prepared by the Lebanese authorities. The conference had been used to raise funds. But very quickly, donors, whose pledges had reached $ 11.6 billion, had expressed doubts about the credibility of the programe, which implementation had been delayed by political instability.
Macron claimed:
“I spoke frankly and transparently with the president regarding the need to fight corruption, implement reforms, conduct a transparent investigation into what is happening in the banking system, and continue dialogue with the IMF.”
Continuing to leave the diplomatic framework, which already brings him some accusations of interference, he returned to this “political, moral, economic and financial crisis in which the political class bears a historical responsibility “, wishing “investigations that can take place in a transparent framework “.
Macron said he would demand accountability from the authorities and that he would return on September 1 and if the proposed “political Pact” was not implemented, he would be forced to take measures.
Of course, Macron faced a great support from the local population. The Lebanese surrounding the president’s procession, accompanied it with songs, cries, slogans, as ” Revolution !”, assistance alternated with the denunciation of Michel Aoun. “Michel Aoun, terrorist!” “You freed us from the Ottomans. Free us from the current authorities.” Disillusioned Lebanese citizens created an online petition demanding to place Lebanon under French mandate for the next 10 years. In less than 6 hours it has already reached more than 20 thousand signatures.
Due to the fact that the meeting itself and the “frank conversation” between Macron and the Lebanese leadership was private, various rumors have emerged. For example, that Macron’s representative voiced the following imperatives to Michel Aoun:
Declaration of Beirut as a demilitarized zone
Full disarmament of Hizbollah’s offices in and around the capital, as well as elimination of all Hizbollah’s rocket forces and installations in the South of the country, and submitting of its command posts to UNIFIL
Submitting of Beirut international airport to a joint international contingent led by Germany
Dissolution of Parliament and the government and holding of snap elections followed by the election of a new President.
These statements, allegedly made by the French side, are clearly pro-Israeli in nature and are primarily directed against Hizbollah.
The reliability of this information, which has passed through various information channels, is highly questionable. It is likely that such information injection is carried out by one of the parties of the regional conflict.
Analyzing the theses allegedly proposed by Macron’s representative to the President of Lebanon, it is difficult to believe in their authenticity. Macron is a fully mature politician and it is unlikely that he and his team have taken such openly provocative steps. Therefore, the demands for immediate early elections and the disarmament of the Hizbollah movement are most likely fake. However, Macron’s actions and the pressure that he exerts on the leadership of Lebanon, which is in a difficult situation, can be described by the French word “chantage”.
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All relevant events on the international stage have some geopolitical effects. Terrorist attacks, natural catastrophes, accidents and other tragedies also have implications for the power game between nations. In fact, any atypical event can completely change the way of relations between states and generate major political, economic and diplomatic crises. The global pandemic of the new coronavirus itself is an example of how major tragedies can influence geopolitics and international relations. Now, with the recent explosion in Lebanon, we have a new example that tragedies can bring profound political and geopolitical changes.
The explosion in Beirut has generated many questions and controversies worldwide. While several experts are investigating the causes of the accident and thinking alternative explanations to the official reports, the political effects of the explosion are going unnoticed. The accident generated several immediate reactions, justifying protests across the country and international mobilizations. Currently, Beirut is experiencing a great wave of demonstrations that are supported by foreign states with an interest in Lebanese politics. In fact, the explosion has accelerated the creation of a scenario of political and social instability and collective dissatisfaction, where the possibilities are many and virtually any change is possible.
A curious detail in the current situation in Lebanon is the foreign attempt to influence national policy, taking advantage of the effects generated by the explosion, with great emphasis on the incursions promoted by France. French President Emmanuel Macron was one of the first heads of state to show his solidarity with Lebanon after the accident. Macron traveled to Lebanon almost immediately after the attack, aiming not only to show solidarity, but to show signs of binational cooperation for the Lebanese recovery. However, this “cooperation” soon proved to be a real attempt to violate Lebanon’s sovereignty and to impose interests and agendas.
Macron is an interesting character for his skills as head of state. His strategic intelligence and ability to predict results are notorious. Since the beginning of his mandate, Macron has maintained a conciliatory discourse in relation to the Middle East and specifically Lebanon, seeking proposals for international cooperation and mutual support, however, demanding, in return, democratic political reforms in the country. Macron does not try to approach Lebanon without reason: France has historical ties to the country. With the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire, the League of Nations – the UN’s precursor international organization – imposed on France the duty to administer and build Lebanon as a country. Due to the years of strong presence in Lebanon, a considerable part of the population continues to have strong ties with the European country, mainly the Christian portion of the population (almost 40% of the Lebanese population), who sees the western nation as an ally within a region of Islamic majority. As a result, many Lebanese, especially among economic elites, tend to see France as a possible ally for their country – something that Macron will certainly explore in his favor.
When visiting Beirut, Macron called for an international mobilization to send financial and humanitarian support for Lebanon but demanded the implementation of several reforms in the country. The French president announced that a major investigation will be launched to ascertain possible negligence by the Lebanese state, which would make it “responsible” for the tragedy. According to Macron, France has demanded several reforms in Lebanon for years that have not been carried out. Macron believes that if these reforms had been carried out, the explosion could have been prevented.
Immediately after Macron arrived in Lebanon, a part of the pro-French Lebanese community initiated an online petition demanding that Lebanon undergo French intervention and remain under Paris’ rule for the next ten years. Despite the absurd and almost impractical content, the petition already counts more than 60,000 signatures, which shows the popular strength willing to support Emmanuel Macron’s neocolonialist plans. In fact, while Macron demands changes in Lebanon, a national economic elite sees the approach to Europe as a way of protection and development, leading an online movement for French sovereignty in their own country. On the other hand, protests in the country are increasing in size and reaching a worrying stage of violence, with official government buildings being invaded and public peace disrupted incessantly.
Protesters demand, among other things, an end to corruption and the same as Macron: reforms. Lebanon has been suffering for a long time with several popular demonstrations, but immediately after the explosion the intensity of the protests increased profoundly, driven mainly by the state’s blame speech, which seems to be a weak and unconditional rhetoric. After all, what evidence does the French government or the demonstrators have to conclude that something as abstract as “corruption” (a problem that exists in all National States) or the “lack of reforms” were in fact responsible for the explosion that destroyed the Lebanese economy? Still, in a time of humanitarian crisis and national emergency, is it ethical to endorse an anti-government discourse on the international stage driven simply by French interests in the country? Are these demonstrators acting in collusion with French interests in Lebanon? Is Lebanon undergoing a colorful revolution?
In fact, Lebanon was not chosen by France because of its “historical ties”, but because of its extreme strategic importance in the Middle East. The country was considered the safest in the region, being sometimes called “Arab Switzerland”, enjoying great economic stability. In addition, Lebanon is an important player in the geopolitical balance of the Middle East, mainly because of its historic and frontal opposition to the Israeli Army. Indeed, for the West, Lebanon is an important country to be controlled. What France is doing is simply taking the lead in the quest to influence Lebanon.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a research fellow in international law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.
Ukraine has a complex historical background and most people have little knowledge of this. The western part of Ukraine known as Galicia has an especially complex history. Going back for more than a thousand years, this region had been settled by Slavic tribes who formed the western extension of the Kievan Rus. To the west it had Polish, Lithuanian, Hungarian and Austrian neighbours. And to its misfortune, these neighbours took turns attacking and subjugating these early Ukrainians. It was largely Poland and Austria that took turns suppressing and occupying the region, economically and culturally. Because of this, although Galicia’s population was almost totally Ukrainian, it had never been part of Ukraine until after World War II ended in 1945.
As a result of the 1917 Russian Revolution and the ensuing turmoil in this and adjoining regions, during 1919 Britain assigned their Foreign Secretary George Curzon to conduct a study to determine the ethnic distribution in these areas. As a result of these studies, he drew up a boundary line showing majority populations on each side of the line. This became known as the Curzon Line. However, Poland ignored this matter and in a subsequent war with Russian forces took over areas that were largely Ukrainian and Belorussian.
Following an agreement at the Tehran Conference, confirmed at the 1945 Yalta Conference (Feb. 6,1945), the Allied leaders Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin issued a statement affirming the use of the Curzon Line, with some five-to-eight kilometre variations, as the border between Poland and the Soviet Union. At first Churchill opposed sections of the proposal and wanted to add parts of Galicia, including the city of Lviv to Poland’s territory. Stalin argued that, as determined by the British official Curzon, these areas had a Ukrainian majority and it would be unjust to allocate them to Poland. Churchill was swayed by this logic and withdrew his proposal. As compensation to Poland for losing about 20 percent of its pre-war borders, the Allies incorporated formerly German-held areas into Poland on its western border. As a result, the current border separating Poland from Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania is an approximation of the Curzon Line.
After World War II ended in May of 1945, on the basis of this earlier territorial agreement, time was provided for a sizeable transfer of people into these new boundaries. Ukrainians still within the new boundaries of Poland were given the opportunity to move to Ukraine. Also Ukrainians living in Austria were given the opportunity to move to Ukraine. German people within the new boundaries of Poland on the west were repatriated to Germany. Polish people within Poland’s former eastern frontier were transferred to Poland, with most going to the newly acquired western area from Germany. This resulted in finally establishing boundaries for each of these countries in which there would now be no sizeable minority groups and that the majority of people would live within the boundaries of their own country. This was a significant development after World War II.
As a result of this, Ukrainians, for the first time in their history, now had the opportunity to live within the boundaries of their own country.
There is a further addendum to Ukraine’s boundaries. This involves the eastern border between Ukraine and the former USSR and now Russia. Shortly after the 1917 Russian Revolution and the cessation of Western military intervention to try to reinstate the Tsar in the early 1920s, Lenin authorized a change to Ukraine’s eastern border.
He noted that at that period the bulk of Ukraine was mainly an agricultural area, with very little industry. To provide it with a better-balanced economy, Lenin’s government proceeded to allocate an adjoining part of traditional Russian territory to Ukraine. This is an area that had the potential for hydropower and it had major coal and iron ore deposits. This encompassed Krivoy-Rog with its iron ore and other minerals, and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions with their coal deposits. Although only a minority of the population was Ukrainian, with the majority being Russian, the region was transferred to Ukraine because of economic reasons, i.e., to give Ukraine a better-balanced economy. The addition of this area enabled Ukraine to afterwards develop both an agricultural and industrial economy.
Unfortunately, somehow many Ukrainians at the present time are unaware of the fact that if it hadn’t been for these earlier initiative under the USSR, Ukraine would have never had the extent of territory and the boundaries it now has.
The CIA-engineered Maidan coup in February of 2014 overthrew the legally elected government in Ukraine and replaced it with a regime which encompassed a large number of the descendants of the World War II Ukrainian Nazi collaborators based in western Ukraine. This resulted in an immediate referendum in Crimea whose predominant Russian population voted overwhelmingly to leave Ukraine and rejoin the Russian Federation. As a result of this referendum, Russia accepted Crimea into its federation, but this was propagandized as a military takeover or an “annexation” which it definitely was not.
Also because the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, with their large Russian-speaking population, were opposed to the neo-Nazi takeover of Ukraine, they wanted to get a semi-autonomous status in the country. This was flatly refused and instead the Kiev regime launched a military attack on them. They fought back valiantly and defeated the attacking Ukraine army, but these battles killed thousands of people. Since then Kiev’s military units have never ceased shelling these two areas and they launch occasional sporadic attacks that are repulsed, with the result that the death toll is now more than 13,000. Also, because of objections to the new regime, about a million Ukrainians from various parts of the country fled as refugees to Russia.
In the West, with blatant anti-Russia propaganda, all this turmoil is blamed on Russia, with the allegation that Russia has sent in its own troops. However, at a time when satellite photos can be taken of licence plates, there has never a single photo taken of any Russian tanks, military vehicles or soldiers in this area. In fact, the chief of Ukraine’s General Military Staff Victor Muzhenko acknowledged that Russian army units were not involved in combat action in the troubled Donetsk and Luhansk region. Later when Russia, Germany and France negotiated the Minsk Agreement as a possible resolution to this conflict, and had Ukraine’s president Poroshenko and the leaders of Donetsk-Luhansk sign it, Ukraine violated the agreement by refusing to enact any part of it, till this day.
Most Ukrainians had not supported the 2014 coup regime, which gave an inordinate amount of power to the descendants of western Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators. The people gave vent to this in the April 1919 election when an independent candidate Volodymyr Zelensky was elected with 73% of the vote. Afterwards in the July 2019 parliamentary election, Zelensky’s political party, Servant of the People, won 60% of the party-list vote or 254 of the 424 seats.
Despite these progressive changes, Zelensky and the new parliament have somehow been hesitant to enact any meaningful progressive reforms. Aside from a prisoner exchange, no progress has been made in relations with Donetsk and Luhansk. It may be that they are intimidated by the fact that the previous governments since the 2014 coup allowed both the national army and its police forces to be infiltrated with neo-Nazis and their sympathizers. The army includes the Azov Battalion that gained notoriety after allegations emerged of torture and war crimes, as well as its neo-Nazi members and its usage of the logo featuring the Wolfsangel, the initial symbol of the Nazi party in Germany.
The dire situation in Ukraine was alarmingly exposed last year just before their election in a major article in The Nation, which included this account:
Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial euphoria. There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, rampant attacks on feminists and LGBT groups, book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators.
And so it still remains to be seen if the Zelinsky government can bring about much needed reforms in the country.
In the meantime, with the termination of trade with Russia, Ukraine’s economy has almost collapsed and the people are in dire economic straits.
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John Ryan, Ph.D. is a retired Professor of Geography and Senior Scholar at the University of Winnipeg. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
It’s been a big few days for the New Normal narrative and, through the deliberately cultivated haze of confusion, it’s not hard to see the world they want to build is taking shape.
1. Australia’s curfew
The state of Victoria, and the city of Melbourne, have declared a “state of disaster” and instituted a lockdown and curfew. The state’s 6.3 million inhabitants, nearly 5 million in the city, have to follow these restrictions:
Workplaces and shops that are not deemed essential will close or reduce their hours from Wednesday midnight but services such as supermarkets, petrol stations and doctors will remain open.
“Permitted” or essential workers will have to carry a special permit to work outside the home.
There is a nightly curfew in force: between the hours of 8pm and 5am you cannot leave home except for work or to get or provide urgent care.
You must stay within five kilometres of your home to shop or exercise.
If you leave the house to exercise, it should be for only one hour each day.
While up to two people can still exercise together, people should shop on their own – groups in public, even from the same household, are no longer allowed.
Schools will shift to remote learning except for vulnerable students and children of permitted workers.
Childcare centres will close to all but vulnerable children and those of essential workers.
Funerals can continue with a maximum of 10 people but weddings are off except for rare, compassionate reasons.
2. UK doctor: “Men should take female hormones to prevent COVID19 infection”
Dr Amir Khan appeared on ITV’s Good Morning Britain today, suggesting men – who are notionally at increased risk of coronavirus infection – should take a contraceptive pill filled with oestrogen. His theory, which he did not support with research, is that the oestrogen will boost the male immune system.
Hormone treatment is a big deal, potentially dangerous and seriously life-changing. To suggest its use to treat a disease which is harmless in over 95% of cases is borderline insanity, especially with no research to back it up. We tweeted about at the time, but GMB’s twitter account has since deleted the video.
At a time when doctors are named-and-shamed (and even fired) for suggesting a known safe medicine like HCQ, or sites like ours are branded “misinformation” for pointing out that PCR tests are unreliable, that a man should appear on national television making such ridiculous claims boggles the mind.
In the UK city of Leicester they are literally going door-to-door to test people. The mayor of Leicester said on the Leicester council website:
Testing is vitally important as it provides us with the information we need to track the virus […] That’s why we’re helping to run the biggest testing operation in the country, mobilising around 500 volunteers to support door-to-door testing, particularly in areas of the city where positive test results have been higher.
There is not one word in the article about “eliminating” false positives, which are very common in all PCR-based testing. So prepare for a huge wave of “new cases” when these tests enter wide circulation.
5. World Economic Forum pushing “immunity passports”
If you don’t like being forced to wear masks (and/or visors), or being placed under house arrest or (for some reason) under a curfew, or indeed, having to take hormone treatments…well don’t worry. Because the World Economic Forum has the solution – immunity passports.
uses blockchain technology to store encrypted data from individual blood tests, allowing users to prove that they have tested negative for COVID-19.
It goes on to say that using this kind of app is the only solution to getting everything back to (the old) normal:
CovidPass could also allow hotels, cinemas, theatres, sporting and concert venues to reopen safely.
If you think this all sounds like something from a dystopian novel, well you’re right. But there’s a silver lining. The app which uses your medical history to decide if you’re allowed to travel will be real environmentally friendly:
CovidPass commits to mandatory carbon offsetting for each flight passenger, to preserve the environmental benefits of reduced air travel during the crisis.
So there’s that, at least.
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It’s not hard to see the pattern taking shape here. Increasingly strict social controls on what you can wear, where you can go, when you can go there and so on and so on…and then the proposed solution.
A brief test and a little app that tracks your movement, or labels you nice and clean, a brand new vaccination for anybody who wants it (and most of the people who don’t) and then we can get back to normal.
It is manipulative blackmail of the worst kind, and it appears to be working.
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The appointment of Elliott Abrams to replace Brian Hook as the next U.S. Special Representative for Iran is another low point for the Trump administration’s disastrous policy towards Iran. The dangerous conflict resulting from Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement will be exacerbated by a man committed to Washington’s failed policies of regime change, including in his present-day position as Trump’s representative for Venezuela.
Elliott Abrams has made a career of lying and committing criminal acts that have led to the death and suffering of innocent people from Guatemala to Iraq. He embraces militarism, covers up for gross human rights abuses, and has a history of supporting authoritarian regimes.
Abrams’ resume includes:
In the 1980s, he defended the infamous Guatemalan General Efraín Ríos Montt, whose violent crackdown on the indigenous Ixil Mayan people of Guatemala was so brutal that it was classified as genocide by the United Nations.
He denied that the Salvadoran military was responsible for the devastating El Mozote massacre where, in 1981, a U.S.-trained battalion murdered more than 500 civilians, slitting the throats of children along the way. Not only did Abrams deny the massacre and push for continued US support for the notoriously brutal Salvadoran government, but he even claimed in a 1994 interview that “the U.S. administration’s record in El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement.”
He is vehemently anti-Palestinian and shamelessly supports Israel. As George Bush’s aide on the National Security Council, Abrams did everything he could to thwart peace negotiations. He repeatedly undercut any U.S. pressure on Israel to stop the building of settlements and cited the Holocaust as justification for Israel’s killings of Palestinians (Jews are “a people who had learned from history what happens to Jews without security”). In 2015, he applauded then-Speaker John Boehner’s decision to invite Netanyahu to address Congress without the approval of President Obama. He lauds Evangelical descriptions of Israel such as the belief that “Israel is connected to the idea that God favors and protects Americans.”
In 1991, Abrams pled guilty to withholding information from Congress related to his involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal, the secret and illegal scam in the 1980s to siphon profits from Iranian weapons sales to support the right-wing Contra rebels trying to overthrow the Sandinista government.
Abrams was a key supporter of the disastrous invasion of Iraq. In 1998, he submitted a letter to President Clinton encouraging him to depose Saddam Hussein. As Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy during George W. Bush’s second term, Abrams was in charge of promoting Bush’s strategy of “advancing democracy abroad.”
Abrams championed the U.S. overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, echoing the tactics used by the neocons for intervention in Iraq.
Abrams’ opposition to the Iran Nuclear Deal is epitomized by his attempts to encourage Israel to bomb Iran’s nuclear sites before negotiations became too serious. He expressed concern that Israel’s capacity to impede the deal was “already being narrowed considerably by the diplomatic thaw, because it is one thing to bomb Iran when it appears hopelessly recalcitrant and isolated and quite another to bomb it when much of the world — especially the United States — is optimistic about the prospect of talks.”
In January 2019, Abrams was appointed to be the U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela, and used his position to support an attempted coup, quash diplomatic talks, and increase brutal sanctions, even during the pandemic.
Abrams has now been appointed as the U.S. envoy for Iran, managing a situation that is already a tinderbox, with the Iranian people suffering immensely from U.S. sanctions. Rather than receiving this new position, Elliott Abrams should be barred for life from government positions and recognized as the war criminal that he is.
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The “globalization of war” is a hegemonic project. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The U.S. military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.
Across the nation, politicians and bureaucrats have invoked the COVID pandemic to seize dictatorial power to ban activities they disapprove. One of the most brazen examples recently occurred in super-lefty Montgomery County (MoCo), Maryland, where local health czar Travis Gayles announced last Friday that he would impose a $5,000 fine and up to a year in prison on private school teachers that teach students in person between now and October 1.
New COVID cases have plummeted in MoCo and are at very low levels. Gayles justified banning private schools in part because of rises in COVID transmission rates elsewhere in Maryland, the District of Columbia, and Virginia. Apparently, as long as there are any positive COVID test results within 300 miles, letting teachers teach is too risky.
Maryland as a whole has been through the Covid wave and now deaths have plummeted.
On Monday, Gov. Larry Hogan overturned Gayles’ decree, ruling that the
“blanket closure mandate imposed by Montgomery County was overly broad and inconsistent with the powers intended to be delegated to the county health officer….As long as schools develop safe and detailed plans that follow CDC and state guidelines, they should be empowered to do what’s best for their community.” Hogan declared, “This is a decision for schools and parents, not politicians.”
On Wednesday, Gayles issued a new dictate claiming that local health officers are entitled to “take any action or measure necessary to prevent the spread of communicable disease” and “issue, when necessary, special instructions for control of a disease or condition.” Gayles claims that as long as more than 8 people test positive for COVID in Montgomery County each day, he is entitled to shut down all private schools at least until October 1.
In a closed video briefing for county employees on May 28, Gayles continually invoked “science and data” like a righteous priest invoking God and the Bible to sanctify scourging his enemies. What does it require to justify boundless power in a county of a million people? A COVID positive rate of 0.000008%. Surprise – the dictatorship will last forever – or at least until the Democratic political machine that runs the county decides it can profit from loosening the tourniquet it imposed that helped destroy more than 50,000 jobs and countless small businesses.
Image on the right is Travis Gayles (Source: Montgomery Community Media)
Montgomery County is suffering from epidemic levels of sexually-transmitted diseases including Hepatitis C and chlamydia. If Gayles has the right to shut down schools based on the 0.000008% rate, the same standard would justify invoking STD numbers to outlaw all sex between unmarried adults. But MoCo would never do that because sexual activity, unlike other private learning, is a freedom that progressives champion.
Gayles justified his school shutdown dictate: “The purpose of what we’re doing is to keep kids safe.” According to Gayles and other MoCo politicians, nothing matters except politicians’ self-proclaimed good intentions.
But the school shutdowns have profoundly disrupted lives and are increasingly blighting learning. A recent Wall Street Journal analysis headlined,
“The Results Are In for Remote Learning: It Didn’t Work,” noted, “In many places, lots of students simply didn’t show up online, and administrators had no good way to find out why not… Soon many districts weren’t requiring students to do any work at all, increasing the risk that millions of students would have big gaps in their learning.”
The Center on Reinventing Public Education found that the vast majority of school districts did not require any live teaching over video. An analysis by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) noted that only “one in three school districts expected teachers to provide instruction, track student engagement, or monitor academic progress for all students.” But since teachers in most places continued collecting full pay, the shutdown is wildly popular with teachers unions.
Montgomery County politicians and school officials have endlessly invoked “closing the achievement gap” to justify boosting school spending (and property taxes). But school shutdowns are devastating minorities. The CDC warned last month that “the lack of in-person educational options disproportionately harms low-income and minority children.”
An analysis by McKinsey and Company consultants estimated that if schools were entirely online until January, on average white students would lose 6 months of learning, Hispanic students 9 months, Black students 10 months and low-income students more than a year during the time school buildings have closed for the pandemic,” the Baltimore Sun reported.
Many parents are desperate to get their children back to learning at full speed and are seeking private alternatives to shuttered public schools. Private schools have taken extreme measures to assure the safety of returning students, installing plexiglass shields, banning field trips, restricting time in hallways, and minimizing unnecessary contact. In comments last week, Gayles brushed off their efforts as “niche issues.” Bureaucrats have always considered freedom a niche nuisance.
After controversy erupted over the shutdown order, the County Council held a session “really showing its hatred of private schools,” Washington Examiner columnist Tim Carney, a Catholic father of six kids, observed. Carney tweeted, “Montgomery County Councilman Craig Rice said that ‘racism’ was behind the efforts to reopen nonpublic schools–because the bureaucrat who tried to close them is a black doctor.” Carney summarized Rice’s argument: “The county shouldn’t allow private schools the same liberty it allowed public schools (whether to reopen) because ‘affluent’ people are more willing to expose their own kids to infection than others are.”
Unfortunately, Rice did not bother explaining the “achievement gap” between local public schools and private schools (many of which spend far less per student). These are the same local politicians who cheered on local mass protests over the George Floyd killing in stark violation of “shelter-at-home” orders at the same time they continue outlawing church services.
While private teaching is considered inherently too risky to permit, Montgomery County announced this week that massage parlors would be permitted to reopen. Local massage parlors are perennially getting busted because Asian masseuses provide more services to patrons than state law permits. But masseuses providing “happy endings” to male customers is apparently less of a public health peril than an adult standing in front of a group of plexiglassed students explaining algebra.
MoCo politicians pretending to take the high road have actually turned local children into “revenue hostages.” Gayles’ shutdown order expires on October 1 – one day after local public schools report their expected enrollment, which will largely determine how much subsidies they receive. Keeping private schools shut down could result in tens of millions of additional tax dollars for the school system even if those kids never show up for a single class – simply because parents will not have the opportunity to notify the county of plans to withdraw their kids for private schools.
The Montgomery County fight has brought out the usual Twitter mobs proclaiming that any government official who fails to prohibit all purportedly risky activity is to blame for any resulting illnesses or deaths. A Twitter user named TeachersAreNotYourSacrificialLambs responded to Hogan’s action: “He now owns it. Every Maryland private school illness, hospitalization, and death now falls squarely on his shoulders. He. Owns. It.” A self-described “progressive democrat” Twitter user railed at Hogan: “Why does he want dead children & school staff in Maryland?… Gov Larry just part of the #GOPDeathCult.”
This is typical of how the COVID shutdowns and lockdowns have been scored: politicians are applauded for everything they ban while enjoying zero liability for the vast collateral damage they inflict. Many MoCo school nurses are concerned about the harm from shutdowns of school-based health centers that effectively serve as primary care providers for many low-income families. The CDC cited studies on pandemics that showed “a strong association between length of quarantine and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms, avoidance behavior, and anger.” Maybe the champions of perpetual shutdowns will solve that problem by making antidepressants mandatory for all children?
Politicians and bureaucrats who claim a right to outlaw all risks ignore the risk of tyranny. Gayles and other MoCo politicians sneer at their critics as if they were unwashed deplorables incapable of understanding “science.” But their school shutdown policy is simply Political Science 101, using deceit and demagoguery to seize more power.
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James Bovard is the author of ten books, including Public Policy Hooligan, Attention Deficit Democracy, The Bush Betrayal, and Lost Rights: The Destruction of American Liberty. He has written for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy, Washington Post, New Republic, Reader’s Digest, and many other publications. He is a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a frequent contributor to The Hill, and a contributing editor for American Conservative.
General Dwight Eisenhower was the first NATO supreme allied commander.
After assuming that post in 1951, General Eisenhower wrote about NATO’s goal:
“If in 10 years, all American troops stationed in Europe for national defense purposes have not been returned to the United States, then this whole project will have failed.”
It did fail because seven decades later, long after the Soviet Union dissolved, NATO still exists with thousands of American troops deployed throughout Europe.
The Warsaw Pact was disbanded in 1991 as Soviet troops withdrew from Eastern Europe.
The American empire exploited this peace to expand NATO and absorb former Warsaw Pact nations and even former Soviet republics while deploying NATO forces to Russia’s borders.
For 40 years they hurled their neoliberal dogmas at us. The financial crisis seriously shook the belief in those beliefs, but eventually the system survived. This time things are different. The corona crisis and the socio-economic measures for saving the system have killed the neoliberal dogmas one by one. High time for something new.
Fallen dogmas
“We are living above our means. Sorry, but there is no money.”
They have taught us that for years. Health care was too expensive, unemployment benefits were too generous, wages were too high and there was simply no money for social or cultural matters. The government deficit and debts had to be kept as low as possible, which is why spending had to be reduced on everything.
Overnight there seems to be money indeed and they appear to have found gigantic money pots. Today they spend billions of euros as if they were handing out candy. A government deficit that is more than three times the 3 percent Maastricht standards or a debt ratio way above 100 percent of the GDP, all of a sudden it is all possible.
“The free market solves everything; the state is inefficient.”
Privatize and deregulate everything as much as possible was the mantra. Government must be downsized as much as possible and allowed to interfere as little as possible.[i] In the words of the Belgian Flemish nationalist politician Bart De Wever: “The state is a monster that sucks up and spits out money”.
The market completely failed during the corona crisis. That was most clearly and dramatically visible in issue of the mouth masks and personal protective equipment. Conversely, we saw both a dramatic return and rehabilitation of public government. It became visible to everyone that only the state can manage and overcome a crisis of this magnitude. Major sectors of the economy were fully or partially nationalized without any problems. According to the Wallstreet Journal, economic stimulus in the US is “the biggest step towards a centrally planned economy America has ever taken.”
“Capital and entrepreneurship create prosperity.”
It is the entrepreneurs who create wealth. Thanks to their capital, daring and innovation, they create employment and increase the wealth of a country.
The lockdowns in the different countries have revealed the opposite everywhere, namely that it is the labor of the working population that produces wealth. When part of the active population had to stop working, economic growth plummeted. It is labor that creates capital and not the other way around. The lockdown also showed that it is often the most essential jobs that get paid the lowest wages.
“What’s good for the rich is good for everyone.”
Precisely because wealth is created by capital and entrepreneurs, we must surely pamper them. Measures that favor entrepreneurs and high incomes (tax gifts, wage subsidies, state aid…) increase investment and create jobs. Their advantage eventually trickles down. This so-called trickle-down effect was the excuse for justifying the policy tailored to the richest 1 percent.
Corona exposes the fallacy of this reasoning. Indeed, thanks to the support measures, the super-rich have made significant progress. Since March 18, billionaires in the US have seen their wealth increase by a fifth, or $ 565 billion. JPMorgan, the largest bank in the US, reported its highest quarterly turnover ever. Investment company Goldman Sachs recorded a growth of 41 percent compared to last year. Of the trickle- down effect however, there is little evidence. Hundreds of millions of people worldwide are pushed into extreme poverty. Domestically, the number of people who call on food banks has risen by 15 percent, and that’s just the beginning.
“We are all egoists.”
‘Man is capable of good, but by nature he is bad. He is primarily driven by self-interest.’ Neoliberal gurus have been teaching us that for decades. Ultimately, they believe, this is beneficial because self-interest leads to competition, which is what drives our economy forward.
The spontaneous and massive solidarity that spread across the globe during the corona crisis completely belied this cynical view of humanity. Young people made grocery runs for their elderly neighbors, thousands of volunteers made mouth masks or volunteered at food banks. When there was no protective material yet, nurses started taking care of their patients jeopardizing their own health – in other words: risking their lives. Certainly, there were groups that did not care about the security measures, but those were the exceptions that confirm the rule. The corona crisis shows more than ever that humans are essentially super cooperators, as previously described by the Belgian people’s doctor Dirk Van Duppen and Dutch journalist Rutger Bregman. Wendy Carlin, professor of economics puts it like this: “The model of the economic actor as amoral and self-centred will finally need to be updated”.
No to a repeat of 2008
All traditional parties, including greens and Social Democrats, have been involved in, or at least supported, neoliberal policies over the past forty years.[ii] The consequences of this anti-social policy have become painfully clear in recent months. Pending cuts and privatizations have taken a toll on human lives in healthcare and residential care centers. In addition, the neoliberal recipes appear to be completely unsuitable to provide a solid answer to the economic crash.
In any case, a similar approach to that of the post 2008 period – pumping extra money into the economy combined with austerity – is out of the question. A new financial doping could completely destroy the already weakened economy. New spending cuts would further erode purchasing power, causing a profound social and political crisis.The Financial Times’ warnings are unambiguous: “But if we want capitalism and liberal democracy to survive Covid-19, we cannot afford to repeat the mistaken “socialise the losses, privatise the gains” approach a decade ago.” “A return to austerity would be madness — an invitation to widespread social unrest, if not revolution, and a godsend for the populists.”
The widespread call for a paradigm shift
That much is clear. Neo-liberalism has come to an end, it is time for something new. Except for a few diehards, no one wants to return to the world before corona. The crisis and the responses to it has led to many frustrations and has radicalized an important part of the active population. In the US, 57 percent of the population believe their political system works only for insiders with money and power. A majority of young people under the age of thirty support socialism. In the UK, barely 6 percent want to return to the same type of economy as before the pandemic. Only 17 percent believe that stimulus measures should be financed through new savings.
70 percent of the French feel it is necessary to reduce the influence of the financial world and the shareholders. In Flanders, three-quarters of the population believe that the money should come from large fortunes and two-thirds believe that after the crisis, politicians should work on an ambitious redistribution of wealth.
The academic and cultural world is also on that wavelength. Three thousand scientists from 600 universities believe that society should radically change its course and put employees back at the center of decision-making. Two hundred artists, including Robert de Niro and Madonna, launched an appeal to “the world” not to return to “the old normal” of the time before Corona, but to profoundly change our lifestyles, consumption and economies.
This realization has also got through to the business world. Klaus Schwab, founder and chairman of the World Economic Forum (Davos), speaks of a “great reset of capitalism”. In his view, the pandemic exposed the shortcomings of an “old system” that had neglected infrastructure, health care and social security systems. “If we continu as we do now … I could foresee that we will have a revolt I our hands.” And even the super-rich beg in an open letter for “higher taxes on the wealthy to pay for Covid-19 recovery”.
According to the Financial Times“radical reforms” will be need to put on the table. “Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investment rather than as liabilities and look for ways to make the labor market less insecure. Redistribution will again be on the agenda… Policies until recently considered eccentric such as basic income and wealth taxes will have to be in the mix.” According to that newspaper, liberal democracy “will survive this second great economic shock only if the adjustments are made within the context of a new social contract that recognises the welfare of the majority over the interests of the privileged”. Foreign Affairstoo is talking about “a new social contract”. The aim of this is “the establishment of a “well-being state” that would provide everyone with the basics necessary to maintain a decent quality of life”. This presupposes “guaranteed universal access to high-quality health care and education”. What was, until recently, considered as extreme leftist ideology has now become mainstream.
An answer to four crises
The challenges we face are huge: The new paradigm must be suitable for respond to at least four crises.[iii]
1. Economic deadlock
The world economy has experienced a major crisis three times over the past decades: the dotcom crisis in 2000, the financial crisis in 2008 and in recent months a depression following a pandemic. This clearly shows that Covid is not the cause but the trigger of the economic storm. A healthy economy should in principle be able to cope with a corona shock, a country such as China proves it. But that does not seem to be the case at all for the capitalist economy. Productivity growth has almost stalled, profit rates (percentage of profit on invested capital) are steadily declining and debt worldwide has risen to an unsustainable 322 percent of GDP. Moreover, each crisis means nothing but misery for millions of people. This crisis will again push several hundreds of millions into poverty. It really can’t go on like this.
2. Outrageous gap between the rich and the poor
In capitalism, production focuses solely on the pursuit of profit of a small group of private owners and not on the social needs or opportunities for development of the great majority. That creates an outrageous gap between the rich and the poor.
With the wealth that is produced worldwide today, every family with two adults and three children worldwide has a potential monthly disposable income of 4,100 euros (you read that right)[iv]. Yet one person in three of the world’s population does not have any basic sanitary facilities and only one person in eight has access to electricity. One in five lives in a slum and one in three does not have safe drinkable water.
In my country, Belgium, 5 percent of the super-rich people possess as much as the 75 percent of the poorest. In one of the richest countries in the world, 20 percent of families are at risk of poverty, a quarter of families have a hard time paying for all medical expenses, 40 percent do not have any opportunity to save, and 70 percent of the unemployed struggle to make ends meet.
These are not excesses of the system. They directly result from its logic.
3. Upcoming pandemics
Since the beginning of last century, we have known that almost all modern epidemics are the result of human intervention in humanity’s immediate ecological environment. Mammals and birds are carriers of hundreds of thousands of viruses that are transmissible to humans.[v] The exploitation of previously inaccessible nature reserves means that there is an increasing chance of transmission of those viruses to humans.
In response to HIV, Sars, Ebola, Mers and other viruses, top experts have been warning for more than a decade. We may consider ourselves fortunate that no more deadly viruses have come our way. In 2018, scientists in the U.S. drew up a detailed plan to prevent such pandemics. Losses caused by Covid-19 may reach an estimated $ 12,500 billion. The cost of the 2018 prevention plan is barely $ 7 billion.
No financier has yet been found for the project. This should come as no surprise, because this kind of research is largely private, and is not about the public interest, but about profit. Chomsky puts it very sharply:
“Labs around the world could be working right then on developing protection for potential coronavirus pandemics. Why didn’t they do it? The market signals were wrong. The drug companies. We have handed over our fate to private tyrannies called corporations, which are unaccountable to the public, in this case, Big Pharma. And for them, making new body creams is more profitable than finding a vaccine that will protect people from total destruction.”
4. Climate degeneration
The hunt for maximum profits undermines the ecological system of the earth and threatens the survival of the human species. According to famous writer and activist Naomi Klein, the world is faced with a decisive choice: either we save capitalism or the climate. This choice is razor-sharp in the fossil energy sector, the main culprit of CO2 emissions. The 200 largest oil, gas and coal companies have a combined market value of $ 4,000 billion and gain tens of billions of profits annually. If we want to keep the temperature rise below 2 ° C, these energy giants must leave 60 to 80 percent of their supplies untouched. But that is detrimental to earnings expectations and it would immediately make their market value plummet. Therefore, they still invest hundreds of billions of dollars annually in the quest for new supplies. If current policies remain in place, demand for fossil fuels will rise by nearly 30 percent within this and twenty years from a drastic decline, with no peak in sight.
As long as we remain trapped in profit logic, we are unable to stop climate warming. According to The Economist, the mouthpiece of the global economic elite, the financial cost of combating global warming is simply too high.
In response to the corona crisis, governments have taken unprecedented measures. In order to tackle climate degeneration action will have to be taken which is at least as radical. “If there’s one thing the pandemic has shown,” the Financial Timeswrote, “it’s the danger of experts’ warnings being ignored.”
Fight for a different social system
What can we learn from these four crises? That we will have to completely rethink our policies and our economy. In order to break the current economic deadlock, it will first of all be necessary to curb the financial markets and break the disproportionate power of the multinationals. In order to tackle social issues, the economy should no longer focus on the private profits of the few, but on the social needs of the many. There must also be a redistribution of wealth. In order to arm ourselves against future pandemics, the pharmaceutical industry will have to implement a radical change of course. Finally, climate policy is too important to be left to the energy giants and their profit logic. Their omnipotence must be broken so that there is room for a responsible climate policy.
To achieve all this, we will have to subordinate the economic sphere to the political sphere. Where is invested and what is invested in, the distribution of the economic surplus, trade, money, etc., we must all focus on the priorities and needs of today’s society and that of future generations. This “planning” by no means implies total state control, but it does mean that the economy is controlled by an (elected) political body and not by private owners. It means that economic logic is subordinated to the state and not the other way round.[vi]
A different social system is a necessary and urgent goal, but it will not be realized by itself. Correct ideas are important but not enough to bring about changes. The present system is backed and driven by giant interests. Those who benefit from this system will never voluntarily give it up or be willing to make concessions, even if enlightened capitalists are convinced that such concessions are essential for the preservation of the system. Associations of Entrepreneurs will even try to use the crisis situation for imposing a shock strategy.
History teaches us that the type of society and our future depend on the struggle we will wage. As sociologist Jean Ziegler puts it, “we should not be optimistic, we should mobilize”.[vii] To build a powerful mobilization, we will have to build strong organizations, because our opponents are very strongly organized themselves. Or as Varoufakis puts it, “If we fail now to stand together … my fear is that this system will only deepen its cruel logic”. In any case, these will be exciting and decisive times. Get ready.
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This article was translated from Dutch by Dirk Nimmegeers.
Notes
[i] This withdrawal of the state does not apply to the major monopolies, on the contrary. Because of their large concentration of power, they have more and more impact on the state system. They use state power to strengthen their competitiveness and to guarantee maximum profits. This is done in various ways. Public contracts, subsidies and favorable tax rates are the best known. However, the government is also called in for the exploration of new sectors or products. Here investments are uncertain and often require huge amounts of capital. Government agencies are taking on this expensive and risky initial phase, often in the context of the war industry. At a later stage, they are then transferred to the private sector, they are literally privatized. To give some recent examples, that was the case with the PC, the Internet, Google’s algorithm, wireless networks, touchscreen technology, GPS, microchips, biotechnology, nanotechnology and many other profitable products or sectors. Apple‘s initial funding came from a US government investment company.
[ii] In all countries where Social Democrats were in governments, they helped shape neo-liberal policies. In the UK, Blair launched the “Third Way” between capitalism and socialism and made a pact with the ultra-right-wing Berlusconi. In Germany, Gerhard Schröder, the leader of the Social Democrats, introduced the low wage model that started a spiral of wage decline across Europe. In Belgium, the Social Democrats are partly responsible for the deterioration of purchasing power, poorer working conditions, the cuts in social security and health care, and the decline of pension systems.
Until now the greens have not co-ruled often and where they did, they have not changed the course of neoliberal policies. In Germany, on the other hand, they have eagerly defended the low wage model. During their only government participation in Belgium (1999 to 2004), they managed to bring about only minor changes. In the European Parliament, the Greens have almost fully endorsed neoliberal measures, such as the Six Pack, and they are thus partly responsible for the drastic austerity policies in the EU.
[v] An estimated 350,000 to 1.3 million viruses. Source The Economist.
[vi] Economic planning can be defined as the ability to impose democratically agreed objectives aimed at sustainable economic development. There are different degrees of planning. Planning is best put into practice in a qualitative manner, more specifically focused on vital human needs. Bureaucratic planning should be avoided.
[vii] Quoted in an interview in Solidair, July – August 2020, p. 31.
Brent Scowcroft badly served his friend George H. W. Bush on Iraq by not doing all he could to stop Bush’s son from committing a war of aggression, writes Ray McGovern, who used to brief H.W.
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Some of the praise being accorded the late Brent Scowcroft is deserved. As national security adviser to President George H. W. Bush, the unassuming Scowcroft was a voice for relative reason and moderation (compared to the neoconservatives who would follow him), as the USSR imploded and U.S. forces chased Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait.
But few pundits commenting on Scowcroft’s legacy are likely to raise an awkward, but important, question that haunts me. It is of such consequence that it belongs in his obituary—and his eulogy. Scowcroft knew the attack on Iraq was not only a war crime but a reflection of insane hubris. Why didn’t he join his voice to the 30 million people in 800 cities who demonstrated against the war on Feb. 15, 2003, five weeks before the invasion?
Friends Don’t Let Friends’ Sons Drive Drunk
President George H. W. Bush examines papers with Sec. Dick Cheney and Gen. Brent Scowcroft in the Oval Office, April 19, 1989. (George Bush Presidential Library and Museum)
I believe Scowcroft badly served his friend George H. W. Bush on Iraq by not doing all he could to stop Bush’s son from committing a war of aggression — “the supreme international crime” as defined by the Nuremberg Tribunal.
Two years after the invasion, Scrowcroft toldThe New Yorker that Saddam Hussein “wasn’t really a threat. His army was weak, and the country hadn’t recovered from sanctions.” Colleagues pointed out that although Scowcroft was chairman of George W. Bush’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, he was “frozen out” of planning for Iraq, as were Bush’s secretary of state, James Baker, and others.
From the neocon viewpoint, it was essential to shut out anyone with practical, strategic, legal, or moral qualms about launching a pre-emptive war with nothing to pre-empt.
Scowcroft had had copious experience with “the crazies”, the so-called “neoconservatives.” They’d gained critical mass when Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Chief-of-Staff Dick Cheney ran President Gerald Ford’s White House. Scowcroft had watched as Rumsfeld and Cheney maneuvered H. W. Bush into what they thought would be a dead-end job directing the CIA.
Then they sicced the crazies on Director Bush in the form of the infamous Team B, which did all it could to exaggerate the Soviet threat. I worked for DCI Bush in 1976; my colleagues and I did what we could to help him stave them off. In the end the Team B alarmists and their neocon descendants, “the crazies”, got more of a hearing than they deserved.
When he became vice president, I gave Bush the early morning briefings based largely on the President’s Daily Brief from 1981-85. He and I had an unusually longstanding professional and, later, cordial personal relationship. For several years after he left Washington, we stayed in touch — mostly by letter.
Bush Sr.’s answer to Ray McGovern
On Jan. 11, 2003, as the invasion of Iraq was gaining steam, I wrote him a letter asking him to speak “privately to your son George about the crazies advising him on Iraq,” adding, “I am aghast at the cavalier way in which the [Richard] Perles of the Pentagon are promoting the use of nuclear weapons as an acceptable option against Iraq.”
My letter continued:
“That such people have the President’s ear is downright scary. I think he needs to know why you exercised such care to keep such folks at arms length. (And, as you may know, they are exerting unrelenting pressure on CIA analysts to come up with the ‘right’ answers. You know how that goes!)”
His reassuring answer not to worry about any influence the “crazies” might have on his son was a big letdown.
The elder Bush may not have been fully aware of it, but he was in the dark whistling while leaving surrogates like Scowcroft and Baker the task of publicly opposing the criminal insanity of attacking and occupying Iraq. H.W. Bush may or may not have tried privately, but it was a tragedy he did not speak out publicly.
Could Scowcroft Have Stopped the Invasion?
He didn’t try very hard. There’s no doubt he saw it coming. He had to be acutely aware that writing a Wall Street Journalop-ed “Don’t Attack Saddam” on August 15, 2002 would not be enough to stop the war, even though Baker wrote a similar op-ed in The New York Times ten days later. Cheney launched the juggernaut to war the next day with a major speech greatly exaggerating the Iraqi threat. After that, resistance from Establishment figures petered out.
Scowcroft’s erstwhile protege Condoleezza Rice, the younger Bush’s national security adviser, made it abundantly clear. The New Yorker article shows how Rice for whatever reason, she had drunk what Cheney, Bush, and Rumsfeld were serving.
“Rice’s split with her former National Security Council colleagues was made evident at a dinner in early September of 2002, at 1789, a Georgetown restaurant. Scowcroft, Rice, and several people from the first Bush Administration were there. The conversation, turning to the current Administration’s impending plans for Iraq, became heated. Finally, Rice said, irritably, ‘The world is a messy place, and someone has to clean it up.’ The remark stunned the other guests. Scowcroft, as he later told friends, was flummoxed by Rice’s ‘evangelical tone.’”
That was six months before the invasion. It’s a pity that those who perceived the impending catastrophe and had the experience and credibility to shout that out, limited themselves to op-eds and head-scratching at Rice’s inanities.
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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. A 27-year CIA analyst, he served as an Acting National Intelligence Officer in 1976 when George H. W. Bush was Director of Central Intelligence. When Bush became vice president, Ray gave him the early morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief from 1981 to 1985.
This month marks the second year since former President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, announced to the world a campaign promoted by a group of Latin American writers and academics to declare August 9 as International Day of US Crimes against Humanity. Appropriately the day is to remember the second nuclear bomb dropped in 1945 on Nagasaki Japan that came just 3 days after the first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.
Imagine how depraved and cold blooded the then Democratic President Truman could be to find that he had incinerated 150,000 people on one day and turned right around and did it again in Nagasaki instantly killing 65,000 more human beings. US historical accounts love to turn truth on its head by saying how many lives those nuclear bombs saved when Japan was already defeated before the bombs were dropped after 67 Japanese cities had been leveled to the ground by relentless US aerial fire bombings.
The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were sacrificed as an exclamation point on a proclamation to the world announcing the arrival of the US as the world’s new pre eminent super power. It also served as an example that the US would commit any murderous crime of any proportion to maintain that imperial position of dominance and they have demonstrated that to be true time and time again. Even now in decline the US has never apologized for this unnecessary crime because that could convey a sign of weakness and a step back from a policy of nuclear blackmail held over the nations of the world. Obama had the chance to do that in the final year of his presidency when he had nothing to lose in a 2016 visit to Hiroshima. Instead of apologizing to the people of Japan or easing tensions in the world Obama, in eloquent fluffy double talk, said, “Mere words cannot give voice to such suffering. But we have a shared responsibility to look directly into the eye of history and ask what we must do differently to curb such suffering again.”
The responsibility for the majority of suffering in the world was then and continues to be, on an imperialist policy and its inherent neo liberal engine that violently throttles the ability of countries to develop in a way that would bring health and prosperity for the benefit of their majorities. In the end it is an unsustainable system that only benefits a sliver of privileged society.
The US crimes against humanity did not begin or end with the dropping of the nuclear bombs on Japan. As militant civil rights leader Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown) pointed out years ago, “Violence is as American as cherry pie.” Since its inception the US has been ingrained with a motor force of violent oppression against everyone and every country that stood in its way of its expansion for control of resources and its entitlement to limitless accumulation of vast wealth for a few.
The original thirteen colonies that rebelled against England were not motivated solely by being taxed without representation but more for the restrictions that King George had placed on the unbridled greed of the white settlers to expand and steal the lands of the indigenous nations and communities and to establish a system of slavery which was the main source of capitalist accumulation especially for the southern colonies. At the time of the revolution close to 20% of the population consisted of Black slaves. Slavery actually ran contrary to British Common Law so the only way the emerging class of landowners in the colonies could flourish was to secede from the British Empire. In doing so it established a pivotal component of the original DNA of the United States; structural racism as a means to justify any level of discrimination and oppression with a deeply embedded belief in the inferiority of any race not white and Christian. The cries of Black Lives Matter in the streets today of all the major cities and towns of the US are a resounding echo of resistance that comes from the plantations and the slave ships that came from Africa.
The genocide of indigenous people in the US was its initial crime wave against humanity as it expanded westward destined by God to exercise their Manifest Destiny. The early history of this country is littered with hundreds of massacres of the original caretakers of the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. And that crime continues to this day with Native Americans suffering from the highest infection rates of Covid-19 in the country as a direct result of government neglect and broken treaties that keeps the reservations in grinding poverty including in many areas where there is not even running water.
On July 21 Congress passed a $740 billion military appropriations bill, the biggest ever and $2 billion more than last year. The United States spends more on national defense than the next 11 largest militaries combined. A well intended but feeble attempt by sections of the Democratic Party to cut 10% of the budget to go to health and human services failed because ultimately funding the 800 US military installations that occupy territory in more than 70 countries around the world takes precedence over something so basic and human as subsidized food programs. Meanwhile approximately20% of the families in this country are struggling to obtain nutritious food every day just as one example of the growing social and health needs.
Wars and occupations are expensive and that money goes right down the drain. It does not recycle through the economy rather it is equipment and operations meant to destroy and terrorize and the only part of it that is re used is the militarization of police forces in the US who are geared out in advanced equipment for the wars at home not even normally seen in theaters of war abroad.
When Obama took over from Bush junior he vowed to end the war in Afghanistan and instead left office with the unique distinction of having had a war going everyday of his 8 years in office. He launched airstrikes or military raids in at least seven countries: Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Somalia and Pakistan and Trump came in and did not miss a beat and has carried the war of death, destruction and destabilization of Afghanistan into its twentieth year. The Pentagon knows that the days of outright winning a war are over and relies now on hybrid wars that are perhaps even more criminal. It is now wars of attrition with proxy and contract armies, aerial bombardment, sabotage of infrastructure that turns into endless wars that’s intent is to make sure that a country is imbalanced, exhausted and does not become independent or develop and use its resources for the benefit of its own people.
This of course is not the only type of criminal warfare in the Empire’s arsenal. Economic sanctions are just as much a crime against humanity as military attacks. No one should ever forget the 10 years of the US orchestrated UN sanctions against Iraq in the 1990’s that were responsible for the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. Primarily through executive order Trump has put some sort of sanctions on around one third of the countries of the world ranging in severity starting with the 60 year old unilateral blockade of Cuba for the crime of insisting on its sovereignty just 90 miles away, to the sanctioning of medicines and food to Venezuela causing the deaths of 40,000 people, the outright stealing of billions of dollars of their assets out of banks and organizing coup plots against the democratically elected President, Nicolas Maduro.
Now the chickens have come to roost with Trump sending shadowy military units of federal agents into cities like Portland, Seattle and other cities like it was a military invasion of some poor country, barging in uninvited not to bring order and peace but to brutalize, escalate and provoke people in the streets who for months now have been demanding real justice and equality. The combination of the failure of the Trump Administration to confront the pandemic with any sort of will or a national science based plan, the existing economic crisis with its glaring separation of wealth and the endless murdering of people of color as normal police policy has exposed the system like never before. The growing consciousness of a majority of the US population that now seem to be getting that there has to be fundamental change will be the catalyst for real change to happen. It will not come from a government that does not reflect their interests but only through a unity of struggle will we be pointed in a direction that will push US crimes against humanity, at home and abroad, to become a thing of the past.
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Bill Hackwell and Alicia Jrapko are members of the US chapter of the Network in Defense of Humanity.
Despite its failings at home, the United States intervenes in countries across multiple continents seeking to control their governments and resources.
This week, we look at the US’ latest efforts in Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Bolivia to undermine their independence and force them to serve the interests of the US government and transnational corporations.
In all three countries, the US has displayed a lack of understanding of the people and their support for their revolutionary processes, and as a result, is failing. As US empire fades, so might the Monroe Doctrine come to an end.
Sandanista- FSLN rally in Nicaragua.
Nicaragua: USAID Multi-Year Destabilization Plan Exposed
A US Agency for International Development (USAID) document revealed by reporter William Grigsby describes covert plans to overthrow the democratically-elected Nicaraguan government in the next two years. USAID seeks to hire mercenaries “to take charge of the plan . . . to disrupt public order and carry out other [violent] actions before, during, and/or after the 2021 elections.”
USAID is creating Responsive Assistance In Nicaragua (RAIN), allotting $540,000 in grants to remove the Sandinista government in what it calls “Nicaragua’s transition to democracy.” Daniel Ortega won the 2016 election with 72 percent of the vote in what election observers from the Organization of American States (OAS), a US tool, described as taking “place in a calm, smooth and pacific manner, with no large incidents.”
Brian Willson, who has opposed US efforts to dominate Nicaragua since the 1980s Contra war, concludes the US realizes Ortega will win the 2021 election. In fact, this week, a poll showed support for Ortega’s party, FSLN, at 50% and for the opposition at 10%. One of USAID plans, as they tried in Venezuela in 2018, is for the opposition to boycott the election since they know they will lose, then call it illegitimate and create a political and economic crisis.
The real goal is not a democracy but domination so US transnational corporations can profit from the second poorest country in the hemisphere by putting in place a neoliberal economy to privatize public services, cut social services, and purge all traces of the Sandinistas. USAID also plans to “reestablish” the police and military to enforce their rule. Another goal is to stop Nicaragua from being the “threat of a good example” for its economic growth, reduction of inequality, poverty, illiteracy and crime.
John Perry writes about “US interference in Nicaragua, going back at least as far as William Walker’s assault on its capital and usurpation of the presidency in 1856.” Since the 1979 Sandinista Revolution, the US has sought to take back control of Nicaragua.
USAID and its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) have been funding the opposition. NED financed 54 projects from 2014-17 to lay the groundwork for a 2018 coup attempt, which also involved USAID. Wiston Lopez writes the US has provided “more than 31 million dollars between the end of 2017 and May 1, 2020.” When the attempted coup in 2018 failed, the US also put in place illegal unilateral coercive measures, known as economic sanctions, supported by both Democrats and Republicans, to try to weaken the country.
The USAID’s RAIN program outlines the usual regime change steps, e.g. remake the police and military as enforcers of the new neoliberal order, move “quickly to dismantle parallel institutions,” i.e. the Sandinista Front, the Sandinista Youth, and other grassroots institutions, and implement “transitional justice measures,” i.e., the prosecution of current government officials and movement leaders.
A new area of attack is a disinformation campaign against Nicaragua’s handling of COVID-19. The opposition misrepresents the government’s response and puts forward false death statistics in an attempt to create chaos. As Wiston López points out, “Since March the US-directed opposition has focused 95% of their actions on attempting to discredit Nicaragua’s prevention, contention, and Covid treatment. However, this only had some success in the international media and is now backfiring since Nicaragua is the country with one of the lowest mortality rates in the continent.”
The US media fails to report on the success of Nicaragua in combating the virus using a community-based health system. Nicaragua has been building its health system for the last 12 years and took rapid action to prepare for the virus. Nicaragua did not impose a lock down because it is a poor country where 80 percent of people are in the informal economy and 40 percent live in rural areas. People must work in order to eat.
Stephen Sefton puts the failure of the United States so far in context. At its root, the US does not understand the people of Nicaragua, their history of fighting US domination, and their ability to overcome right-wing puppets. It also misunderstands what the Sandinista government is doing to better the lives of the people in every sector of the economy. Sefton concludes, “The US government has failed notoriously to meet the needs of its own people during the current pandemic but can still find money to try and destroy a small country whose success makes US social, economic and environmental policy look arbitrary, negligent and criminal.”
Nicolas Maduro kicks out Donald Trump. Photo by Ben Norton.
Venezuela: Bipartisan Failed Regime Change
Ever since the 1998 election of Hugo Chavez, successive US administrations have tried and failed to dominate Venezuela. The bipartisan nature of this policy was on display on August 4, when Elliot Abrams, the notorious coup-monger for multiple presidents, testified in Congress. Not a single Senator criticized the attempt to illegally overthrow a democratically-elected government.
Abrams was criticized by both Democrats and Republicans for his inability to remove President Maduro from power. Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) was most open about the coup attempt describing it as “a case study in diplomatic malpractice” and claiming Trump botched a winning play in a comedy of errors that strengthened Maduro. After the hearing, Murphy posted a series of Tweets admitting the coup and how it could have been done better.
A clip from Murphy’s embarrassing comments was shared widely including by the Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodríguez and Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza. When Vijay Prashad asked Arreaza his reaction, he described the US openly admitting crimes and said the “confessions” of Murphy, Gen. John Kelly, John Bolton, and Elliot Abrams “are priceless evidence for the complaint we raised at the International Criminal Court.”
Elliot Abrams announced the US will be starting a media war against Venezuela. The reality is the US has been conducting a media war against Venezuela for more than 20 years.
Venezuela is moving ahead with elections for the National Assembly on December 6, 2020. Unlike 2018, more parties are agreeing to participate including the larger Democratic Action and Justice First parties, as well as a new Communist Party alliance and the hard-right Popular Will party, which was US puppet Juan Guaidó’s former party. There will be 105 political parties contesting for 277 National Assembly seats, 110 more than the current term. Venezuela uses a combination of majority winners and proportional representation. Venezuela also requires half the candidates to be female, and they use electronic voting confirmed by paper ballots with a public citizen audit on Election Day.
Juan Guaidó and others allied with the United States said they would boycott the election. Guaidó cannot risk running because he is likely to be defeated. The US is encouraging a boycott and then will claim the election was not legitimate as it did in the last presidential election. After December, Guaidó will not hold any elected office making his fraudulent claim to the presidency even weaker.
Bolivians protest the postponement of the election.
Bolivia: US Dictator Fears Democratic Vote
On November 12 2019, a US-backed coup in Bolivia removed President Evo Morales who had just won re-election. The self-proclaimed President Jeanine Añez, a right-wing Christian, leads a de facto government involved in massacres, persecution and imprisonment of political leaders. It is destroying the social and economic model and achievements of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS Party) led by Morales.
Many have called this a lithium coup because the element is plentiful in Bolivia and critical for batteries. This was made evident when Elon Musk, the head of Tesla, said on Twitter “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Tesla would benefit from cheap and plentiful lithium for electric car batteries.
The people of Bolivia are struggling to restore democracy. The fraudulent report by the OAS led to a three-week conflict between right-wing Bolivians protesting alleged fraud and pro-government, mostly indigenous, demonstrators defending Morales. The military and police sided with the right-wing coup. The coup government threatened legislators and their families while repressing the people. There were racist attacks against the majority Indigenous population and the Wiphala, the indigenous flag, was burned in the streets. When she took power, Áñez, surrounded by right-wing legislators, held up a large leather bible and declared, “The Bible has returned to the palace.”
The US recognized the coup government, similar to its recognition of the failed coup leader, Juan Guaidó in Venezuela. Añez claimed she’d be transitory until the next election, but at the direction of the US, she is putting in place deep roots and has delayed elections.
The repression has galvanized the MAS party, as well as peasant unions and grassroots organizations who continue their struggle to restore Bolivian democracy. The pressure led to elections being scheduled. Initially, Áñez said she would not run but reversed herself and is now a candidate while she is trying to outlaw the MAS party and its candidates.
Elections were scheduled for May 3, but have been postponed twice allegedly due to the pandemic, but really because this is an ongoing coup.
It is true that the COVID-19 pandemic is hitting Bolivia hard with horror stories about people unable to get medical treatment. Immediately after the coup, the Añez government expelled the Cuban doctors. The coup-government is unable to manage the health system. Corruption is rampant in the purchase of medical equipment. The health ministry has had three ministers during the crisis. The situation is dire with overcrowded hospitals, lack of basic supplies, and corpses in the streets and in their homes with nowhere to be buried.
The coup-government is using the virus to try to delay elections because polls show the MAS candidate, Luis Arce, is far ahead and likely to win in the first round of elections with Áñez coming in a distant third. Áñez has sought to prosecute Arce to keep him from running, so far unsuccessfully. On July 6, the Attorney General of Bolivia charged Evo Morales with terrorism and financing of terrorism from exile and is seeking preventive detention.
Since mid-July, thousands of Bolivians have been protesting the postponement of elections. They are holding sustained protests throughout the country and blocking many roads. Indigenous and peasant groups, agricultural groups, along with women and unions are joining together calling for elections. Morales, Arce, and the MAS Party have denounced the delay.
“The United States is trying to make Latin America its backyard forever. We know about the hard resistance of the peoples of Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua. The struggle of our peoples is very important. The United States wants to divide us in order to plunder our natural resources. The peoples no longer accept domination and plunder. The United States is in decline, and yet it lashes out.”
The US is weakening as a global power and its failures in Latin America are both a symptom of this and are causing further decline. The US’ violations of international law are obvious and are being challenged. But the US is an empire and it will not give up the Monroe Doctrine easily.
As citizens of Empire, we have a particular responsibility to demand the US stop its sanctions and illegal interference in Latin America and elsewhere around the world. In this time of multiple global crises, we must demand the US become a cooperative member of the world community and work peacefully to address the pandemic, recession and climate crisis.
Structures to do this exist to help with this such as the global ceasefire and the Paris Climate agreement. And on the anniversary of the US bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, we must add the Nuclear Ban Treaty as another effort the US must join.
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Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers co-direct Popular Resistance where this article was originally published.
If you had been going down the rabbit hole of COVID-19 research for long enough, a few things would be astounding to you. First, how uninformed, uncurious, or deceptive reporters in the corporate media are on a matter of life and death. Second, how much publicly available information about COVID-19 is on the internet contradicts what is reported and said by Health Experts™on cable news. Finally, it is impossible to believe Dr. Anthony Fauci enjoys a 62% approval rating.
Of course, part of the reason Dr. Fauci enjoys this level of trust is that reporters who interview him put a sort of religious faith in every word he utters. Having worked with doctors for years, I don’t suffer from any such affliction. There are some great ones, some awful ones, and some who are great at one thing and not another.
It is also quite reasonable for doctors to disagree. Medicine is the art of applying science and it is rarely “settled.” This healthy tension is why patients get second opinions. Yet during the COVID-19 pandemic, only one doctor has had almost no pushback in any public interview. This is journalistic malpractice, but not surprising. Most of the corporate media agree with his recommendations or can use panic porn clicks.
However, if there were a courageous and intelligent reporter who could score an interview with Dr. Fauci, here is a list of questions I would suggest.
1. How is COVID-19 a novel virus?
Dr. Fauci, can you please explain how COVID-19 is a novel virus when it has an overlap with the structure of SARS at a rate of 79%? In addition, there are several human coronaviruses that we have dealt with seasonally for years. Is “novel,” as in completely new, an unnecessarily shocking term?
Only minor differences have been found between the genome sequences of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV
In another section of the same paper, it says:
Genome sequence analysis has shown that SARS-CoV-2 belongs to the Betacoronavirus genus, which includes Bat SARS-like coronavirus, SARS-CoV, and MERS-CoV [6].
SARS-CoV-2 possesses a genomic structure which is typical of other betacoronaviruses.
Typical and novel are hardly synonyms. Framing the virus as something completely new makes it scarier.
2. Why should we worry about COVID mutations?
Often news reports are discussing new mutations of COVID-19. Aren’t virus mutations expected and common? It appears that there has not been a mutation that significantly increases the way the virus works in the body making it more deadly or dangerous.
Viruses mutate. This is not news and breathless reports about it in the case of COVID-19 only serve to increase panic. The changes to the virus so far are helpful in documenting its spread. There has not been a single change that warrants additional concern and it is not surprising a single patient may have multiple mutations. Mutations generally happen when the virus replicates. It does this inside the body’s cells.
3. Doesn’t COVID-19 behave like SARS?
Both SARS and COVID-19 have a spike protein that uses angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE-2) receptors to enter the respiratory tract cells, correct? I understand COVID-19 may be more efficient at doing so, but the cell entry is highly similar?
The method of cell entry was documented to be the same as SARS on January 23, 2020, in the Journal of Virology.
4. Why not give patients hydroxychloroquine and zinc?
In 2005 the NIH did a study on chloroquine that found it was effective in inhibiting and eliminating the SARS virus in vitro. It affected the functioning of the ACE-2 receptor. It is also a zinc ionophore that allows zinc to more efficiently enter the cell. In 2010 an NIH study demonstrated zinc interfered with the replication of coronaviruses. What is the scientific basis to reject its use in the outpatient setting where there are significant observational studies indicating it is effective in early illness?
When asked, Dr. Fauci said he would take this medication if he were diagnosed with COVID-19. It is likely because he clearly understands the drug’s safety profile, how it acts, and previous studies on it. His failure to combat the media narrative of hydroxychloroquine being a terribly dangerous drug was astounding. Standing silently by while governors and professional boards interfere with the doctor-patient relationship by prohibiting or denying prescription is unconscionable.
There is no requirement for a double-blind randomized study for off-label use of an FDA approved drug at the approved dosage. Observational studies are more than acceptable in the medical and research community. The decision to use this medication needs to remain between a doctor and a patient.
5. Doesn’t the wide range of symptoms make sense?
In 2003 an article in New Scientist documented that patients who died from SARS actually died of a cytokine storm. This appeared to be well known in the research community. There are 4,735 NIH-funded studies on the phenomenon after the SARS outbreak. Was this overlooked in preparing for the pandemic response? Doesn’t this immune response explain the myriad of symptoms in severe disease?
The panic porn industry loves the range of symptoms that COVID-19 causes. Unfortunately for them, these are all explained by the overwhelming damage that can be caused by an immune system overreaction. Blood clots, organ damage, and heart dysfunction can all be caused as the immune system attacks the body’s own tissue.
6. How does the government respond to broader immunity than you expected?
There are now several studies that indicate that some significant portion of the population has T-cell or long-term immunity to COVID-19 due to exposure to coronaviruses in the past. How does this research impact public health measures and the approach to the virus?
Immunologists had theorized about this idea for some time in order to explain the resilience of children and the fact that some members of a household that contained an infected person never fell ill despite close contact. It also may explain so-called “asymptomatic” cases.
The PCR type test looks for pieces of the COVID-19 virus RNA. It does not determine whether the virus is alive or dead. A T-cell response would leave viral debris in the body for some period of time. A PCR test given in the absence of symptoms may detect this debris, giving the impression of an “asymptomatic” case.
Because I actively look for information and follow the data about COVID-19, it is easy to see there is a lot of good news. This is not a novel virus and it works in ways very similar to SARS. Cytokine storms have been studied for years and there are some good therapies available. Death rates are falling likely because doctors and patients are employing these therapies.
The virus is fading in the sunbelt and there are very good data to believe there are large swaths of the population that will not become ill with it. With improved treatment and some level of immunity in the population, everyone should feel confident in our ability to protect the vulnerable and return to a much more normal life.
The nation should not be discussing wearing goggles, additional lockdowns, testing asymptomatic people, and maintaining any policy that limits the civil liberties of its citizens. There is every reason to take greater steps toward reopening the economy, our schools, and normal life.
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This article was published by GR ten years ago in commemoration of the tenth anniversary of 9/11.
On September 12, 2001, The Atlantic Council meeting in Brussels invoked article 5 of the Washington Treaty. An Attack against one member state of the Atlantic alliance by a foreign power is an Attack against all member states of the Atlantic Alliance. The name of that aggressive foreign power was never mentioned. It was Afghanistan.
Michel Chossudovsky, August 10, 2020
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“You love your country
as the nearest, most precious thing to you.
But one day, for example,
they may endorse it over to America,
and you, too, with your great freedom –
you have the freedom to become an air-base.”
From: “A Sad Kind Of Freedom”, by Nazim Hickmet (1902-1963) courtesy Rick Rozoff, Stop NATO(*)
It is instructive to look at the plethora of 9/11, tenth anniversary pullouts in newspapers, to note the commemorative programmes, interviews, memories. The heartbreak, broken and lost lives: the ten year old, now twenty, who realized, horror struck, that her father was in the building she watched flaming and falling, on television.
There are spreads of other ten years olds, children unborn when their pregnant mother was widowed, by a terrible atrocity, on a sunlit day, in a city turned dark by smoke and ash. Pregnant survivors, say “experts”, passed their trauma to their children, we learn.
“Share your memories of 9/11 ten years on”, invite newspapers
Photographers have recalled: “the day of horror.”
Yet, with the all comes the realization that seemingly, this tragedy of enormity – 2,751 lost souls, in an event, which exceeded the deaths of Pearl Harbour, according to the 9/11 Commission Report – is unique.
Carnage across the world, has been wrought in subsequent US-driven bloodshed. One assessment to August 2010, using a more conservative death toll than some, is of the equivalent of three hundred and three 9/11s in Iraq and Afghanistan alone, in the ongoing post-September 2001 assaults. (i)
This toll, however, is, seemingly, inconsequential. The lives of others, in numbers beyond comprehension, are not tragedy, searing loss, unimaginable grief, but: “collateral damage.”
The acres of coverage of the “orphans of 9/11”, are poignant; heart-rending.
In Afghanistan, that first post 9/11 onslaught victim, there are two million orphans, of which over 600,000 sleep on the streets. Over 400,000 are maimed from land mines – and over a million children suffer from post- traumatic stress disorder.
One in ten Afghan children are severely malnourished, more than half suffer from stunted growth, and one in every four children dies before age five – the fourth highest level in the world (UNICEF).
This was Afghanistan in the 1970s, destroyed by US-NATO and the CIA
Fifty percent of the Afghan population is less than eighteen years of age, with almost no education. (ii)
Iraq’s figures since the 2003 invasion, again, lest ever forgotten, dwarf even Afghanistan’s appalling plight. Five million orphans, one million widows, nearly five million exiled.
By April 2011, just six weeks in to the “humanitarian” bombardment of Libya, the death toll was already being estimated as high as 30,000. If correct, an average of over two “9/11s”, in human toll, a week. (iii)
On 7th July, the Jordan Times recorded eight hundred deaths in just one graveyard in Misrata.
The paper also noted: ‘There is no trace of hatred or resentment on the part of the gravediggers in charge of burying their enemies:
“It’s a tragedy. They are our brothers. We did not want all this to happen. I’m sorry for all this,” murmurs Jetlawi.
Colleague Derateia too is sad.
“I wish God saved the lives of everyone. We are used to this, to see the dead, but we are appalled to see Muslims killing each other. It’s pathetic,” he adds.’
What a contrast to the encapsulation of what seems to be the Western, political and military concept of the peoples and cultures we are decimating.
On BBC Radio 5, (9th September.) David Buik, an executive with Cantor Fitzgerald, which lost over six hundred employees in the Twin Towers, told listeners of his understandable fury, yet with little concept that others bleed, suffer, grieve in tragedy.
The dominant emotion still, he said, was: “The abuse of life – to us in the West, so precious and to terrorists and religious fanatics so cheap.” Does he not reflect how what is being done in George W. Bush’s declared “Crusade”, in the name of this sacred West, is being viewed across the world? On a scale equaling some of history’s greatest atrocities,
Libya, another painstakingly developed country, is fast becoming another Iraq, in every way, from factional, to ethnic cleansing, especially of those with a darker skin, to factions brought in to ensure there will never be reconciliation – and historical and archeological treasures and heritage looted, bombed, destroyed.
In Bani Walid, with its university campus and population of just over 46,000 the NATO backed National Transitional Council’s “rebels”, have deliberately cut off water and electricity supplies. An indisputable war crime.
But as bodies mount, buildings fall and dreams die, make no mistake, Libya is another looming occupation. With its oil, frozen overseas financial assets possibly as high as $150 Billion – with NATO countries estimated holding possibly $99 Billion (v) – near inestimable water wealth and a strategic geographic location to dream of, for invaders with eyes on others regional assets and natural resources, the “liberators” will not be planning on leaving any time soon.
Further, by 1st March, there were already reports of the US, Britain and France having established bases in Benghazi and Tobruk.(vi) Ironically, Tobruk was site of the WW11, 240-day siege of allied forces by Lieutenant General Erwin Rommel.The pinned down troops were finally rescued by the (UK) 8th Army, in the Muslim country, in “Operation Crusader.
Tripoli, of course was the site of the vast US Air Force base, appropriated in 1943, when Libya was ruled by the British backed King Idris. The then US Ambassador to Libya had called it: “A little America on the sparkling shores of the shores of the Mediterranean.”
The base, renamed “Wheelus”, remained American until Quaddafi overthrew Idris’s regime in 1969 and closed all foreign bases.
The base became Tripoli international Airport, now bombed.The liberators will surely award themselves the rebuilding contracts and planning for the re-opening of the base is, equally surely, underway.
The US had, of course, under the project of AFRICOM, offered African governments money to “host” American bases. Quaddafi, reportedly, offered them twice as much not to, resulting in a formal rejection of AFRICOM by the African Union, in 2008.
It was a prescient Tripoli taxi driver, who told the LA Times: “I have a fear that one day we will be like Iraq, wishing for the days of Muammar Quaddafi.”
Afghanistan, bombed and invaded less than a month after 9/11 to free it from a “repressive” and “tyrannical” regime, now has 400 US and “coalition” bases. (vii) Iraq, also freed from the “Butcher of Baghdad” by US-led largesse, based on a pack of lies about as ridiculous as the pack of “Most Wanted” playing cards, now has 14 city sized bases and a list of others, near inexhaustible. (viii) The “coalition” are there to stay.
In an interview this week, “Middle East Peace Envoy”, former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, still not in the International Criminal Court in the Hague, in spite of the best efforts of some towering legal minds, made it clear that Syria and Iran were next, firmly in US/UK sights.
General Wesley Clarke, of course, told “Democracy Now” (2nd March 2007) that in 2001, after 9/11, he was told by a Pentagon official that the US planned to attack seven countries in five years. They were: “Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Iran.” Bombing Afghanistan was already underway.(iv)
And the contractors are already queuing to re-arm that which they sold Libya, now destroyed, and to rebuild. Britain, now under Prime Minister “this will be a Libyan led transformation, we have learned from Iraq” Cameron. “Libya – The Future” is a not to be missed Conference, to be held in London, 26th and 27th September:
“The race is on for countries and businesses to create strategic alliances with the Libyan National Transitional Council regime. Government body, UK Trade and Investment, plans an invitation only Conference, Tuesday 27th September.
“You really need to be at ‘Libya – The Future’, at the prestigious QE11 Conference Centre, in the heart of Westminster.” At up to £3,000 a delegate. (x)
On this tenth anniversary of 9/11, Abdul Hakim Belhadji, allegedly formerly on US and UK terrorist lists, moved to Tripoli to be Libya’s new leader, backed by the same US and UK. This as his “rebel forces” are reported to have entirely ethnically cleansed, Tawarga, a town of 10,000 people, which now lies entirely empty. (xi)
After 9/11: “The US enjoyed an outpouring of global sympathy. Within a couple of years, that sympathy had been squandered”, wrote Rupert Cornwell, in the Independent this week.
A friend who has spent every waking hour since the Iraq invasion of 2003, trying to put back the lives of Iraqi refugees who fled the invasion, perhaps said it all for invasions since, and planned:
“Dear USA, Your 9/11 is our 24/7.”
**
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This article is a refutation of Health Feedback’s so-called fact-checking. I show why Dr. Alexov’s statements, in fact, fit the evidence, and punch plenty of other holes in Health Feedback’s claim that our article is “clearly wrong” and has “very little credibility.”
Health Feedback’s review is fatally faulty right off the top, when the review’s unnamed author mistakes my co-author Patrick Corbett for James Corbett of The Corbett Report: the screencap at the top of the review is from James Corbett’s June 16 interview with me.
The review also takes a swipe at outlets that reposted our article: it notes Media Bias/Fact Check dubbs GlobalResearch.ca and Australian National Review “conspiracy websites.”
But Media Bias/Fact Check has long been launching bogus attacks. And in addition, the Media Bias/Fact Check website says it has “chosen the IFCN [International Fact Checking Network] as our standard fact-checkers because they all abide by the same rules. This is important, as the standards are high.”
Note, however, that IFCN is funded by the likes of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (see below).
By the way, there’s at least one other article claiming to debunk our piece: a July 8 article by Lead Stories. Facebook uses the Lead Stories review to try to block people from reading our July 2 piece. I focus on Health Feedback’s review here because it’s more detailed and covers the same ground as the Lead Stories piece.
I’ll just mention a couple of things about Lead Stories. First, it belongs to the IFCN (still more on the IFCN very shortly). And when Lead Stories’ co-founder and editor-in-chief Alan Duke and his buddy Perry Sanders started the company in 2015, Duke was ending his long career with CNN – which isn’t exactly known for its factual reporting. And Duke shows his blatant bias when, in this article on Lead Stories, he blames COVID-19 deaths on people who don’t wear masks or social distance, and says “misinformation can be deadly.”
Let’s now take a quick peek under the hood of Health Feedback. It bills itself as a “non-partisan, non-profit organization dedicated to science education.”
Its advisors include nuclear-power booster and MIT professor Dr. Kerry Emanuel. Another advisor is Thomas Malone, who’s listed as a founding director of the Center for Collective Intelligence.
At 21:57 in the video, and in this link in the show notes, of The Corbett Report’s June 19 podcast episode exposing the glaring conflicts of interest in the fact-checking industry, host James Corbett reveals that IFCN’s major funders include George Soros-backed organizations and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Its Advisory Group members range from Cherstyn Hurley, Immunisation Publications Manager for Public Health in England, to Catharina de Kat, a member of the WHO’s team that answers media inquiries regarding COVID-19, to Dr. Jane Gidudu, Vaccine Safety Officer at the Global Immunization Division of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Also, the company will not have financial responsibility in many countries for injuries and deaths from the vaccine it’s developing against COVID-19 — and which it’ll deliver billions of doses of, starting as early as December, without having to first show the vaccine is safe or effective.
Therefore it’s plausible that the company, possibly joined by other powerful players, pushed the ESP leaders to distance themselves from Dr. Alexov’s revelations. (A statement by ESP leaders attempting to disprove Dr. Alexov’s assertions is included in the review; in the error list below I show evidence, including quotes from ESP President Dr. Holger Moch, that Dr. Alexov is correct.)
AstraZeneca also funded the ESP’s June 25 webinar that I discuss below. Furthermore, it was one of the three top funders of the ESP’s annual meeting, known as the European Congress of Pathology, in 2019. And it was a major sponsor of the 2018 congress.
Without further ado, here’s the list of errors Health Feedback made in its so-called ‘fact check’ of the main eight ‘claims’ Patrick Corbett and I made in our July 2 article.
ERROR #1 – CLAIM 1
In the section on Claim 1, the Health Feedback review states that Dr. Alexov made the revelations described in our article “during a [May 8] webinar organized by the European Society of Pathology.”
Health Feedback repeats and extends this falsehood a few sentences later: Dr. “Alexov made his remarks at a ‘consensus of participants’ during the ESP webinar – with the implication that his comments were accepted as part of the scientific or medical consensus.”
We, in fact, wrote that Dr. Alexov made his revelations in a May 13 interview (bolding added for emphasis):
The May 13 video interview of Dr. Alexov was conducted by Dr. Stoycho Katsarov, chair of the Center for Protection of Citizens’ Rights in Sofia and a former Bulgarian deputy minister of health. The video is on the BPA [Bulgarian Pathology Association]’s website, which also highlights some of Dr. Alexov’s main points.”
ERROR #2 – CLAIM 2
The section on Claim 2 in the review states that it’s false that no monoclonal antibodies for the novel coronavirus exist.
In our article we wrote that:
Among the major bombshells Dr. Alexov dropped is that the leaders of the May 8 ESP webinar said no novel-coronavirus-specific antibodies have been found.”
The review article asserts that:
This is false. Several published studies report the discovery of antibodies that bind specifically to SARS-CoV-2, the causative agent of COVID-19, as well as antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in people who had been previously infected[1-4].”
The review also cites another study to try to bolster their position that there are novel-coronavirus-specific monoclonal antibodies (Reference 10, which they cite in the section of the review on Claim 4).
Health Feedback also obtained a statement from ESP President Dr. Holger Moch, ESP Director-General Dr. Raed Al-Dieri and ESP Secretary Dr. Aurelio Ariza. The ESP officials write that their statement summarizes the official position of the ESP, “which is not responsible for the claims and opinions of its individual members.”
The ESP trio’s statement addresses monoclonal antibodies and detection of the virus by saying:
Monoclonal antibodies able to identify different components of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) are certainly available. They are used by pathologists to demonstrate the presence of the virus in body tissues with immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence studies.
“Other techniques (such as in situ hybridization and RT-PCR [reverse-transcriptase polymerase chain reaction) can detect viral RNA in tissues. Additionally, electron microscopy neatly allows the visualization of the spike-crowned virus (hence the name coronavirus) in the diseased organs.
“Coronavirus images as observed by pathologists in human tissues may be seen in the articles by M. Ackerman [sic] et al. (NEJM 2020)[6], I. Colmenero et al. (Brit J Dermatol 2020)[7], V.G. Puelles et al. (NEJM 2020)[8] and Z. Varga et al. (Lancet 2020)[9], among others.
In this section we’ll deal with the assertions about monoclonal antibodies by Health Feedback and the ESP officials. In the section on Error #4 below we’ll address their claims that pathologists have detected viral RNA in tissues and have used electron microscopy to visualize the virus.
If they’re correct and the novel coronavirus in fact has been found and is the causative agent of the deaths attributed to COVID-19, there should be monoclonal antibodies that are specific to it and only to it.
That’s because SARS-CoV-2 supposedly is distinct from every other virus, including its cousin SARS-CoV. So monoclonal antibodies used to detect the novel coronavirus should be specific to only the novel coronavirus.
But none of the five references cited by Health Feedback – References 1-4 and Reference 10 – prove the existence of such monoclonal antibodies.
One of the papers (Reference 4) doesn’t even mention monoclonal antibodies. Three of the others (References 1, 2 and 10) involve monoclonal antibodies to SARS-CoV rather than to SARS-CoV-2. And the fourth (Reference 3) uses two antibody tests, but neither has been shown to be specific to the novel coronavirus — or even to be accurate at all.
Also, the five papers’ authors also don’t provide any other objective verification that the novel coronavirus truly is present.
The details of my examination of those five references are in Appendix One.
During a June 25 ESP webinar, Dr. Zsuzsanna Varga, a senior attending physician in the University Hospital of Zurich’s Institute of Pathology and Molecular Pathology which Dr. Moch heads, gave a presentation on the methods to detect the virus in autopsy tissue.
She said (at 13:19 in the video of her presentation), in discussing a paper claiming to detect the novel coronavirus using among other methods monoclonal antibodies via immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence (which as it turns out is Reference 10 in the Health Feedback review), that few if any groups have been able to replicate these findings:
The problem that I see at the moment is that many pathology institutions face unspecific background stain and unspecific stains,” said Dr. Varga “…. We tried several clones [monoclonal antibodies] to get such nice and reliable signals [as the paper’s authors] [but] we are at the moment not at that step where we can say we have a good antibody and we have reliable signals.”
The details of this are in Appendix Two’s section on Reference 8. And I discuss Dr. Varga’s presentation some more in the section on Error #4 below.
Another problem with the assertion that monoclonal antibodies for the novel coronavirus have been produced is that none of them appear to have undergone objective and thorough antibody validation.
In this article providing a framework for robust antibody validation the authors state that “for commercially available antibodies, it is clear that what is on the label does not necessarily correspond to what is in the tube.”
The authors also emphasize that “for antibodies, one must demonstrate that they are specific, selective, and reproducible in the context for which they are used.”
And by the way, in case you haven’t guessed, the sale of monoclonal antibodies is highly profitable. It’s so lucrative they comprise the majority of the biopharmaceutical market. See for example this articleand this paper on the booming monoclonal-antibody business.
ERROR #3 – CLAIM 3
The review asserts that Patrick Corbett and I were inaccurate in the way we described monoclonal antibodies.
This was our description:
The body forms antibodies specific to pathogens it encounters. These specific antibodies are known as monoclonal antibodies and are a key tool in pathology.”
The review points out that in fact the body produces what are known as ‘polyclonal antibodies.’ These are an array of antibodies that differ from each other. They state that polyclonal antibodies are used for the production of monoclonal antibodies, and that this can only be done in laboratories, via cloning of cells that produce specific antibodies.
I concede that our description could have been clearer. But the essence of our description is accurate.
what Dr. Alexov is saying and what we’re explaining is that mAbs [monoclonal antibodies] are necessary for verifying the presence of pathogens in tissue and that no such mAbs exist for the novel coronavirus. Obviously that’s because there have not been any antibodies found that are highly specific to the novel coronavirus; these are needed to produce mAbs.”
ERROR #4 – CLAIM 4
Health Feedback refutes the statement in our article that, because no monoclonal antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 have been identified to date, pathologists can’t verify whether the virus is present in the body and whether the disease or diseases attributed to the virus truly were caused by it.
In an attempt to show that our statement is wrong, Health Feedback cites this part of the ESP leaders’ statement:
Monoclonal antibodies able to identify different components of the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) are certainly available. They are used by pathologists to demonstrate the presence of the virus in body tissues with immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence studies.”
They also refer to another part of the ESP leaders’ statement:
Other techniques (such as in situ hybridization and RT-PCR [polymerase chain reaction]) can detect viral RNA in tissues. Additionally, electron microscopy neatly allows the visualization of the spike-crowned virus (hence the name coronavirus) in the diseased organs.
“Coronavirus images as observed by pathologists in human tissues may be seen in the articles by M. Ackerman et al. (NEJM 2020)[6], I. Colmenero et al. (Brit J Dermatol 2020)[7], V.G. Puelles et al. (NEJM 2020)[8] and Z. Varga et al. (Lancet 2020)[9], among others.
In Error #2 above I addressed the assertions about the monoclonal antibodies. In this section I’ll address whether the virus in fact has been visualized.
I carefully examined References 6 to 9 cited in the ESP statement. I found that none of them can truly claim to describe the imaging of the novel coronavirus. Appendix Two gives the details of my findings.
On top of that, Dr. Moch himself has cast doubt on whether the novel coronavirus has been imaged in autopsy tissues of people said to have died of the novel coronavirus.
At 6:58 in the first of the six publicly viewable videos from the May 8 ESP webinar — in talking about “viral-like particles” shown in an electron-microscopy figure accompanying a Lancet Respiratory Medicine paper — he says that while many researchers claim to have imaged the novel coronavirus:
at the moment it is relatively controversial if [whether] these are true viral particles.”
The Health Feedback article also states, “the ESP webinar that the article refers to included a specific session dedicated to methods for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in human tissue. This session showed that pathologists are using a variety of techniques to determine whether a person was infected with SARS-CoV-2, including molecular techniques such as in situ hybridization (ISH).”
They’ve made another error there – the ESP webinar they’re referring to took place on June 25; it isn’t the May 8 ESP webinar that we discussed in our article on Dr. Alexov.
And as I mentioned in Error #2 above, in that June 25 ESP webinar Dr. Varga does discuss methods for detecting SARS-CoV-2 in autopsy tissues.
However, she concludes, when discussing a paper she and Dr. Moch co-authored along with other papers published to date on electron-microscope images that claim to show viral particles (and which is Reference 9 in the Health Feedback review), that visualizing the virus, via electron microscopy is:
demanding [and] time-consuming, and searching for virus takes sometimes several hours.”
Dr. Varga also notes that it requires a lot of expertise, because other structures and fixation artefacts can be mistaken for viral particles. The latter are distortions created during the processing of tissue sections for examination.
She suggests that, to be sure whether the viral particles are present in autopsy tissue, further study is needed with immune electron microscopy, which is even more painstaking – and expensive – technique.
(See Appendix Two for more on these quotes and other information on imaging viral particles, PCR, in situ hybridization, and visualizing the virus’s RNA and protein.)
Note also that Torsten Englebrecht and Konstantin Demeter asked teams of scientists who had claimed to have purified and sequenced the novel coronavirus whether the electron micrographs in their published findings showed purified viruses.
It’s striking that a virus which is supposedly a constant threat to all of us and overwhelms the bodies of hundreds of thousands of its victims is so extremely elusive. It should be easy to detect the virus in autopsy tissue, particularly the target tissue of the lungs, because viruses replicate until they’re present in large enough quantities to kill a person.
Based on all the evidence, the only logical conclusion is that it’s very uncertain whether these “viral particles” are the novel coronavirus.
ERROR #5 – CLAIM 5
The review also states that our claim is false that “novel coronavirus has not fulfilled Koch’s postulates.”
I stand by my and Amory Devereux’s June 9 Off-Guardian article in which we demonstrate that the novel coronavirus has not fulfilled Koch’s postulates.
I also stand by Torsten Englebrecht and Konstantin Demeter. As I mention in the section on Error #4 above, the duo asked scientists who had claimed to have purified and sequenced the novel coronavirus whether the electron micrographs in their published findings indeed showed purified viruses. The scientists’ responses indicated that they did not show this.
And oddly, the Health Feedback review first asserts that the Koch’s postulates are obsolete – and then it states that a microbiologist and epidemiologist Dr. W. Ian Lipkin “told Health Feedback that many published studies have already demonstrated that SARS-CoV-2 fulfills Koch’s postulates”(with References 14-16 to support this).
And Dr. Lipkin again cites References 14-16 in this shot later in the article:
Conspiracy theorists are not persuaded by data. There are many studies of SARS-CoV-2 that fulfill Koch’s postulates.”
But one wonders who in fact isn’t persuaded by data: while References 14-16 describe monkeys developing COVID-19 symptoms after being injected with the novel coronavirus, among other defects in the papers is the lack of proof that the substance injected into the monkeys was purified novel coronavirus.
And by the way, a whole article could be written on Dr. Lipkin alone.
For example, the web page on him from Columbia University where he’s a professor gives clues regarding his allegiances. It includes the following (verbatim from the web page with bolding added for emphasis):
Dr. Lipkin serves as co-chair of the Steering Committee of the National neurology biosurveillance Advisory Subcommittee and as Director of the Northeast Biodefense Center and the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Center on Diagnostics, Surveillance and Immunotherapeutics for Emerging Infectious and Zoonotic Diseases, the only academic WHO Center focused on diagnostics and discovery. He has ongoing collaborations and projects with the Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, USAID PREDICT, US Department of Agriculture, US Food and Drug Administration, Agilent Technologies, Pfizer, Roche 454 Life Sciences, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Google.org, Institut Pasteur,and OneHealth Alliance.
And the Wikipedia page on Dr. Lipkin notes among other things that he’s a proponent of gain-of-function research on pathogens.
[Note: For a rundown on gain-of-function research and how it applies to weapons programs, watch this interview with independent journalist Sam Husseini – ed.]
ERROR #6 – CLAIM 6
The review states that it’s false to claim that “no one has died from the coronavirus.”
It uses as support these two sentences in the ESP leaders’ statement:
As discussed in the two ESP webinars on the subject (May 8th and June 25th, 2020), the striking autopsy findings seen in the lungs and other organs of COVID-19 patients are unexplainable as the effect of any concurrent disease and support the novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) as the cause of death in these cases.”
And:
There is evidence of a specific COVID-19-associated coagulopathy that can cause deadly thromboembolism.”
However, as discussed in Errors #2 and 4 above, the autopsy findings published to date have not conclusively shown that the novel coronavirus is present in the tissue of people deemed to have died of COVID-19.
Also, in the May 8 ESP webinar, during the Q&A at the end, a participant asked, “When we deal with the statistics, do we know who died ofand who died with COVID-19?” Dr. Moch responded:
In principle we cannot say; we cannot tell. Because every COVID-19 patient has an individual cause of death. In my opinion, we should do autopsies and derive from the autopsy findings if a patient died with or because of COVID-19.”
(He added that “of course” the virus plays “a leading role” in intensive-care patients with very severe clinical symptoms. “But we have to better understand the disease course in patients that die at whom;” he said, because some patients arrive at hospital with very mild symptoms and within a week develop severe blood clots [thromboemboli in their lungs].)
Also, when leaders of the May 8 webinar were asked a few minutes laterwhat autopsy differences there are between patients with COVID-19 and those with usual seasonal flu, Dr. Moch — after a period of silence and asking the question to be repeated — said:
It’s difficult to answer. We have very poor[ly] described morphology images [i.e., pathology findings] from the seasonal flu cases.”
(Dr. Moch then held up a thesis that he said is titled “The Spanish Flu in 1918 and 1919” and contains autopsy reports from more than 970 people who died the Spanish flu. “So I’m convinced these findings get a new emphasis in the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said.)
ERROR #7 – CLAIM 6 (CONTINUED)
As part of the assertion that it is false to say that “no one has died of the novel coronavirus,” Health Feedback claims that the higher number of deaths in 2020 compared to previous years in the US means there have been excess deaths with COVID-19. It cites one of their own review articles, published on May 22, 2020.
It also mentions an April 26 Financial Times article that indicates excess mortality has been observed in 14 countries.
The review draws the conclusion that, “The excess mortality observed across the world in 2020 can only be attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic, as there is no other factor which can explain this sudden increase in mortality compared to previous years when COVID-19 was not present.”
But that assertion is very unscientific: it isn’t backed up by any truly independent analyses of whether these deaths were due to the novel coronavirus or instead to other causes.
Here are a few of the many lines of evidence that challenge the underpinnings of the COVID-19 peak.
First, the PCR test relied on for COVID-19 case counts is highly inaccurate.
Also, it’s now well-known that the cases are highly over-counted. Several countries finally are admitting this. See for example this July 17 article by Off-Guardian editor Kit Knightly.
Second, Ontario Civil Liberties Association researcher Dr. Denis Rancourt performed an analysis indicating that the ‘COVID-19 peak’ of deaths occurred during the winter, which is when deaths peak every year.
However, he found the COVID-19 peak wasn’t consistent with any other peaks of all-cause mortality. The spike in COVID-19-attributed deaths in the US only occurred in a few hotspots such as New York City (and it didn’t take place in states that did not have lock-downs); was only four weeks long; and was almost entirely due to excess deaths in nursing homes and assisted-living facilities.
Rancourt concluded that:
the ‘COVID peak results from an accelerated mass homicide of immune-vulnerable individuals, and individuals made more immune-vulnerable, by government and institutional actions, rather than being an epidemiological signature of a novel virus, irrespective of the degree to which the virus is novel from the perspective of viral speciation.”
Third, there are many other major factors that could be linked to deaths but that haven’t been taken into account by Health Feedback, its masters the WHO and other ‘authorities’ such as the CDC.
Here are seven of those major factors:
Serious medical conditions ranging from heart disease that are listed as mere underlying comorbidities on COVID-19 death certificates but that in fact are very likely to be the true killers;
Officials may well have deemed many deaths from influenza as being caused by COVID-19.
And as noted in Error #6 above, when leaders of the May 8 ESP webinar were asked what the differences are in autopsy findings between patients with COVID and those with the seasonal flu, Dr. Moch answered:“It’s difficult to answer. We have very poor[ly] described morphology images from the seasonal flu cases.”
An eighth fatality factor possibly could be tuberculosis (TB). TB has long been a true pandemic; according to the WHO it kills about 1.5 million people a year (although the ‘pandemic’ label has disappeared from the WHO’s description of the state of TB around the world). And TB’s symptoms significantly overlap with those attributed to COVID-19.
This highly contagious disease has been ignored during the COVID-19 crisis and therefore it may be spreading unchecked and deaths from it being attributed to COVID-19 instead.
Modelling work suggests that if the COVID-19 pandemic led to a global reduction of 25% in expected TB detection for 3 months – a realistic possibility given the levels of disruption in TB services being observed in multiple countries – then we could expect a 13% increase in TB deaths, bringing us back to the levels of TB mortality that we had 5 years ago.
Health Feedback said we were wrong when we wrote in the July 2 article that “the inability to identify monoclonal antibodies for the virus suggests there is no basis for the vaccines, serological testing and immunity certificates being rolled out around the globe at unprecedented speed and cost.”
First the review states that novel-coronavirus-specific monoclonal antibodies have been identified. I demolish this in the section on Error #2.
Second, they note that the body produces an array of immune responses, from polyclonal antibodies to T-cell-mediated responses.
But that completely misses the point.
The serological tests developed to date all are based on antibody detection. And as I demonstrated in the section on Error #2, even the monoclonal antibodies produced to date are not specific to the novel coronavirus.
Therefore there’s a very low probability that tests based on far less-specific entities such as polyclonal antibodies would be able to pick out the novel coronavirus and not other viruses.
Add to that the fact that viruses mutate. For example, the best that the Ontario Ministry of Health can muster on their website promoting influenza vaccination is that:
When the vaccine is well-matched to the flu strains circulating in a particular flu season, it can prevent the flu in up to 60% of the overall population.”
So the dice are loaded against a novel-coronavirus vaccine being any use at all. Instead, we’ll be subjected to “side effects” unaccompanied by any benefits.
The review also asserts that “immunity certificates are not being ‘rolled out around the globe’ at the moment,” citing articles from April 10 and May 21. But this much more recent piece — a June 26 MintPress News article — credibly suggests the COVI-PASS is rolling out very soon in 15 countries.
[NOTE: The World Economic Forum was promoting the “immunity passport” app as recently as July 30 – ed.]
ERROR #9 – CLAIM 8
The Health Feedback article says we were incorrect when in our July 2 article we wrote, “Among the myriad ways the WHO is creating [worldwide] chaos is by prohibiting almost all autopsies of people deemed to have died from COVID-19.”
The review states that the WHO hasn’t prohibited COVID-19 autopsies. The review also cites the June 25 ESP webinar as proof that autopsies have been performed on COVID-19 victims.
And it claims that “several studies on COVID-19 autopsy findings from countries such as the US, Germany and China have been published.” It uses four papers to support their claim (References 17-20).
The review seem to be right about part of this: I searched for and found no such explicit pronouncement from the WHO.
However, there’s ample evidence that many countries simultaneously stopped doing autopsies. This in turn strongly suggests that behind the scenes the WHO — or perhaps some other powerful world body, but no organization has had the same global reach during the COVID-19 crisis as the WHO — was urging the cessation of autopsies on people deemed to have died of the novel coronavirus.
And this, in fact, is supported rather than refuted by the four papers Health Feedback cites.
The first of the four papers (Reference 17) was published in the June 2020 issue of the American Journal of Clinical Pathology. It describes two – count ‘em two – full autopsies done by April 4 in the state of Oklahoma of people who had tested positive for the novel coronavirus.
The second reference (Reference 18) was published on June 4, 2020, and describes the first 80 consecutive full COVID-19 autopsies in the German province of Hamburg. The authors state in the introduction that:
Contrary to the initial recommendation of the German Robert Koch Institute (RKI) to avoid autopsies of COVID-19 deaths if possible [1], this institution has recently changed its recommendation and currently acknowledges the benefits and value of autopsies in the context of pandemic control.”
This explicitly shows that some sort of autopsy prohibition was indeed in place, but that the authors pushed back and conducted autopsies anyway. (And the results were very revealing. More on this paper shortly.)
The third reference (Reference 19) was published in the May 2020 issue of the Journal of Clinical Pathology. But it isn’t a study of autopsy findings — it’s a guideline written by four UK pathologists on how to perform autopsies in people who are suspected of having died of COVID-19.
The fourth reference (Reference 20) was published on June 30, 2020 in Virchow’s Archives, which is the official journal of the ESP. The authors from the University Hospital Ruebingen in Germany describe the four autopsies they performed between March 20 and April 18, 2020. A whopping four autopsies.
There’s also other evidence of a coordinated, widespread move to minimize the number of autopsies.
For example, in early February the UK’s Royal College of Pathologists issued a briefing paper stating that:
In general, if a death is believed to be due to confirmed COVID-19 infection, there is unlikely to be any need for a post mortem to be conducted and the Medical Certificate of Cause of Death should be issued.”
COVID-19-attributed deaths are deemed ‘natural’ by new rules released by the chief coroner [for Ontario] on April 9. In all but an extremely small number of cases, natural deaths are exempt from any further investigations or post-mortems.”
The few published studies on COVID-19 autopsies show that they can yield critically important information. For example, Hamburg pathologists found in the study described above (Reference 18) that among the first 80 consecutive full COVID-19 autopsies in that German state, only two of the deceased did not have serious comorbidities.
The remaining 78 may well have died from those comorbidities instead of the novel coronavirus. And it’s entirely possible, based on the information I’ve revealed in this rebuttal, that the autopsy information on the other two didn’t actually prove that they died of COVID-19.
Health Feedback’s masters the WHO, and in turn WHO’s financial backers Bill Gates and Big Pharma, wouldn’t be too happy with these facts, would they?
With files from Patrick Corbett. Some points are explored in more detail in Appendices 1 and 2, which you can view as PDFs here and here.
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This article was originally published on OffGuardian.
Rosemary Frei has an MSc in molecular biology from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Calgary, was a freelance medical writer and journalist for 22 years and now is an independent investigative journalist. You can watch her June 15 interview on The Corbett Report, read her otherOff-Guardian articles and follow her on Twitter.
On 6 July 2020, an article extolling the benefits of genetically modified (GM) crops appeared on the BloombergQuint website based on an interview with Dr Ramesh Chand, a member of the key Indian Government think tank Niti Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India). On 17 July, another piece that placed a positive spin on GM crops and gene editing technology (Feeding 10 Billion People will Require Genetically Modified Food) appeared on the same site.
According to Prof Andrew Paul Gutierrez, Dr Hans R Herren and Dr Peter E Kenmore, internationally renowned agricultural researchers, the pieces reported “sweeping unsupported claims” about the benefits of and need for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and related technologies in agriculture in India.
The three academics felt that “a responsible and factual response” was required and have written a letter – containing what could be described as the definitive analysis of Bt cotton in India – to Dr Ramesh Chand, Dr Rajiv Kumar (Niti Aayog Vice Chancellor) and Dr Amitabh Kant (Niti Aayog CEO).
Chand is reported as saying that there is no credible study to show any adverse impact of growing Bt cotton in the last 18 years in the country (India’s only officially approved GM crop). This is simply not the case. Moreover, Gutierrez et al argue that all of the credible evidence shows any meagre increases in cotton yield after the introduction of Bt cotton in 2002 were largely due to increases in fertiliser use.
Before proceeding, it is pertinent to address the claim that ‘feeding 10 billion people will require genetically modified food’. If we take the case of India and its 1.3 billion-plus population, it has achieved self-sufficiency in food grains and has ensured that, in theory at least, there is enough food available to feed its entire population. It is the world’s largest producer of milk, pulses and millets and the second-largest producer of rice, wheat, sugarcane, groundnuts, vegetables and fruit.
However, food security for many Indians remains a distant dream. Hunger and malnutrition remain prevalent. But that is not because farmers don’t produce enough food. These problems result from other factors, including inadequate food distribution, social and economic policies, inequality and poverty. It is a case of ‘scarcity’ amid abundance (reflecting the situation globally). India even continues to export food while millions remain hungry. Productivity is not the issue.
And while proponents say GM will boost productivity and help secure cultivators a better income, this too ignores crucial political and economic contexts; with bumper harvests, Indian farmers still find themselves in financial distress. India’s farmers are not experiencing hardship due to low productivity. They are reeling from the effects of neoliberal policies and years of neglect. It’s for good reason that the calorie and essential nutrient intake of the rural poor has drastically fallen.
Yet the pro-GMO lobby has wasted no time in wrenching these issues from their political contexts to use the notions of ‘helping farmers’ and ‘feeding the world’ as lynchpins of its promotional strategy.
Valid concerns
The Chand interview occurred at a book release event for a new volume titled ‘Socio Economic Impact Assessment of GM crops: Global Implications Based on Case Studies from India’ edited by Sachin Chaturvedi and Krishna Ravi Srinivas of the Delhi-based Research and Information System (RIS) for developing countries – a policy research think tank in the Ministry of External Affairs.
Gutierrez et al state that what Niti Aayog and RIS representatives say and write are existentially important because of their deep links to Indian policy makers: their views can have a large impact on the future development of policy in the area of genetic engineering and related technologies such as genomic editing, which will affect the long-term health, livelihood and welfare of Indian farmers and the nation.
Chand posits that opposition and uncertainty to GM technology lingers because it has created fear in the minds of people. He appears to imply this is one reason why the Indian government did not embrace the technology and that media reporting has relied more on activists than on scientists.
GMO biotech lobbyists have often stated that science has been sidelined by activists who have swayed the policy agenda.
In the journal Current Science (September 2019), Dr Deepak Pental responded to a previous paper in the same journal by eminent scientists P C Kesavan and M S Swaminathan, whose piece cited good evidence that questioned the efficacy of and the need for GMO agriculture in India. Pental argued that the two authors had aligned themselves with environmentalists and ideologues who have “mindlessly” attacked the use of GM technology and that aspects of their analysis are a reflection of their “ideological proclivities”.
However, in India it was a unique four-month scientific enquiry, not activism, that led to the rejection of the commercialisation of Bt Brinjal in 2010. And if we look at Europe, robust regulatory mechanisms are in place for GMOs as it is agreed they are not substantially equivalent to their non-GM counterparts. Numerous studies have highlighted the flawed premise of ‘substantial equivalence’. Furthermore, from the outset of the GMO project, the sidelining of serious concerns about the technology has occurred and, despite industry claims to the contrary, there is no scientific consensus on the health impacts of GM crops.
Both the Cartagena Protocol and Codex share a precautionary approach to GM crops and foods in that they agree that GM differs from conventional breeding and that safety assessments should be required before GMOs are used in food or released into the environment.
These concerns cannot be brushed aside as being non-science based. Such accusations are political posturing, part of a strategy to slant the policy agenda and divert attention away from evidence that leads to the questioning of the safety, environmental impacts and record of GM crops.
False narrative of Bt cotton
Gutierrez et al also comment on the Chaturvedi–Srinivas book in their letter and note that, in contrast to pro-GMO statements about the book reported in the press, most of the chapters contain some points that temper or criticise this over-simplified enthusiasm.
In reviewing the book, the three researchers note the general policy position, that Bt cotton benefits smaller and poorly connected farmers, is not always supported by the case study data presented. Moreover, Bt cotton yields were not necessarily higher (than non-Bt cotton) for all farmers and even when economic gains occurred, it was not demonstrated that those gains came from Bt traits: higher fertiliser levels usually increased yields.
Bt cotton is also not scale neutral: it has mainly benefited larger farmers and high Bt cotton seed prices are a big concern for many farmers as are monopolistic pricing practices.
Gutierrez and his colleagues conclude that the RIS volume cited gains in yield and reductions in insecticide use in Bt cotton that are inaccurate.
They add:
“… a failed picture emerges of an unsustainable eco-social Bt cotton system based on a dystopic relationship between those who control and sell the inputs, and the vast majority of farmers… Nowhere in the volume is there mention of potential viable non-GMO alternatives.”
The three researchers note that at least 25-30 peer reviewed papers have been published recently in India from almost all the agricultural universities dealing with cotton, validating the short-season high-density (SS-HD) concepts using non-Bt varieties. In all the studies, SS-HD plantings invariably got the highest yields, clearly pointing to the inappropriateness of the current long-season low-density hybrid system. Yet, none of these studies were cited in the Chaturvedi–Srinivas RIS volume.
Gutierrez et al note that hybrid cottons unique to India were introduced in the mid-1970s purportedly to increase yield and quality, but the hybrid seed is considerably more expensive, the plants require more fertiliser and stable water and the hybrid technology serves as a value capture mechanism requiring annual purchases of seed.
They argue that Indian farmers are planting inappropriate long-season hybrid cotton varieties at inappropriate low planting densities due to high seed costs, which contributes to low yield stagnation.
They also provide an overview of how, in long-season hybrid cotton, insecticide use caused ecological disruption, inducing outbreaks of secondary insect pests:
“Farmers were spending money on insecticides to lose money from (insecticide) induced pests… While the Bt technology initially solved the bollworm problems, outbreaks of secondary pests not controlled by the Bt toxins began to occur, again increasing insecticide use in Bt cotton that by 2013 surpassed pre-2002 levels. This caused ecological disruption and induced outbreaks of still newer secondary pests… and increased levels of resistance to insecticides. By 2013, Indian farmers were solidly on both the insecticide and biotechnology treadmills.”
The three researchers conclude that Bt cotton did not increase yields but did contribute to increased cost of production in the face of stagnant yields, leading to economic distress.
They argue that hybrid Bt cotton in India is a failure or at best very suboptimal for farmer welfare and say that HD-SS non-GMO pure line rainfed cotton varieties have been developed in India that could double yield and triple net income. The potential exists for development of even higher yielding HD-SS non-hybrid non-GMO varieties in India, which would allow seed saving by Indian farmers.
However, they assert that this approach has been sidelined: we now see hybrid Bt cotton falsely being used as an example of success and as a template for rolling out GMOs, gene editing and other technologies across Indian agriculture.
On 12 August 2013, an article in The Hindu (‘Nip this in the bud’) noted that the Ministry of Agriculture, the Indian Council of Agriculture Research and the Ministry of Science and Technology were deeply compromised due to their strong and active ties with the GMO biotech industry. Indeed, Monsanto had been granted access to agri-research public institutions, which had placed that company in a position to seriously influence policy. By 2014, 95 per cent of cotton grown in India was GM and non-GM seeds had almost disappeared from the market.
The push is now on to see a similar value-capture scenario take root with genetically engineered food crops based on a myth of Bt cotton success, which has in recent years been promoted by a number of government officials in India. Science and reason (and farmers and the public) are in danger of being sacrificed for the “ideological proclivities” of key figures and bodies directly linked to national policy making.
The letter mentioned in this article can be read in full on the GMWatch.org website. It contains a more in-depth analysis of Bt cotton in India than presented here, including numerous graphics and references to key studies.
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Colin Todhunter is a frequent contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research.
“By nearly all measures, hybrid GM Bt cotton in India is a failure.”
Three eminent experts have joined forces to debunk claims by a member of two influential think tanks that GM Bt cotton in India has been a resounding success.
The claims were made by Dr Ramesh Chand, a member of the Indian Government think tank Niti Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), in an interview published by BloombergQuint in July 2020. Dr Chand said that India has three pressing needs: improving farm efficiency, sustainability, and food security. He claimed that a “positive environment” for GM crops was developing in India “as there is no credible study to show any adverse impact of growing Bt cotton in the last 18 years in the country”.
The Chand interview took place at an event publicizing a new book called Socio Economic Impact Assessment of GM crops: Global Implications Based on Case Studies from India, edited by Drs Sachin Chaturvedi and Krishna Ravi Srinivas of the Research and Information System (RIS) for Developing Countries, a policy think tank in the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India. What Niti Aayog and RIS representatives say and write is important because of their close links to Indian policymakers.
In the interview, Dr Chand attempts to explain the widespread opposition to GM technology in India on the supposed basis that “the technology is so powerful that it has created fear in the minds of people”, “the government stayed away from it as the technology was opposed globally”, and “the media relied more on activists than on scientists”.
Taking issue with all of these claims are Andrew Paul Gutierrez, senior emeritus professor at the College of Natural Resources at the University of California at Berkeley and CEO of the Center for the Analysis of Sustainable Agricultural Systems; Hans R. Herren, winner of the World Food Prize and president of the Millennium Institute, Washington DC; and Peter E. Kenmore, MacArthur Fellow (“Genius Award”) for his work on integrated pest management in green revolution rice, former head of FAO/Plant Protection, and former FAO Ambassador to India. These authors have written a fully referenced open letter to Dr Chand and other members of Niti Aayog rebutting their claims. They have given GMWatch permission to publish the letter in full below.
The letter is long and detailed, so here’s a summary of its contents:
GM Bt cotton not responsible for meager increases in yield
The authors (Gutierrez, Herren, and Kenmore) agree that there is a need to improve farm efficiency, sustainability, and food security, but all credible evidence shows that the meager increases in cotton yield after the introduction of Bt cotton in 2002 were largely due to increases in fertilizer use and not to Bt cotton. Bt cotton did not increase yields, but did contribute to increased cost of production.
Analysis of the available state wide and national data show that suicides among Indian cotton farmers increase with decreasing yield and net revenues.
Problems of GM Bt cotton
The Chaturvedi-Srinivas book focuses on promoting the unrestrained development of indigenous GMOs and fails to mention any viable alternatives to the GMO model. Yet in spite of this, and in contrast to statements reported in press articles, the book contains points that contradict the over-simplified enthusiasm of GMO promoters. For example:
Bt cotton yields were not higher than non-Bt cotton for all farmers
Average yields for Bt cotton in the same farmers’ fields have declined over recent years.
Bioeconomic analyses of Bt cotton show:
Hybrid GM Bt cotton seed is more expensive due to royalty and technology costs
Plants require more fertilizer and water
The technology serves as a value capture mechanism requiring annual purchases of seed.
Indian farmers are planting inappropriate long-season hybrid cotton varieties at inappropriate low planting densities due to high seed costs. This contributes to low yield stagnation.
Proponents of Bt cotton’s success point to increases in national production, yet the true measures of how well farmers are doing should be based on yield and total net income per hectare. Also, proper accounting of costs of ecosystem and biodiversity losses should be considered. When viewed from an objective perspective, a picture emerges of a failed and unsustainable Bt cotton system based on a dystopic relationship between those who control and sell the inputs and the vast majority of farmers.
Viable and better alternatives
Many peer-reviewed studies question the success of GM hybrid Bt cotton and show the availability of viable and better alternatives. Examples include studies reporting field trial data on high yielding short-season high-density (SS-HD) non-hybrid non-GMO cotton; bioeconomic studies of Bt cotton in India; and a critique of the ecologically unsustainable basis of the current Indian Bt cotton production system.
25-30 peer-reviewed papers from Indian agricultural universities validate the SS-HD concepts in cotton production using non-Bt varieties. In all studies, SS-HD plantings invariably got the highest yields, pointing to the inappropriateness of the current low-density system. (None of these studies were cited in the Chaturvedi–Srinivas book.)
SS-HD non-GMO rainfed cotton varieties have been developed in India that could double yield (according to data from the Central Institute for Cotton Research, CICR) and triple net income. The obvious question is: Why haven’t these varieties been developed and implemented in the field?
Repeated failure of techno-fixes
Pre-2002, insecticides were used to control the native pink bollworm, the key pest. Insecticide use caused ecological disruption that in India induced outbreaks of secondary insect pests like the damaging “American” bollworm and others. To solve this problem, GMO Bt cotton was introduced starting in 2002 (and illegally before). While GM Bt technology initially solved the bollworm problem, outbreaks of secondary pests not controlled by Bt toxins began to occur, again increasing insecticide use in Bt cotton that by 2013 surpassed pre-2002 levels. This again caused ecological disruption and induced outbreaks of newer secondary pests and increased resistance to insecticides. By 2013, Indian farmers were solidly on the insecticide and biotechnology treadmills. Yet some still propose that pest issues could be fixed with further biotech fixes – a proposal akin to a dog chasing its own tail.
By nearly all measures, hybrid GM Bt cotton in India is a failure, or at best suboptimal for farmer welfare. Despite increases, Indian yields are no higher than some of the poorest African countries that do not cultivate hybrid cotton or Bt cotton. Hybrid GM Bt cotton is falsely cited as an example of a grand success and a template for implementing GM technologies (including gene editing) in other crops, especially food crops. Legitimate concerns about the loss of biodiversity and of the irreversible GMO contamination of indigenous crop varieties and wild species have been ignored. The emphasis has been on GMO development even though viable alternatives are available but remain largely unexplored.
Open letter to Niti Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India) – an Indian Government think tank
From: Prof. Andrew Paul Gutierrez
Dr. Hans R. Herren
Dr. Peter E. Kenmore
4 August 2020
A 6 July 2020 article in the business-oriented BloombergQuint reported an interview with Dr. Ramesh Chand, a member of the Indian Government think-tank Niti Aayog (National Institution for Transforming India), and an earlier article on 17 July 2019 (“Feeding 10 billion people will require genetically modified food”), require a responsible and factual response. The articles reported sweeping unsupported claims concerning the benefits of, and need for, genetic engineering and related technologies in agriculture in India, and further asserted that Bt cotton was a grand success and an example of the potential of biotechnology. Dr. Chand is reported as stating that India has three pressing needs: improving farm efficiency, sustainability and food security, and further that a “positive environment” [is] developing in India as there is no credible study to show any adverse impact of growing Bt cotton in the last 18 years in the country…”.
We agree that there is a need to improve farm efficiency, sustainability, and food security, but in contrast, all of the credible evidence shows that the meager increases in cotton yield after the introduction of Bt cotton in 2002 were largely due to increases in fertilizer use (Kranthi 2016; Kranthi and Stone 2020), and there are other serious shortcomings addressed below. [N.B. Dr. K.R. Kranthi was the former head of CICR at Nagpur and Professor G. Stone is an international expert on socio-economics of farming systems.]
The Chand interview occurred at a book release event for a new volume titled Socio Economic Impact Assessment of GM crops: Global Implications Based on Case Studies from India, edited by Drs. Sachin Chaturvedi and Krishna Ravi Srinivas of the Delhi-based Research and Information System (RIS) for developing countries, an agency that is a policy research think tank in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. Hence, what Niti Aayog and RIS representatives say and write is existentially important because of their deep links to Indian policy makers, and hence the large impact on the future development of policy in the area of genetic engineering and related technologies such as genomic editing – policies that will impact the health, livelihood, and welfare of Indian farmers and the Nation far into the future.
In the interview, Dr. Chand posits that “opposition and uncertainty” to GM technology lingers because “the technology is so powerful that it has created fear in the minds of people”; that “GM technology came at the time of the IT revolution due to which global views were available on internet platforms and the government stayed away from it as the technology was opposed globally”; and that “the media relied more on activists than on scientists”. We respectfully submit that these are not strong arguments and are materially inaccurate.
For fairness, we also review the Chaturvedi–Srinivas edited RIS volume. In contrast to the statements reported in the press articles above, most of the chapters contain some points that temper or criticize the over-simplified enthusiasm of GMO promoters. A brief study of the book revealed the following findings:
A. The general policy position, that Bt cotton is a paradigm for benefits to smaller and poorly connected farmers, was not always supported by the case study data in the book.
A-1. Not all farmers enjoyed economic or income benefits from Bt cotton: Chapters 1 and 4.
A-2. Bt cotton YIELDs were not higher (than non-Bt cotton) for all farmers within one season: Chapters 4 and 10.
A-3. Average yields for Bt cotton in the same farmers’ fields declined over recent years: Chapters 1, 8, and 10.
B. Even when economic gains were made by Bt cotton farmers, it was not demonstrated that those gains came from Bt traits: Chapter 11 (surveying the Bt cotton case studies in this book.)
B-1. Higher fertilizer levels usually increased yields in field studies: Chapters 1, 8, and 10.
B-2. Bt cotton is “irrigation intensive” compared with non-Bt cotton: Chapters 1 and 5.
B-3. Bt cotton benefited larger farmers more than smaller farmers: Chapters 8 and 10.
B-4. Bt cotton showed INCREASING Returns to Scale (i.e. NOT Scale Neutral), thus benefiting larger, richer, better connected farmers: Chapter 8.
C. Farm input and output prices in India are influenced by a variety of governmental restrictions, subsidies, taxes, credit access and other instruments. Farmers’ opinions, governmental interventions, and larger private/corporate rent-seeking and protection push against each other regarding Bt cotton.
C-1. High Bt cotton seed prices concern most farmers interviewed: Chapters 1, 4, 5, and 8.
C-2. Monopolistic pricing practices and seed patent rights owned by larger seed companies limit benefits to Bt cotton farmers: Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 7.
C-3. Prices received by farmers for Bt cotton were lower than for non-Bt cotton: Chapters 5 and 10.
D. As described by a Parliamentary Commission: “All is not well with regulatory and governance mechanisms” for GMO crops: Chapters 4 and 7. For example:
D-1. Bt seed prices are regulated by government interventions to reduce the maximum price seed companies can charge: Chapters 1, 3, 4, 7, and 8.
D-2. There is need to improve involvement of farmers and local village government in regulating GMO crops: Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 12.
D-3. Regulatory innovations at global, national, and local levels (ecotoxicology, pesticides, pollution) are relevant for improving GMO regulations to protect farmers and consumers: Chapters 4 and 11.
The volume has limited scientific value and is written for people with inside knowledge. All of the authors are social scientists who evaluated data and analyses by other social scientists to develop RIS “Guidelines and Methodologies for Socio-Economic Assessment” for use in policy development. Nowhere in the text did scientists in agronomy, entomology and related disciplines provide in-depth analysis of the posited benefits of GMOs, except in industrial agriculture in developed countries (Shelton et al. 2002); results that have little applicability to conditions in India. The authors and the social scientists cited fail to acknowledge that the issues of crop production and protection are first and foremost ecological in nature, and this sets the basis for what is possible at the economic and social scales. Nowhere in the volume was the biology-ecology of crop production systems assessed. The reports of field trials in India reporting the benefits of GMO technology were based largely on meta, ex ante, ex post and post hoc studies conducted by agricultural economists producing lots of nice round numbers lacking holistic assessment at different scales. The RIS volume cited gains in yield and reductions in insecticide use in Bt cotton that are inaccurate, and further are method-, time-, and place-specific (see Gutierrez et al. 2017; Kranthi and Stone 2020). Only in Chapter 1 was a result critical of the overall impact of the Bt technology in India reported (Sahai and Rahman 2003). The thoughtful Chapter 4 by Dr. E. Haribabu on public perceptions of risk is excellent.
There is also considerable emphasis on Article 26 of the Strategic Plan for the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2011-2020) (CPB) envisaged to protect the right of Parties (nation states) by taking into account socio-economic considerations in the transboundary movement, development, and impact of Living Modified Organisms (LMOs) on the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. Unfortunately, it is apparent from the RIS text that India wishes to interpret the CPB to address limitations on GMOs raised by various stakeholders within India, allowing, based on presumed ‘socio-economic considerations’, the unrestrained development of indigenous LMOs (i.e. GMOs). That was the main focus of the RIS volume.
Dr. Chand and much of the RIS volume cite the presumed grand success of Bt cotton as a template for introducing GMO (and gene editing) technologies in other crops (mustard, brinjal, etc.), often using questionable methods to gain registration for GMO chimeras (e.g., Pental 2019; see a reply by Gutierrez et al. 2020). Proponents of Bt cotton’s success point to increases in national production, and yet the true measures of how well farmers are doing should be scale neutral with yield and total net income per hectare being appropriate metrics, and proper accounting of costs of ecosystem and biodiversity losses should be considered. When viewed from an objective perspective, a failed picture emerges of an unsustainable eco-social Bt cotton system based on a dystopic relationship between those who control and sell the inputs, and the vast majority of farmers that given their level of information and education attempt to implement them. Nowhere in the volume is there mention of potential viable non-GMO systems alternatives.
Below the “success” of Bt cotton in India is reviewed based on deep analyses of the effects of weather, ecological and agronomic factors. We apologize for self-citations, but not all scientists (including in the USA) have the freedom to express opposing views as freely as did the biotechnologist Dr. Deepak Pental in his strongly worded critique against very prominent, globally respected and honored Indian scientists Dr. P. C. Kesavan and Dr. M. S. Swaminathan (see Pental 2019; Gutierrez 2020). In order of importance questioning the success of hybrid Bt cotton are: (1) the field trial data on high yielding short-season high-density (SS-HD) non-hybrid non GMO cotton by CICR’s Venugopalan et al. (2011); studies that clearly show the availability of highly viable alternatives to hybrid GMO Bt cotton (see Fig. 4 below); (2) the analysis of the long-term national and state data on the impact of Bt cotton in India by Kranthi and Stone (2020; see Gutierrez et al. 2017) that lays bare the fallacy of the Bt cotton myth in India; (3) the bioeconomic studies of Bt cotton in India (Environmental Sciences Europe (Gutierrez et al. 2015)); and analyses in Current Science India (Gutierrez et al. 2017, 2019) that deconstructed the unsustainable econ-ecological bases of the current Indian Bt cotton production system. We note that at least 25-30 peer reviewed papers have been published recently in India from almost all the agricultural universities dealing with cotton, validating the SS-HD concepts using non-Bt varieties (see the partial list of publications below). In all of the studies, SS-HD plantings invariably got the highest yields, clearly pointing to the inappropriateness of the current low-density system. Yet, none of these studies were cited in the Chaturvedi–Srinivas RIS volume.
In chronological order, the results of the bioeconomic investigations of Bt cotton clearly show:
1. Hybrid cottons unique to India were introduced in the mid-1970s purportedly to increase yield and quality, but the hybrid seed is considerably more expensive due to royalty and technology costs, the plants require more fertilizer and stable water, and the hybrid technology serves as a value capture mechanism requiring annual purchases of seed (Gutierrez et al. 2015; in press). This problem will recur for hybrid GMO varieties proposed for other crops (see Gutierrez et al. 2019).
2. Indian farmers are planting inappropriate long season hybrid cotton varieties at inappropriate low planting densities due to high seed costs. This contributes to low yield stagnation (see Venugopalan et al. 2011, Gutierrez et al. 2017; Kranthi and Stone 2020).
3. Pre-2002, insecticides were used to control the native pink bollworm (PBW, i.e. the key pest) in long season hybrid cotton. As occurred worldwide, insecticide use causes ecological disruption that in India induced outbreaks of secondary insect pests (i.e. normally non pests) like the highly damaging “American” bollworm (and others). Farmers were spending money on insecticides to lose money from (insecticide) induced pests. To solve the insecticide induced American bollworm and other induced moth problems (e.g., PBW), GMO Bt cotton was introduced starting in 2002. We note that illegal Bt seed was introduced in Gujarat before 2002 (see RIS Chapter 4)
4. While the Bt technology initially solved the bollworm problems, outbreaks of secondary pests not controlled by the Bt toxins began to occur, again increasing insecticide use in Bt cotton that by 2013 surpassed pre-2002 levels. This caused ecological disruption and induced outbreaks of still newer secondary pests (whitefly, jassids, mealybug), and increased levels of resistance to insecticides. By 2013, Indian farmers were solidly on both the insecticide and biotechnology treadmills. And yet, some technologists still propose that developing pest issues could be fixed with still further biotech fixes – a proposal akin to a technological dog chasing its own tail. Data on points 1-4 are depicted in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Trends of national cotton yield, Bt cotton adoption and total insecticide use on cotton with the quantities partitioned as to the target pests (bollworms (black line) vs sucking insects (i.e. hemiptera – red line)) (Ministry of Agriculture data)
5. Bt cotton did not increase yields, but did contribute to increased cost of production (Figure 2), all in the face of stagnant yields (see Figure 1) leading to economic distress.
Figure 2. Ministry of Agriculture data on national costs of production against a background of percent Bt cotton adoption (solid line) and stagnant yields (see Figure 1).
6. Analysis of the available statewide and national data show that suicides among Indian cotton farmers increase with decreasing yield and net revenues (i.e. economic distress; Figure 3; Gutierrez et al. 2015, in press; see also Sadanandan 2014).
Figure 3. Correlation of Indian cotton farmer suicides with (a) cotton yield and (b) net revenues (Indian rupees, Rs = ₹) for the period 1999-2014 across the south-central Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra (Gutierrez et al. in press). The data in the dashed area in (a) are from Gujarat.
7. High density, short season (HD-SS) NON-GMO pure line rainfed cotton varieties have been developed in India that could double yield (CICR data; Figure 4) and triple net income. The average yield of the current hybrid varieties in Maharashtra is shown for comparison. The obvious question is – Why haven’t these varieties been developed and implemented in the field?
Figure 4. Published data from CICR, Nagpur, Maharashtra (Venugopalan et al. 2011). The average yield for Maharashtra (MH) was superimposed to illustrate the yield gap.
8. The potential exists for development of even higher yielding HD-SS non-hybrid non-GMO varieties in India; varieties that would allow seed saving by Indian farmers.
9. Incorporation of hybrid and Bt technologies in HD-SS cottons would not give economic benefit because there would be no increase in yield, seed cost would be 6-8fold current costs, and rainfed HD-SS varieties would avoid infestation by the key pest pink bollworm obviating the need for the Bt technology (see Gutierrez et al. 2015).
10. Resistance to Bt cotton in pink bollworm is now widespread in India, and resistance to insecticide in many pests is increasing (Kranthi 2014; Naik et al. 2018).
By nearly all measures, hybrid Bt cotton in India is a failure, or at best very suboptimal for farmer welfare. Despite increases, Indian yields are no more than some of the poorest African countries which do not cultivate hybrid cotton or Bt-cotton. In 2017, 31 countries were ranked above India in terms of cotton yield (i.e. kg ha–1), and of these, only 10 grew GMO cotton (Kranthi 2014). So why is hybrid Bt cotton falsely used as an example of a grand success, and why should it be used as a template for implementing the hybrids, GMOs, gene editing and other technologies in other crops – especially food crops? Why have legitimate concerns been ignored about the loss of biodiversity and of the irreversible GMO contamination of indigenous crop varieties and wild species. Why has the emphasis been on GMO development when viable alternatives are available but remain largely unexplored? Much of biotechnology in agriculture is an exercise in linear thinking and reductionism, of unexpected consequences; the eco-social manipulations of the RIS volume aside. There is a need to use caution and back up any decision that affect the food and nutrition security of over a billion people with strong science, farmers’ knowledge and experience as well as an understanding of the possible conflicts of interest (IPES-Food 2016) at play to the detriment of the Indian agricultural sector, the public, and the Nation.
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Andrew Paul Gutierrez FRES is Senior Emeritus Professor in the College of Natural Resources at the University of California at Berkeley. He was founder of the University of California Integrated Pest Management Program and Associate Director of the National NSF/EPA/USDA IPM Projects. He has 40years of experience working on cotton globally. He is CEO of the Center for the Analysis of Sustainable Agricultural systems (CasasGlobal.org) with ongoing research programs globally on various crop systems.
Hans R. Herren received the World Food Prize (and others awards) for his leadership of the hugely successful project on the biological control of cassava pests in sub Saharan Africa; he is President of the Millennium Institute, Washington DC (USA) and of the NGO Biovision, Zurich, Switzerland and a Foreign Associate of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has global experience in diverse agricultural systems.
Peter E. Kenmore is a MacArthur Fellow (Genius Award) for his work on IPM in green revolution rice, former head of FAO/Plant Protection, and former FAO Ambassador to India. Kenmore was the founder of the internationally renown Farmer Field School program in Asia.
Sources
Gutierrez AP, Kenmore PE, Rodrigues A (2019) When biotechnologists lack objectivity. Curr Sci 117:1422–1429
Gutierrez AP, Ponti L, Baumgärtner J (2017) A critique on the paper ‘Agricultural biotechnology and crop productivity: macro-level evidences on contribution of Bt cotton in India.’ Curr Sci 112:690–693
Gutierrez AP, Ponti L, Herren HR, et al (2015) Deconstructing Indian cotton: weather, yields, and suicides. Environ Sci Eur 27:12. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12302-015-0043-8
Gutierrez, A.P., Luigi Ponti, Keshav R. Kranthi, Johann Baumgärtner, Peter. E. Kenmore, Gianni Gilioli, Antonio Boggia, Jose Ricardo Cure, Daniel Rodríguez (submitted) Bio-economics of Indian hybrid Bt cotton and farmer suicides. Environ Sci Eur
Gutierrez AP, P.E. Kenmore and A. Rodrigues 2020, Commentary – A reply by Gutierrez et al. Curr. Sci., 118(6)
Naik VC, Kumbhare S, Kranthi S, et al (2018) Field-evolved resistance of pink bollworm, Pectinophora gossypiella (Saunders) (Lepidoptera: Gelechiidae), to transgenic Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton expressing crystal 1Ac (Cry1Ac) and Cry2Ab in India. Pest Manag Sci doi:10.1002/ps.5038. https://doi.org/10.1002/ps.5038
Pental, D., (2019) When scientists turn against science: exceptionally flawed analysis of plant breeding technologies Curr. Sci., 117, 932–939; doi:10.18520/cs/v117/i6/932-939.
Sadanandan, A. (2014). Political economy of suicide: Financial reforms, credit crunches and farmer suicides in India. The Journal of Developing Areas, 48(4), 287–307. http://search.proquest.com/ docview/1523669376?accountid=79789.
Sahai, S. and Rahman, S. (2003). Performance of BT cotton in India: Data from the First Commercial crop. Gene Campaign.
Shelton, A. M., Zhao, J. Z., & Roush, R. T. (2002). Economic, ecological, food safety, and social consequences of the deployment of Bt transgenic plants. Annual Review of Entomology, 47(1), 845–881.
Stone, G. D. (2012, September 22). Constructing facts Bt cotton narratives in India. Economic and Political Weekly, XLVII (38).
Venugopalan, MV, Prakash AH, Kranthi KR, et al (2011) Evaluation of cotton genotypes for high density planting systems on rain fed vertisols of Central India. In: Kranthi KR, Venugopalan MV, Balasubramanya RH, et al (eds) World Cotton Research Conference. International Cotton Advisory Committee, Mumbai, India, pp 341–346.
A partial list of papers on SS-HD cotton research in India
Ahuja, S. L., Monga, D., Meena, R. A., Rishi Kumar and Neha Saxena 2013. Evaluation of G. arboreum cotton genotypes for High Density Planting Systems in Northern India. National Symposium on “Technology for Development and Production of Rainfed Cotton” 24-25 October, 2013, RCRS, NAU, Bharuch: 9.
Alur, A., Halepyati, A.S., Chittapur, B.M., Nidagundi, J.M. and Koppalkar, B.G., 2020. Effect of high density planting and nutrient management on growth and yield of compact cotton (Gossypium hirsutum l.) Genotypes. Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry, 9(4), pp.294-297.
Desai, H.R., Bhanderi, G.R., Patel, R.D., Sankat, K.B. and Patel, R.K., 2019. High density planting with insecticide resistance management approach for sustainable and profitable cotton production in rain fed region. Journal of Entomology and Zoology Studies 2019; 7(5): 453-458
Ganvir, S. S., Khargkharate, V. K., Ghanbahadur, M. R., Tamgadge, J. B. and Nage, S. M. 2013. Effect of high density planting, nutrient management and In-Situ moisture conservation on productivity of hirsutum cotton. National Symposium on “Technology for Development and Production of Rainfed Cotton” 24-25 October, 2013, RCRS, NAU, Bharuch. p. 85.
Harshana, A., Patil, S.B. and Udikeri, S.S., 2017. Validation of existing IPM module of cotton under high density planting system. Journal of Entomology and Zoology Studies, 5(5), p.687.
Maheswari, M.U. and Krishnasamy, S.M., 2019. Effect of crop geometries and plant growth retardants on physiological growth parameters in machine sown cotton. Journal of Pharmacognosy and Phytochemistry, 8(2), pp.541-545.
Nalayini, P. and Manickam, S., 2018. Agronomic manipulation of high strength cotton genotype, CCH4474 for yield maximization under irrigated agro ecosystem of Coimbatore. Journal of Cotton Research and Development, 32(2), pp.256-259.
Nemade, P., Rathod, T., Deshmukh, S., Paslawar, A., Ujjainkar, V., Deshmukh, V. And Jayle, S., 2015. Evaluation of spacing and spray schedule for management of bollworms in HDPS cotton. Book of Oral Presentations, p.165.
Parihar, L.B., Rathod, T.H., Paslawar, A.N. and Kahate, N.S., 2018. Effect of High Density Planting System (HDPS) and Genotypes on Growth Parameters and Yield Contributing Traits in Upland Cotton. Int. J. Curr. Microbiol. App. Sci, 7(12), pp.2291-2297.
Paslawar, A. N., Patil, B. R., Ingole, O. V., Nemade, P. W. and Deotalu, A. S. 2013. High Density Planting System for AKH-081 and its influence on Growth, Yield and Economics under rainfed cultivation. National Symposium on “Technology for Development and Production of Rainfed Cotton” 24-25 October, 2013, RCRS, NAU, Bharuch. p. 74.
Pawar, N.D., Jiotode, D.J., Kubde, K. J., Khawle, V.S., Puri, P.D. 2017. Effect of plant geometry under HDPS on crop phenology and yield contributing characters in cotton. Journal of Soils and Crops 2017 Vol.27 No.1 pp.274-280
Pradeep Kumar., Karle, A.S., Sing D. and Verma, L. 2017. Effect of high density planting system (HDPS) and varieties on yield, economics and quality of desi cotton. Int. J. of Curr. Microbio. and Applied Sci. ISSN: 2319-7706 Volume 6(3): 233-238.
Santhosh, B., Thatikunta, R., Reddy, D.V.V., Hussain, S.A. And Shankar, V.G., 2019. Physiological Basis of Improved Yields. In Rainfed Cotton Under High Density Planting System. The J. Res. Pjtsau Vol. XLVII No. 3 pp 1-70, July-Sep., 2019, p.12.
Venugopalan, M. V., Blaise D., Tandulkar, N. R. and Shubhangi, L. 2013. HDPS [HD-SS]- A promising option for Rainfed Cotton. National Symposium on “Technology for Development and Production of Rainfed Cotton” 24-25 October, 2013, RCRS, NAU, Bharuch : L-3.
Venugopalan, M. V., Kranthi, K. R., Blaise, D., Shubhangi Lakde and Shankaranarayanan, K. 2013. High density planting system in cotton – The Brazil Experience and Indian Initiatives. Cotton Res. J. 5(2): 172- 185.
Featured image is by Peggy Greb – USDA, ARS via Wiki Commons
Today, we celebrate the International Day of the World’s Indigenous Peoples and all Indigenous leaders who have been fighting for our rights. Today, we remember the first meeting of the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations that took place in 1982 in Geneva, Switzerland. Much progress has been made for Indigenous rights protections in the international arena, but too many countries remain behind in respecting, protecting, and fulfilling our rights. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated the disparities that exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities.
Everyday I hear inspiring stories of the ways our communities are mobilizing to protect our elders and those most vulnerable. How communities, especially youth, are relearning and returning to our traditional knowledge and practices to grow traditional foods and medicine to feed their families and keep them healthy. It is the passing down of this knowledge over generations, as well as our relationships to all our living and nonliving, animate and inanimate relatives, that have made us resilient. This knowledge carries strength and wisdom, and can guide us on how to cope with today’s greatest challenges and to dismantle colonial and racists structures.
Human rights and Indigenous Peoples’ rights need to be respected and upheld today more than ever. We know change takes decades. Today, we celebrate all those who put their lives on the line defending Mother Earth from extraction.
Today, we celebrate all the Indigenous activists and leaders who have worked tirelessly to get rid of racist mascots and other forms of dehumanization against Indigenous Peoples. Today, we celebrate Indigenous journalists who defy oppressive State governments to go on air on the radio and speak their languages to share knowledge and inform their people. Today, we celebrate all those who are fighting to reclaim their ancestral lands, uphold treaties, and succeed like Indigenous Peoples in Oklahoma and the Maya Ixil and Chorti Peoples in Guatemala with their recent #LandBack wins.
Hain daa (Thank you) for your ongoing support and for joining us in this journey to secure a future that respects and honors Indigenous Peoples’ inherent rights and dynamic cultures, deeply and richly interwoven in lands, languages, spiritual traditions, and artistic expression, rooted in self-determination and self-governance.
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The narrative that the Beirut explosion was an exclusive consequence of negligence and corruption by the current Lebanese government is now set in stone, at least in the Atlanticist sphere.
And yet, digging deeper, we find that negligence and corruption may have been fully exploited, via sabotage, to engineer it.
Lebanon is prime John Le Carré territory. A multinational den of spies of all shades – House of Saud agents, Zionist operatives, “moderate rebel” weaponizers, Hezbollah intellectuals, debauched Arab “royalty,” self-glorified smugglers – in a context of full spectrum economic disaster afflicting a member of the Axis of Resistance, a perennial target of Israel alongside Syria and Iran.
As if this were not volcanic enough, into the tragedy stepped President Trump to muddy the – already contaminated – Eastern Mediterranean waters. Briefed by “our great generals,” Trump on Tuesday said: “According to them – they would know better than I would – but they seem to think it was an attack.”
Trump added, “it was a bomb of some kind.”
Was this incandescent remark letting the cat out of the bag by revealing classified information? Or was the President launching another non sequitur?
Trump eventually walked his comments back after the Pentagon declined to confirm his claim about what the “generals” had said and his defense secretary, Mark Esper, supported the accident explanation for the blast.
It’s yet another graphic illustration of the war engulfing the Beltway. Trump: attack. Pentagon: accident. “I don’t think anybody can say right now,” Trump said on Wednesday. “I’ve heard it both ways.”
Still, it’s worth noting a report by Iran’s Mehr News Agency that four US Navy reconnaissance planes were spotted near Beirut at the time of the blasts. Is US intel aware of what really happened all along the spectrum of possibilities?
That ammonium nitrate
Security at Beirut’s port – the nation’s prime economic hub – would have to be considered a top priority. But to adapt a line from Roman Polanski’s Chinatown: “Forget it, Jake. It’s Beirut.”
Those by now iconic 2,750 tons of ammonium nitrate arrived in Beirut in September 2013 on board the Rhosus, a ship under Moldovan flag sailing from Batumi in Georgia to Mozambique. Rhosus ended up being impounded by Beirut’s Port State Control.
Subsequently the ship was de facto abandoned by its owner, shady businessman Igor Grechushkin, born in Russia and a resident of Cyprus, who suspiciously “lost interest” in his relatively precious cargo, not even trying to sell it, dumping style, to pay off his debts.
Grechushkin never paid his crew, who barely survived for several months before being repatriated on humanitarian grounds. The Cypriot government confirmed there was no request to Interpol from Lebanon to arrest him. The whole op feels like a cover – with the real recipients of the ammonium nitrate possibly being “moderate rebels” in Syria who use it to make IEDs and equip suicide trucks, such as the one that demolished the Al Kindi hospital in Aleppo.
The 2,750 tons – packed in 1-ton bags labeled “Nitroprill HD” – were transferred to the Hangar 12 warehouse by the quayside. What followed was an astonishing case of serial negligence.
From 2014 to 2017 letters from customs officials – a series of them – as well as proposed options to get rid of the dangerous cargo, exporting it or otherwise selling it, were simply ignored. Every time they tried to get a legal decision to dispose of the cargo, they got no answer from the Lebanese judiciary.
When Lebanese Prime Minister Hassan Diab now proclaims, “Those responsible will pay the price,” context is absolutely essential.
Neither the prime minister nor the president nor any of the cabinet ministers knew that the ammonium nitrate was stored in Hangar 12, former Iranian diplomat Amir Mousavi, the director of the Center for Strategic Studies and International Relations in Tehran, confirms. We’re talking about a massive IED, placed mid-city.
The bureaucracy at Beirut’s port and the mafias who are actually in charge are closely linked to, among others, the al-Mostaqbal faction, which is led by former Prime Minister Saad al-Hariri, himself fully backed by the House of Saud.
The immensely corrupt Hariri was removed from power in October 2019 amid serious protests. His cronies “disappeared” at least $20 billion from Lebanon’s treasury – which seriously aggravated the nation’s currency crisis.
No wonder the current government – where we have Prime Minister Diab backed by Hezbollah – had not been informed about the ammonium nitrate.
Ammonium nitrate is quite stable, making it one of the safest explosives used in mining. Fire normally won’t set it off. It becomes highly explosive only if contaminated – for instance by oil – or heated to a point where it undergoes chemical changes that produce a sort of impermeable cocoon around it in which oxygen can build up to a dangerous level where an ignition can cause an explosion.
Why, after sleeping in Hangar 12 for seven years, did this pile suddenly feel an itch to explode?
So far, the prime straight to the point explanation, by Middle East expert Elijah Magnier, points to the tragedy being “sparked” – literally – by a clueless blacksmith with a blowtorch operating quite close to the unsecured ammonium nitrate. Unsecured due, once again, to negligence and corruption – or as part of an intentional “mistake” anticipating the possibility of a future blast.
This scenario, though, does not explain the initial “fireworks” explosion. And certainly does not explain what no one – at least in the West – is talking about: the deliberate fires set to an Iranian market in Ajam in the UAE, and also to a series of food/agricultural warehouses in Najaf, Iraq, immediately after the Beirut tragedy.
Follow the money
Lebanon – boasting assets and real estate worth trillions of dollars – is a juicy peach for global finance vultures. To grab these assets at rock bottom prices, in the middle of the New Great Depression, is simply irresistible. In parallel, the IMF vulture would embark on full shakedown mode and finally “forgive” some of Beirut’s debts as long as a harsh variation of “structural adjustment” is imposed.
Who profits, in this case, are the geopolitical and geoeconomic interests of US, Saudi Arabia and France. It’s no accident that President Macron, a dutiful Rothschild servant, arrived in Beirut Thursday to pledge Paris neocolonial “support” and all but impose, like a Viceroy, a comprehensive set of “reforms”. A Monty Python-infused dialogue, complete with heavy French accent, might have followed along these lines: “We want to buy your port.” “It’s not for sale.” “Oh, what a pity, an accident just happened.”
Already a month ago the IMF was “warning” that “implosion” in Lebanon was “accelerating.” Prime Minister Diab had to accept the proverbial “offer you can’t refuse” and thus “unlock billions of dollars in donor funds.” Or else. The non-stop run on the Lebanese currency, for over a year now, was just a – relatively polite – warning.
This is happening amid a massive global asset grab characterized in the larger context by American GDP down by almost 40%, arrays of bankruptcies, a handful of billionaires amassing unbelievable profits and too-big-to-fail megabanks duly bailed out with a tsunami of free money.
Dag Detter, a Swedish financier, and Nasser Saidi, a former Lebanese minister and central bank vice governor, suggest that the nation’s assets be placed in a national wealth fund. Juicy assets include Electricité du Liban (EDL), water utilities, airports, the MEA airline , telecom company OGERO, the Casino du Liban.
EDL, for instance, is responsible for 30% of Beirut’s budget deficit.
That’s not nearly enough for the IMF and Western mega banks. They want to gobble up the whole thing, plus a lot of real estate.
“The economic value of public real estate can be worth at least as much as GDP and often several times the value of the operational part of any portfolio,” say Detter and Saidi.
Who’s feeling the shockwaves?
Once again, Israel is the proverbial elephant in a room now widely depicted by Western corporate media as “Lebanon’s Chernobyl.”
Israel did admit that Hangar 12 was not a Hezbollah weapons storage unit. Yet, crucially, on the same day of the Beirut blast, and following a series of suspicious explosions in Iran and high tension in the Syria-Israeli border, Prime Minister Netanyahu tweeted , in the present tense: “We hit a cell and now we hit the dispatchers. We will do what is necessary in order to defend ourselves. I suggest to all of them, including Hezbollah, to consider this.”
That ties in with the intent, openly proclaimed late last week, to bomb Lebanese infrastructure if Hezbollah harms Israeli Defense Forces soldiers or Israeli civilians.
A headline – “Beirut Blast Shockwaves Will Be Felt by Hezbollah for a Long Time” – confirms that the only thing that matters for Tel Aviv is to profit from the tragedy to demonize Hezbollah, and by association, Iran. That ties in with the US Congress “Countering Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Military Act of 2019” {S.1886}, which all but orders Beirut to expel Hezbollah from Lebanon.
And yet Israel has been strangely subdued.
Muddying the waters even more, Saudi intel – which has access to Mossad, and demonizes Hezbollah way more than Israel – steps in. All the intel ops I talked to refuse to go on the record, considering the extreme sensitivity of the subject.
Still, it must be stressed that a Saudi intel source whose stock in trade is frequent information exchanges with the Mossad, asserts that the original target was Hezbollah missiles stored in Beirut’s port. His story is that Prime Minister Netanyahu was about to take credit for the strike – following up on his tweet. But then the Mossad realized the op had turned horribly wrong and metastasized into a major catastrophe.
The problem starts with the fact this was not a Hezbollah weapons depot – as even Israel admitted. When weapons depots are blown up, there’s a primary explosion followed by several smaller explosions, something that could last for days. That’s not what happened in Beirut. The initial explosion was followed by a massive second blast – almost certainly a major chemical explosion – and then there was silence.
Thierry Meyssan, very close to Syrian intel, advances the possibility that the “attack” was carried out with an unknown weapon, a missile -– and not a nuclear bomb – tested in Syria in January 2020. (The test is shown in an attached video.) Neither Syria nor Iran ever made a reference to this unknown weapon, and I got no confirmation about its existence.
Assuming Beirut port was hit by an “unknown weapon,” President Trump may have told the truth: It was an “attack”. And that would explain why Netanyahu, contemplating the devastation in Beirut, decided that Israel would need to maintain a very low profile.
Watch that camel in motion
The Beirut explosion at first sight might be seen as a deadly blow against the Belt and Road Initiative, considering that China regards the connectivity between Iran, Iraq, Syria and Lebanon as the cornerstone of the Southwest Asia Belt and Road corridor.
Yet that may backfire – badly. China and Iran are already positioning themselves as the go-to investors post-blast, in sharp contrast with the IMF hit men, and as advised by Hezbollah Secretary-General Nasrallah only a few weeks ago.
Syria and Iran are in the forefront of providing aid to Lebanon. Tehran is sending an emergency hospital, food packages, medicine and medical equipment. Syria opened its borders with Lebanon, dispatched medical teams and is receiving patients from Beirut’s hospitals.
It’s always important to keep in mind that the “attack” (Trump) on Beirut’s port destroyed Lebanon’s main grain silo, apart from engineering the total destruction of the port – the nation’s key trade lifeline.
That would fit into a strategy of starving Lebanon. On the same day Lebanon became to a great extent dependent on Syria for food – as it now carries only a month’s supply of wheat – the US attacked silos in Syria.
Syria is a huge exporter of organic wheat. And that’s why the US routinely targets Syrian silos and burns its crops – attempting also to starve Syria and force Damascus, already under harsh sanctions, to spend badly needed funds to buy food.
In stark contrast to the interests of the US/France/Saudi axis, Plan A for Lebanon would be to progressively drop out of the US-France stranglehold and head straight into Belt and Road as well as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Go East, the Eurasian way. The port and even a great deal of the devastated city, in the medium term, can be quickly and professionally rebuilt by Chinese investment. The Chinese are specialists in port construction and management.
This avowedly optimistic scenario would imply a purge of the hyper-wealthy, corrupt weapons/drugs/real estate scoundrels of Lebanon’s plutocracy – which in any case scurry away to their tony Paris apartments at the first sign of trouble.
Couple that with Hezbollah’s very successful social welfare system – which I saw for myself at work last year – having a shot at winning the confidence of the impoverished middle classes and thus becoming the core of the reconstruction.
It will be a Sisyphean struggle. But compare this situation with the Empire of Chaos – which needs chaos everywhere, especially across Eurasia, to cover for the coming, Mad Max chaos inside the US.
General Wesley Clark’s notorious 7 countries in 5 years once again come to mind – and Lebanon remains one of those 7 countries. The Lebanese lira may have collapsed; most Lebanese may be completely broke; and now Beirut is semi-devastated. That may be the straw breaking the camel’s back – releasing the camel to the freedom of finally retracing its steps back to Asia along the New Silk Roads.
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The so-called Long Peace after 1945 was covered in the blood of innocent people. Americans generally prefer to remember the Cold War as a mostly peaceful triumph punctuated by a handful of debacles, but for many of the people living in non-aligned and newly independent countries after WWII their experience of the Cold War was one of horror and devastation.
Those nations that had the misfortune of being deemed important in the struggle against communism tended to suffer the most. Fanatical anticommunism claimed millions of victims during the Cold War. The atrocities committed against these people are often forgotten in the West, if they were ever known in the first place. That is true most of all in the United States, since it was our government that frequently encouraged and assisted local actors in their crimes against their own people.
We generally ignore this part of the Cold War because it is ugly and because our government bears considerable responsibility for what happened to these countries. It does not square with the “liberal order” mythology that our leaders tell themselves and us. It does not comport with our flattering appraisals of our benevolent role in the world, but it is an important part of the history of our foreign policy that we cannot afford to forget. When politicians and pundits blithely threaten to pursue a new Cold War today against China, we need to understand the destruction that would unleash on unsuspecting people in many other countries. We should not make the same costly errors now.
Indonesia was considered especially crucial during the 1960s as one of the leading non-aligned countries with the largest communist party outside the USSR and China. U.S. officials saw it as a “prize” far more valuable than South Vietnam, and in 1965-66 it was violently yanked into the U.S. orbit by mass murder. The Indonesian military under Suharto and its auxiliaries carried out mass killings against communists and suspected communists, and they murdered up to one million innocent people for nothing more than their presumed political affiliations.
This mass murder and its broader consequences for the rest of the world is the subject of Vincent Bevins’ exceptional The Jakarta Method. Bevins is an international correspondent who worked first in Brazil and then in Indonesia, and while in Indonesia he began to investigate the history of the 1965-66 mass murder that is still officially denied by the government there. As he dug into the stories of the survivors and tracked the consequences of Operation Annihilation (the Army’s internal name for the extermination campaign), he found links between what had happened in Indonesia in the mid-1960s and the brutal campaigns in Latin America by U.S.-aligned dictatorships in the decades that followed. In these other countries, Jakarta became a codeword for massacring the enemies of the fanatical anticommunists, and the mass murder that occurred in Indonesia was held up as a model of what to do.
The U.S. government not only knew about the slaughter in Indonesia, but actively encouraged it and provided the killers with lists of names. Bevins writes:
But after seven years of close cooperation with Washington, the military was already well equipped. You also don’t need advanced weaponry to arrest civilians who provide almost no resistance. What officials in the embassy and the CIA decided the Army really did need, however, was information. Working with CIA analysts, embassy political officer Robert Martens prepared lists with the names of thousands of communists and suspected communists, and handed them over to the Army, so that these people could be murdered and “checked off” the list.
Another million people were rounded up into concentration camps for detention, where they were subjected to starvation, forced labor, torture, and ideological re-education. It was an infamous “victory” that no one wanted to remember.
Bevins recounts this history in a dispassionate, matter-of-fact way, and he carefully weaves together the stories of the individual survivors whom he has found over the course of his investigation. He takes us to the sites of killing fields in Bali where tourist hotels now stand. He introduces us to the Indonesians who lost family and friends in the massacres, and he shows how the survivors are still ostracized and viewed with suspicion all these decades later. One of the survivors he met, an elderly woman named Magdalena, now lives in poverty after her release from prison. He tells how she was “marked for life” because of her past, and she has no family ties because all of these were severed after she was accused of being a communist. As Bevins notes, this “kind of situation if extremely common for survivors of the 1965 violence and repression.” In addition to those that were killed in the violence, there are tens of millions of victims and relatives of victims still alive today.
He also traces the use of the tactics employed against innocent Indonesians to Brazil, Chile, Argentina, and elsewhere in Latin America, and reminds us that people in these countries are still living in the shadow of the U.S.-backed dictatorships that were in power there in the 1970s and 1980s. The Brazilian dictatorship that seized power before Suharto’s takeover later sought to imitate what had happened in Indonesia. The Chilean government under Pinochet did so, albeit on a smaller scale, and the so-called “dirty war” in Argentina followed as well. The trail continues into Central America up to the end of the Cold War. Many of the individual elements of Bevins’ story may be familiar, but he has made connections between them that most Americans do not know.
As he tries to make sense of the horrific events he has described in the book, Bevins leaves us with this grim but fair conclusion:
Looking at it this way, the major losers of the twentieth century were those who believed too sincerely in the existence of a liberal international order, those who trusted too much in democracy, or too much in what the United States said it supported, rather than what it really supported—what the rich countries said, rather than what they did. That group was annihilated.
When he spoke to Winarso, the head of Sekretariat Bersama ’65, the organization that advocates on behalf of survivors of the mass murder, Bevins asked him who won the Cold War. Winarso replied that the United States won. When he followed up by asking how, Winarso replied simply, “You killed us.” What’s more, these people were killed for nothing.
It cannot be emphasized enough that the victims in Indonesia and in the other countries that Bevins reports on were innocent people. They were killed en masse only because they held or were believed to hold certain political beliefs. Bevins writes: “They were sentenced to annihilation, and almost everyone around them was sentenced to a lifetime of guilt, trauma, and being told they had sinned unforgivably because of their association with the earnest hopes of left-wing politics.” They had done nothing wrong. They had the awful luck of being caught in the middle of an international rivalry for power and influence that had nothing to do with them, and they were crushed because it was expedient for our government and its clients that they be crushed.
A few months ago, Hal Brands wrote a column in which he suggested that the U.S. might support covert regime changes as part of a rivalry with China. In one breath, he cited the Suharto takeover in Indonesia as an example of a “cost-effective” success, and then in the next acknowledged the grisly human cost measured in hundreds of thousands of lives. Here is how he described U.S. complicity in mass murder: “CIA support helped the Indonesian military consolidate power after it toppled an increasingly anti-American Sukarno in 1965, thus avoiding the prospect of Southeast Asia’s most important country turning hostile.” He acknowledges that this implicated the U.S. in “horrific violence,” but he remains very vague about what the U.S. did there. If Indonesia is counted as a “win” for the pro-regime change crowd, the idea of promoting regime change is absolutely bankrupt and should never be employed again.
If a strategy relies on policies that lead to the wanton murder of so many innocent people, it is time to throw that strategy out and find another. Supporting regime change in another country is often held up as a quick-fix solution to some problem that the U.S. has in the world, but most of the time this fails on its own terms. Even when regime changes “work” in the near term, they inflict a ghastly toll on the people in the targeted country. The U.S. would do well to reject regime change, covert or otherwise, and to respect the sovereignty and independence of other states instead. The U.S. should also avoid another Cold War with a major power rival that leads to such monstrous crimes as the mass murder in Indonesia.
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Daniel Larison is a senior editor at TAC, where he also keeps a solo blog. He has been published in the New York Times Book Review, Dallas Morning News, World Politics Review, Politico Magazine, Orthodox Life, Front Porch Republic, The American Scene, and Culture11, and was a columnist for The Week. He holds a PhD in history from the University of Chicago, and resides in Lancaster, PA. Follow him on Twitter.
Only the most perverse kind of ideology-derived inertia explains the stupidity, incompetence and criminality of current US foreign policy towards Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Stupid for being based on the insane messianic 19th Century Monroe Doctrine vision of Manifest Destiny, the US, in Nicaragua’s case, has applied for 40 years essentially the same unsuccessful policies that have failed for 170 years, ever since the defeat of William Walker. Now the US authorities have taken up where they left off following the landmark 1986 International Court of Justice ruling condemning US terrorist aggression against Nicaragua.
Having already resumed illegal unilateral coercive measures attacking Nicaragua’s economy, the US government is now openly supplementing its economic aggression with a program intended not just to supplant Nicaragua’s Sandinista government but ultimately to destroy Sandinismo as a viable political movement. They want to turn Nicaragua into Bolivia. Last week, Managua’s Radio La Primerísima revealed the contents of a USAID document with details of this next US government effort at regime change in Nicaragua. The document outlines the main elements of a program called Responsive Assistance in Nicaragua (RAIN). As if it were designed to fail, the thinking behind RAIN is wantonly yankee in practically every sense, bumptious, superficial, self-regarding technocratic nonsense. Its premises are irrational from the start, like an alchemist’s recipe, lost in spurious detail, oblivious to its demented absurdity.
Other writers like Brian Willson, Wiston López, Ben Norton, John Perry and Nan McCurdy have done excellent analysis of the USAID document and its significance. They point out that, in the short to medium term, the plan actually acknowledges likely failure, because USAID’s planners recognize that the Sandinista Front (FSLN) will probably win the national elections in 2021. That likelihood was made very clear this week with the publication of an opinion poll by the widely respected M&R consulting company showing political support for the FSLN at 50% and for the opposition at 10%. In this context, RAIN is clearly a plan for the next decade, establishing a permanent in-country destabilization unit to better manage, coordinate and integrate open and covert regime change activities, both in-house and outsourced.
This aspect of the document suggests that even the monsters-in-human-form running United States’ foreign policy terror programs recognize that Nicaragua cannot be destroyed, pillaged and mismanaged as they have so far got away with doing in Haiti or Honduras. Even so, the plan underestimates the level of traumatic political and social change needed for it to work, unlikely to be achieved by conventional US techniques of softening up countries to overthrow their governments. One sign of this is the way it discounts the profound patriotic strength and robust democratic vision of Nicaragua’s 1987 constitution which even 17 years of US owned neoliberal government between 1990 and 2007 failed to weaken.
This lack of a sense of history and the ensuing inability to understand Sandinismo, along with hopeless tactical timing and poor strategy, are enduring characteristics of US foreign policy failure in Nicaragua. US foreign policy strategists thought the FSLN was finished after losing the 1990 elections, believing the local right-wing US puppets had a long term, unassailable, structural electoral majority. They were wrong. Then they thought Nicaragua’s Sandinista government would succumb to the crisis of 2008-2009. Wrong again. Thanks in large part to Comandante Hugo Chávez and ALBA, President Daniel Ortega’s government actually came out stronger and easily won the national elections in 2011 with a big majority in the legislature as well .
Then, in 2018, the same US foreign policy deadbeat svengalis thought that by coopting youth, threatening private business, weaponizing NGOs and via blitzkrieg-style, industrial scale lying on social media they could wipe out Sandinismo in Nicaragua. Wrong yet again. Now the Sandinista Front is as strong as ever, despite the complex problems provoked by the COVID-19 pandemic. RAIN continues the dysfunctional pattern of sinister US foreign policy derangement with its implicit false premise that the US can secure a more successful outcome than in 2018, if only they can better consolidate, enhance and improve their non-governmental, media, business, religious and political fifth column in Nicaragua. They followed that will-o’-the-wisp from 2006 to 2018 and ended up defeated, just as they have been since 1998 in Venezuela and since 1959 in Cuba.
Even so, the USAID document’s fantasy frame of reference still reflects the involuted narcissism of the US Embassy’s false propaganda that Nicaragua is a hapless dictatorship with a failing economy and inadequate public services. Even a look out of the US embassy window in Managua shows the opposite: brand new infrastructure, vibrant commercial life and a clean environment. The UN’s Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean has just reported that while the rest of Latin America and the Caribbean are suffering drastic falls in their exports, Nicaragua has seen a remarkable 14% increase for the period to May this year over 2019. The report notes, “Nicaragua capitalized on the rise in the price of gold and in the volumes of agricultural and livestock products exported (including coffee, sugar cane, beans and tobacco).”
Pick a sector, any sector, of national life and President Daniel Ortega’s government team have a clear decisive policy plan effectively addressing that sector’s needs within the budgetary imitations of a small impoverished country of 6.5 million people subject to economic attack by the United States. Electricity coverage? Look here. Competitiveness? Look here. Telecommunications? Here. Access to drinking water? Read this. Rural water and sanitation? Look here. Civil defence capacity ? Here. Role of local government? Here. Infrastructure development? Look here, here and here and read this and this. Geoscience technologies? Here. Innovation? Read this. Education? Read this, this, this and this, as well as this and this. Public health and COVID-19? Look here and here and read this and this.
Defending the popular economy? Here. Defending the family, youth and children? Here. Citizen Security? Look here. Community policing? Here. What about overall social spending? Surely that must have suffered given the economic debacle described by the US State Department? Not at all, look here. Food production and food security? Read this and this and look here, here and here. And isn’t Nicaragua hopeless on the environment? Don’t be ridiculous. Look here, here and here and read this. And isn’t property and security to land title in chaos, especially for indigenous peoples? Also absurd, look here.
All these policies reflect the focus of the Sandinista Front’s historic program on realizing the rights of the human person, for everyone living in Nicaragua, brought up to date and carried out successfully despite great difficulties. They make the false claims of the US authorities and the mercenary losers comprising Nicaragua’s opposition, whom the US has bankrolled for over a decade with tens of millions of dollars, look completely out to lunch. M&R’s latest survey shows that over 80% of Nicaraguans would like the country to return to its situation prior to 2018 and 67% of people think Nicaragua is getting back on track to resume the progress it enjoyed before the violent, failed coup attempt of that year.
But isn’t free speech under relentless attack under Nicaragua as freely proclaimed every day by Channel 10, Channel 12, Channel 23, 100% Noticias, Radio Corporación, la Prensa, Confidencial and a plethora of local radio and cable TV outlets? Um… some mistake here surely… And isn’t everyone afraid of “Putin’s, Assad’s, Castro’s, Maduro’s, Gaddhafi’s…surely the caricature is in here somewhere… Ortega’s!” repressive police? Well, according to M&R’s research, 62% of Nicaraguans think their police are highly professional. 62% of people think there is a high level of respect for freedom of expression and human rights and the proportion of people thinking of emigrating has dropped from 45% in April 2019, the low point of the economic impact of the failed 2018 coup attempt, to 28% now. In fact, thousands of Nicaraguans have been desperate to return to Nicaragua after finding their situation unsustainable overseas during the pandemic.
The US government has failed notoriously to meet the needs of its own people during the current pandemic but can still find money to try and destroy a small country whose success makes US social, economic and environmental policy look arbitrary, negligent and criminal. After 170 years, the US ruling class have nothing to forget about Nicaragua because in all that time they never learned a thing. But all they really they need to know is this: the Sandinista Front plans its work, works it plan and then… they win, because they uphold the interests of Nicaragua’s people. Right now, Nicaragua is half way through a rainy season that has blessed the country with what looks like an abundant first harvest with strong indications currently of good second and third harvests too, later in the year. Along with all its other achievements, that’s why, for now anyway, Nicaragua is singin’, just singin’ in the rain…
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All politicians lie. Rare exceptions prove the rule.
Trump is Exhibit A, a serial liar never to be trusted, a menace to virtually everything just societies hold dear.
Last February 8 he tweeted: “We will not be touching your Social Security and Medicare in Fiscal 2021 Budget.”
On February 9, the Wall Street Journal headlined:
“Trump to Propose $4.8 Trillion Budget With Big Safety-Net Cuts,” saying:
His proposed budget, if reelected in November, includes “steep reductions in social-safety-net programs,” more for militarism and warmaking.
The Journal added that as long as Dems control one or both houses of Congress, his proposed budget is dead on arrival.
He and other hardliners in Washington aim to destroy social justice, notably by weakening and killing Social Security and Medicare by defunding them.
They aim to return America to 19th century harshness, neoliberalism on steroids.
Their scheme includes cutting, then ending welfare for impoverished households, restricting then eliminating food stamps and housing assistance.
It also aims to destroy collective bargaining rights, turning workplaces into sweatshops, paying workers poverty wages, abolishing benefits, allowing child labor, agricultural and other slave labor more than already, along with other dystopian aims.
The centerpiece of their scheme is killing Social Security and Medicare.
According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), about $1 trillion of the 2019 federal budget went for Social Security.
Another $1.1 trillion funded Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace subsidies — nearly two-thirds of this amount for Medicare.
If the above programs and other safety net ones are eliminated in the years ahead, well over $2 trillion more will be available annually for the Pentagon, DHS, the CIA, NSA, other national intelligence, corporate handouts, and more tax cuts for the rich.
In 2017, then-House Speaker Paul Ryan declared war on Social Security and Medicare, saying “that’s really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”
They’re “the big drivers of our debt,” falsely calling employer/worker-funded insurance programs “entitlements” which they’re not.
They’re insurance programs financed by payroll tax deductions.
Private citizen Trump earlier said “I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican, and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid.”
In October 2018, he vowed to keep Medicare “healthy and well.”
Last February at the Davos World Economic Forum billionaire’s ball, he said “at some point,” cuts in Social Security and Medicare will be on the table.
Weeks ahead of Davos, he vowed to “save” Social Security. His proposed budget included cuts to vital social safety net programs — including SS, Medicare and Medicaid.
On Saturday after unconstitutionally breaching congressional appropriations authority, he vowed to “terminate” Social Security if reelected in November.
In response, Social Security Works president Nancy Altman said the following:
Trump “once promised that he would be ‘the only Republican that doesn’t want to cut Social Security.’ ”
“We now know that what he meant is that cutting Social Security doesn’t go far enough for him.”
“He wants to destroy” the vital social safety net program, Medicare, Medicaid, and other social programs along with it.
His unlawful (Saturday) executive order to (defer) Social Security contributions, is bad enough.”
If reelected in November, he vowed “to terminate FICA contributions” that amounts to “a full-on declaration of war against current and future Social Security beneficiaries.”
“Social Security is the foundation of everyone’s retirement security.”
“At a time when pensions are vanishing and 401ks have proven inadequate, Trump’s plan to eliminate Social Security’s revenue stream would destroy the one source of retirement income that people can count on.”
The program “is often the only disability insurance and life insurance that working families have.”
“If reelected, Trump plans to destroy those benefits as well.”
Altman stressed the importance of mass denunciation of “Trump’s unconstitutional (aim to) raid (and destroy) Social Security.”
The same goes for his aim to kill Medicare and other vital social safety net programs.
Everyone “who cares about (these vital programs) must do everything they can to ensure that Trump does not get a second term.”
CBPP’s president Robert Greenstein called Trump’s Saturday actions “woefully inadequate and legally dangerous,” adding:
“(B)y bypassing Congress on major budget and tax decisions and trying to override federal laws on the use of federal funds,” along with “shredding longstanding norms of governance, (he) potentially violate(d) the Constitution.”
“That we have reached this point is a national tragedy. The executive actions raise serious legal issues” — though it’s unclear how Supreme Court justices would rule on his actions if they have final say.
“Nor is it clear (whether his regime) actually can implement” what he ordered.
Congress has exclusive appropriations authority.
Cash-strapped states may be unable to pay 25% of $400 weekly unemployment benefits.
Even if able to do it by diverting funds from other priorities, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds “would run out after about six weeks.”
With its power of the purse, Congress alone can address this issue. Trump’s usurpation of congressional authority made a bad situation worse.
His actions provided no funding to cash-strapped states or the postal service in need of financial help.
His deferral of student loan payments through yearend only applies to federally funded ones.
His so-called extension of the federal evictions moratorium and rental assistance did “neither,” CBPP’s Greenstein explained.
He “merely direct(ed) the Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary to take legally permissible steps to help people avoid eviction or foreclosure.”
“(T)he order notably doesn’t include extending the evictions moratorium in its list of actions for HUD to consider.”
It only “asks the HUD and Treasury secretaries to try to identify any federal funds that (his regime) could use to provide financial assistance to renters and homeowners.”
In other words, no federal funds were identified for this purpose.
Further, deferral of payroll taxes won’t contribute to economic recovery.
Employers and workers still owe and must pay taxes on the suspended amounts at a later date.
Trump’s actions are unrelated to jobs creation. Hiring by firms depends on the demand for their products and services.
Given today’s harder than ever hard times, it’s essential for Congress and the White House to work together on helping ordinary Americans in need, along with actions to stimulate economic growth.
Trump’s actions made an untenable situation worse.
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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.”
On Saturday, Trump unconstitutionally breached exclusive congressional appropriations authority.
Under Article I, section 9, clause 7 of the US Constitution (the appropriations clause), “(n)o money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.”
Congress has exclusive legislative power of the purse.
The appropriations clause requires the president and federal agencies to spend only what Congress appropriates.
Spending not congressionally authorized is unconstitutional.
According to Supreme Court rulings on the Constitution’s appropriation clause, the executive branch may not authorize payments from the Treasury beyond congressionally authorized amounts.
Talks between Dem and Republican leaders stalemated.
The White House and GOP controlled Senate leadership agreed only to go along with extending sub-poverty benefits to unemployed workers, nothing to cash-strapped states, limited eviction and student loan protection, and little more.
It’s way less than what’s vitally needed at a time of unprecedented economic collapse with around 30% of working-age Americans left jobless.
Throughout his time in office, Trump consistently showed profound indifference toward public health and welfare — exclusively serving privileged interests at the expense of world peace, equity, justice, the rule of law, and a nation safe and fit to live in.
On Saturday, Trump signed one executive order and three memorandums that circumvented exclusive congressional appropriations authority.
He reduced expired unemployment benefits of $600 to $400 and unlawfully suspended payroll taxes — for workers earning less than $100,000 annually — through year end that fund Social Security and Medicare.
His executive order requires cash-strapped states to cover 25% of $400 weekly benefits —from funds they don’t have. The $300 in weekly federal benefits will only go to recipients in states that pay them $100.
According to Tax Policy Center’s Howard, Gleckman, his action, if sticks, “blow(s) a trillion dollar hole” in the trust funds that provide benefits to eligible recipients.
Other estimates put full calendar year 2020 payroll taxes at about $1.3 trillion, around $108 billion monthly.
Suspending payroll taxes provides no extra income to tens of millions of unemployed working-age Americans.
Given the reality of harder than ever hard times likely to be protracted, the extra amount is unlikely to be used for anything other than essentials to life and welfare.
Trump also extended eviction protection and deferred student loan payments through yearend, the former action not written in stone. See below.
His actions have nothing to do with “sav(ing) American jobs and provid(ing) relief to American workers” as he claimed — everything to do with circumventing the rule of law to do as he pleases, along with failing to do the right thing.
In remarks on Saturday, he added that if reelected in November, he’ll continue to suspend payroll taxes and push for “terminat(ing)” them altogether — a way to expedite termination of Social Security and Medicare when their trust funds are depleted.
Most Republicans failed to criticize Trump’s circumvention of exclusive congressional appropriations authority, GOP Senator Ben Sasse an outspoken exception, saying:
“The pen-and-phone theory of executive lawmaking is unconstitutional slop.”
The Washington Post cited an unnamed unemployment benefits expert, saying Trump’s weekend actions won’t increase unemployment benefits for the nation’s jobless.
Instead, a new federal bureaucracy will be established that could take “months” to begin operating. The same requirement will fall on states.
Trump’s suspension of evictions only calls for federal agencies to “consider” halting them.
Reportedly, he intends using Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to implement his orders.
They’ll be exhausted in weeks if used for this purpose so further funding will be needed he can’t legally authorize on his own but perhaps will do it anyway.
He also failed to say when benefits to recipients will begin.
According to National Employment Law Project’s Michele Evermore, Trump’s action provides no additional funds to the existing federal employment program.
It puts an immense burden on states they’ll be hard-pressed to implement, months likely required before anything can be done that at best will be far less than what’s vitally needed.
Dems so far haven’t indicated whether they’ll challenge his orders judicially. If so, will Supreme Court justices have final say on this issue?
A joint statement by Speaker Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Schumer called his Saturday pronouncements “unworkable, weak and narrow,” adding:
He “does not comprehend the seriousness or the urgency of the health and economic crises facing working families.”
He’s “cutting families’ unemployment benefits and pushing states further into budget crises.”
Actions by both right wings of the one-party state seek political advantage in the run-up to November elections.
As political posturing continues, ordinary Americans are enduring the most severe economic crisis in US history.
While politicians dicker and dither, Rome burns.
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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.”
The Quincy Institute’s “New Paradigm for the Middle East” calling for a definitive end to the disastrous policy the United States has pursued in the region for nearly two decades offers the first coherent analysis of what is wrong with that policy and the first conceptual framework for a fundamentally different approach. The paper makes it clear, moreover, that the U.S. military presence continues to be a crucial part of the problem.
This paper was, of course, an initial broad outline of such an alternative Middle East policy, which will be followed by a more detailed blueprint of a new policy. But the brief treatment of the central issue of military withdrawal leaves unclear whether the authors intend to call for the definitive end to the permanent stationing of U.S. forces in the region.
The paper refers to “a reduction” in troops rather than a full “withdrawal,” and the penultimate paragraph proposes to begin discussions with regional states hosting a U.S. military presence “to determine a timeline for responsible withdrawal and the contours of continuing relationships that would still permit future U.S. military action, if needed, to stop an aggressor or would-be regional hegemon.”
But as the report itself makes clear, there is no realistic scenario in which a regional or extra-regional state could successfully use military force to dominate the region over the coming decade, because no state is even close to having the capability to do so. And no regional or outside power has had or will have the incentive to disrupt the flow of oil, except in the present circumstances in which the United States itself has prevented Iran from selling its oil worldwide.
The only scenario for such disruption that is remotely realistic — a desperate Iranian move to pressure the United States to end its application of secondary sanctions against its past trade partners — is merely a reflection of the aggressive posture of the United States itself rather than another state seeking to interfere with the free flow of oil.
And if there is no plausible scenario under which the region would be under the threat of domination or disruption from the ambitions of another power, there is no need to reach such new agreements with host countries.
The report suggests a delay in the completed withdrawal of five to 10 years to allow regional governments “sufficient time to take what measures they consider necessary.” But those nations are capable of making rapid adjustments in policy in response to a fundamental shift in U.S. policy, and one response to such a five- to 10 -year delay would certainly be to wait for a new administration to reverse the policy.
There is an even more compelling reason, moreover, to avoid any such delay: U.S. troops and bases in the region are sitting ducks that could be easily hit by Iranian missiles or drones in the event of an Israeli-Iranian war, as was amply demonstrated in September 2019 and again in January 2020. Indeed the report acknowledges this, stating that “[a] standing military presence becomes a target for asymmetric attacks and increases the chance of inadvertent clashes with foreign military forces.”
Their presence gives both Iran and Israel options that are crucial to their respective strategies in the crisis now playing out. Iran hopes to deter U.S. involvement in a war begun by Israel, but Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hopes that an Iranian attack on a U.S. target in response to an Israeli attack will force the hand of the U.S. president. Thus, forces have become potential triggers for U.S. involvement in another avoidable war. It should be a high priority for the United States to signal to host countries its determination to remove those invitations to war as soon as possible.
But a swift U.S. military withdrawal is not only important for its impact on regional policies. Equally or even more important would be its impact on U.S. policy in the region. During a five- to 10-year transitional period, U.S. military assets in the region — especially aircraft and naval forces — would continue to offer military options that some ambitious senior national security official or bureaucratic coalition may well be tempted to propose for parochial political reasons.
The availability of such options has for many years created the incentive for U.S. officials to use force to advance their personal agendas in the region. When he was trying to pressure the Syrian government to negotiate a political compromise with the armed opposition from 2013 to early 2015, then-Secretary of State John Kerryrepeatedly sought cruise missile strikes on the Syrian air force, which President Obama fortunately repeatedly rejected.
In September 2016, that incentive to use force had more serious consequences. The U.S. Air Force Central Command Combined Air Operations Center at Al-Udeid Airbase in Qatar ordered an airstrike that killed dozens of Syrian Army troops at Deir Ezzor. The decision for the airstrike was said to have been a mistake, but it was no secret that Defense Secretary Ashton Carter had strongly opposed the ceasefire, and an investigation into the bombing found irregularities suggesting it was not accidental.
Furthermore, any U.S. hesitation about withdrawing from its bases in the Gulf states would prolong a serious problem in policy toward the region: U.S. interests in maintaining its access to bases has given host countries political leverage to leave them free to pursue policies that were clearly contrary to fundamental U.S. interests in regard to both suppression of popular demands for democratic rights and support for terrorism.
It has now long been forgotten that in 2011, the Obama administration initially condemned the brutal suppression of Bahraini Shi’a protests demanding fair representation in the fledgeling legislature of the royal government. But, as Robert Gates — who was Obama’s Defense Secretary at the time — chronicled in his memoir, the Obama administration quickly backed off after the Saudis, who exercise tight control over the government of Bahrain, made it clear the U.S. would lose its access to the naval base at Manama.
The Obama administration faced a similar dilemma when it discovered in 2013 that its Qatari allies were providing military assistance to al Qaeda fighters in Syria. The National Security Council proposed a mild form of pressure on Qatar by withdrawing a squadron of U.S. fighter planes from the Al Udeid base, but that was vetoed because of fear of threatening U.S. access to the base.
The Quincy Institute paper suggests that the United States should serve as “balancer from a distance only when balancing is required.” As long as that concept is understood as excluding an effort to maintain a naval presence in Bahrain, it would be a major step toward precluding further efforts to intervene in the region’s conflicts. And It would require firm opposition to the decided preference of the U.S. military and the national security elite for maintaining the naval base at Manama, Bahrain, which has been accepted by some who embrace the “offshore balancing option.”
A key political argument for a prompt and complete military withdrawal from the region is to recall that throughout the entire Cold War period, the only long-term stationing of U.S. military personnel and assets in the Middle East was about 100 sailors and four ships at a very small naval facility in Bahrain. That remarkable fact was the consequence of broad agreement among specialists on the region over more than four decades that stationing troops in the Arab world should be avoided altogether, because it is likely to create instability both in the country where they might be stationed and in the region as a whole.
That rule was first breached after the first Gulf War when then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney immediately began preparing for future U.S. wars in the region. The subsequent experience of policy in the Middle East that continued to violate that fundamental principle has proven over and over again the folly of ignoring it. Those in the national security elite who now call for continuing to disregard the lesson of the recent past should bear a very heavy political burden in doing so. And the Quincy institute should be out in front in posing a clear choice between those two alternatives.
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The government has been caught out lying about evidence on the killing of civilians in Afghanistan by the elite Special Air Service (SAS).
Three years into a civil case in the High Court brought by Saiffulah Yar into the deaths of four family members at the hand of the SAS, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has finally handed over a tranche of e-mails and documents revealing official concerns about the killing of Afghan civilians. The MoD previously indicated it had no such documents.
The documents, written by SAS officers and military personnel, provide evidence of war crimes. They show that while the government claimed that there was no credible evidence about these events, the evidence had been sitting in Whitehall.
It is a damning confirmation of the criminality of the 2001 US-led invasion and occupation of Afghanistan that has led to more than 175,000 deaths, hundreds of thousands of wounded, and millions forced from their homes.
The intervention in Afghanistan, planned well in advance of the bombing of the twin towers in New York in 2001, was not launched to prosecute a “war on terrorism” but rather to project US military power into Central and South Asia. The US was intent on seizing control of a country bordering on the oil-rich former Soviet republics of the Caspian Basin, as well as China. The UK joined as a willing partner on behalf of its own oil corporations in this criminal venture.
The High Court has now ordered Ben Wallace, the Secretary of State for Defence, to explain why the ministry withheld evidence suggesting SAS soldiers executed 33 civilians in Afghanistan in early 2011. He has until November to reply. The MoD claimed it was not new evidence, as it had been reviewed by the official inquiry—Operation Northmoor—into allegations of civilian killings.
Saifullah brought the case against the MoD to discover what happened to his family and whether the case had been thoroughly investigated by the British authorities. His father, two brothers, and a cousin were killed during a raid on his family’s home in Qala-e-Bost, east of Lashkar Gah in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, under British occupation in 2011.
After the raid, Saifullah, who was 16 at the time, found his father, Haji Abdul Kaliq, 55, two brothers, Sadam, 23, and Atullah, 25, and a cousin shot dead. One of his brothers and his father had been handcuffed and hooded before being shot as they lay face down on the ground. Royal Military Police (RMP) officers had arrived at his family’s compound by helicopter and handcuffed and fingerprinted him, along with the other male members of his family, before he was taken to a barn with the women and children, where they were guarded by soldiers during the raid. He denies that his family had any weapons or were connected to the Taliban, the ostensible cause of the raid.
According to the 1977 Geneva Conventions, shooting civilians is only lawful if they are participating directly in hostilities. With no precise definition of “direct participation,” civilians are expected to be given the benefit of the doubt. Under UK domestic law, which is applicable to the armed forces, a soldier can use force to defend him/herself and others, including lethal force, only provided it is reasonable in the circumstances.
The MoD had previously maintained that it was unaware of any complaint about the raid until the family launched a legal case in 2013. But six years later, it transpired that the Royal Military Police (RMP) had interviewed 54 soldiers involved in the operation leading up to the raid on Saifullah’s family home, with the government’s lawyers claiming that none of those involved could remember very much about the operation.
The documents, first revealed by BBC TV’s Panorama and the Sunday Times, tell a different story. They confirm claims that the government covered up dozens of allegations—including by UK soldiers—of the killing of innocent civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Philip Alston, the former UN Special Rapporteur on executions, told Panorama,“ I have no doubt that overall many of the allegations [of innocent people being killed] are justified, and that we can conclude that a large number of civilians were killed in night raids, totally unjustifiably.”
One of the e-mails, sent by an SAS officer the morning after the raid, described it as “the latest massacre!” and added, “I’ve heard a couple of rumours.” Another document revealed that there had been a secret review of suspicious killings and a string of related incidents in which the SAS had killed fighting-age men, often during a search of premises, allegedly because they had picked up a weapon.
According to the review that covered the first quarter of 2011, 23 people were killed and 10 guns were recovered in three operations. It was clear a senior officer examining the official reports filed about the SAS’s night raids was sceptical of their veracity, remarking on their similarity in that the detained men suddenly grabbed a weapon. He found at least five separate incidents where more people were killed than weapons were recovered. Taken together, this led him to conclude, “In my view there is enough here to convince me that we are getting some things wrong, right now.”
One SAS commander even wrote to London warning there was “possibly a deliberate policy” and that the SAS troops had potentially strayed into “indefensible behaviour” that could amount to being “criminal.”
His concern was that the killings were jeopardising the support of Afghan forces, which were refusing to accompany the British on night raids, and “put[ting] at risk the [redacted] transition plan and more importantly the prospects of enduring UK influence” in Afghanistan.
While the RMP had launched an investigation called Operation Northmoor into 657 allegations of abuse, mistreatment, and killings, including into the deaths of Saifullah’s family members, at the hands of British forces, the government closed it down in 2017. Once again, a three-year-long official probe, costing at least £10 million, failed to result in a single prosecution.
The corporate media had gone into overdrive, branding the investigations as a witch-hunt. The MoD filed complaints against the lawyers bringing civil suits against it, including against Saifullah’s lawyer Leigh Day. Leigh Day was cleared of wrongdoing after a six-week tribunal in September 2017.
In March, the government introduced legislation proposing a five-year limit on prosecutions for soldiers serving outside the UK. With its “presumption against prosecution” that gives the green light to future war crimes, including the mass murder of civilians, the military will now be above the law.
It was WikiLeaks publisher and journalist Julian Assange who, by publishing the Afghan war logs in 2010, a vast trove of leaked US military documents, first brought to the world’s attention evidence of the criminality of a war that has now lasted 19 years. The Afghan war logs exposed the myth that the occupation of Afghanistan was a “good war,” supposedly waged to defeat terrorism, extend democracy, and protect women’s rights. They revealed the mass killings of civilians by both US and UK forces, detailing at least 21 occasions when British troops opened fire on civilians.
It is not just those soldiers who perpetrated these crimes on behalf of British imperialism that have escaped punishment. The guilty include those at the top of the political and military ladder that planned and executed this criminal war, even as they plot new crimes, including catastrophic conflicts with nuclear-armed powers such as China and Russia.
Instead, the only two people who have faced criminal repercussions are those who reported the crimes: Chelsea Manning, who has endured a decade of persecution, and Julian Assange, who is imprisoned in Britain’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison awaiting court hearings for his extradition to the US where he faces 175 years of imprisonment under the Espionage Act. The exposures of the horrors of both the Afghan and Iraq wars earned Assange the undying hatred of Britain’s political establishment, which is why they have hounded, intimidated, tortured and imprisoned him.
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This article was originally published in 2012, on the 67th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
August 6, 9, 2012 was the 67th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the whole truth of which has been heavily censored and mythologized starting with the news of the event that created understandable joy because of the end of that awful war.
Hundreds of millions of Americans took in, as gospel truth, the heavily edited stories about the end of the war. To the average American, the war’s end was such a relief that there was no questioning. For the soldiers who were particularly war-weary, no moral questions were raised regarding the justification of their use.
The immediate history was written by the victors, of course, with no balancing input from the losing side. But, several decades later, after intensive research by unbiased historians, we now know that the patriotic narrative contained a lot of false information, often orchestrated by war-justifying militarists – starting with General Douglas MacArthur. MacArthur, aka “the American Caesar”, successfully imposed a virtual total censorship of what really happened at Ground Zero. One of his first acts after taking over as viceroy of Japan was to confiscate and/or destroy all the unpleasant photographic evidence documenting the horrors of the atomic bombings.
Back in 1995, the Smithsonian Institute was preparing to correct the pseudo-patriotic myths by staging an honest, historically-accurate 50th anniversary display exploring all sides of the atomic bombings. This provoked serious right-wing reactionary outrage from veterans groups and other “patriot” groups (including Newt Gingrich’s GOP-dominated Congress) the Smithsonian felt compelled to remove all of the contextually important aspects of the story, especially the bomb-related civilian atrocity stories. So again we had another example of powerful politically-motivated groups that falsified history because of a fear that “unpatriotic” truths, albeit historical, would contradict their deeply-held beliefs – and intolerable psychological situation for many blindered superpatriots.
The Okinawa bloodbath could have been avoided
The Smithsonian historians did have a gun to their heads, of course, but in the melee, the mainstream media – and their easily brain-washable consumers of propaganda – ignored a vital historical point. And that is this: the war could have ended as early as the spring of 1945 without the August atomic bombings, and therefore there could have been averted the 3 month bloody battle of Okinawa that resulted in the deaths of thousands of American Marines with tens of thousands of Japanese military casualties and uncounted thousands of Okinawan civilian casualties.
In addition, if the efforts had succeeded at ending the war via early Japanese efforts for an armistice, there would have been no need for the atomic bombs nor for an American land invasion – the basis of the subsequent propaganda campaign that retroactively justified the use of the bombs.
President Truman, was fully aware of Japan’s search for ways to honorably surrender months before the fateful order to incinerate, without warning, the defenseless women, children and elderly people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, who had not been given a choice by their militarist, fascist government about going to war..
That top-secret intelligence data, de-classified in the 1980s, showed that the contingency plans for a two-stage US invasion of the mainland (the first one no sooner than November 1, 1945 and the second one in the spring of 1946) would have been unnecessary.
Japan was working on peace negotiations through its Moscow ambassador as early as April of 1945 when the battle of Okinawa was just starting. Harry Hopkins, President Truman’s close advisor, was aware of Japan’s desire for an armistice. He cabled the president from Moscow, saying: “Japan is doomed and the Japanese know it. Peace feelers are being put out by certain elements in Japan.”
Truman’s team knew of these and other developments because the US had broken the Japanese code years earlier, and US intelligence was intercepting all of Japan’s military and diplomatic messages. On July 13, 1945, Foreign Minister Togo said: “Unconditional surrender (giving up all sovereignty, thereby deposing Hirohito, the Emperor god) is the only obstacle to peace.”
What did Truman know and when did he know it?
Since Truman and his advisors knew about these efforts, the war could have ended through diplomacy, first with a cease-fire and then a negotiated peace, by simply conceding a post-war figurehead position for the emperor Hirohito – who was regarded as a deity in Japan. That reasonable concession was – seemingly illogically – refused by the US in their demands for “unconditional surrender”, which was initially demanded at the 1943 Casablanca Conference between Roosevelt and Churchill and reiterated at the Potsdam Conference (July 1945) between Truman, Churchill and Stalin.
When General Douglas MacArthur heard about the demand for unconditional surrender, he was appalled. He recommended dropping that demand to facilitate the process of ending the war peacefully. William Manchester, in his biography of MacArthur, American Caesar, wrote: “Had the General’s advice been followed, the resort to atomic weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki might have been unnecessary.”
Even Secretary of War Henry Stimson, said: “the true question was not whether surrender could have been achieved without the use of the bomb but whether a different diplomatic and military course would have led to an earlier surrender. A large segment of the Japanese cabinet was ready in the spring of 1945 to accept substantially the same terms as those finally agreed on.” In other words, Stimson felt that the US prolonged the war, including the battle for Okinawa, and could have made using the bombs unnecessary if it had engaged in honest negotiations.
Shortly after WWII, military analyst Hanson Baldwin wrote: “The Japanese, in a military sense, were in a hopeless strategic situation by the time the Potsdam Declaration (insisting on Japan’s unconditional surrender) was made.”
Admiral William Leahy, top military aide to President Truman, said in his war memoirs, I Was There: “It is my opinion that the use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons. My own feeling is that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages.”
And General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in a personal visit to President Truman a couple of weeks before the bombings, urged him not to use the atomic bombs. Eisenhower said: “It wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing . . . to use the atomic bomb, to kill and terrorize civilians, without even attempting [negotiations], was a double crime.”
After the bombings of August 6 and 9, the “unconditional” surrender terms were quietly dropped
Ironically – and tragically – after the war ended, the emperor was allowed to remain in place as spiritual head of Japan, the very condition that made the Japanese leadership refuse to accept the humiliating “unconditional surrender” terms.
So the two essential questions that need answering (to figure out what was going on behind the scenes) are these: 1) Why did the US refuse to accept Japan’s only concession concerning their surrender (Japan’s ability to retain their emperor) and 2) with the end of the war in the Pacific already a certainty why were the bombs still used?
The factors leading up to the decision to use the bombs
Scholars have determined that there were a number of factors that contributed to Truman’s decision to use the bombs.
1) The US had made a huge investment in time, mind and money (a massive 2 billion in 1940 dollars) to produce three bombs, and there was no inclination – and no guts – to stop the momentum.
2) The US military and political leadership – not to mention most war-weary Americans – had a tremendous appetite for revenge because of the surprise attack at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Of course, mercy isn’t a consideration for any wartime military force, and that includes the US military. The only factor to be considered was ending the war by any means necessary, no matter what methods are used. So, in the elation of the end-of-war moment, the public asked no questions and no explanations were demanded by the relieved citizens who quite willingly accepted the propaganda that justified the hideous end.
National security typically allows – indeed, demands – stealing, cheating and lying about what really happens at the ground zeroes of history. The absurd old saying that “all’s fair in love and war” applies most emphatically to war.
3) The fissionable material in Hiroshima’s bomb was uranium and Nagasaki’s was plutonium. Scientific curiosity about the differences between the two weapons was a significant factor that pushed the project to its completion. The Manhattan Project scientists and the US Army director of the project, General Leslie Groves, wanted answers to a multitude of questions raised by the project, including “what would happen if an entire city was leveled by a single nuclear bomb?” The decision to use both bombs had been made well in advance of August 1945. Harry Truman did not specifically order the bombing of Nagasaki.
The three-day interval between the two bombs was unconscionably short. Japan’s communications and transportation capabilities were in shambles, and no one, either the US military or the Japanese high command, fully understood what had happened at Hiroshima, particularly the short-term or long-term after effects of the radiation. The Manhattan Project was so top secret that even MacArthur had been kept out of the loop until a few days before Hiroshima was reduced to ashes.
4) The Soviet Union had proclaimed its intent to enter the war with Japan 90 days after V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day, May 8, 1945), which would have been Aug. 8, two days after Hiroshima was bombed. Indeed, our Russian allies did declare war on Japan on August 8 and was advancing eastward across Manchuria, eager to reclaim territories lost to Japan in the 1904-05 Russo-Japanese War. The US didn’t want Japan surrendering to Russia (soon to be the only other superpower and a future enemy) so the first nuclear threat “messages” of the Cold War were “sent”, loud and clear.
Russia indeed received far less of the spoils of war than they had hoped for, and the two superpowers were instantly and deeply mired in the arms-race stalemate that eventually resulted in their mutual moral (and fiscal) bankruptcies that occurred a generation or two later.
The reality for the victims
An estimated 80,000 innocent, defenseless civilians, plus 20,000 essentially weaponless young Japanese conscripts died instantly in the Hiroshima bombing. Hundreds of thousands more suffered slow deaths from agonizing burns, radiation sickness, leukemias and virtually untreatable infections for the rest of their shortened lives; and generations of the survivor’s progeny were doomed to suffer horrific radiation-induced illnesses, cancers and premature deaths that are still on-going at this very hour. Another sobering reality that has been covered up is the fact that 12 American Navy pilots, their existence well known to US command, were instantly incinerated in the Hiroshima jail on August 6, 1945.
The 75,000 victims who died in the huge fireball at Nagasaki on August 9 were virtually all civilians, except for the inhabitants of an allied POW camp near Nagasaki’s ground zero. They were instantly liquefied, carbonized and/or vaporized by an experimental weapon of mass destruction that was executed by obedient, unaware scientists and soldiers, and blessed by Christian military chaplains who were just doing their duty. The War Dept. knew of the existence of the Nagasaki POWs and, when reminded of that fact before the B-29 fleet embarked on the mission, simply replied: “Targets previously assigned for Centerboard (code name for the Kokura/Nagasaki mission) remain unchanged.”
So the official War Department.National Security State-approved version of the end of the war in the Pacific contained a new batch of myths that took their places among the long lists of myths by which nations make war. And such half-truth versions are still standard operating procedure that are continuously fed to us by the corporate, military, political and media opinion leaders that are the war-makers and war profiteers of the world.
The well-honed propaganda of the war machine manufactures glory out of inglorious gruesomeness, as we have witnessed in the censored reportage of the US military invasions and occupations of sovereign nations like North Korea, Iran, Viet Nam, Laos, Cambodia, Lebanon, Granada, Panama, the Philippines, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Colombia, Kuwait, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc, etc. And this list doesn’t even start to uncover the uncountable Pentagon/CIA covert operations and assassination plots in the rest of the known world, where as many as150 nations have been bribed – or threatened – to host, usually against the population’s will, American military and CIA bases, secret torture (euphemistically called “rendition”) sites and other covert operations.
But somehow most of us Americans still hang on to a shaky “my country right or wrong” patriotism, desperately wanting to believe the cunningly-orchestrated myths that say that the war-profiteering 1%, the exploitive ruling elite and the ChickenHawk politicians, military leaders and media talking heads that are in their employ, only work for peace, justice, equality, liberty and spreading democracy, all the while being blind to the fact that America has historically supported right-wing fascist dictatorships that make the world unsafe for democracy all the while ensuring easy access for vulture capitalists, high finance, multinational corporations and other exploiters to be able to do their dirty work.
While it is true that the US military has faced down the occasional despot (usually the ones who won’t cooperate with the “interests” of the 1%), more often than not the rationalization for going to war is the same as those of the anti-American “freedom fighters”, ”insurgents” or the other “evil empires” that are on the other side of the battle line. The justification of the atrocities of August 6 and 9, 1945 are symbolic of the brain-washing that goes on in all “total wars”, which always result in other varieties of mass human slaughter in war known as “collateral damage” and “friendly fire”.
Is it too late to resuscitate the humanitarian, peace-loving America?
It might already be too late to rescue and resuscitate the humanitarian, peace-loving America that we used to know and love. It might be too late to effectively confront the corporate hijacking of liberal democracy in America. It might be too late to successfully bring down the arrogant and greedy ruling elites who are selfishly exploiting the resources of the world and dragging the planet and its creatures down the road to destruction. The rolling coup d’etat of the Friendly American Fascists may already have happened.
But there is always hope. Rather than being silent about the wars that the soulless and ruthless war-mongers are provoking all over the planet (with the very willing pushes by the Pentagon, the weapons industry and their conservative lapdogs in Congress), people of conscience need to ramp up their resistance efforts and teach the whole truth of history, in spite of the painful lessons that will be revealed.
We need to start owning up to the uncountable war crimes that have been hidden from history, including the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And then we need to go to the streets, publicly protesting and courageously refusing to cooperate with those who are transforming America into a criminal rogue nation that will eventually be targeted for its downfall by the billions of suffering victims outside our borders, just as happened to Nazi Germany and Fascist Japan.
Doing what is right for the whole of humanity for a change, rather than just doing what is profitable or advantageous for our over-privileged, over-consumptive and unsustainable American way of life, would be real honor, real patriotism and an essential start toward real peace.
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August 9th, 2020 by Institute for Middle East Understanding
First published on September 17, 2012
The Gaza massacre is part of longstanding process of Israeli crimes against humanity. This article describes one of the worst atrocities in modern Middle Eastern history committed against the people of Palestine. This article was first posted on Global Research in 2016.
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On September 16, 1982, Christian Lebanese militiamen allied to Israel entered the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila and the adjacent neighborhood of Sabra in Beirut under the watch of the Israeli army and began a slaughter that caused outrage around the world. Over the next day and a half, up to 3500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, mostly women, children, and the elderly, were murdered in one of the worst atrocities in modern Middle Eastern history. The New York Times recently published an op-ed containing new details of discussions held between Israeli and American officials before and during the massacre. They reveal how Israeli officials, led by then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, misled and bullied American diplomats, rebuffing their concerns about the safety of the inhabitants of Sabra and Shatila.
Lead Up
On June 6, 1982, Israel launched a massive invasion of Lebanon. It had been long planned by Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, who wanted to destroy or severely diminish the Palestine Liberation Organization, which was based in Lebanon at the time. Sharon also planned to install a puppet government headed by Israel’s right-wing Lebanese Christian Maronite allies, the Phalangist Party.
Israeli forces advanced all the way to the capital of Beirut, besieging and bombarding the western part of city, where the PLO was headquartered and the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila and the adjacent neighborhood of Sabra are located.
Israel’s bloody weeklong assault on West Beirut in August prompted harsh international criticism, including from the administration of US President Ronald Reagan, who many accused of giving a “green light” to Israel to launch the invasion. Under a US-brokered ceasefire agreement, PLO leaders and more than 14,000 fighters were to be evacuated from the country, with the US providing written assurances for the safety of hundreds of thousands of Palestinian civilians left behind. US Marines were deployed as part of a multinational force to oversee and provide security for the evacuation.
On August 30, PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat left Beirut along with the remainder of the Palestinian fighters based in the city.
On September 10, the Marines left Beirut. Four days later, on September 14, the leader of Israel’s Phalangist allies, Bashir Gemayel, was assassinated. Gemayel had just been elected president of Lebanon by the Lebanese parliament, under the supervision of the occupying Israeli army. His death was a severe blow to Israel’s designs for the country. The following day, Israeli forces violated the ceasefire agreement, moving into and occupying West Beirut.
The Massacre
On Wednesday, September 15, the Israeli army surrounded the Palestinian refugee camp of Shatila and the adjacent neighborhood of Sabra in West Beirut. The next day, September 16, Israeli soldiers allowed about 150 Phalangist militiamen into Sabra and Shatila.
The Phalange, known for their brutality and a history of atrocities against Palestinian civilians, were bitter enemies of the PLO and its leftist and Muslim Lebanese allies during the preceding years of Lebanon’s civil war. The enraged Phalangist militiamen believed, erroneously, that Phalange leader Gemayel had been assassinated by Palestinians. He was actually killed by a Syrian agent.
Over the next day and a half, the Phalangists committed unspeakable atrocities, raping, mutilating, and murdering as many as 3500 Palestinian and Lebanese civilians, most of them women, children, and the elderly. Sharon would later claim that he could have had no way of knowing that the Phalange would harm civilians, however when US diplomats demanded to know why Israel had broken the ceasefire and entered West Beirut, Israeli army Chief of Staff Rafael Eitan justified the move saying it was “to prevent a Phalangist frenzy of revenge.” On September 15, the day before the massacre began, Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin told US envoy Morris Draper that the Israelis had to occupy West Beirut, “Otherwise, there could be pogroms.”
Almost immediately after the killing started, Israeli soldiers surrounding Sabra and Shatila became aware that civilians were being murdered, but did nothing to stop it. Instead, Israeli forces fired flares into the night sky to illuminate the darkness for the Phalangists, allowed reinforcements to enter the area on the second day of the massacre, and provided bulldozers that were used to dispose of the bodies of many of the victims.
On the second day, Friday, September 17, an Israeli journalist in Lebanon called Defense Minister Sharon to inform him of reports that a massacre was taking place in Sabra and Shatila. The journalist, Ron Ben-Yishai, later recalled:
‘I found [Sharon] at home sleeping. He woke up and I told him “Listen, there are stories about killings and massacres in the camps. A lot of our officers know about it and tell me about it, and if they know it, the whole world will know about it. You can still stop it.” I didn’t know that the massacre actually started 24 hours earlier. I thought it started only then and I said to him “Look, we still have time to stop it. Do something about it.” He didn’t react.”‘
On Friday afternoon, almost 24 hours after the killing began, Eitan met with Phalangist representatives. According to notestaken by an Israeli intelligence officer present: “[Eitan] expressed his positive impression received from the statement by the Phalangist forces and their behavior in the field,” telling them to continue “mopping up the empty camps south of Fakahani until tomorrow at 5:00 a.m., at which time they must stop their action due to American pressure.”
On Saturday, American Envoy Morris Draper, sent a furious message to Sharon stating:
‘You must stop the massacres. They are obscene. I have an officer in the camp counting the bodies. You ought to be ashamed. The situation is rotten and terrible. They are killing children. You are in absolute control of the area, and therefore responsible for the area.’
The Phalangists finally left the area at around 8 o’clock Saturday morning, taking many of the surviving men with them for interrogation at a soccer stadium. The interrogations were carried out with Israeli intelligence agents, who handed many of the captives back to the Phalange. Some of the men returned to the Phalange were later found executed.
About an hour after the Phalangists departed Sabra and Shatila, the first journalists arrived on the scene and the first reports of what transpired began to reach the outside world.
Casualty Figures
Thirty years later, there is still no accurate total for the number of people killed in the massacre. Many of the victims were buried in mass graves by the Phalange and there has been no political will on the part of Lebanese authorities to investigate.
An official Israeli investigation, the Kahan Commission, concluded that between 700 and 800 people were killed, based on the assessment of Israeli military intelligence.
An investigation by Beirut-based British journalist Robert Fisk, who was one of the first people on the scene after the massacre ended, concluded that The Palestinian Red Crescent put the number of dead at more than 2000.
Following international outrage, the Israeli government established a committee of inquiry, the Kahan Commission. Its investigation found that Defense Minister Sharon bore “personal responsibility” for the massacre, and recommended that he be removed from office. Although Prime Minister Begin removed him from his post as defense minister, Sharon remained in cabinet as a minister without portfolio. He would go on to hold numerous other cabinet positions in subsequent Israeli governments, including foreign minister during Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s first term in office. Nearly 20 years later, in March 2001, Sharon was elected prime minister of Israel.
In June 2001, lawyers for 23 survivors of the massacre initiated legal proceedings against Sharon in a Belgian court, under a law allowing people to be prosecuted for war crimes committed anywhere in the world.
In January 2002, Phalangist leader and chief liaison to Israel during the 1982 invasion, Elie Hobeika, was killed by a car bomb in Beirut. Hobeika led the Phalangist militiamen responsible for the massacre, and had announced that he was prepared to testify against Sharon, who was then prime minister of Israel, at a possible war crimes trial in Belgium. Hobeika’s killers were never found.
In June 2002, a panel of Belgian judges dismissed war crimes charges against Sharon because he wasn’t present in the country to stand trial.
In January 2006, Sharon suffered a massive stroke. He remains in a coma on life support.
The United States
For the United States, which had guaranteed the safety of civilians left behind after the PLO departed, the massacre was a deep embarrassment, causing immense damage to its reputation in the region. The fact that US Secretary of State Alexander Haig was believed by many to have given Israel a “green light” to invade Lebanon compounded the damage.
In the wake of the massacre, President Reagan sent the Marines back to Lebanon. Just over a year later, 241 American servicemen would be killed when two massive truck bombs destroyed their barracks in Beirut, leading Reagan to withdraw US forces for good.
The Palestinians
For Palestinians, the Sabra and Shatila massacre was and remains a traumatic event, commemorated annually. Many survivors continue to live in Sabra and Shatila, struggling to eke out a living and haunted by their memories of the slaughter. To this day, no one has faced justice for the crimes that took place.
For Palestinians, the Sabra and Shatila massacre serves as a powerful and tragic reminder of the vulnerable situation of millions of stateless Palestinians, and the dangers that they continue to face across the region, and around the world.
Iranian-backed militias and the Syrian National Defense Forces (NDF) have launched a joint security operation against ISIS cells in the area between the towns of al-Mayadin and al-Bukamal, on the western bank of the Euphrates. According to pro-government sources, hundreds of fighters and 120 military vehicles are involved. Liwa Fatemiyoun, which is funded, trained, and equipped by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, is reportedly leading the operation.
Pro-government forces once again resumed active anti-ISIS efforts following another increase of ISIS attacks in the desert area. According to pro-government sources, on August 6, the terrorists attacked positions and checkpoints of the Syrian Arab Army and the National Defense Forces around the town of Jundya. Government forces repelled the attack after several hours of heavy clashes. On August 4, ISIS terrorists stormed a Syrian Army position near the town of Jub Abyad. The previous attack, on August 1, also happened in the countryside of Deir Ezzor killing at least 2 NDF members and injuring several others.
On August 6, a combat drone of the Turkish Armed Forces struck an electric cable factory in the district of Qanat al-Suis, east of the city of al-Qamishli in the province of al-Hasakah. The targeted factory reportedly employs dozens of locals and produces only civilian products. At least one civilian was severely injured in the strike, which also caused material damage.
A day earlier, on August 5, Turkish artillery strikes killed at least 2 members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near the towns of Ayn Issa and Sida. While Turkish-backed forces and the SDF do not conduct active offensive actions against each other, they regularly engage each other in firefights and artillery duels.
The security situation continues to deteriorate in the southern part of the Idlib de-escalation zone. Since August 5, clashes between the Syrian Army and Turkish-backed militants, mostly Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, have been ongoing in northern Lattakia and northwestern Hama. This significantly intensified on the evening August 6 in the area of the al-Kurd Mountian. Army troops reportedly tried to advance towards al-Hadadah hill, but their attack was repelled. According to pro-militant sources, at least 9 Syrian soldiers and 5 militants were killed in the clashes.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also claimed that several Russian service members were injured in militant artillery strikes near the village of Kinsabba. If this report is confirmed, it may finally force the Russian Aerospace Forces and special operations units to provide more active assistance to the Syrian Army in its current standoff with the terrorists. This support will likely guarantee success in the field for pro-government forces, but at the same time it will lead to a new round of tension with Turkey, which actively protects Idlib radicals. Therefore, a new round of escalation in Greater Idlib still requires some large incident that would force the main backers of the warrying sides to switch from mostly diplomatic efforts to direct military actions.
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The sonic blast at the Port of Beirut on August 4 produced a huge white mushroom cloud that enveloped the port and then rose into the evening sky just after 6 pm. However, the cloud of confusion and disbelief still fogs the minds of the Lebanese people, who demand answers and accountability.
President Trump’s favorite news source, “Fox News”, falsely reported that the Port of Beirut was controlled by Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and resistance movement. Hassan Koraytem is the General Manager of the Port Authority of Beirut, and a member of former Prime Minister Saad Hariri’s “Future Party”, which controls access to the Port. During the street protests which rocked Beirut from October 2019, and continued until the COVID-19 lockdown began, fireworks were used extensively as a weapon directed against the police and security forces, and it was reported that the “Future Party” had distributed the fireworks. The “Future Party” is opposed to Hezbollah, and is aligned with the US and Saudi Arabia.
On August 3, the Israeli Defense Forces had announced that it had suspected Hezbollah of an attempted operation on the Israeli border, and PM Netanyahu had threatened Hezbollah with retaliation.
United States Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s 2019 meetings in Lebanon, which included sessions with President Michel Aoun and the then Prime Minister Saad Hariri, were for the express purpose to denounce Hezbollah and its allies in the government. Pompeo’s trip was seen as appeasement for Israel.
“Lebanon and the Lebanese people face a choice: bravely move forward as an independent and proud nation or allow the dark ambitions of Iran and Hezbollah to dictate your future,” Pompeo said.
The Foreign Minister, Gebran Bassil, who is an ally of Hezbollah, countered Pompeo saying,
“For us, Hezbollah is a Lebanese party, not terrorists. Its members of parliament were elected by the Lebanese people, with high popular support.”
On August 7 in a televised speech, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah denied claims that the armed group had any weapons stored at the warehouse.
“We have nothing in the port: not an arms depot, nor a missile depot nor missiles nor rifles nor bombs nor bullets nor ammonium nitrate,” Nasrallah said. He called for accountability and the need for a just and transparent investigation.
“First, how the explosive material entered and was stored, second whether the explosion was a result of negligence or an accident, and third the possibility that there was external interference.”
On April 28, 2012, the Lebanese Navy seized three containers of weapons destined for the Syrian terrorists aboard the “Letfallah II”. The load consisted of heavy machine guns, shells, rockets, rocket launchers, and explosives loaded in Libya, and had made a port call at Alexandria, but was seized by Lebanese authorities on its way to Tripoli, Lebanon. Labeling on one box said it contained fragmentation explosives, and one was marked Tripoli/Benghazi, Libya. Three containers of weapons were taken to the Port of Beirut while under military and helicopter escort.
On May 4, 2012, a military prosecutor Judge indicted 21 people, including customs agents and crew members of the “Letfallah II”, and they were charged with buying and shipping large quantities of weapons, munitions and explosive supplies from Libya to Lebanon and with forming an evil group, and with the intention of carrying out terrorist acts by means of these weapons. The Syrian ambassador to Lebanon, Ali Abdel Karim Ali, accused Qatar and Saudi Arabia of involvement.
Youssef Shehadeh, an employee at the Port of Beirut, reported his first-hand account that the explosion of August 4 involved the Letfallah II, which had been at berth 10, and near to warehouse 12, which was home to the 2,700 tons of ammonium nitrate.
Boris Prokoshev, the former captain of the ship MV Rhosus that brought almost 3,000 tons of ammonium nitrate to Beirut, recalled he started on September 23, 2013, from the port of Batumi in Georgia on the way to Mozambique and reached the port of Beirut to take on several pieces of heavy machinery; however, the machinery proved too heavy to load, and the ship was impounded by the Lebanese authorities for failing to pay port fees, and never left the port again.
WHO spokesman told the UN that containers with thousands of personal protection equipment (PPE) items used to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have also been destroyed in the Port blast, which also wiped out 500 beds from local hospitals.
The US has pledged over $17 million in initial disaster aid for Lebanon, according to the US embassy. The European Union announced the release of 33 million euros ($39m) in emergency aid to Lebanon.
Russian military expert Viktor Morahofski raised doubt as to the exact amount of ammonium nitrate present in the explosion. He estimated about 300 tons had exploded because nearly 3,000 tons would have leveled the city. If his estimate is correct, it begs the question: who had been selling off the ammonium nitrate stored between 2014 to 2020, and to whom?
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Four days after the Beirut Blast of 4th August 2020, the Lebanese president, Michel Aoun, has attempted to explain what caused the largest explosion since the end of the Second World War. He attributes it to either the accidental ignition of 2750 tons of Ammonium Nitrate (AN) stored in a warehouse at Beirut port or a planned attack by some external entity. There is maybe a nexus between the two causes.
If the blast was an accident, its impact has been devastating. More than a 160 people have died so far and at least 6000 have been injured. Most observers agree that the storage of the fertilizer did not adhere to safety procedures. Negligence and incompetence appear to have scarred the 6 year storage of the AN. Besides, it is alleged that fireworks were also stored close to the warehouse recently.
A number of officials connected to the port and customs have been arrested. The elected government made up largely of representatives from the Shia and Christian communities is determined to show that it will not tolerate gross dereliction of duty and ineptitude. At the same time it is aware that it should not scapegoat any individual or group in order to protect the real culprits behind the blast.
It is quite conceivable that the real culprits are linked to the second likely cause — a planned attack. This theory which has different variations has been advanced by some respected commentators. One such variation by the French writer, Thierry Meyssan argues that “Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu authorized a strike against a Hezbollah arms depot using a new weapon that has been tested for seven months in Syria.” The weapon which “is a missile with a tactical nuclear component in its warhead – causes a smoke mushroom characteristic of nuclear weapons “ but “is obviously not an atomic bomb in the strategic sense. “It has also been deployed against Iranian military vessels in the Persian Gulf
Israel has of course denied that it was behind the Beirut blast. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has also insisted that his group has no arms depot at the Beirut port. In this regard it should be noted that it was Netanyahu who in a speech at the UN General Assembly on 27 September 2018 alluded to alleged Hezbollah arms at a warehouse in Beirut port. The allegation has never been proven.
This is why there has to be an impartial inquiry into the Beirut Blast of 4th August President Aoun and the Hezbollah are against internationalizing the inquiry. They fear that given US and Western influence within the international system such an inquiry will be manipulated to exonerate Israel. A way out of this situation would be for the UN Secretary-General Antonio Gutteres to establish a small Committee of Inquiry comprising a representative each from the US, France, China and Russia with the UNSG as the chair whose main objective would be to determine who was responsible for the blast. The Committee will report its findings directly to the UN General Assembly.
The Committee should look deeply at the two causes which President Aoun referred to. In examining the second possibility— an external attack — the Committee one hopes will have the courage and the principles to reveal why Lebanon has been under tremendous pressure in the last few months, both economic and political, aimed at emasculating the government in Beirut and bringing about a regime change that will benefit Israel and Western interests
Without such an understanding of the geopolitical forces at work in the region where Lebanon is located, it will not be possible to fathom why the Beirut Blast occurred.
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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World. (JUST), Malaysia.
Today, August 9, 2020, we commemorate the 7th anniversary of the bombing of Nagasaki.
This article was first published by Global Research in August 2013 as a commemoration of the egregious lie on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. See article below. (minor updates)
73 years ago, at 11:02 am on August 9th, 1945, an all-Christian bomber crew dropped a plutonium bomb, on Nagasaki, Japan. That bomb was the second and last atomic weapon that had as its target a civilian city. Somewhat ironically, as will be elaborated upon later in this essay, Nagasaki was the most Christian city in Japan and ground zero was the largest cathedral in the Orient.
These baptized and confirmed airmen did their job efficiently, and they accomplished the mission with military pride. There was no way that the crew could not have known that what they were participating in met the definition of an international war crime (according to the Nuremberg Principles that were very soon to be used to justify the execution of many German Nazis).
It had been only 3 days since the August 6th bomb, a uranium bomb, had decimated Hiroshima. The Nagasaki bomb was dropped amidst considerable chaos and confusion in Tokyo, where the fascist military government had been searching for months for a way to honorably end the war. The only obstacle to surrender had been the Roosevelt/Truman administration’s insistence on unconditional surrender, which meant that the Emperor Hirohito, whom the Japanese regarded as a deity, would be removed from his figurehead position in Japan – an intolerable demand for the Japanese that prolonged the war and kept Japan from surrendering months earlier.
The Russian army had declared war against Japan on August 8, hoping to regain territories lost to Japan in the disastrous Russo-Japanese war 40 years earlier, and Stalin’s army was advancing across Manchuria. Russia’s entry into the war represented a powerful incentive for Japan to end the war quickly and they much preferred surrendering to the US rather than to Russia. A quick end to the war was important to the US as well. It did not want to divide any of the spoils of war with Russia.
The Target Committee in Washington, D.C. had made a list of relatively un-damaged Japanese cities that were to be excluded from the conventional fire-bombing (using napalm) campaigns that had burned to the ground 60+ major Japanese cities during the first half of 1945. That list of protected cities included, at one time or another Hiroshima, Niigata, Kokura, Kyoto and Nagasaki. These relatively undamaged cities were off-limits from incendiary terror bombings but were to be preserved as possible targets for the new “gimmick” weapons of mass destruction.
Scientific curiosity was a motivation in choosing the targeted cities. The military and the scientists needed to know what would happen to intact buildings – and their living inhabitants – when atomic weapons were exploded overhead. Ironically, prior to August 6 and 9, the residents of Hiroshima and Nagasaki considered themselves lucky for not having been bombed as much as other cities. Little did they know.
Early in the morning of August 9, 1945, a B-29 Superfortress that had been christened Bock’s Car, took off from Tinian Island in the South Pacific, with the prayers and blessings of its Lutheran and Catholic chaplains, and headed for Kokura, the primary target. Bock’s Car’s plutonium bomb was in the bomb bay, code-named “Fat Man,” after Winston Churchill.
The only field test (blasphemously code-named “Trinity”) of a nuclear weapon had occurred just three weeks earlier (July 16, 1945) at Alamogordo, New Mexico. The molten lava rock that resulted from the heat of that blast (twice the temperature of the sun) can still found at the site today. It is called trinitite.
The reality of what had happened at Hiroshima was only slowly becoming apparent to the fascist military leaders in Tokyo. It took 2 – 3 days after Hiroshima was incinerated before Japan’s Supreme War Council was able to even partially comprehend what had happened there, to make rational decisions and to discuss again the possibility of surrender.
But it was already too late, because by the time the War Council was meeting that morning in Tokyo, Bock’s Car and the rest of the armada of B-29s was already approaching Japan – under radio silence. The dropping of the second bomb had initially been planned for August 11, but bad weather had been forecast, and the mission was moved up to August 9.
With instructions to drop the bomb only on visual sighting, Bock’s Car arrived at the primary target, but Kokura was clouded over. So after futilely circling over the city three times, there was no break in the clouds, and, running seriously low on fuel in the process, the plane headed for its secondary target, Nagasaki.
The history of Nagasaki Christianity
Nagasaki is famous in the history of Japanese Christianity. Not only was it the site of the largest catholic church in the Orient, St. Mary’s Cathedral (completed in 1917), but it also had the largest concentration of baptized Christians in all of Japan. It was the megachurch of its time, with 12,000 baptized members.
Nagasaki was the location where the legendary Jesuit missionary, Francis Xavier, established a mission church in 1549. The Christian community survived and prospered for several generations. However, soon after Xavier’s planting of the church in Japan, it became obvious to the Japanese rulers that Portuguese and Spanish commercial interests were exploiting Japan, and it didn’t take too long for all Europeans to be expelled from the country – as well as their foreign religion. All aspects of Christianity, including the new Japanese converts, became the target of brutal persecutions.
By 1600, being a Christian was a capital crime in Japan. The Japanese Christians who refused to recant of their new religion suffered torture and even crucifixions similar to the Roman persecutions in the first three centuries of Christianity. After the reign of terror was over, it appeared to all observers that Japanese Christianity was extinct.
However, 250 years later, in the 1850s, after the coercive gunboat diplomacy of Commodore Perry forced open an offshore island for American trade purposes, it was discovered that there were thousands of baptized Christians in Nagasaki, living their faith in a catacomb existence, completely unknown to the government – which immediately started another purge. But because of international pressure, the persecutions were soon stopped, and Nagasaki Christianity came up from the underground. And by 1917, with no help from the government, the growing Japanese Christian community had built the massive Urakami Cathedral, in the Urakami River district of Nagasaki.
Now it turned out, in the mystery of good and evil, that the massive Cathedral was one of two Nagasaki landmarks that the Bock’s Car bombardier had been briefed on, and looking through his bomb site 31,000 feet overhead, he identified the cathedral through a break in the clouds and ordered the drop.
At 11:02 am, during morning mass, Nagasaki Christianity was boiled, evaporated and carbonized in a scorching radioactive fireball that exploded 500 meters above the cathedral. Ground Zero was the persecuted, vibrant, surviving center of Japanese Christianity.
The Nagasaki Christian death count
Since the Cathedral was the epicenter of the blast, most Nagasaki Christians did not survive. 6000 of them died instantly, including all who were at confession that morning. Of the 12,000 church members, 8,500 died as a direct result of the bomb. Three orders of nuns and a Christian girl’s school disappeared into black smoke or chunks of charred remains Tens of thousands of innocent Shinto and Buddhist Japanese also died instantly and hundreds of thousands were mortally wounded, some of whose progeny are still in the process of slowly dying from the trans-generational malignancies and immune deficiencies caused by the deadly plutonium.
What the Japanese Imperial government could not do in over 200 years of persecution, destroy Japanese Christianity, American Christians did in 9 seconds. Even today those who are members of Christian churches in Japan represent a fraction of 1% of the population, and the average attendance at Christian worship services is 30. Surely the decimation of Nagasaki at the end of the war crippled what at one time was a thriving church.
The COVID-19 crisis at a time of deteriorating economic conditions caused what in hindsight may be known as a Greater Depression — exceeding the worst of the 1930s.
For 20 straight weeks, new claims for unemployment insurance exceeded one million.
Prior to March, the highest ever weekly total was 695,000. What’s unfolding in real time in the US is unprecedented and then some.
The Labor Department’s reported 1.2 million new filings was fake news like earlier weekly reports.
According to the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), 1.6 million US workers applied for unemployment benefits in the last week — not seasonally adjusted.
The number includes 984,000 who applied for state unemployment benefits — another 656,000 seeking Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA).
In the past 20 weeks, a previously unimaginable 55 million Americans filed initial claims for unemployment benefits.
Nearly one-third of US working-age Americans currently have no jobs.
Over 30% of laid off US workers who regained employment were furloughed again because of Depression-level economic conditions at a time of zero federal jobs creation programs.
While only Cassandra excelled at predicting future events, what’s going on suggests harder than ever hard times may worsen ahead before improving at an unknown future time.
Federally approved unemployment insurance (UI) benefits of $600 weekly to eligible recipients expired at end of July.
Republicans want benefits slashed to $200 weekly, along with no financial aid to cash-strapped states, no funds for emergency workplace health and safety protections, nothing to prevent landlords from evicting jobless tenants with no ability to pay rent.
Through Thursday, Republicans and Dems failed to agree on a package of vital benefits for unemployed Americans.
According to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, “(w)e’re still a considerable amount apart.”
Dems expressed “disappoint(ment)” over failure to resolve differences with Republicans.
Treasury Secretary Mnuchin said if stalemated talks continue, Trump will act unilaterally by executive order that surely will fall far short of what’s needed by a president who time and again showed indifference toward public health and welfare — serving privileged interests exclusively throughout his tenure.
Dems said they’ll legally challenge unilateral action by Trump to resolve major differences if he takes this step.
Both sides blame each other for impasse on major issues at a time of unprecedented US unemployment armageddon when vital aid to the needy is essential without delay.
For the past week, jobless Americans got no UI.
EPI called slashing benefits from $600 to $200 weekly, as Senate Republicans demand, “not just cruel, it’s terrible economics,” adding:
“These benefits are supporting a huge amount of spending by people who would otherwise have to cut back dramatically.”
“The spending made possible by the $400 that the Senate wants to cut is supporting 3.4 million jobs.”
“If you cut the $400, you cut those jobs.”
If (now expired) benefits are cut to $400 weekly, $1.7 million jobs will be lost.
May and June employment gains “reversed. Now is not the time to cut benefits that are supporting jobs,” EPI stressed.
GOP leadership claims that UI benefits of $600 disincentivise unemployed Americans from returning to work have no merit.
EPI called the claim “massively overblown,” adding:
“(R)igorous empirical studies show that any theoretical disincentive effect has been so minor that it cannot even be detected.”
Data show that over two-thirds of UI recipients who returned to work in May and June earned more from unemployment benefits than on-the-job pay.
Slashing benefits when most needed amounts to cruel and unusual punishment, an 8th Amendment breach.
In his second (January 1937) inaugural address to the nation, Franklin Roosevelt said the following:
“I see tens of millions of its citizens—a substantial part of its whole population—who at this very moment are denied the greater part of what the very lowest standards of today call the necessities of life.”
“I see millions of families trying to live on incomes so meager that the pall of family disaster hangs over them day by day.”
“I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.”
“I see millions denied education, recreation, and the opportunity to better their lot and the lot of their children.”
“I see millions lacking the means to buy the products of farm and factory and by their poverty denying work and productiveness to many other millions.”
“I see one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished.”
The state of the nation today for most Americans is more dire than during the 1930s.
No FDR era alphabet soup of jobs creation programs exists to put Americans back to work, none planned by Republicans or Dems.
Will things change for the better if Biden succeeds Trump in January and if Dems control both houses of Congress?
No evidence suggests it other than perhaps some tinkering around the edges when massive relief and jobs creation programs are vitally needed to turn things around — at a time of unprecedented economic and unemployment armageddon.
What’s going on is likely to be protracted and painful for countless millions of Americans — what I call the hardest of hard times in a nation serving privileged interests exclusively, uncaring about the vast majority of ordinary people.
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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.”
Upon reading Australia’s new defense strategy, one might think its authors believe they are surrounded by nations invaded and destroyed by China with Australia next in line.
The “threat” of China – the articles and the new defense strategy argue – requires Australia to spend billions on weapons bought from the United States and to depend more heavily on the US for Australia’s protection.
Yet in the same breath, Australia’s media openly admits that up until now, Australia’s military has spent much of its time contributing to America’s many and still-ongoing wars of aggression around the globe from Libya and Syria to Iraq and Afghanistan. Most recently, Washington has recruited Australia to help bolster its presence in the Strait of Hormuz in an effort to menace Iran as well.
In one of the above mentioned articles it’s admitted that:
For decades Australia has been quick to send troops, naval vessels and planes to help the United States wage wars on distant shores.
Despite all but admitting the US – not China – is engaged in a global campaign of armed aggression and that Australia is a willing accomplice – Australia’s new defense strategy points the finger at China as the ultimate global threat.
A likely explanation for this contradictory worldview among Australian policymakers is the possibility that deep-pocketed lobbyists from Washington still hold more sway over Australia’s political levers than Australian businesses and certainly the Australian public – and plan to collectively squeeze Australia for billions in arms sales for missiles and other weapon systems pointed at what is otherwise Australia’s largest and most important economic partner – China.
Not only does this fill up the coffers of corporations like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and others, but Australia’s apparently hostile posture toward China will most certainly taint relations between the two nations, creating further conflict, and requiring continued and increased weapon sales well into the future.
Should any conflict erupt between the US and China, Australia will find itself a much closer target than the US – a sacrificial pawn of sorts that will bear the full brunt and consequences of any potential US-Chinese hostilities.
Well-Timed “Cyber Attacks” Help Sell an Otherwise Unappealing Defense Strategy
The new defense strategy – long in the works – was unveiled only after a healthy dose of recent and mysterious “cyber attacks” Australian security agencies attributed with no evidence to China.
Again – the irony here is that the US has by far demonstrated itself to be as much a threat in cyberspace as it is to sovereign nations and their physical territory, and much more so than China.
Regarding Australia specifically, a 2013 Guardian article titled, “NSA considered spying on Australians ‘unilaterally’, leaked paper reveals,” would note that a:
The US National Security Agency has considered spying on Australian citizens without the knowledge or consent of the Australian intelligence organisations it partners with, according to a draft 2005 NSA directive kept secret from other countries.
The US National Security Agency (NSA) has been revealed to have compromised communications worldwide, hacked the phones of national leaders both friend and foe, infiltrated and created backdoors in Western-manufactured high tech hardware, and carried out offensive cyber attacks against nations around the globe.
There is also a growing body of evidence that suggests many attacks attributed to nations like Russia and China – like the one recently carried out against Australia – were either fabricated entirely, or in fact carried out by actors in the US itself.
But what better way is there to sell the otherwise unpopular idea of Australia buying billions of dollars of weapons from America and poisoning relations with China than to cite an alleged act of aggression from China that is nearly impossible to attribute one way or the other? The Western media’s clout has in the past and continues to be much more persuasive than fact or common sense in the short-term.
Other analysts have pointed out Australia’s new defense policy is out of touch with reality. It will also do much more to undermine Australia’s national security than underwrite it.
While it is sensible for nations to ensure they have a credible deterrence against all forms of aggression regardless of the nation of origin, Australia’s defense posture has it facing a nation clearly more interested in economics than conquest, and facing away from a nation not only openly and repeatedly carrying out aggression worldwide, but one increasingly turning on its own allies for not exhibiting enough zeal against its many and multiplying enemies.
While Australia commits billions to buying American weapons and buying into Washington’s continued and growing confrontation with China – in the end – Australia will need to pick between fading with the US economically or finally accepting China’s rise regionally and globally and Australia’s role as a partner with China rather than part of America’s “primacy” over it.
Again – the irony here is of course that the most likely threat to Australia’s national security will not be from a rising China eager to do business with Australia, but a scorned Washington seeking increasingly aggressive means to force Australia back into its traditional role of buttressing US primacy.
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Tony Cartalucci is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook” where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Dr. Judy Mikovits is a top U.S. scientist who has played key roles in saving millions of lives. Instead of lauding her achievements and honoring her, Western governments and their agencies have sought to destroy her.
Why? Because corruption infests Western governments. It destroys, subverts, and censors humanity-serving truths. Big Pharma and associated monopolies have captured legislatures and their agencies.
Mikovits was part of the team that created curative therapy for H-cell Leukemia.
Her award-winning PhD thesis in 1991 changed the scientific paradigm through its focus on preventing dormant viruses from being activated.
She worked under Dr F. Ruscetti who discovered one of the first cancer-causing retroviruses.
She was part of the team that isolated HIV from saliva and blood, which confirmed Luc Montagnier’s discovery of the HIV virus as a possible causative agent for AIDS. Montagnier would later win the Nobel Prize in 2008 for discovering the HIV virus.
Mikovits played a seminal role in identifying and isolating the XMRV retrovirus, and found close links between it and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) (1). Additional studies have linked it to leukemia, prostate cancer, autoimmune disease, and Alzheimers.
Important discoveries such as those were transformative. Mikovits also discovered that the blood supply had been contaminated by dangerous retroviruses. Lab-derived animal cell cultures were contaminating vaccines and causing myriad chronic diseases, often years after the original vaccination.
It was at this point that her boss, Dr. Anthony Fauci, took steps to end her career and destroy her reputation.
Instead of declaring a National Emergency, putting a moratorium on vaccines, and addressing this discovery, with a view to saving lives, Western governments and their agencies subverted and censored the findings.
Fauci’s career continued to rise, and now he is playing a key role in the global COVID Operation against humanity, in which bad science and destructive state measures are predominant.
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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. Visit the author’s website at https://www.marktaliano.net where this article was originally published.
Order Mark Taliano’s Book “Voices from Syria” directly from Global Research.
Mark Taliano combines years of research with on-the-ground observations to present an informed and well-documented analysis that refutes the mainstream media narratives on Syria.
There are few more righteous sights than the paunchy US Secretary of State savaging the People’s Republic of China with his next volley on Chinese territorial aspirations. In July, Mike Pompeoreleased a statement putting any uncertain minds at ease on where Washington stood on the matter.
“We are making clear: Beijing’s claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them.”
International politics, for all that confidence, rides on the stead of hypocrisy. The more vehement a condemnation regarding a course of conduct, the more likely the stead is about to turn. For all the promises of freedom of navigation and repudiation of Chinese claims to the South China Sea, the United States nurses its own questionable readings of international law. The term “rule based order” is a lovely one seemingly shorn of realpolitik (nothing of the sort), but collapses on closer inspection.
When it comes to the matter of alleged Chinese violations of maritime law in the South China Sea, odd messages bubble from the mouths of US officials on, for instance, violations of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. Pompeo speaks of preserving “peace and stability”, upholding “freedom of the seas in a manner consistent with international law, maintain the unimpeded flow of commerce” and opposing “any attempt to use coercion or force to settle disputes.” He also refers to UNCLOS, a document the United States has not ratified despite President Barack Obama’s previous plea that the Senate, were it to do so, “should help strengthen our case [against China’s actions in the South China Sea].” Smugly, Pompeo cites the ruling of the Arbitral Tribunal constituted in accordance with UNCLOS, as its finding on July 12, 2016 rejecting “the PRC’s maritime claims as having no basis in international law.”
The same can be said of the enormous air base known as Diego Garcia, located in the Chagos Archipelago in the Indian Ocean. It is worth noting that predatory behaviour was very much part of the policy towards the indigenous populace of the island, which had been a dependency of the British colony of Mauritius. In 1965, the Chagos Islands was separated from Mauritius in exchange for an “indemnity” of £3 million. What was created in its place was a legal misnomer of some nastiness: the British Indian Ocean Territory.
In 1966, the US was promised a strategic tenancy on Diego Garcia for five decades. The UK Permanent Under-Secretary promised to be “tough about this. The object of the exercise was to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a Committee (the Status of Women does not cover the rights of Birds.” Very droll.
This brutal endeavour was done as part of Britain’s continued need to feel relevant in the post-colonial power game, a supposedly sagacious proxy for the projection of US power. It was also done against the spirit of decolonisation stressed in UN General Assembly Resolution 1514 (XV), which noted that “[a]ny attempt aimed at the partial or total disruption of the national unity and the territorial integrity of a country is incompatible with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations.”
The British authorities were true to their word: the indigenous population between 1967 and 1973 was forcibly relocated to Mauritius and the Seychelles, with the US paying $14 million for the effort. The way for the establishment of a military base was cleared but only after pockets of Chagossian resistance were crushed through threats and intimidation.
Analysts from the US perspective look at this situation as one forced upon the United States and find China, as tends to be the pattern these days, the catalyst of encouragement.
“The policy trigger,” writes retired Rear Admiral Michael McDevitt, “was the 1962 Sino-Indian war, when Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had pressed Washington for military assistance to India.”
The Kennedy administration obliged by sending the USS Kitty Hawk, an aircraft carrier with the express purpose of deterring China in the event of any push towards Calcutta. The analysis by McDevitt is bloodless, mechanical, and makes no mention of the Chagossians. Absent are US methods of terroristic pummelling. What he does describe is the indispensable nature of the base, “perfect … for US Navy maritime patrol aircraft and especially US Air Force heavy bombers.”
These were not views shared by many members of the UN General Assembly. In June 2017, the General Assembly, in resolution 71/292, requested an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice on whether the decolonisation of Mauritius had been lawfully completed with regards the separation of the Chagos Archipelago. A second question also arose on the legal consequences of the UK’s “continued administration … of the Chagos Archipelago including with respect to the inability to implement a programme for the resettlement on the Chagos Archipelago of its nationals, in particular those of Chagossian origin”.
In its February 25, 2019 opinion, the ICJ found that “the process of decolonisation of Mauritius was not lawfully completed when that country acceded to independence”. The UK was “under an obligation to bring to an end its administration of the Chagos Archipelago as rapidly as possible.” The judges acknowledged resolution 1514 (XV) as “a defining moment in the consolidation of State practice on decolonisation” and that “[b]oth State practice and opinio juris at the relevant time confirm the customary law character of the right to territorial integrity of a non-self-governing territory as a corollary of the right to self-determination.” No evidence of approval of the practice of an administering power’s detachment of part of a non-self-governing territory, certainly for the purposes of maintaining colonial rule over it, was shown. “States have consistently emphasised that respect for the territorial integrity of a non-self-governing territory is a key element in the exercise of the right to self-determination under international law.”
The UN affirmed the 13-1 opinion in May 2019, calling upon Britain to “withdraw its colonial administration” within six months and duly acknowledge Chagos as forming “an integral part” of Mauritius. Eviction orders received that month were ignored by the British, showing that the Anglo-American reverence for the sacred “rules-based international order” can be selectively profane when it needs to be. “The United Kingdom is not in doubt about our sovereignty over the British Ocean Territory,” insistedBritain’s ambassador to the UN, Karen Pierce. The territory had never been part of Mauritius and it had “freely entered into an agreement” covering fishing rights and marine resources. The question left begging here was how the entity could lawfully enter into any arrangements with Britain over Chagos if the territory had never formed the basis of Mauritian control. The spirit of Neville Chamberlain, one approving the ceding and dividing of territory not his own, is still very much alive.
It is worth nothing that the approval of the ICJ findings, along with international law bodies in general, is very much dependent on favourability towards the great power. Playground bullies are always bound to ignore them; small states, less likely to. Just as China refuses to acknowledge the legitimacy of international judicial rulings on its maritime claims, the US and Britain refuse to acknowledge determinations regarding the status of Diego Garcia and the Chagossians. That’s the rules-based order in international relations for you.
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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]
On 5 August, 2020, the Brazilian Supreme Court ordered President Jair Bolsonaro to institute measures aimed at protecting indigenous people from the Covid-19 pandemic. This ruling is the legal recognition of the totally disastrous anti-indigenous policies of the Bolsonaro government. Like other indigenous people living in the Peruvian jungles, eastern Bolivia, the Ecuadorian Amazon and the Colombian Amazon, Brazilian collectivities too have been disproportionately impacted by the Covid-19 pandemic. More than 23,000 members of 190 indigenous groups in the Amazon basin have been infected by the virus and all of these communities share a commonality – they suffer from structural inequalities.
According to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA), “Indigenous peoples, in particular indigenous women and girls are often disproportionately affected by epidemics and other crises. Indigenous peoples are nearly three times as likely to be living in extreme poverty as their non-indigenous counterparts. They account for almost 19 per cent of the extreme poor”. In Latin America, more specifically, it is estimated that 43% of the 44.7 million indigenous people are poor (living on less than $5.50 a day in 2011 purchasing power parity prices (PPP))and 24% are extremely poor (living on less than $1.90 a day in 2011 PPP prices).
“Indigenous peoples in nearly all countries fall into the most “vulnerable” health category. They have significantly higher rates of communicable and non-communicable diseases than their non-indigenous counterparts, high mortality rates and lower life expectancies. Contributing factors that increase the potential for high mortality rates caused by COVID-19 in indigenous communities include mal – and undernutrition, poor access to sanitation, lack of clean water, and inadequate medical services. Additionally, indigenous peoples often experience widespread stigma and discrimination in healthcare settings such as stereotyping and a lack of quality in the care provided, thus compromising standards of care and discouraging them from accessing health care, if and when available.”
While Brazilian communities do experience the disadvantageous effects of structural inequalities, their plight has been politically amplified by the Bolsonaro administration which has accelerated extractivism during the Covid-19 pandemic. With more than 23,000 cases and 600 deaths, indigenous Brazilians are dying at a higher rate than the general population and it is estimated that they die of the virus twice as often as the non-indigenous people. Some communities, such as the Arara people, living near the Xingu river basin and the Xicrin in southwest Para state, are on the verge of extermination due to Coronavirus.
These high death rates among the indigenous population are killing knowledgeable elders, the main transmitters of indigenous culture. The recent death of the famous leader, Aritana Yawalapiti of the Yawalapiti people, on August 5, 2020, underscores the cultural loss taking place as the diffusers of traditional knowledge die and the wisdom of indigenous people gets lost.
Behind the soaring statistics on the death of indigenous people in Brazil, one can observe the unmistakable presence of Bolsonarian extractivism. The UN Special Rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples, José Francisco Cali Tzay, has said,
“In some countries, consultations with indigenous peoples and also environmental impact assessments are being abruptly suspended in order to force through megaprojects relating to agribusiness, mining, dams and infrastructure.”
José Francisco Cali Tzay’s statement, while not explicitly referring to Brazil, accurately describes the consequences of Bolsonarian politics.
In the Brazilian region of Rondônia, “Indigenous organizations have reported the presence of garimpeiros (illegal gold miners) and madeireiros (timber traffickers) who have used the current health crisis as a cover to intensify their profit-driven invasions in the territories where the Karipuna people lives.” Rondônia is a region where, ever since the election of Bolsonaro as the president, the National Mining Agency (ANM) has granted mining permits even for demarcated indigenous lands i.e. lands that have been legally regularized through the federal government and presidential authorization. In 2013, for example, “the Ariquemes Small-Scale Miners Cooperative (Cooperativa Mineradora dos Garimpeiros de Ariquemes or COOMINGA) obtained a small-scale gold mining permit for an area that includes part of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau Indigenous Territory [which was officially demarcated in 2006]. The cooperative is now the third-largest producer of tin in the country, according to the ANM’s 2018 Annual Mining Report. In 2016, the Rondônia Tin Cooperative (Cooperativa Estanífera de Rondônia) acquired a mining permit to mine cassiterite, the main tin ore, in an area that included segments of the Uru-Eu-Wau-Wau territory. The largest open-air cassiterite mine in the world is located in Ariquemes, Rondônia.”
The events in Rondônia are directly driven by the extractivist agenda of Jair Bolsonaro which glorifies anti-indigenous hatred and allows extractive capital to exploit previously protected territories. Under his administration, applications to mine on indigenous lands in Amazon have increased by 91% and 4,000 requests have been submitted for mining on 31 indigenous reserves. Moreover, the number of invasions of indigenous areas has increased from 111 in 2018 to 160 in 2019 and in July 2019, 20,000 illegal gold miners had invaded the Yanomami Park, the largest indigenous reserve in Brazil. These illegal miners were “well funded, likely by entrepreneurs, who pay workers and provide them with earthmoving equipment, supplies and airplanes. Three illegal air strips and three open-pit goldmines are in operation within the Yanomami indigenous territory.” As a natural result of the extension of extractivism into ecologically fragile areas, deforestation astronomically increased and “year-on-year deforestation of the Brazilian Amazon rose by 34% between August 2018 and July 2019, felling an area of forest about as big as Jamaica.” All the invasions have been punctuated by regular violence and according to the Human Rights Watch, “Indigenous people who have organized themselves to defend their forests—in the absence of adequate law enforcement—have been threatened, attacked, and, according to community leaders, murdered by people engaged in illegal deforestation.” In July 2019, for instance, 10-15 heavily armed men had invaded the village Yvytotõ of the Wajãpi community and killed one indigenous individual to access the gold reserves located in the village.
The ecocide, ethnocide and genocide of 2019 have continued in 2020 and in the first few weeks of the year, 5 indigenous people have been murdered due to land conflicts. Deforestation has persisted with 529 square kilometers of forest being destroyed in April, 2020, representing an increase of 171% when compared to the same month the previous year. Mining invasions, too, have progressed unabated and the Triunfo Do Xingo area, where many indigenous people live, has been witnessing the aggressive and repeated incursion of miners, cattle ranchers and other commercial actors. In June and July 2020, 3,842 fire alerts have been reported in Triunfo Do Xingo, linked to illegal land grabbing and mining activities, significantly increasing the Covid-19 risks of indigenous people whose co-infection of Covid-19 with other high-prevalence diseases can lead to high mortality rates.
Mining magnates in Brazil have been emboldened to murder indigenous people and invade ancestral lands by the Bolsonaro administration which has secured a suitable investment climate for extractivism. Through the fusion of anti-indigenist rhetoric and pro-mining policies, Bolsonaro has unleashed a war against the 900,000 indigenous people living in Brazil. In terms of rhetoric, the following statements are adequate to show how Bolsonaro has discursively activated the extermination and dispossession of indigenous people:-
(1) “The Indians do not speak our language, they do not have money, they do not have culture. They are native peoples. How did they manage to get 13% of the national territory”.
(2) “There is no indigenous territory where there aren’t minerals. Gold, tin and magnesium are in these lands, especially in the Amazon, the richest area in the world. I’m not getting into this nonsense of defending land for Indians”.
(3) “This unilateral policy of demarcating indigenous land by the Executive will cease to exist. Any reserve that I can reduce in size, I will do so. It will be a very big fight that we’re going to have with the UN”.
(4) “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry hasn’t been as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.”
In terms of policies, Bolsonaro has attempted to implement a “dream” initiative by sending a bill to the Brazilian Congress in February 2020. This bill would open Brazilian indigenous reserves to “commercial mining, oil and gas exploration, cattle ranching and agribusiness, new hydroelectric dam projects, and tourism — projects that have been legally blocked under the country’s 1988 Constitution.” Marcio Santilli, a former head of FUNAI (National Indian Foundation), the agency responsible for indigenous affairs, has said that the dream initiative will “not promote the economic development of the Indians, but guarantee the exploitation by third parties of their natural resources. It would encourage Indians to live from royalties while watching the dispossession of their lands.”
Bolsonaro’s staunch and brutal opposition to indigenous people has continued during the Covid-19 pandemic and in July 2020, the Bolsonaro government vetoed provisions of a law that entailed the government to provide disinfectants, drinking water and a guarantee of hospital beds to indigenous people amid the pandemic. Bolsonaro also “vetoed funding for the states and local governments with emergency plans for indigenous communities, as well as provisions to help give them more information on coronavirus, including greater internet access.” Along with the orchestrated genocide of indigenous population, Bolsonaro is also busy protecting illegal mining from environmental actions. On 6 August, 2020, Bolsonaro’s Defence Ministry suspended operations by the environmental protection agency Ibama against illegal miners on an indigenous reserve in Amazon.
The Defence Ministry has said that the suspension occurred on the request of the Munduruku tribe who apparently want marauding miners to steal their lands. This claim is false insofar that the Munduruku tribe have protested against illegal gold mining operations in their territories in 2019 and have promised to keep on fighting against extractive elites. In fact, a statement released by the Munduruku tribe unequivocally expressed opposition to mining and made it clear that the indigenous group will never request miners to dispossess them: “You are destroying our sacred sites and disturbing our spirit world. This is bringing diseases and death to our people. We will not accept this destruction anymore…Gold mining is dividing our people, introducing new diseases, and contaminating our people with mercury. Mining brings drugs, alcohol, weapons, and prostitution. And greed.”
At the opening of the 74th United Nations general assembly, Jair Bolsonaro has declared that he is representing “a new Brazil, resurgent after being on the brink of socialism.” Now, we can observe how Brazil, revived by Bolsonaro after the supposed curse of socialism, is slaughtering indigenous people for the penetration of extractivism into the entrails of Amazon and other protected regions. Instead of installing sanitary cordons around indigenous territories and efficiently carrying out essential Covid-19 practices – isolation, laboratory confirmation, contact tracing, efficient detection of suspected cases – Bolsonaro has called Coronavirus a “little flu” and a “cold”, denied the infection and death rates and hysterically advanced the interests of the mining sector. Instead of these anti-science and extractivist policies, a science-based and socialist response would have been much better.
In addition to the proper protection of indigenous people living in remote regions, much could have been done to alleviate the conditions of the urban indigenous population which, in the case of Brazil, constitutes half of the indigenous population. This urban population serves as an expendable reserve army of labor for capitalism and consequently, experiences high levels of inequalities in the form of informal employment and gender pay gap. The rate of informal employment for indigenous women and men is 85% and 81%, respectively, compared to 52 per cent and 51 per cent for non-indigenous women and men. Furthermore, indigenous women’s hourly earnings are less than a third of those of non-indigenous men with the same level of education. During the pandemic, it is this indigenous reserve army of labor which is experiencing exploitation along with the indigenous people living in the protected regions.
The present-day mass deaths of Brazilian indigenous people are similar to the colonial ethnocide of late fifteenth and early sixteenth century that dramatically reduced the population from 150 million before 1492 to less than 11 million 100 years later. A native commentary on the colonial conquest of Guatemala and the consequent outbreak of smallpox plague terrifyingly encapsulates the contemporary indigenous situation: “Great was the stench of the dead. After our fathers and grandfathers succumbed, half of the people fled to the fields…The mortality was terrible. Your grandfathers died…we became orphans, oh, my sons! So we became when we were young. All of us were thus. We were born to die!”
As Brazil progresses into the Covid-19 pandemic, it is necessary that Bolsonaro’s extermination campaign be stopped. Brazilian indigenous people suffer from malnutrition and other immune-suppressive conditions, thus increasing their susceptibility to Coronavirus infection. The high immunological vulnerability of indigenous communities has been compounded by Bolsonaro’s crony capitalism that allies itself with extractive elites. While the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) has urged “Governments to intensify protection measures to stop external farmers, settlers, private firms, industries and miners from entering indigenous peoples´ territories taking advantage of the present crisis”, Bolsonaro has clashed head-on with these organizations, opening indigenous territories for extractive robbery. But indigenous resistance to Bolsonaro and his extractive power bloc is in the offing and the statement released by the Brazil’s Indigenous People Articulation (APIB) sets the tone for the future revolt: “we remain firm, as our ancestors did, who for more than 520 years have resisted, fighting, whether for the right to territory, to overcome dictates of the dictatorship, as well as other epidemics, the landowners’ bullets or the lengthy attempt to make our cultures and ways of life invisible.”
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Yanis Iqbalis a student and freelance writer based in Aligarh, India and can be contacted at [email protected]. His articles have been published by numerous magazines and websites such as Monthly Review Online, ZNet, Institute of Latin American Studies, Green Social Thought, Weekly Worker, People’s World, LA Progressive, News and Letters Weekly, Economic and Political Weekly, Arena, Eurasia Review, Coventry University Press, Culture Matters, Dissident Voice, Countercurrents, Counterview, Hampton Institute, Ecuador Today, People’s Review, Eleventh Column, Karvaan India, Clarion India, OpEd News, The Iraq File and Portside.
There are two world-class scientists at the center of the Covid-19 hydroxychloroquine storm.
They are Dr. Didier Raoult at the IHU Medical Institute in Marseille, and Dr. Harvey Risch at Yale University.
The present article confronts a shabby injustice to Dr. Risch.
On August 4, 2020, a group of 24 Yale professors signed a public letter of “grave concern,” and posted it to medium.com. It opens with:
“We write with grave concern that too many are being distracted by the ardent advocacy of our Yale colleague, Dr. Harvey Risch, to promote the assertion that hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) when given with antibiotics is effective in treating COVID-19, in particular as an early therapeutic intervention for the disease.”[i]
Dr. Harvey Risch is a distinguished professor of epidemiologic methods in both the Yale School of Medicine and the Yale School of Public Health. Over his career, he has been cited 40,000 times in Google Scholar, and his h-index (89) makes him “a truly unique individual.”[ii]
Because Dr. Risch’s specialty is cancer epidemiology, the Yale professors object that “he is not an expert in infectious disease methodology.”
It is strange, however, that the list of 24 detractors includes professors of bioethics, biology, economics, engineering, law, nursing, and radiology, who are not epidemiologists of anykind.
Stranger yet is that these signatories evidently failed to check for errors in their open letter – posted and seemingly crafted by former AIDS activist-turned epidemiologist, Asst. Prof. Gregg Gonsalves, who received his PhD from Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences/School of Public Health in 2017.[iii]
The Groundless Charges Against Dr. Risch
Image on the right is Dr. Risch
To understand the context of these charges, it is first important to grasp the simple, common-sense Covid-19 strategy advanced by Dr. Risch:[iv]
it applies to the outpatient treatment of symptomatic, high-risk Covid-19 patients
it applies to the early days of the infection, while Covid-19 is still basically a cold
it involves a short treatment course of low doses of hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin, and possibly zinc
its purpose is to prevent hospitalization, where second stage pneumonia becomes much more dangerous for high-risk patients.
In terms of Dr. Risch’s strategy above, the following quoted charges against him are false and irrelevant:
“He has not been swayed by the body of scientific evidence from rigorously conducted clinical trials, which refute the plausibility of his belief and arguments. Over the last few weeks, all of us have spent considerable time explaining the evidence behind HCQ research, as it applies to early and late stage COVID-19 patients to the scientific community and general public, and now are compelled to detail the evidence in this open letter.”
Comment: There are currently 68 HCQ studies in existence, 41 of them peer-reviewed, arguing both for and against hydroxychloroquine.[v] Very few examine its outpatient efficacy in early stage (days 1-5) Covid-19 infection in combination with azithromycin, which is what Dr. Risch has been talking about all along.[vi]
The charge that he is not “swayed” in his specific claim by their less precise and less expert perspective, is immaterial.
“We are seriously alarmed for the safety of patients and the coherence and effectiveness of our national COVID-19 emergency response when misinformation about HCQ is spread and when rigorous scientific evidence and consensus produced by the community of expert researchers in infectious diseases, federal agencies and national and global health organizations are not heeded…[alluding to Dr. Risch]
…the evidence thus far has been unambiguous in refuting the premise that HCQ is a potentially effective early therapy for COVID-19.” (my emphasis)
Comment: The italicized statement, repeated several times throughout the letter, is utterly and demonstrably false.
For example, a recent 22-author study of 3,737 patients, led by France’s top microbiologist Dr. Didier Raoult, has been published and stored in a U.S. National Institutes of Health database: “Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: A retrospective analysis.”[vii]
This study lists other studies of the efficacy of early use hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin.
“Finally, we point to the recent memorandum from the US Food and Drug Administration revoking the Emergency Use Authorization for HCQ that has assembled the data on the drug as of June 2020 (Food and Drug Administration Memorandum[viii] Explaining Basis for Revocation of Emergency Use Authorization for Emergency Use of Chloroquine Phosphate and Hydroxychloroquine Sulfate).”
Comment: The 24 signatories evidently did not read the revoked FDA memorandum, which clearly states that its focus was hospitalized patients, whereas Dr. Risch has been talking about outpatients: The revoked memorandum reads:
“Current U.S. treatment guidelines do not recommend the use of CQ or HCQ in hospitalized patients with COVID-19 outside of a clinical trial, and the NIH guidelines now recommend against such use outside of a clinical trial.”[ix]
On July 30, FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn clarified this critically important point for all the non-investigating journalists and professors who continue to parrot the falsity that the revoked Emergency Use Authorization revoked on June 15 had community application in the doctor-patient relationship.[x]
“The FDA has rescinded the EUA for HCQ for a reason: the vast preponderance of the evidence suggests that the drug is without merit in clinical care for COVID-19 and presents real dangers to patients by its continued use.”
Comment: To repeat, Dr. Risch recommends low-dosage HCQ for outpatient care during the first 5 days, not for hospital care.
Regarding the alleged “real dangers” of HCQ, the current CDC travel advisory for travelers in malaria countries says:
“Hydroxychloroquine can be prescribed to adults and children of all ages. It can also be safely taken by pregnant women and nursing mothers.”[xi]
“It is critical that we follow the science and where the evidence leads us on a quest to treat and prevent COVID-19. In this climate, it’s important to rely on the data above all else when making clinical or regulatory decisions. Making these kinds of choices guided by personal endorsements outside of the context of the existing scientific evidence is medicine by testimonial and risks people’s lives…
While minority opinions, anecdotal evidence, novel interpretations and challenges to orthodoxies in a field can be important, at some point, the application of the scientific method generating evidence from multiple, well-designed clinical trials and observational studies does matter and should be heard over the noise of conspiracy theories, purported hoaxes, and the views of zealots.”
Comment: It takes many months to conduct randomized clinical trials. Indeed, most Covid-19 hydroxychloroquine trials were halted after the Lancet’s May 22 five-continent heart-risk hit piece on hydroxychloroquine, identified by Lancet editor-in-chief Dr. Richard Horton as “a fabrication” and “a monumental fraud.”[xii]
With most of the RCTs halted, there are still many observational studies (as called for in the letter’s quotation immediately above) reporting HCQ+Azithromycin efficacy.[xiii]
The insulting final remarks above presumably round out the introductory statement of “grave concern” about “the ardent advocacy” of outpatient hydroxychloroquine+azithromycin promoted by Dr. Harvey Risch.
Rather than representing “the noise of conspiracy theories, purported hoaxes, and the views of zealots,” Dr. Risch recently won a major public health reward for his specialty, cancer epidemiology, and for his epidemiologic methods in general.[xiv]
In summary, in this matter it is clear that these 24 relatively inexperienced people are way out of their depth.
The betrayal behind their appalling act of public condemnation against a fellow university colleague brings Shakespeare to mind.
It is the worst thing I have seen in the area of medical discourse since I began my career as a medical/public health librarian in 1978.
During the years when accuracy, respect, and civility prevailed in the United States, a rude and ignorant public letter such as this would have been disciplined by a university dean or president or board, and placed on the human resources files of all involved.
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Elizabeth Woodworth is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Notes
[i] “Statement from Yale Faculty on Hydroxychloroquine and its Use in COVID-19,” 4 August 2020
[ii] Dr. Risch’s 40,067 citations and his h-index of 89, as of August 6, 2020, are shown at https://scholar.google.ca/citations?user=E1US9ucAAAAJ&hl=en. The h index is a metric for evaluating the cumulative impact of an author’s scholarly output and performance; measures quantity with quality by comparing publications to citations. “An h index of 60 after 20 years, or 90 after 30 years, characterizes truly unique individuals.” (https://www.pnas.org/content/102/46/16569).
(His Twitter identity is: I work @Yale focusing on operations research/epidemiology for infectious disease. In the real world: been an AIDS activist for ~30 yrs. Asst Prof YSPH.)
[vi] Harvey A. Risch, “Early Outpatient Treatment of Symptomatic, High-Risk Covid-19 Patients that Should be Ramped-Up Immediately as Key to the Pandemic Crisis,” Amer. J. Epid, 27 May 2020 (https://academic.oup.com/aje/advance-article/doi/10.1093/aje/kwaa093/5847586). The American Journal of Epidemiology is the world’s top epidemiology journal.
[vii] Jean-Christophe Lagier, et al., “Outcomes of 3,737 COVID-19 patients treated with hydroxychloroquine/azithromycin and other regimens in Marseille, France: A retrospective analysis,” Travel Med Infect Dis. 2020 July-August; 36: 101791; Published online 2020 Jun 25. doi: 10.1016/j.tmaid.2020.101791 (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7315163/).
[viii] U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “Memorandum Explaining Basis for Revocation of Emergency Use Authorization for Emergency Use of Chloroquine Phosphate and Hydroxychloroquine Sulfate,” 30 June 2020 (https://www.fda.gov/media/138945/download).
[ix] U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “Memorandum Explaining Basis for Revocation of Emergency Use Authorization for Emergency Use of Chloroquine Phosphate and Hydroxychloroquine Sulfate,” 30 June 2020 (https://www.fda.gov/media/138945/download)
Today, August 7, 2020 negotiations on an economic stimulus package between US House Democrats and the White House broke down and broke off. What’s behind it?
In recent days the Democrats’ leaders, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Shumer, reportedly reduced the cost of their original ‘Heroes Act’ proposals by $1 trillion. Instead of the original cost of $3T in the Heroes Act passed last June, they were willing to agree to a reduced package of $2 trillion. Never mind the attempt to reach a compromise on some middle ground. The White House, Thru his assigned negotiator, staffer Mark Meadows, Trump rejected the Dems offer. Meadows reportedly slammed the table (a two-bit amateur negotiating tactic) and walked out of negotiations with Pelosi-Shumer in a huff. Meadows’ walkout appears a well planned set up in the works for some time.
What does this mean? Politically and for the economy, now showing clear signs of the mild rebound of May-June dissipating in recent weeks?
On one level it’s clearly a typical Trump negotiating tactic: Bring a deal to a near close, then make a big show and angrily walk away. Trump’s done that before on numerous occasions. We saw it in the trade negotiations with China in 2018 and again 2019. It didn’t work then with the Chinese trade negotiators, and will likely not work here again—assuming the Dems don’t lose their backbone and fall for the set up, which has been known to happen in the past.
Trump coyly stayed on the sidelines in the early phase of the negotiations between the Dems and McConnell in the Senate and Mnuchin at Treasury.
He let McConnell in the Senate carry the early bargaining water. But McConnell’s extreme ideologue wing, led by Rand Paul and others, revolted. They said they couldn’t support any kind of new stimulus because of its impact on the government’s deficit and debt. However, this same Rand Paul-led crew in just one day last week quickly approved a record $760B Pentagon spending bill. Nor did these same folks have any problem approving tax cuts worth $5 trillion in the past two years under Trump. Nothing said about that impact on the budget and national debt.
And its these same hypocrites in the Senate who have been arguing the $600/wk. unemployment benefits for workers under the March 2020 Cares Act were ‘too generous’. The benefit was keeping workers from returning to work, although at least a half dozen university studies—from Harvard, Yale and Princeton—concluded it’s not so.
McConnell’s withdrawal to the sidelines in negotiations in early July—allowing Trump, Meadows and Mnuchin to take the lead in negotiations on the stimulus—may be part of the Republican strategy as well. UP until recent weeks, McConnell and Mnuchin were respectively playing ‘hard cop’ and ‘soft cop’ with Pelosi-Shumer. McConnell wouldn’t budge, which let the Dems pursue compromise with Mnuchin as lead for the Trump negotiations. Mnuchin and the Dems actually made some headway and some compromises. Mnuchin sucked them in, getting them to reduce their original Heroes Act $3T proposals to $2T. They were being set up.
Then Mark Meadows, Trump’s hatched man, joined in taking over the negotiations and played hard cop to Mnuchin’s soft cop. Now Meadows broke off discussions and stomped out today, August 7. The tactic is transparently designed to get the Dems to reduce their position even further. Propose more than the $1 trillion concessions already made this past week as the cost of getting Meadows to return to the bargaining table. If they do, it makes Trump look tough and in control of the negotiations agenda. And if they don’t, then Trump moves on to legislative by executive action—which also puts him in the appearance of control and the sole person producing the stimulus package.
Trump also wants to put his ‘mark’ on the negotiations, as is always the case. He wants it to look like the parties couldn’t come together, but he was able to hammer out a deal. ‘The Art of the Deal’, right?
And there’s another more insidious objective here. Trump’s been signaling for weeks he’d like to inject his own pet demands and is ready to do so by executive order once again if necessary. He wants to legislate by executive order. He pulled it off before, setting a precedent. That was when he spent money for his wall by shifting it from the Defense Dept., prepared to restore the diverted funds back to the Defense Dept. at a later date. Republican proposals on the table, by the way, provide another $29 billion for the Pentagon—over and above the just awarded Pentagon spending of $760 billion. Now he’ll make a similar move: he’ll divert funds by executive action to pay for his new tax cuts and other measures taking money from some other pot, present or future, to pay for it. Dems in Congress will be left standing saying ‘hey, you can’t do that’, but it’ll already be done.
Breaking off negotiations now gives Trump the opportunity to introduce his proposals by executive order. To do so is clearly unconstitutional but that means nothing to Trump. He’ll soon announce his own stimulus proposals and start executive orders implementation . He’ll use that fait accompli to force the Dems to agree to them if they want to be part of any final stimulus deal. And if they don’t,” so what” he’ll say. “They couldn’t get it passed. I did.”
But as the failure to pass a new fiscal stimulus drags on, 14 million workers will lose their supplemental $600/wk. unemployment benefits. That’s roughly $85 billion a month taken out of US GDP, in reduced household consumption. Failure to pass a stimulus also means that 12.3 million renters will be evicted before November, according to the most conservative survey. Some surveys estimate as many as 28 million will be evicted. And no more money for state and local governments facing a growing fiscal crisis that will soon require them to start mass layoffs in September.
The McConnell-Trump strategy is not to bail out state and local governments. It’s about making the high urban population centers—located largely in ‘blue’ states—to bear the brunt of the continuing economic crisis. If they need more money, let them go to the municipal bond market and borrow more. It’s a blue state problem, they argue. Let them sink with it is the Republican view. Or else cut their too generous public employee benefits and pensions.
To sum up, the strategic objectives behind Trump’s ordering his man, Meadows, to break off negotiations are several: inject Trump to the center of the negotiations in the last phase of bargaining so he can take credit for any subsequent deal. Second, allow Trump to raise his pet proposals—like making the payroll tax cut permanent—to the top of the bargaining agenda with the Dems. Third, let McConnell off the hook and avoid creating a split within his Republican ranks over deficits in order to forge a deal. Fourth, expand Trump’s attack on the legislative and purse strings authority of the US House of Representatives, and thereby push the presidency toward usurping legislative authority still further than it already has.
Trump is not only a tyrant—i.e. someone who sees himself above the law—as witnessed by his recent pardons and his own numerous public statements about himself as president; he is also a classic usurper, attempting to shift legislative authority via executive action from Congress to himself; and he is also moving toward rule by decree—aka a dictator—which is a hallmark of all authoritarian and would-be fascist rulers.
And we should watch out for more ‘rule by decree’ attempts in coming months as he invokes one or more ‘national emergency declarations’ to deal with America’s current triple crises—political as well as economic and health.
With Trump forcing a break-up of the recent fiscal stimulus negotiations, and his to be announced executive orders, the political-constitutional and economic crises in America are becoming increasingly entangled. It almost seems as if Trump’s grand strategy may be to exacerbate the deepening crises as much as possible before November 3, in order to create a pretext for him to declare the election void and challenge the results.
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Jack Rasmus writes on his own blog site where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.
Massive uncontrolled unprecedented wild fires are consuming portions of the Amazon rainforest and several regions of the Arctic. Somebody somewhere must be asking why all of a sudden in unison, all over creation, two of the planets largest ecosystems are going up in smoke. It’s eerily spine chilling.
“Major fires have hit the Amazon and the Arctic for the second year in a row.” (Source: NewScientist, June 26, 2020)
Where’s the world’s largest fire alarm when so desperately needed?
Sure, all of mainstream press covers the fires and people hear about the fires and read about the fires. But that’s the end of any sort of impact because the sensationalism of reading about and hearing about massive fires thousands of miles away in vast wilderness areas doesn’t move the needle enough for people to express serious concern or even go so far as to panic. Maybe they should.
These are not regular ole run of the mill fires. Rather, these are firestorms so powerful that they create their own wind systems and self-perpetuate. More to the point, the world is on a biblical fire alert that posits the Book of Revelations 16:8 smack dab into contemporary society, to wit: Then the fourth angel poured out his bowl on the Sun, and power was given to him to scorch men with fire, and men were scorched with great heat.
For example, recent bushfires in Australia (2019) were not just unprecedented. They were “deadly catastrophic,” thus leaving some ecosystems “forever changed.” The conflagrations obliterated landscapes, not just patches of landscape but entire landscapes.
Why obliteration? Climate change is the villain. It supercharged the wildfires by turning landscapes into tinder. As such, and contrary to political opinions by right-wing whacko nutcases, climate change does not constitute surreal events in thin air, rather, it’s power-packed hard-hitting damage to our “one and only” planet. It’s authentic.
Australia’s wildfires convulsed above and beyond any known scale of normal fires, from which animals are usually able to escape. They didn’t. They couldn’t run fast enough! The fires took out entire landscapes, not patches of landscape that leave behind pockets of safety untouched for scampering animals. Nothing was left untouched by the hot lapping flames.
The wildfires permanently crippled iconic habitats that make Australia an ecological wonder for all to behold. From loss of crucial plant life to decimation of species that serve as a meal for a higher species, the ripple effects remain unaccountable, extensively beyond human calculation.
Now, two of the world’s largest, and most significant, ecosystems are on fire like never before, similar to Australia’s biblical fires of a year ago, as more, and more, precious natural resources suffer waves of obliteration. Of course, normal fires in the wild are healthy; however, these fires are anything but normal. They’re truly biblical in scale.
“Six months of record-breaking temperatures have sparked massive fires in the Siberian Arctic this year. Great plumes of smoke were visible on satellite… temperatures more than 5°C above average over much of Siberia… A Met Office-led international study has concluded this period of exceptional weather would have been impossible had the world not been warmed by man-made greenhouse gas emissions. (Source: New Warning Over Climate Change From Siberian Arctic, BBC News, July 15, 2020)
“What we’re seeing really is unprecedented… we’ve never seen the probability of a change of an event of more than 600 times. We’ve never seen a result like that, Professor Peter Stott, Met Office,” Ibid.
“Looking at the geologic record, we don’t think we’ve ever seen CO2 levels this high in about 5 million years… We are in uncharted territory, Dr. Katharine Hendry,” Ibid.
Meanwhile, bad vibes with strong undertones of contempt upend civilized society, as follows: America’s president Don Trump has tweeted 120 posts that variously poke fun at, and ridicule, climate change. Moreover, he has issued dozens of tweets claiming that “cold weather” disproves climate change. It should be noted that 62 million people voted for Trump in 2016 and many “live by his words.”
At the same time, in the real world of the Amazon rainforest, Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research reported 6,803 fires in the Amazon in July 2020 alone, nearly 30% more than July 2019 when the Western world went bananas over the loss of rainforest due to human-set fires. When in fact fires are not a regular feature of rainforests.
Now, environmentalists are going batty because August is traditionally the start of the human-generated fire season, but it already has a roaring head of steam. Not only that, but according to INPE data, the first six months of 2020 are already the worst on record for deforestation. Yes, “the worst on record.”
Sure enough, the Amazon rainforest, similar to landscapes in Australia in 2019, is subjected to obliteration forces, and it’s not just deforestation as the root cause. Climate change has kicked into high gear all across the magnificent rainforest with devastating drought conditions galore!
Excessive drought conditions, in part, originate early in the morning in garages around the world as fossil-fueled gasoline engines crank up, spewing out CO2, and the whir of a jet engine igniting, the blast of a diesel train engine cranking up, the murmur of a jet ski, ignition of hot coals for an electricity-generating plant, a furnace blast molding steel, all are the basis, the origin, of greenhouse gases that blanket the atmosphere, in turn, enhancing devastating severe droughts.
According to a landmark Amazonian rainforest in-depth analysis: “Several studies indicate that the region has been suffering severe drought since the end of the last century, as in 1997/1998, 2005, 2010 and 2015. The intensity and frequency of these extreme drought episodes in the AB during the last years, approximately one episode every five years with a significant increase in the coverage area, is remarkable.” (Beatriz Nunes Garcia, et al, Extreme Drought Events Over the Amazon Basin: The Perspective from the Reconstruction of South American Hydroclimate, Departamento de Meteorologia, Instituto de Geociências, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Nov. 7, 2018)
Back-to-back-to-back-to-back 100/yr. drought events, every 5 years, are not normal, meaning something somewhere is horribly wrong. After all, major ecosystems that profoundly influence all aspects of the planet’s health and well-being are burning, collapsing, melting like there’s no tomorrow. The message is clear.
Along the way, Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro feigns attempts to limit rainforest damage, but experts say the government’s response has been largely ineffective, more symbolic than real. In truth, he’s the primary driving force behind record-setting deforestation. Similar to Trump, on the world stage he’s a laughing stock and archenemy of the planet.
According to NASA, this year’s dry season will be more prone to fires than last year’s record-setting affair. Moreover, according to NASA, warmer ocean surface temps in the North Atlantic (global heating at work) create conditions for more extreme drought in the Amazon, as excessive ocean heat brings on far-flung damage. Everything in nature is somehow connected.
“The world on fire” is merely a prelude to a climate “gone berserk” disaster scenario that’s almost certain to eventually take civilization down to its knees, by all appearances sooner than mainstream science suggests, but frankly scientists don’t make such predictions.
Yet, isn’t a climate gone berserk scenario already playing out in real time, e.g., in Siberia, in the Amazon, in Australia?
Meanwhile, climate-related crises on a grand scale never before recorded throughout human history continue building to a crescendo, in earnest, right before society’s “eyes wide shut.”
Postscript: Reports out of the London School of Economics claim one-half of the Arctic fires are peat soil, normally too wet and too cold to burn, but now burning because of powerful intense heat… peat soil is carbon-rich and can burn for months/years, emitting carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane (CH4). (Source: Arctic Fires Released More Carbon in Two Months Than Scandinavia Will All Year, Grist, Aug. 4, 2020)
Speechless, once again!
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Robert Hunziker, MA, economic history DePaul University, awarded membership in Pi Gamma Mu International Academic Honor Society in Social Sciences is a freelance writer and environmental journalist who has over 200 articles published, including several translated into foreign languages, appearing in over 50 journals, magazines, and sites worldwide. He has been interviewed on numerous FM radio programs, as well as television.
When the new flu season arrives in autumn 2020, our western governments and mainstream news media are preparing to go into overdrive and declare (without evidence) that the 2nd wave of the COVID-19 pandemic is here. The fact is, they’re already pushing this narrative by declaring that there’s an uptick in COVID-19 cases and so governments around the world are now imposing mandatory mask laws on the population (see here and here) with added threats of national lock-downs!
The entire COVID-19 narrative has been hyped up beyond stupid and bulled through on the global population by national governments around the world without providing any credible evidence, and when actual data is provided by Investigative Journalists, doctors and professionals on social media for all to see, they are censored and removed by YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and major Internet search engines such as Google. The practice is Orwellian, as it censors free speech and is in collusion with the U.N. World Health Organization and its corporate financiers.
To make things worse, the fear driven COVID-19 narrative is being pushed by mainstream media that does not provide investigative journalism. Together, they are all working against the population of the world and our communities by silencing professionals and their data on COVID-19, a virus that has proven to be no worse than the seasonal flu.
In reality, there will be no second wave, however, there will be a continuing flu cycle with the beginning of the annual flu season set to kick off when schools reopen in late August or early September 2020…and classes will not be going back to normal as social distancing rules are already in place including half classes with half of the year at home and online. This whole COVID event has embedded fear, worry and panic within the minds of our children. What this amounts to is psychological terrorism on our children!
The fear mongering on COVID-19 has already sparked public panic and anger in many countries, but in particular, there has been, and will continue to be, a huge backlash on all the people who are protesting government over-reaction and media propagation of mandatory mask wearing, social distancing, vaccines and the lock-down of society.
The lack of real investigation by mainstream media into the facts of COVID-19, the economic lock-down and mandatory mask laws imposed by government are major failures within our communities. They prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that we do not live in a just and moral democracy because a just and moral democracy requires that the government engage the doctors and professionals and investigate all aspects and positions, while investigative journalism, as an uncompromised media, informs the population. We have none of that.
The fallout and backlash by mainstream news believers on those opposed to the COVID-19 narrative is ramping up because those in fear of COVID-19 are feeling empowered by the government and media propaganda to publicly attack those not wearing masks or attack those who question the mainstream narrative. Violence will become more common and a deeper division within our communities will result if this COVID fear campaign is not ended soon.
The majority of people who continue to believe the COVID-19 narrative, are also in favour of the government push for mandatory vaccinations from vaccines that will miraculously appear from the “for profit only” pharmaceutical corporations embedded in collusion with the World Health Organization, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the World Economic Forum and the Western Economic Cartel.
Division of society by the western economic cartel is carried out through their close economic relationship with the mainstream media, political parties at all levels of government…and their collusion with the social media platforms and the major Internet search engines which have censored all opposing opinion.
Censorship has been rampant across the Internet over the past two years but since the COVID-19 narrative began, censorship on social media has been in overdrive silencing doctors, professionals and all voices that bring real data and a differing opinion on COVID-19.
Economic Trends and Fallout
What will also ensue during this false second wave will be more lock-downs and restrictions that will further the bankruptcy of small businesses which directly affects our communities. After all, the economy is made up of 60% small business; i.e. restaurants, bars, taverns, pubs, hair salons, barber shops, corner stores and a host of many mom and pop shops that cater to everything else.
Unemployment and bankruptcy will also affect the fraudulent real estate market that continues to inflate housing prices way past the point of affordability. All of this points to a major economic crash that will take everything away from the people and put it in the pockets of the banking and corporate economic cartel.
Those that stand to gain from the resulting economic crash are major corporations and / or billionaires with deep pockets looking to usurp all small enterprises to meet their growth requirements or to simply create a new corporate UBER industry out of the ashes of small business bankruptcies such as, for example, a consolidated hair salon / barber shop industry…all connected to a digital monetary banking system that will account for all revenue, taxes and tips…And of course, mega fast food corporations will certainly benefit from the closure of the many family restaurants that compete against them. In fact, Ontario Canada has just imposed a new law where all patrons of restaurants will have to give up their personal information on who they are, where they’ve been, who they’ve been with, and all their info will be held by the restaurant for 30 days! That will definitely hurt small business restaurants, especially when they do not have a drive through or delivery service.
And what to do with the hundreds of thousands of grounded planes? What about the millions of jobs in the airline Industries? There is only one trend and direction that can happen here without total bankruptcy, and that is consolidation of the Industry with a huge reduction in services.
The Airlines not bailed out during this COVID-19 scam will eventually be consumed by larger corporate airlines through economic consolidation…the aviation Industry will not return to peak business levels again unless by some miracle the economy suddenly grows and puts everyone back to work…but when the global economy severely contracts due to the over reaction of COVID-19 with no end in sight, well then its safe to assume that growth is not going to come back anytime soon. Besides, the economic system was already on its way to collapse before the false pandemic was enacted.
As a result of closed borders and mandatory two-week isolation, tourism is still on hiatus in most of the World and of course that affects small business as well.
If you believe that your government is acting in your best interests, think again. Ask yourself, what was the last thing they did that didn’t involve corporate or banking profits?
Vaccines
Big Pharma companies are “for profit only” organizations that have no concern for the human population. The only things they are concerned about is their bottom line and profit margins. Would you really trust a corporation who’s very existence is to make money from you anyway they can with a vaccine that could earn them hundreds of billions of dollars?
Like all other corporate Industries tied to the economic cartel, Pharmaceutical companies have a long history of dishonesty and criminal behaviour when it comes to their economic viability. Any corporation whose viability depends on a vaccine rushed to market during an economic collapse due to the very flu the vaccine was designed for, is going to be a fraud and a huge money maker for the corporation that produces it…and the sad thing is, people will believe that a vaccine will save them from a corona virus that has already mutated and evolved…the thing is, everyone has probably already had COVID-19 and didn’t know it since the symptoms for the 2019 corona virus in the majority of people is mild. People must not think they have an immune system.
If we look at elderly care homes, where most of deaths from COVID-19 happened, there are rules that force all residents to have mandatory flu shots once or twice a year. And so as I look back on my own experience of having had a parent in an elderly care home, residents had their mandatory vaccination during the flu season. As I visited my mother 4 or 5 times a week over a six-month period, I noticed an uptick in resident deaths shortly after the flu vaccine was administered. Familiar faces were gone and new ones appeared, ambulances were a common sight during this time and that was 2015. That is not to say that the vaccine alone causes death in the elderly even though by taking the vaccine you are injecting your system with a virus including additional poisonous ingredients within the vaccine, but the annual flu also claims lives in exactly the same manner and numbers every year.
The flu vaccine is created by a for profit pharmaceutical company and its product is always a guesstimate with a 70% miss rate. That’s because the virus always mutates into a new virus every year…and every year the very young with undeveloped immune systems and the elderly who have additional medical conditions die from the annual flu.
Given that all vaccines contain harmful toxins to humans including mercury, and aluminum, there is a real concern that vaccines do more harm than good to everyone especially the young and elderly.
Most people are unaware of vaccine risks because the mainstream media does not do their job with investigative journalism, health organizations discount the risks and our governments refuse to investigate and would rather rubber stamp corporate products that generate revenue while exempting pharmaceutical companies from liability.
Masks
Mandatory Mask laws are going into effect in nation after nation as the fear-mongering by government and mainstream media begins its second wave.
It’s bad enough that censorship of doctors and professions is raging across the Internet and removing any dialog or real information on masks and COVID-19; but it is another thing to see and experience fearful people harassing and lashing out at those not wearing masks. People have become so entrenched in their beliefs that they are actually fist fighting each other over mask wearing. Society has been divided and increasingly, we are at war with each other over a mask. We are being conditioned to “Obey” government directives regardless of how dystopian those directives are and those who obey feel empowered to lash out at those who do not.
The World Economic Forum has just released a very disturbing video on how they will proceed with opening up society while maintaining that COVID-19 is here to stay. Their vision is fear based and totalitarian and proves what many of us in the alternative news have been saying; that our future will be locked down in submission to government directives which will force people to be tested often, vaccinated annually, and provide proof of these soon to be mandatory measures or you will not be allowed to participate in society. i.e. Schools, work, sports, entertainment venues and sports stadiums, shopping malls, food stores or access to any buildings including courts, banks and government offices without feeling the penalty of the law.
This is a classic move by dictatorships where a problem (COVID-19) is created to raise fear levels for a while and then they provide you with their planned dystopian solution for society to remedy the fears…at the expense of your freedom.
All of this for a virus that has a 99.98% survival rate. This COVID-19 operation is not about your health, it is about absolute control of the global population!
Masks Are a Psychological Preparation for Mandatory Vaccinations
Conclusion
Humanity is being corralled and forced into obedience by the state whose directives come from the United Nation’s World Health Organization which is compromised and funded by Pharmaceutical corporations, banks and special interests such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation within the western economic cartel. To continue down the path that they prescribe is to march humanity straight into global totalitarianism without any means of redress.
Border closings, travel restrictions and lock-downs, have put an end to our freedom of movement. Shutting down investigative journalists including Doctors and professionals by censoring real data on COVID-19, virology, corona virus’s, vaccines and the dangers of prolonged mask wearing is an attack on press freedom and free speech. The act itself closes down all avenues of redress.
Anyone who opposes the oppressive COVID laws that governments have imposed on their citizens is met with severe punishment, jail and or heavy fines…
The economic depression that will unfold has the potential to cause a massive die off due to mass unemployment, evictions, food shortages, isolation, forced compromise on the immune system, collapsing health care systems and the repression of the population by economically compromised governments.
We no longer have our freedom of movement or freedom of speech nor is there real democracy anymore when all political parties are compromised by the corporations and private banks of the economic cartel. Human rights are limited to what our governments dictate, and freedom of the press has long since been removed from mainstream media while alternative Independent press is heavily censored. The freedoms we once experienced in North America and Europe are gone…
What is happening around the world right now is the deliberate destruction of the global economy and the most affected are the small businesses that make up the bulk of economics in our communities. It’s the final act of consolidation and consumption of our communities by large corporate and private banking interests where any form of resistance will be crushed by the state. The actual face of the monster that controls our world has been revealed and it is pure evil…is this the world you want to live in or leave to your children and grandchildren?
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This interview serves as a reminder regarding the diabolical timeline of America’s hegemonic project. Is Iran the next target “to be taken out”?
All these countries including Lebanon and Iran are on the Pentagon’s drawing board. These seven countries have directly or indirectly been the object of US aggression.
America’s hegemonic military agenda has reached a dangerous threshold: The assassination of IRG General Soleimani ordered by Donald Trump in early January was tantamount to an Act of War against Iran.
The Beirut explosion of August 4th. Is this tragic event part of a Middle East War Timeline?
Washington’s stated objective (according to General Wesley Clark) is to take Lebanon and Iran, with the support of Israel.
And Israel’s diabolical objective is “To Take Out” Palestine, with the support of the US, as part of “The Greater Israel Project”.
Michel Chossudovsky, January 4, 2019, August 9, 2020
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General Wesley Clark. Retired 4-star U.S. Army general, Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the 1999 War on Yugoslavia .
Complete Transcript of Program, Democracy Now.
Today we spend the hour with General Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general. He was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. In 2004 he unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He recently edited a series of books about famous U.S. generals including Dwight Eisenhower and Ulysses Grant – both of whom became president after their military careers ended.
Complete Video Interview:
Well for the rest of the hour we are going to hear General Wesley Clark on the possibility of a U.S. attack on Iran, the impeachment of President Bush, the use of cluster bombs, the bombing of Radio Television Serbia during the Kosovo War and much more. I interviewed Wesley Clark on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
Short version of video interview:
Gen. Wesley Clark. Retired 4-star US Army general. Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, an exclusive hour with General Wesley Clark, the retired four-star general. He was Supreme Allied Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. He has been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2004, he unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination. He recently edited a series of books about famous US generals, including Dwight Eisenhower and Ulysses Grant, both of whom became president after their military careers ended.
On Tuesday, I interviewed Wesley Clark at the 92nd Street Y Cultural Center here in New York City before a live audience and asked him about his presidential ambitions.
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of these generals who run for president?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I like them. It’s happened before.
AMY GOODMAN: Will it happen again?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It might.
AMY GOODMAN: Later in the interview, I followed up on that question.
AMY GOODMAN: Will you announce for president?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I haven’t said I won’t.
AMY GOODMAN: What are you waiting for?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I’m waiting for several different preconditions, which I’m not at liberty to discuss. But I will tell you this: I think about it every single day.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for the rest of the hour, we’ll hear General Wesley Clark in his own words on the possibility of a US attack on Iran; the impeachment of President Bush; the use of cluster bombs; the bombing of Radio Television Serbia during the Kosovo War under his command; and much more. I interviewed General Clark on Tuesday at the 92nd Street Y in New York.
AMY GOODMAN: Now, let’s talk about Iran. You have a whole website devoted to stopping war.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you see a replay in what happened in the lead-up to the war with Iraq — the allegations of the weapons of mass destruction, the media leaping onto the bandwagon?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, in a way. But, you know, history doesn’t repeat itself exactly twice. What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn’t be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.
I knew why, because I had been through the Pentagon right after 9/11. About ten days after 9/11, I went through the Pentagon and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. I went downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the Joint Staff who used to work for me, and one of the generals called me in. He said, “Sir, you’ve got to come in and talk to me a second.” I said, “Well, you’re too busy.” He said, “No, no.” He says, “We’ve made the decision we’re going to war with Iraq.” This was on or about the 20th of September. I said, “We’re going to war with Iraq? Why?” He said, “I don’t know.” He said, “I guess they don’t know what else to do.” So I said, “Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said, “No, no.” He says, “There’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go to war with Iraq.” He said, “I guess it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good military and we can take down governments.” And he said, “I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.”
So I came back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in Afghanistan. I said, “Are we still going to war with Iraq?” And he said, “Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk. He picked up a piece of paper. And he said, “I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office — “today.” And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.” I said, “Is it classified?” He said, “Yes, sir.” I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.” And I saw him a year or so ago, and I said, “You remember that?” He said, “Sir, I didn’t show you that memo! I didn’t show it to you!”
AMY GOODMAN: I’m sorry. What did you say his name was?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I’m not going to give you his name.
AMY GOODMAN: So, go through the countries again.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, starting with Iraq, then Syria and Lebanon, then Libya, then Somalia and Sudan, and back to Iran. So when you look at Iran, you say, “Is it a replay?” It’s not exactly a replay. But here’s the truth: that Iran, from the beginning, has seen that the presence of the United States in Iraq was a threat — a blessing, because we took out Saddam Hussein and the Baathists. They couldn’t handle them. We took care of it for them. But also a threat, because they knew that they were next on the hit list. And so, of course, they got engaged. They lost a million people during the war with Iraq, and they’ve got a long and unprotectable, unsecurable border. So it was in their vital interest to be deeply involved inside Iraq. They tolerated our attacks on the Baathists. They were happy we captured Saddam Hussein.
But they’re building up their own network of influence, and to cement it, they occasionally give some military assistance and training and advice, either directly or indirectly, to both the insurgents and to the militias. And in that sense, it’s not exactly parallel, because there has been, I believe, continuous Iranian engagement, some of it legitimate, some of it illegitimate. I mean, you can hardly fault Iran because they’re offering to do eye operations for Iraqis who need medical attention. That’s not an offense that you can go to war over, perhaps. But it is an effort to gain influence.
And the administration has stubbornly refused to talk with Iran about their perception, in part because they don’t want to pay the price with their domestic — our US domestic political base, the rightwing base, but also because they don’t want to legitimate a government that they’ve been trying to overthrow. If you were Iran, you’d probably believe that you were mostly already at war with the United States anyway, since we’ve asserted that their government needs regime change, and we’ve asked congress to appropriate $75 million to do it, and we are supporting terrorist groups, apparently, who are infiltrating and blowing up things inside Iraq — Iran. And if we’re not doing it, let’s put it this way: we’re probably cognizant of it and encouraging it. So it’s not surprising that we’re moving to a point of confrontation and crisis with Iran.
My point on this is not that the Iranians are good guys — they’re not — but that you shouldn’t use force, except as a last, last, last resort. There is a military option, but it’s a bad one.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to get your response to Seymour Hersh’s piece in The New Yorker to two key points this week, reporting the Pentagon’s established a special planning group within the office of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to plan a bombing attack on Iran, that this is coming as the Bush administration and Saudi Arabia are pumping money for covert operations into many areas of the Middle East, including Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, in an effort to strengthen Saudi-supported Sunni Islam groups and weaken Iranian-backed Shias — some of the covert money has been given to jihadist groups in Lebanon with ties to al-Qaeda — fighting the Shias by funding with Prince Bandar and then with US money not approved by Congress, funding the Sunnis connected to al-Qaeda.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don’t have any direct information to confirm it or deny it. It’s certainly plausible. The Saudis have taken a more active role. You know, the Saudis have —
AMY GOODMAN: You were just in Saudi Arabia.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Hmm?
AMY GOODMAN: You just came back from Saudi Arabia.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. Well, the Saudis have basically recognized that they have an enormous stake in the outcome in Iraq, and they don’t particularly trust the judgment of the United States in this area. We haven’t exactly proved our competence in Iraq. So they’re trying to take matters into their own hands.
The real danger is, and one of the reasons this is so complicated is because — let’s say we did follow the desires of some people who say, “Just pull out, and pull out now.” Well, yeah. We could mechanically do that. It would be ugly, and it might take three or four months, but you could line up the battalions on the road one by one, and you could put the gunners in the Humvees and load and cock their weapons and shoot their way out of Iraq. You’d have a few roadside bombs. But if you line everybody up there won’t be any roadside bombs. Maybe some sniping. You can fly helicopters over, do your air cover. You’d probably get safely out of there. But when you leave, the Saudis have got to find someone to fight the Shias. Who are they going to find? Al-Qaeda, because the groups of Sunnis who would be extremists and willing to fight would probably be the groups connected to al-Qaeda. So one of the weird inconsistencies in this is that were we to get out early, we’d be intensifying the threat against us of a super powerful Sunni extremist group, which was now legitimated by overt Saudi funding in an effort to hang onto a toehold inside Iraq and block Iranian expansionism.
AMY GOODMAN: And interestingly, today, John Negroponte has just become the number two man, resigning his post as National Intelligence Director to go to the State Department, Seymour Hersh says, because of his discomfort that the administration’s covert actions in the Middle East so closely echo the Iran-Contra scandal of the 1980s, and Negroponte was involved with that.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’m sure there are a lot of reasons why John would go back to the State Department. John’s a good — he’s a good man. But, you know, the question is, in government is, can you — are you bigger than your job? Because if you’re not bigger than your job, you get trapped by the pressures of events and processes into going along with actions that you know you shouldn’t. And I don’t know. I don’t know why he left the National Intelligence Director’s position. He started in the State Department. Maybe he’s got a fondness to return and finish off his career in State.
AMY GOODMAN: Can you talk about — do you know who the generals are, who are threatening to resign if the United States attacks Iran?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: No, I don’t. No, I don’t. And I don’t want to know.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you agree with them?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’ll put it this way. On Labor Day weekend of 1994, when I was the J5 — I was a three-star general. I was in the Pentagon. And it was a Saturday morning, and so I was in the office. Walt Kross was the director of the Joint Staff, and he was in the office. And I think it was either Howell Estes or Jack Sheehan who was the J3 at the time. The three of us — I think it was Jack still on the job for the last couple of days. And the three of us were in Shalikashvili’s office about 11:00 in the morning on a Saturday morning, and he had just come back from a White House meeting. And he was all fired up in the way that Shali could be. And he said, “So,” he said, “we will see who will be the real soldiers this weekend! There’s much work to be done! This operation on Haiti has to be completed! The planning must be done correctly, and it must be done this weekend! So we will see who are the real soldiers!”
Then the phone buzzed, and he got up from this little round table the four of us were sitting at to take the call from the White House. We started looking at each other. We said, “Gosh, I wonder where this came from.” I mean, we were all getting ready to check out of the building in an hour or so. We had finished off the messages and paperwork. And we just usually got together because there was normally a crisis every Saturday anyway, and so we normally would come in for the Saturday morning crisis. And so, Shali came back, and so I said to him, I said, “Well, sir, we’ve been talking amongst ourselves, and we’re happy to work all weekend to get all this done, but this is just a drill, right, on Haiti?”
He looked at me, and he said, “Wes,” he said, “this is no drill.” He said, “I’m not authorized to tell you this. But,” he said “the decision has been made, and the United States will invade Haiti. The date is the 20th” — I think it was this date — “of the 20th of September. And the planning must be done, and it must be done now. And if any of you have reservations about this, this is the time to leave.” So I looked at Jack, and I looked at Walt. They looked at me. I mean, we kind of shrugged our shoulders and said, “OK, if you want to invade Haiti, I mean, it’s not illegal. It’s not the country we’d most like to invade. The opposition there consists of five armored vehicles. But sure, I mean, if the President says to do it, yeah, we’re not going resign over it.” And so, we didn’t resign. Nobody resigned.
But Shali was a very smart man. He knew. He knew he was bigger than his job, and he knew that you had to ask yourself the moral, legal and ethical questions first. And so, I’m encouraged by the fact that some of these generals have said this about Iran. They should be asking these questions first.
AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. He says he thinks about running for president again every day. We’ll come back to my interview with him in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: We go back to my interview with General Wesley Clark.
AMY GOODMAN: What about the soldiers who are saying no to going to Iraq right now?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Iraq?
AMY GOODMAN: To going to Iraq. People like First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, first commissioned officer to say no to deploy. And they just declared a mistrial in his court-martial. He will face another court-martial in a few weeks. What do you think of these young men and women — there are now thousands — who are refusing? But, for example, Ehren Watada, who says he feels it’s wrong. He feels it’s illegal and immoral, and he doesn’t want to lead men and women there.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think, you know, he’s certainly made a personally courageous statement. And he’ll pay with the consequences of it.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think he should have to go to jail for that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think that you have to have an effective armed forces. And I think that it’s not up to the men and women in the Armed Forces to choose where they’ll go to war, because at the very time you need the Armed Forces the most is — there will be a certain number of people who will see it the other way. And so, I support his right to refuse to go, and I support the government’s effort to bring charges against him. This is the way the system works.
Now, the difference is, the case that I described with Shalikashvili is, we would have been given the chance to retire. We would have left our jobs. We might not have retired as three-star generals, because we hadn’t done our duty. But we weren’t in the same circumstance that he is, so there wasn’t necessarily going to be charges brought against us.
But an armed forces has to have discipline. It’s a voluntary organization to join. But it’s not voluntary unless it’s illegal. And you can bring — the trouble with Iraq is it’s not illegal. It was authorized by the United States Congress. It was authorized by the United Nations Security Council resolution. It’s an illegitimate war, but not an illegal war.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think it’s wrong?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It’s wrong to fight in Iraq? Well, I think it’s a mistake. I think it’s a bad strategy. I think it’s brought us a lot of grief, and it will bring us a lot more grief. I think it’s been a tremendous distraction from the war on terror, a diversion of resources, and it’s reinforced our enemies. But on the other hand, his case is a moral case, not a legal case. And if you’re going to be a conscientious objector morally like this, then what makes it commendable is that you’ll take your stand on principle and pay the price. If there’s no price to be paid for it, then the courage of your act isn’t self-evident. So he’s taken a very personally courageous stand. But on the other hand, you have to also appreciate the fact that the Armed Forces has to be able to function.
So, you know, in World War I in France, there were a series of terribly misplaced offensives, and they brought — they failed again and again and again. The French took incredible losses. And these were conscript armies. And after one of these failures, a group of thousands of soldiers simply said, “We’re not doing this again. It’s wrong.” You know what the French did? They did what they call decimation. They lined up the troops. They took every tenth soldier, and they shot them. Now, the general who ordered that, he suffered some severe repercussions, personally, morally, but after that the soldiers in France didn’t disobey. Had the army disintegrated at that point, Germany would have occupied France. So when you’re dealing with the use of force, there is an element of compulsion in the Armed Forces.
AMY GOODMAN: But if the politicians will not stop it — as you pointed out, the Democrats joined with the Republicans in authorizing the war — then it’s quite significant, I think, that you, as a general, are saying that this man has taken a courageous act. Then it’s up to the people who are being sent to go to say no.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. But the courage that we need is not his courage. We need the courage of the leaders in the United States government: the generals who could affect the policy, the people in Congress who could force the President to change his strategy. That’s the current — that’s the courage that’s needed.
AMY GOODMAN: And how could they do that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, you start with a non-binding resolution in the United States Congress, and you build your momentum from there. And you keep hammering it. The Congress has three principal powers. It has the power to appoint, power to investigate, power to fund. And you go after all three. On all three fronts, you find out what the President needs, until he takes it seriously. I think it’s a difficult maneuver to use a scalpel and say, “Well, we’re going to support funding, but we’re not going to support funding for the surge,” because that’s requiring a degree of micro-management that Congress can’t do.
But you can certainly put enough squeeze on the President that he finally calls in the leaders of the Congress and says, “OK, OK, what’s it going to take? I’ve got to get my White House budget passed. I’ve got to get thirty judges, federal judges, confirmed. I’ve got to get these federal prosecutors — you know, the ones that I caused to resign so I could handle it — they’ve got to get replacements in place. What do I have to do to get some support here?” I mean, it could be done. It’s hard bare-knuckle government.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think Congress should stop funding the war?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I think Congress should take a strong stand to get the strategy changed. I don’t think that if you cut off funding for the war, it’s in the — right now that’s not in the United States’ interest. What is in the United States’ interest is to change the strategy in the war. You cannot succeed by simply stopping the funding and saying, “You’ve got six months to get the Americans out.” That’s not going to end the misery in Iraq. It’s not going to restore the lives that have been lost. And it’s not going to give us the power in the region to prevent later threats.
What we do have to do is have a strategy that uses all the elements of America’s power: diplomatic, economic, legal and military. I would send a high-level diplomatic team into the region right now. I’d have no-holds-barred and no-preconditioned discussion with Iran and Syria. And I would let it be known that I’ve got in my bag all the tricks, including putting another 50,000 troops in Iraq and pulling all 150,000 troops out. And we’re going to reach an agreement on a statement of principles that brings stability and peace and order to the region. So let’s just sit down and start doing it. Now, that could be done with the right administrative leadership. It just hasn’t been done.
You know, think of it this way. You’re on a ship crossing the Atlantic. It’s a new ship. And it’s at night. And you’re looking out ahead of the ship, and you notice that there’s a part of the horizon. It’s a beautiful, starry night, except that there’s a part of the horizon, a sort of a regular hump out there where there are no stars visible. And you notice, as the ship plows through the water at thirty knots, that this area where there are no stars is getting larger. And finally, it hits you that there must be something out there that’s blocking the starlight, like an iceberg. So you run to the captain. And you say, “Captain, captain, there’s an iceberg, and we’re driving right toward it.” And he says, “Look, I can’t be bothered with the iceberg right now. We’re having an argument about the number of deck chairs on the fore deck versus the aft deck.” And you say, “But you’re going to hit an iceberg.” He says, “I’m sorry. Get out of here.” So you go to the first officer, and he says, “I’m fighting with the captain on the number of deck chairs.”
You know, we’re approaching an iceberg in the Middle East in our policy, and we’ve got Congress and the United States — and the President of the United States fighting over troop strength in Iraq. It’s the wrong issue. The issue is the strategy, not the troop strength.
AMY GOODMAN: General Clark, do you think Guantanamo Bay should be closed?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: If Congress cut off funds for the prison there, it would be closed. Should they?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think the first thing Congress should do is repeal the Military Commissions Act. I’m very disturbed that a number of people who are looking at the highest office in the land have supported an act which advertently or inadvertently authorizes the admission into evidence of information gained through torture. That’s not the America that I believe in. And the America that I believe in doesn’t detain people indefinitely without charges. So I’d start with the Military Commissions Act.
Then I’d get our NATO allies into the act. They’ve said they don’t like Guantanamo either. So I’d like to create an international tribunal, not a kangaroo court of military commissions. And let’s go back through the evidence. And let’s lay it out. Who are these people that have been held down there? And what have they been held for? And which ones can be released? And which ones should be tried in court and convicted?
You see, essentially, you cannot win the war on terror by military force. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas. It is secondly a law enforcement effort and a cooperative effort among nations. And only as a last resort do you use military force. This president has distorted the capabilities of the United States Armed Forces. He’s used our men and women in uniform improperly in Guantanamo and engaged in actions that I think are totally against the Uniform Code of Military Justice and against what we stand for as the American people.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think that President Bush should be impeached?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think we ought to do first thing’s first, which is, we really need to understand and finish the job that Congress started with respect to the Iraq war investigation. Do you remember that there was going to be a study released by the Senate, that the senator from Iowa or from Kansas who was the Republican head of the Senate Intelligence Committee was going to do this study to determine whether the administration had, in fact, misused the intelligence information to mislead us into the war with Iraq? Well, I’ve never seen that study. I’d like to know where that study is. I’d like to know why we’ve spent three years investigating Scooter Libby, when we should have been investigating why this country went to war in Iraq.
AMY GOODMAN: The Center for Constitutional Rights has filed a complaint against Donald Rumsfeld, General Miller and others in a German court, because they have universal jurisdiction. Do you think that Donald Rumsfeld should be tried for war crimes?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’d like to see what the evidence is against Rumsfeld. I do know this, that there was a lot of pressure put on the men and women in uniform to come up with intelligence. I remember — I think it was either General Sanchez or General Abizaid, who stated that we don’t need more troops — this is the fall of 2003 — we just need better information. Well, to me, that was immediate code words that we were really trying to soak these people for information.
And it’s only a short step from there to all the kinds of mistreatment that occur at places like Abu Ghraib. So we know that Al Gonzales wrote a couple of really — or authored, or his people authored and he approved, a couple of outrageous memos that attempted to define torture as deliberately inflicted pain, the equivalent of the loss of a major bodily organ or limb, which is — it’s not an adequate definition of torture. And we know that he authorized, to some degree, some coercive methods, which we have — and we know President Bush himself accepted implicitly in a signing statement to a 2005 act on military detainees that he would use whatever methods were appropriate or necessary. So there’s been some official condoning of these actions.
I think it’s a violation of international law and a violation of American law and a violation of the principles of good government in America. There have always been evidences of mistreatment of prisoners. Every army has probably done it in history. But our country hasn’t ever done it as a matter of deliberate policy. George Washington told his soldiers, when they captured the Hessians and the men wanted to run them through, because the Hessians were brutal and ruthless, he said, “No, treat them well.” He said, “They’ll join our side.” And many of them did. It was a smart policy, not only the right thing to do, but a smart policy to treat the enemy well. We’ve made countless enemies in that part of the world by the way we’ve treated people and disregarded them. It’s bad, bad policy.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask — you’re a FOX News contributor now?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Oh, at least.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you what you think of the dean of West Point, Brigadier General Patrick Finnegan, together with a military interrogator named Tony Lagouranis and the group Human Rights First, going to the heads of the program 24, very popular hit show on FOX, to tell them that what they’re doing on this program, glorifying torture, is inspiring young men and women to go to Iraq and torture soldiers there, and to stop it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: And not only that, but it doesn’t work. Yeah, Pat Finnegan is one of my heroes.
AMY GOODMAN: So what do you think about that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I think it’s great.
AMY GOODMAN: And have you been involved in the conversation internally at FOX, which runs 24, to stop it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, as far as I know, they actually put out a call to all the writers in Hollywood. My son’s a writer, and he was one of them who got a call. They were all told: stop talking about torture. It doesn’t work. So I think it was an effective move by Pat Finnegan.
AMY GOODMAN: So you support it?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. I’m interviewing him at the 92nd Street Y. We’re going to come back to the conclusion of that interview in a minute.
[break]
AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark recently edited a series of books about famous US generals: Grant, LeMay, Patton and Eisenhower. When I interviewed him at the 92nd Street Y, I asked him a question about the presidency of General Dwight Eisenhower
AMY GOODMAN: 1953 was also a seminal date for today, and that was when Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy Roosevelt, went to Iran and led a coup against Mohammed Mossadegh under Eisenhower.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: People make mistakes. And one of the mistakes that the United States consistently made was that it could intervene and somehow adjust people’s governments, especially in the Middle East. I don’t know why we felt that — you can understand Latin America, because Latin America was always an area in which people would come to the United States, say, “You’ve got to help us down there. These are banditos, and they don’t know anything. And, you know, they don’t have a government. Just intervene and save our property.” And the United States did it a lot in the ’20s. Of course, Eisenhower was part of that culture. He had seen it.
But in the Middle East, we had never been there. We established a relationship during World War II, of course, to keep the Germans out of Iran. And so, the Soviets and the Brits put an Allied mission together. At the end of World War II, the Soviets didn’t want to withdraw, and Truman called their bluff in the United Nations. And Eisenhower knew all of this. And Iran somehow became incorporated into the American defense perimeter. And so, his view would have been, we couldn’t allow a communist to take over.
AMY GOODMAN: But wasn’t it more about British Petroleum?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Oh, it’s always — there are always interests. The truth is, about the Middle East is, had there been no oil there, it would be like Africa. Nobody is threatening to intervene in Africa. The problem is the opposite. We keep asking for people to intervene and stop it. There’s no question that the presence of petroleum throughout the region has sparked great power involvement. Whether that was the specific motivation for the coup or not, I can’t tell you. But there was definitely — there’s always been this attitude that somehow we could intervene and use force in the region. I mean, that was true with — I mean, imagine us arming and creating the Mujahideen to keep the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Why would we think we could do that? But we did. And, you know, my lesson on it is, whenever you use force, there are unintended consequences, so you should use force as a last resort. Whether it’s overt or covert, you pay enormous consequences for using force.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about what you think of the response to Jimmy Carter’s book, Peace, Not Apartheid.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I’m sorry to say I haven’t read the book. And it’s one of the things I’ve been meaning to read, and I just haven’t. I will tell you this, that we’re in a very, very difficult position in Israel. I say “we,” because every American president has committed to the protection and survival of the state of Israel. And I think that’s right. And I certainly feel that way, and I’m a very strong supporter of Israel.
But somehow we’ve got to move off top dead center in terms of these discussions with the Palestinians. And this administration has failed to lead. They came into office basically determined not to do anything that Bill Clinton did. I think that was the basic guideline. And so, they have allowed unremitting violence between Israel and the Palestinians with hardly an effort to stop that through US leadership. And now, it’s almost too late. So Condi was over there the other day, and she didn’t achieve what she wanted to achieve, and people want to blame the Saudis. But at least the Saudis tried to do something at Mecca by putting together a unity government. So I fault the administration.
Jimmy Carter has taken a lot of heat from people. I don’t know exactly what he said in the book. But people are very sensitive about Israel in this country. And I understand that. A lot of my friends have explained it to me and have explained to me the psychology of people who were in this country and saw what was happening in World War II, and maybe they didn’t feel like they spoke out strongly enough, soon enough, to stop it. And it’s not going to happen again.
AMY GOODMAN: General Clark, I wanted to ask you a tough question about journalists.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, now, that would be the first tough question you’ve asked me tonight.
AMY GOODMAN: There are more than a hundred journalists and media workers in Iraq who have died. And particularly hard hit are Arab journalists. I mean, you had Tariq Ayoub, the Al Jazeera reporter, who died on the roof of Al Jazeera when the US military shelled Al Jazeera, then went on to shell the Palestine Hotel and killed two reporters, a Reuters cameraman and one from Telecinco in Spain named Jose Couso. Many Arab journalists feel like they have been targeted, the idea of shooting the messenger. But this tough question goes back to your being Supreme Allied Commander in Yugoslavia and the bombing of Radio Television Serbia. Do you regret that that happened, that you did that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: No, I don’t regret that at all. That was part of the Serb command and control network. And not only that, I was asked to take out that television by a lot of important political leaders. And before I took it out, I twice warned the Serbs we were going to take it out. We stopped, at one news conference in the Pentagon, we planted the question to get the attention of the Serbs, that we were going to target Serb Radio and Television.
AMY GOODMAN: RTS.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah. And that night, in fact, Milosevic got the warning, because he summoned all the foreign journalists to come to a special mandatory party at RTS that night. But we weren’t bombing that night. We put the word out twice before we actually I did it.
AMY GOODMAN: You told CNN, which was also there, to leave?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I told — I used — I think I used CNN to plant the story and to leak it at the Pentagon press conference. But we didn’t tell anyone specifically to leave. What we told them was it’s now a target. And it was Milosevic who determined that he would keep people there in the middle of the night just so there would be someone killed if we struck it. So we struck it during the hours where there were not supposed to be anybody there.
AMY GOODMAN: But you killed civilians.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Six people died.
AMY GOODMAN: I think sixteen. But I think it’s the media — it’s the beauticians, the technicians. It was a civilian target.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Yeah, they were ordered to stay there by Milosevic. Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: But it was a civilian target.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: It was not a civilian target. It was a military target. It was part of the Serb command and control network
AMY GOODMAN: What do you think of Amnesty International calling it a war crime?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think it was investigated by the International Criminal Tribunal in Yugoslavia and found to be a legitimate target. So I think it’s perfectly alright for Amnesty International to have their say, but everything we did was approved by lawyers, and every target was blessed. We would not have committed a war crime.
AMY GOODMAN: Upon reflection now and knowing who died there, the young people, the people who worked for RTS, who — as you said, if Milosevic wanted people to stay there, they were just following orders.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, it was a tragedy. But I’ll tell you something. If you want to talk about tragedies, how about this one? We bombed what we thought was a Serb police station in Kosovo. We saw the Serb vehicles. We flew unmanned aerial vehicles over it. And we did everything we could to identify it. And we found that there were Serb police vehicles parked there at night, so we sent an F-16 in, dropped two 500-pound laser-guided bombs and took it out. We killed eighty Albanians who had been imprisoned by the Serbs there. They were trying to escape, and the Serbs locked them up in this farmhouse and surrounded them with vehicles. So, I regret every single innocent person who died, and I prayed every night that there wouldn’t be any innocent people who died. But this is why I say you must use force only as a last resort.
I told this story to the high school kids earlier, but it bears repeating, I guess. We had a malfunction with a cluster bomb unit, and a couple of grenades fell on a schoolyard, and some, I think three, schoolchildren were killed in Nish. And two weeks later, I got a letter from a Serb grandfather. He said, “You’ve killed my granddaughter.” He said, “I hate you for this, and I’ll kill you.” And I got this in the middle of the war. And it made me very, very sad. We certainly never wanted to do anything like that. But in war, accidents happen. And that’s why you shouldn’t undertake military operations unless every other alternative has been exhausted, because innocent people do die. And I think the United States military was as humane and careful as it possibly could have been in the Kosovo campaign. But still, civilians died. And I’ll always regret that.
AMY GOODMAN: Do you think cluster bombs should be banned?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: You know, we used, I think 1,400-plus cluster bombs. And there’s a time when you have to use cluster bombs: when they’re the most appropriate and humane weapon. But I think you have to control the use very carefully. And I think we did in Yugoslavia.
AMY GOODMAN: Right now, the US has rejected an international call to ban the use of cluster bombs. On Friday, forty-six countries were in Oslo to develop a new international treaty to ban the use of cluster munitions by — I think it’s 2008. Would you support that?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, you know, people who are against war often make the case by trying to attack the weapons of war and stripping away the legitimacy of those weapons. I’ve participated in some of that. I’d like to get rid of landmines. I did participate in getting rid of laser blinding weapons. And I was part of the team that put together the agreement that got rid of laser blinding weapons. I’d like to get rid of nuclear weapons. But I can’t agree with those who say that force has no place in international affairs. It simply does for this country. And I would like to work to make it so that it doesn’t. But the truth is, for now it does. And so, I can’t go against giving our men and women in uniform the appropriate weapons they need to fight, to fight effectively to succeed on the battlefield, and to minimize their own casualties.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’ll have to leave it there. I thank you very much, General Wesley Clark.
GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: General Wesley Clark. I interviewed him at the 92nd Street Y, the cultural center here in New York, on the publication of the Great General Series, on Grant, LeMay, Patton and Eisenhower.
H. Ealy, M. McEvoy, M. Sava, S. Gupta, D. Chong, D. White, J. Nowicki, P. Anderson
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Key Findings For Data Through July 12th
According to the CDC, 101 children age 0 to 14 have died from influenza, while 31 children have died from COVID-19.
No evidence exists to support the theory that children pose a threat to educational professionals in a school or classroom setting, but there is a great deal of evidence to support the safety of in-person education.
According to the CDC, 131,332 Americans have died from pneumonia and 121,374 from COVID-19 as of July 11th, 2020.
Had the CDC used its industry standard, Medical Examiners’ and Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting Revision 2003, as it has for all other causes of death for the last 17 years, the COVID-19 fatality count would be approximately 90.2% lower than it currently is.
Abstract
The CDC has instructed hospitals, medical examiners, coroners and physicians to collect and report COVID-19 data by significantly different standards than all other infectious diseases and causes of death.
These new and unnecessary guidelines were instituted by the CDC in private, and without open discussion among qualified professionals that are free from conflicts of interest.
These new and unnecessary guidelines were additionally instituted despite the existence of effective rules for data collection and reporting, successfully used by all hospitals, medical examiners, coroners, and physicians for more than 17 years.
As a result, elected officials have enacted many questionable policies that have injured our country’s economy, our country’s educational system, our country’s mental and emotional health, and the American citizen’s personal expression of Constitutionally-protected rights to participate in our own governance.
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This paper will present significant evidence to support the position that if the CDC simply employed their 2003 industry standard for data collection and reporting, which has been successfully used nationwide for 17 years; the total fatalities attributed to COVID-19 would be reduced by an estimated 90.2%, and questions would be non-existent regarding schools reopening and whether or not Americans should be allowed to work.
Is It Safe for Students & Teachers to Return to School?
While the current question gripping the nation is, ‘Should schools reopen in the fall?’ The crucial data available through the CDC, but not being actively promoted by the CDC, asks a different question, ‘Should schools have ever closed in the first place?’
According to the CDC’s Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts By Sex, Age & State, we know the following data from Feb 1, 2020 through July 11th, 2020.1
Three times as many children in the 0 to 14 age demographic have died from influenza (101) compared to COVID-19 (31).
In the 0 to 14 age demographic, there have been 11,158 reported fatalities from all causes.
Thus, COVID-19 fatalities in the 0 to 14 age demographic make up a very small 0.0278% of all fatalities.
There is more data when looking at the 15 to 24 age demographic.
41.2% more teens and college age young adults, in the 15 to 24 age demographic, have died from pneumonia (267) compared to COVID-19 (157).
In the 15 to 24 age demographic, there have been 13,721 reported fatalities from all causes.
Thus, COVID-19 fatalities in the 15 to 24 age demographic make up only 1.14% of all fatalities.
We would not consider closing in-person educational institutions for typical seasonal flu or pneumonia fatalities, so why did we close them when COVID-19 numbers are even lower?
Some have argued for concern and caution in the 25 to 54 age demographic, which makes logical sense, so let’s look again at the current data available.
More work force age adults, in the 25 to 54 age demographic, have died from pneumonia (9,268) compared to COVID-19 (9,034).
In the 25 to 54 age demographic, there have been 146,663 reported fatalities from all causes.
Thus, COVID-19 fatalities in the 25 to 54 age demographic make up 6.16% of all fatalities. The risk of fatality for COVID-19 is on par with the risk of fatality associated with contracting pneumonia, 6.32% in this age demographic.
As encouraging as this data is, we have concerns regarding data collection and reporting that we will discuss below that potentially lowers current fatality counts by 90.2%. It is very possible that state health departments have been instructed by the CDC to over-count COVID fatalities, cases, and hospitalizations, and we will present that evidence shortly.
As we have demonstrated in our first 2 research articles, ‘Are Children Really Recovering 99.9584% of the Time From COVID-19,’ and ‘COVID-19…Have You Heard? There Is Good News!’ there is a very real concern for Americans over the age 50 and especially over 65 years of age. Risk of fatality increases substantially for Americans over age 50 with at least 1 of the following comorbidities: Hypertension, Diabetes, Elevated Cholesterol, Kidney Disease, Dementia, Heart Disease. For perspective, according to the CDC, is the risk of dying from pneumonia higher than the risk of dying from COVID-19 in the 55 to 64 age demographic?
Pre-retirement adults, in the 55 to 64 age demographic, had a slightly higher chance of dying from pneumonia (16,469) compared to COVID-19 (14,963).
In the 55 to 64 age demographic, there have been 178,884 reported fatalities from all causes.
Since February 1st, fatalities in the 55 to 64 age demographic had a 12% greater risk of dying from pneumonia than COVID-19. COVID-19 fatalities in the 55 to 64 age demographic make up 8.21% of all fatalities and the risk of fatality due to COVID-19 is on par with the risk of fatality associated with contracting pneumonia, 9.21%.
The reported fatalities from the CDC’s Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Sex, Age & State webpage:
Include ‘Probable’ fatalities, unconfirmed by testing, for COVID but not for influenza or pneumonia;
Does not have accompanying data to detail how many of the fatalities had significant underlying, pre-existing, or comorbid medical conditions;
Does not have accompanying data to determine if any of the fatalities were treated in a hospital setting and if the subsequent fatality was a result of the treatment.
What this data does reveal, however, is that there is no more significant risk of fatality from contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus than from contracting influenza for children & teens. It also reveals that there is no more significant risk of fatality from contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus than there is for developing pneumonia for teens & young adults.
We would not consider prohibiting in-person education when presented with infection rates and medical conditions at these rates, so why are we considering doing it for an infection that poses even less of a risk?
What this data reveals for adults working with children, teens, and young adults is that COVID-19 has a lower risk of fatality than pneumonia and the data suggests that other options should be created for both parents and educational professionals to allow them to choose which style of education they are currently comfortable with (1) traditional in-person education; (2) hybrid online/in-person education; or (3) virtual online education.
There are many questions that need to be addressed with the current situation.
Should each school district give parents and professionals options for in-person education, hybrid education, and/or online education this fall?
Should parents and professionals be allowed to decide where their comfort level is, and act accordingly given the data presented?
Or, should in-person students and professionals be forced to adhere to guidelines from the CDC that not only compromise the educational experience, but also place undue, unrealistic burdens upon them for something with a lower risk than pneumonia for all and influenza for the 0 to 14 age demographic?
We leave these questions for each American to answer.
More Scientific Evidence that It’s Safe for Children to Go Back to School
A genetic project in Iceland revealed interesting findings about children infecting adults.
“Children under 10 are less likely to get infected than adults and if they get infected, they are less likely to get seriously ill. What is interesting is that even if children do get infected, they are less likely to transmit the disease to others than adults. We have not found a single instance of a child infecting parents.”2 See this
Sweden kept schools open with no demonstrative adverse impact upon children in school settings compared to Finland that elected to close in-person education.
“Sweden’s decision to keep schools open during the pandemic resulted in no higher rate of infection among its schoolchildren than in neighboring Finland, where schools did temporarily close, their public health agencies said in a joint report…In conclusion, (the) closure or not of schools had no measurable direct impact on the number of laboratory confirmed cases in school-aged children in Finland or Sweden.” 3 See this
A German study found that children are unlikely vectors of COVID-19.
“Prof Reinhard Berner, the head of pediatric medicine at Dresden University Hospital and leader of the study, said the results suggested the virus does not spread easily in schools. “It is rather the opposite,” Prof Berner told a press conference. “Children act more as a brake on infection. Not every infection that reaches them is passed on.” The study tested 2,045 children and teachers at 13 schools — including some where there have been cases of the virus.” 4 See this
No evidence of children infecting teachers in Australia.
“Our investigation found no evidence of children infecting teachers…In contrast to influenza, data from both virus and antibody testing to date suggest that children are not the primary drivers of COVID-19 spread in schools or in the community.” 5 See this
School environments are low risk and in-person education resuming should begin.
“Our report includes both the primary and secondary school setting, with no transmission in either setting. The limited evidence of transmission in school settings supports the re-opening of schools as part of the easing of current restrictions. There are no zero risk approaches, but the school environment appears to be low risk.” 6 See this
Infected children do not spread the virus to other children, teachers or administrators.
“The main new finding is that the infected children did not spread the virus to other children or to teachers or other school staff…there was no secondary transmission of the virus to other children at the school, or from children to teachers.” 7 See this
Why Did the CDC Decide to Create Unique Reporting Rules for COVID-19 When Successful Reporting Rules Already Existed?
A double standard exists for how COVID-19 data is collected and reported versus all other infectious diseases and causes of death. Let’s examine three essential data categories; Fatalities, Cases & Hospitalizations for all infectious diseases because there are significant flaws in what constitutes a COVID-19 case, hospitalization and fatality.
On March 24th, the CDC decided to ignore universal data collection and reporting guidelines for fatalities in favor of adopting new guidelines unique to COVID-19. The guidelines the CDC decided against using have been used successfully since 2003.
After all, based upon the July 11th data from the CDC’s Provisional COVID-19 Death Counts by Sex, Age & State webpage, if COVID-19 is an epidemic (122,374 Fatalities), then shouldn’t pneumonia (131,372 Fatalities) also be an epidemic?1
Fatality Data
It is important to note that COVID-19 data is collected and reported by a much different standard than all other infectious diseases and causes of death data. This unique standard for COVID-19 was used, despite the existence of guidelines that have been successfully used since 2003 for data collection across all infective, comorbid, and injurious situations.
This begs the question, if the CDC already has well established guidelines for reporting fatalities then why make up new guidelines for COVID-19?
COVID-19 data is collected and reported based upon the March 24th National Vital Statistics Systems (NVSS) Guidelines and the April 14th CDC adoption of a position paper authored by the Council of State and Territorial Epidemiologists (CSTE). 8,9
However, the data for all other causes of death is based upon the 2003 CDC’s Medical Examiners’ & Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting and the CDC’s Physicians’ Handbook on Medical Certification of Death. 10,11
On March 24th, the NVSS, under the direction of the CDC and National Institute of Health (NIH), instructed physicians, medical examiners, and coroners that COVID-19 would:
be recorded as the underlying cause of death “more often than not;”
be recorded as the cause of death listed in Part I of the death certificate even in assumed cases;
be recorded as the primary cause of death even if the decedent had other chronic comorbidities. All comorbidities for COVID-19 would be listed now in Part II, rather than in Part I as they had been since 2003 for all other causes of death.
March 24th, 2020 – NVSS COVID-19 Alert No. 2
“Will COVID-19 be the underlying cause? The underlying cause depends upon what and where conditions are reported on the death certificate. However, the rules for coding and selection of the underlying cause of death are expected to result in COVID19 being the underlying cause more often than not.”
“Should “COVID-19” be reported on the death certificate only with a confirmed test? COVID-19 should be reported on the death certificate for all decedents where the disease caused or is assumed to have caused or contributed to death. Certifiers should include as much detail as possible based on their knowledge of the case, medical records, laboratory testing, etc. If the decedent had other chronic conditions such as COPD or asthma that may have also contributed, these conditions can be reported in Part II. (See attached Guidance for Certifying COVID-19 Deaths)”
It’s worth noting that Part I of a death certificate is the immediate cause of death listed in sequential order from the official cause on line item (a) to the underlying causes that contributed to death in descending order of importance on line item (d), while Part II is/are the significant conditions NOT relating to the underlying cause(s) in Part I.
As we will demonstrate shortly, comorbid conditions are always listed on Part I of death certificates as causes of death per the 2003 CDC Handbook, so that accurate reporting can be developed. Comorbidities are seldom placed in Part II, as this is typically the place where coroners and medical examiners can list recent infections as underlying factors.
Prior to the March 24th and April 14th decisions, any comorbidities would have been listed in Part I rather than Part II and initiating factors, like recent infections, would have been listed on the last line in Part I or in Part II.
Why does this matter?
This matters because the Part I causes of death are statistically recorded for public health reporting, while Part II does not hold nearly the same statistical significance in reporting. This March 24th NVSS guideline essentially allows COVID-19 to be the cause of death when the actual cause of death should be the comorbidity according to the industry-standard 2003 CDC Handbook. It can be a bit confusing, so we will present an example shortly for clarity.
On April 14th, the CDC in conjunctions with approval from the National Institute of Health (NIH), adopted the CSTE position paper that authorized the following guidelines for data collection and reporting which are completely unique for COVID-19 and had never been done before which:
allowed for ‘Probable’ cases, hospitalizations, and fatalities [section A5];
created a pathway for the minimum standards of evidence to be a single cough [section A1];
created a pathway for completely bypassing laboratory testing in order to classify a COVID-19 case as positive [section A5];
created a pathway for the minimum standard of evidence necessary for determining a COVID-19 case to be positive as being within 6 feet of a ‘Probable’ case for 10 minutes or traveling to an area with outbreaks [section A3];
declined to create any methodology for ensuring the same COVID-19 positive person would not be counted multiple times as a new case upon being tested multiple times [section B].
April 14th, 2020 – CDC Adopts CSTE Interim-20-ID-01
Title: Standardized surveillance case definition and national notification for 2019 novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19)
“VII. Case Definition for Case Classification
Narrative: Description of criteria to determine how a case should be classified.
A1. Clinical Criteria At least two of the following symptoms:
fever (measured or subjective), chills, rigors, myalgia, headache, sore throat, new olfactory and taste disorder(s) OR
At least one of the following symptoms: cough, shortness of breath, or difficulty breathing OR
Severe respiratory illness with at least one of the following:
Clinical or radiographic evidence of pneumonia, or
Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). AND
No alternative more likely diagnosis
A2. Laboratory Criteria Laboratory evidence using a method approved or authorized by the FDA or designated authority:
Confirmatory laboratory evidence:
Detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in a clinical specimen using a molecular amplification detection test
Presumptive laboratory evidence:
Detection of specific antigen in a clinical specimen
Detection of specific antibody in serum, plasma, or whole blood indicative of a new or recent infection*
*serologic methods for diagnosis are currently being defined
A3. Epidemiologic Linkage One or more of the following exposures in the 14 days before onset of symptoms:
Close contact** with a confirmed or probable case of COVID-19 disease; or
Close contact** with a person with:
clinically compatible illness AND
linkage to a confirmed case of COVID-19 disease.
Travel to or residence in an area with sustained, ongoing community transmission of SARS-CoV2.
Member of a risk cohort as defined by public health authorities during an outbreak.
**Close contact is defined as being within 6 feet for at least a period of 10 minutes to 30 minutes or more depending upon the exposure. In healthcare settings, this may be defined as exposures of greater than a few minutes or more. Data are insufficient to precisely define the duration of exposure that constitutes prolonged exposure and thus a close contact.
A4. Vital Records Criteria A death certificate that lists COVID-19 disease or SARS-CoV-2 as a cause of death or a significant condition contributing to death.
A5. Case Classifications
Confirmed:
Meets confirmatory laboratory evidence.
Probable:
Meets clinical criteria AND epidemiologic evidence with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID-19.
Meets presumptive laboratory evidence AND either clinical criteria OR epidemiologic evidence.
Meets vital records criteria with no confirmatory laboratory testing performed for COVID19.
Criteria to distinguish a new case of this disease or condition from reports or notifications which should not be enumerated as a new case for surveillance
N/A until more virologic data are available”
Additionally, the CSTE position paper gave no definition as to what constitutes a COVID-19 recovery for all state and country health departments to follow.
While the, seemingly independent, CSTE position paper was authored by five accomplished professionals from the Idaho, Alabama, Michigan, Hawaii, and Iowa state health departments; 5 of the 7 Subject Matter Experts who contributed to the position paper were directly employed by the CDC which raises ethical concerns about conflicts of interest.
It stands to reason that each of the professionals who contributed to the CSTE position paper were aware of the existence of the 2003 guidelines for reporting fatalities.Additionally, no subject matter experts from universities, medical examiners, coroners or private industry appear to have been consulted on the production of this highly questionable document.
So, why does all of this matter?
It matters for several reasons:
The minimum standards defy accepted professional standards for differential diagnosis in medical practice;
Section A3 empowers contact tracers, who are unlikely to have any medical training, to illegally diagnose patients without even examining them, which is a violation of medical law in every state and constitutes practicing medicine without a license;
The CSTE position paper opens the door for any fatality to be listed as COVID-19 without any reasonable standard of evidence, while mandating that comorbidities simultaneously be deemphasized and moved to Part II, so as not to appear as a cause of death;
Simultaneous testing for all other infectious diseases, with similar respiratory symptom profiles like Coccidioidomycosis for Valley Fever, is not required. We therefore have no clinical or statistical means of knowing if a co-infection was present along with a positive finding of the SARS-CoV-2 virus in the differential diagnosis process.
Why was all of this necessary with a successful methodology for physicians, medical examiners, and coroners already in place since 2003?
The CDC’s 2003 Handbook suggests that COVID-19 should be listed either at the bottom of Part I or in Part II of a death certificate, rather than as the top line item in Part I, despite Dr. Fauci’s describing in multiple press interviews, that medical examiners and coroners would not be doing this, which disregards any knowledge of the March 24th orders by the NVSS to do so.
Let’s review what would have happened had the CDC decided to use their 2003 Handbook rather than adopting new rules for COVID-19 reporting.
2003 – CDC Medical Examiners’ and Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration
“Because statistical data derived from death certificates can be no more accurate than the information provided on the certificate, it is very important that all persons concerned with the registration of deaths strive not only for complete registration, but also for accuracy and promptness in reporting these events.”.
“The principal responsibility of the medical examiner or coroner in death registration is to complete the medical part of the death certificate.”
“The cause-of-death section consists of two parts. Part I is for reporting a chain of events leading directly to death, with the immediate cause of death (the final disease, injury, or complication directly causing death) online (a) and the underlying cause of death (the disease or injury that initiated the chain of events [SARS-CoV-2 in this case] that led directly and inevitably to death) on the lowest used line.Part II is for reporting all other significant diseases, conditions, or injuries that contributed to death but which did not result in the underlying cause of death given in Part I.”
Under these guidelines, the highest COVID-19 could be listed in the presence of an established comorbidity would be Part I, line item (d) or lower, or in Part II.
“The cause-of-death information should be the medical examiner’s or coroner’s best medical OPINION. Report each disease, abnormality, in-jury, or poisoning that the medical examiner or coroner believe adversely affected the decedent.”
The ability for medical examiners and coroners to register their best medical opinion was neutered by the March 24th NVSS guidelines.
“If an organ system failure (such as congestive heart failure, hepatic failure, renal failure, or respiratory failure) is listed as a cause of death, always report its etiology on the line(s) beneath it (for example, renal failure due to Type I diabetes mellitus or renal failure due to ethylene glycol poisoning).”
Based upon the 2003 CDC Handbook, Part I for COVID-19 fatalities should contain any comorbidities first. Under these guidelines, COVID-19 would only be listed as a cause of death in Part I if there were no comorbidities and therefore the fatality counts for COVID-19 would be much lower than they currently are.
Here is the comorbidity data we have compiled from the only 7 states currently publishing this data in a manner that can be analyzed statistically. Note that 90.2% of fatalities had at least 1 comorbidity and therefore these fatalities would not be counted as COVID-19 fatalities under the 2003 CDC Handbook, but instead are counted based upon the NVSS guidelines and CSTE position paper adopted by the CDC on March 24th and April 14th respectively.
Keep in mind that while the number of fatalities with published comorbidity data is significant (N=44,562), we were unable to obtain comorbidity information on all fatalities from all states because the majority of states have not been publishing this data, if they are collecting it at all.
If each state were publishing comorbidity data, and if each state used the CDC’s 2003 Revision Handbook as they do for all other death certificates, the actual COVID-19 fatality totals would be approximately 90.2% LOWER than they currently are based upon an extrapolation of the data that is available.
2003 – CDC Medical Examiners’ and Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration [continued]
“Only one cause is to be entered on each line of Part I. Additional lines should be added between the printed lines when necessary. For each cause, indicate in the space provided the approximate interval between the date of onset (not necessarily the date of diagnosis) and the date of death. For clarity, do not use parenthetical statements and abbreviations when reporting the cause of death. The underlying cause of death should be entered on the LOWEST LINE USED IN PART I. The underlying cause of death is the disease or injury that started the sequence of events leading directly to death or the circumstances of the accident or violence that produced the fatal injury. In the case of a violent death, the form of external violence or accident is antecedent to an injury entered, although the two events may be almost simultaneous.”
These clear guidelines from the CDC’s 2003 Handbook state that the highest COVID-19 would be able to be placed for comorbid conditions is on the lowest line in Part I without the March 24th NVSS guidelines and April 14th CSTE position paper. This means that while the SARS-CoV-2 virus may have initiated the process of death, the cause was actually the comorbidity as it should always be.
Additionally…
Without the March 24th NVSS guidelines or the April 14th CSTE position paper adoption, COVID-19 would NOT be allowed to be listed on a death certificate at all WITHOUT A POSITIVE LAB TEST or confirmatory pathologic autopsy findings.
Let’s take a look at how different the cause of death reporting can be for similar situations.
If we have a person who died from renal failure due to type 1 diabetes mellitus, but in scenario 1 the initiating factor was the H1N1 influenza virus while in scenario 2 the initiating factor was the SARS-CoV-2 virus, how would that look?
Here are 2 visuals of just how different these 2 very similar situations are to be recorded based upon March 24th NVSS guidelines.
Scenario 1 – H1N1 Influenza as Initiating Factor
Scenario 2 – COVID-19 as Initiating Factor
As you can see, these similar situations are reported dramatically different. As a result, the statistical reporting for fatalities will be dramatically different as well, for all people with known comorbidities, which makes up approximately 90.2% of all reported fatalities due to COVID-19 according to the US State Health Departments reporting this data.
Why is all of this important?
The CDC knew in early March that the vast majority of fatalities would be in people over 60 with comorbidities according to Dr. Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases and reported by CNBC on March 9th, 2020.6
“This seems to be a disease that affects adults and most seriously older adults. Starting at age 60, there is an increasing risk of disease and the risk increases with age. People with diabetes, heart disease, lung disease and other serious underlying conditions are more likely to develop “serious outcomes, including death.”
Why would the CDC adopt new rules for reporting fatalities when they already had successful guidelines?
Was the CDC and Dr. Fauci, the head of the NIAID (a division of the NIH), aware of the potential implications that adopting these guidelines would create in terms of fatality reporting?
And perhaps the most important question of them all… Is SARS-CoV-2 a naturally evolved microorganism or is it the result of gain of function experiments?
These are questions Americans deserve answers to, for hopefully obvious reasons.
Why does this matter for schools reopening?
The fatality data being reporting has clearly been inflated in multiple ways due to the adoption of recording and reporting rules that were unnecessary. As a result, this has greatly skewed public perception of this crisis, cost more than 50 million Americans their jobs, and created a tremendous amount of undue fear regarding the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
Even with the March 24th NVSS guidelines and the April 14th adoption of the CSTE position paper, COVID-19 has a lower risk of fatality than pneumonia in all age demographics and a lower risk of fatality than influenza in the 0 to 14 age demographic according to the CDC.
If the fatality data reporting guidelines inflate COVID-19 fatalities while holding all other causes of death to a different and higher standard, then why are we even considering forcing children to study from home?
That is a question every American must answer for themselves as well.
So Why Are Cases & Hospitalizations Continuing to Rise?
It is important to understand the difference between SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19. The scientific name of the new strain of coronavirus is SARS-CoV-2. After much naming instability, the disease caused by this new strain is called Coronavirus Disease 2019 or COVID-19.
Thus, it is important to realize that once testing is done to determine whether a person is positive for SARS-CoV-2, the patient must then have symptoms consistent with COVID-19 before being counted as a COVID case.
Professional medical training and practice dictates that for a person to be diagnosed with an infection, they must have lab evidence of the infection AND symptoms to support the diagnosis.
This distinction is very important as a person can have detectable levels of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and NOT present with any symptoms. This is possible in the case of a person who had contracted the virus as much as 6 weeks prior, gone through natural adaptive immunity processes to defeat the infection, and now has harmless remnant proteins still present in their body.
For example, an individual may test positive for Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and not have AIDS. Similarly, an individual may test positive for SARS-CoV-2 and not have COVID-19.
In order for a case to be classified as COVID-19 there must be symptoms to support the diagnosis by a licensed professional. Lab testing alone and symptom evaluation alone violates accepted professional standards for differential diagnosis in medical practice.13
In addition to what is stated above, there are several factors to consider regarding why we are seeing increases in cases and hospitalizations in addition to what was stated above:
The dramatic increase in testing;
Contact Tracers diagnosing Americans as COVID-19 positive without examination, evidence, or even being required to speak to a patient as allowed for by the CDC’s April 14th adoption of the CSTE’s position paper;
June 13th CDC changes to hospital guidelines for testing in hospitals that creates the opportunity for the same patient being counted multiple times as a new case;
Confirmed & Probable COVID-19 hospitalized cases being counted as COVID-19 cases regardless of the reason for their admission into the hospital.
Increases in Testing
This graph shows how the number of PCR molecular tests processed continues to increase almost daily. Monthly Testing Averages:
April – 167,477 people tested per day;
May – 345,361 people tested per day;
June – 547,480 people tested per day;
July – 696,396 people tested per day thru July 12th.
More people are testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 per day, and thousands more people are being tested per day. Due to the significant increase in number of people being tested, the overall percentage of people testing positive dropped from a peak of 19.6% on April 12th to 7.8% on July 12th.
Contact Tracers Can Diagnose Without Contact
During our investigation, one of the most concerning pieces of information our team has come across is the empowerment of Contact Tracers (CTs) to diagnose without medical training, medical licensure, medical examination, or even being required to make physical or verbal contact with the prospective patient as allowed for by the CDC’s April 14th adoption of the CSTE position paper [section VII.A3].9
The CDC followed up this dubious authorization with guidance issued on June 17th, 2020.14
“The development and implementation of a robust data management infrastructure will be critical for assigning and managing investigations, linking clients with confirmed and probable COVID-19 to their contacts, and evaluating success and opportunities for improvement in a case investigation and contact tracing program. COVID-19 case investigations will likely be triggered by one of three events:
A positive SARS-CoV-2 laboratory test or
A provider report of a confirmed or probable COVID-19 diagnosis or
Identification of a contact as having COVID-19 through contact tracing
If testing is not available [or declined], symptomatic close contacts should be advised to self-isolate and be managed as a probable case. Self-isolation is recommended for people with probable or confirmed COVID-19 who have mild illness and are able to recover at home.”
What this reveals is that CTs are authorized to diagnose a New COVID-19 case without being medically trained or legally licensed to do so. Even more concerning is that CTs are empowered to do this without needing to examine or take a health history from a prospective patient.
If a person does not answer the call from a CT, then they are able to list that person as a Probable COVID-19 case and report their findings to their state health department for inclusion in reporting data.
This explains why Probable Cases have been rising daily since June 17th despite the dramatic increases in testing.15
Changes In Hospital Testing Protocols & The Inclusion Of COVID-19 Probable Hospitalizations
With the abundant availability of PCR molecular testing, most hospitals in the country have adopted the policy of testing all hospital admissions for the SARS-CoV-2 virus upon admission to the hospital regardless of why that person is being admitted.
People admitted for elective surgeries are required to be tested. People admitted for injuries or accidents are being tested. People in need of care for chronic comorbid conditions are being tested, and so forth.
If a person tests positive for presence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, regardless of symptom presentation or reason for admission, they are now officially counted as a COVID-19 hospitalized case. This change in policy, never undertaken before, makes it now almost impossible to distinguish between people being admitted for COVID-19 symptoms and people being admitted who simply tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, but are being admitted for reasons other than COVID-19 symptomatology.
As a result, under this methodology of data categorization, hospital numbers have risen and will continue to rise until there are substantive changes to how data is being reported that allows everyone to clearly distinguish between the two vastly different new patient scenarios.
Even worse is the reality that an unacceptable percentage of hospital admissions are ‘Probable’ (‘Suspected’) and not lab confirmed. This is exemplified in this graphic provided by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health on July 12th that shows roughly 70-80% of COVID-19 Hospital Admissions are not lab confirmed. Be aware that the Massachusetts Department of Public Health is doing one of the best jobs in reporting among all state health departments despite the highly questionable CDC guidelines they are being confined to adhere to.
These severe breakdowns in accurate, clear data collection and reporting were initiated by the CDC on March 24th, reinforced again in their adoption of the CSTE’s April 14th position paper, and then reinforced yet again with a June 13th update of hospital testing guidelines for the safe discharge of COVID-19 positive patients.16,17
Per the CDC June 13th Update:
“Recommended testing to determine resolution of infection with SARS-CoV-2
A test-based strategy, which requires serial tests and improvement of symptoms, can be used, as an alternative to a symptom-based or time-based strategy, to determine when a person with SARS-CoV-2 infection no longer requires isolation or work exclusion. This strategy could be considered in three situations: Discontinuation of Transmission-Based Precautions and Disposition of Patients with COVID-19 in Healthcare Settings
Test-based strategy
Resolution of fever without the use of fever-reducing medications and
Improvement in respiratory symptoms (e.g., cough, shortness of breath), and
Negative results of an FDA Emergency Use Authorized COVID-19 molecular assay for detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA from at least two consecutive respiratory specimens collected ≥24 hours apart (total of two negative specimens)”
What this reveals is that if a person is admitted to a hospital, they must be tested every 24 hours until they produce 2 consecutive negative PCR tests regardless of whether they have the serologic presence of antibodies or there is no serologic detection of the virus in the bloodstream.
Why is this important?
This is important because the PCR test has been reported to be inaccurate 50% of the time it is used according to Dr. Lee as reported in the International Journal of Geriatrics and Rehabilitation published on July 17th, 2020. In this study, up to 30% of PCR tests resulted in false positives and up to 20% resulted in false negatives, which means that PCR may only be accurate for detection 50% of the time it is used.18
The generally accepted medical standard for lab test accuracy is 95% and above, but in a situation like this 70 to 80% would likely be deemed as acceptable by most medical professionals.
Additionally, the mere presence of viral nucleic acids does not necessarily indicate active viral infection nor viral replication. Nucleic acid fragments from a viral entity may exist in patient tissues because of immunological destruction of the virus, which is supposed to happen and potentially occurred several weeks prior to specimen collection. What PCR testing may be discovering is not evidence of a current infection, but rather the remnants of a prior infection that the patient has already recovered from.
Conclusion
Clearly, we have to make significant changes to our case, hospitalization, and fatality definitions, data collection and reporting as a country, if the ultimate goal is accuracy in reporting for policy-level decision making in the best interests of all Americans.
Had the CDC used the well-established and successful methodology for recording COVID-19 related fatalities, as it does for all other causes of death, the fatality counts would be significantly lower.
How much lower?
We may never know. However, when we base our estimates upon the comorbidity data being published by New York, Massachusetts, Georgia, Oklahoma, Utah, Pennsylvania and Iowa the data suggests that accurate fatality rates could drop by approximately 90.2%.
How much would using the Medical Examiners’ and Coroners’ Handbook on Death Registration and Fetal Death Reporting rather than the March 24th NVSS guidelines and the April 14th CSTE position paper completely reshape the way we see COVID-19?
How much would it address the fear of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, and the implications, which so many media outlets have attempted to instilled within us?
And would any objective American have any worry for our children’s safety if they knew that pneumonia and influenza have each claimed more lives in the 0 to 14 age demographic than COVID-19?
We have serious professional and ethical concerns with empowering people with limited medical training to diagnose any medical condition without examining the prospective patient and reviewing a full health history with them as Contact Tracers are doing.
We have serious professional and ethical concerns with hospitals admitting patients as COVID-19 case without definitive evidence.
We have serious professional and ethical concerns with licensed physicians and nurses being required to classify all hospitalizations as COVID-19, regardless of reason for admission, or if the patient tests positive or is suspected to have contracted the SARS-CoV-2 virus. Making this a requirement prevents trained medical professionals from using their best judgment in determining diagnosis.
We have serious professional and ethical concerns with COVID-19 having much lower standards of evidence and much broader categories for inclusion into reports as Probable compared to reporting for all other infectious diseases.
In medicine, we are taught not to guess when we can know, but that basic ethos for safe practice and the sharing of accurate information has not been applied to COVID-19 in our professional opinions.
And we have serious professional and ethical concerns with medical examiners and coroners being required to list COVID-19 on Part I line item (a) as the cause of death in the clear presence of comorbid conditions with verifiable medical history, rather than trusting our healthcare professionals to do the job they are trained to do and have done so well, for so many years.
Medical examiners and coroners play a crucial role in saving lives by producing accurate data licensed healthcare professionals to use in clinical settings.
There is something to be learned in every loss of life. Sadly, what we are learning with COVID-19 is that accuracy in reporting does not matter as much as inflating the data and fanning the flame of fear.
Should American children, educational professionals, small business owners, workers and our country as a whole have to suffer because critical mistakes were made in the adoption of unnecessary new reporting rules?
Should public health officials, with no expertise in public education and economic policy, be given unchecked power to create policies that adversely impact the mental, emotional, and social development of our children, suppress small-business economic opportunity, and threaten to destroy the livelihoods of tens of millions of Americans in the name of safety?
These are questions all Americans deserve an answer to and questions we all must answer for ourselves…our collective future depends upon it.
Mahalo.
***
Updated Probability of Recovery & Age Demographics Data
Probability of Recovery continues to improve for all age demographics from our initial June 21stresearch article.
While the relative percentages of Fatalities with 1+ Comorbidity and age demographics for Fatalities, Hospitalizations, and Cases remains relatively unchanged, there has been a slight redistribution of age demographic percentages for cases, as more children in the Age 0 to 19 demographic are being tested for COVID-19.
Funding & Conflict of Interest Statement
This statistical research paper has been developed, composed and published without any funding, and thanks in part to a strictly, 100% volunteer community effort made by a diverse array of qualified professionals who care deeply about children and the health of every American. The authors of this paper confirm no conflicts of interest, financial, political or otherwise.
*
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An important transition in nuclear doctrine occurred in the immediate wake of 9/11.
The Cold War MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) doctrine was scrapped by the Bush Jr administration in 2002, replaced by the first strike pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons as a means of self defense. (2001 Nuclear Posture Review, adopted by the US Senate in 2002).
America’s use of nuclear weapons on a first strike basis is no longer considered as a weapon of total annihilation. Quite the opposite, the preemptive use of nuclear weapons is upheld as a means to ensuring global peace and security.
In contrast to the Truman era, however, today’s US thermonuclear bombs are several hundred times more powerful (in terms of yield) than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which resulted in the death of some 100,000 people in a matter of seven seconds.
And in the US, there is a 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program in support of Donald Trump’s “fire and fury”, comparable in some regards to Truman’s diabolical 1950 narrative pertaining to the use of the atomic bomb “as a means of self defense”against both China and North Korea.
While the US has waged countless wars in what is euphemistically described as “the post war era” (1945- present), the issue of “self defense” is erroneous: in the course of the last century, the national security of the United States of America has never been threatened.
Financing the Culture of War
Trump’s 1.2 trillion dollar nuclear weapons program constitutes a financial bonanza for the defense contractors. US media reports suggest that the nuclear weapons program “makes the World safer”.
And there are more than 5000 US nuclear weapons deployed. And now the US is committed to developing a generation of “more usable” low yield tactical nuclear weapons (bunker buster bombs) which are “harmless to the surrounding civilian population because the explosion is underground”.
“Making America Great again”…
“Blowing up the Planet” on a first strike basis as a instrument of peace and global security.
Those who decide on the use of nuclear weapons believe their own lies.
