Global Research

The British health secretary Matt Hancock said during a briefing that he hopes ‘everybody would have the vaccine’, if and when a coronavirus shot is rolled out, and did not rule out making it mandatory for every citizen.

Hancock was asked directly by a reporter if getting the vaccine could be made compulsory, and replied that the question is “not one that we have addressed yet”.

“I would hope given the scale of this crisis and given the overwhelming need for us to get through this and to get the country back on its feet and the very positive impact that a vaccine would have that everybody would have the vaccine.” Hancock said.

Professor John Newton, who is overseeing Britain’s coronavirus testing, then confirmed that mandating vaccinations is on the table.

“Clearly mandation is there, it can be used in some instances.” Newton said, admitting however that “most successful vaccine programmes tend to be by consent.”

“Although some countries have adopted mandatory programmes, the most successful programmes tend to be done on the basis of consent, good information and good delivery mechanisms.” Newton said.

Hancock has previously strenuously criticised anti-vaccination campaigners. Last year he announced that the UK Government was “looking very seriously” at instituting compulsory vaccinations for state school pupils.

In the US, calls have been made to make any vaccination mandatory with the likes of the New York Times expressing concern that half of Americans would refuse to take it.

In Canada, a poll recently revealed that 60 per cent think that when a vaccine for coronavirus becomes available it should be made mandatory.

In addition, Canada’s current Chief Public Health Officer appeared in a recently resurfaced 2010 documentary in which she advocated using mandatory “tracking bracelets” for people who refuse to take a vaccine after a virus outbreak.

Many experts have suggested that a vaccine may not even be successful due to the nature of the coronavirus family and the fact that it can mutate.

In the UK, Scientists have expressed doubts over the effectiveness of a vaccine that has been rushed to human trials, after all of the monkeys used in initial testing later contracted coronavirus.

Meanwhile, greater breakthroughs have been made in anti-body studies, with researchers from Seattle successfully neutralizing the spike proteins of the virus, and researchers in California claiming to have discovered anti-bodies that can completely block COVID-19.

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Featured image is from Natural News

The government and media have dumped at the doorstep of the coronavirus many of the political, economic and social afflictions that are now ravaging much of the global population. In reality, they need to point the finger at themselves.

As the mainstream media saturates the airwaves with a daily overdose of coronavirus fear porn, the majority of journalists have given their governments a free pass to enact any draconian measure they see fit. From the closure of public beaches to forbidding power boats on waterways, the insanity seems to have no limits or logic. And as the media would have us believe, it was the coronavirus that enacted these measures, as opposed to living, breathing, unthinking humans.

Anti lockdown Protest went well. #Antilockdown #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/ArG1GDExnb

— Dave (@rundaverun93) May 16, 2020

What dirty deeds does the new and improved villain of our times stand accused of? First and foremost, the coronavirus singlehandedly destroyed the global economy as only ‘essential’ businesses may continue to operate. Thus, thousands of small businesses have been ordered shuttered, de facto destroyed, while countless numbers of people around the world have been ordered to ‘shelter-in-place’ with dwindling financial reserves.

Again, this wanton destruction of a large swath of the economy is not due to bad government decision-making, at least according to the media, but Covid-19.

‘Jobless claims jump another 4.4 million — 26 million Americans have lost their jobs to the coronavirus,’ reported MarketWatch. ‘It could take two years for the economy to recover from the coronavirus pandemic,’ screamed another headline.

Perhaps it was also the coronavirus that decided that it would make perfect sense to keep abortion clinics and state-owned liquor stores open during the pandemic, while shutting down houses of worship and gun shops. Clearly, the coronavirus is an equitable and non-partisan distributor of pain and suffering!

As was the case when battling the evil forces of terrorism (which has been strangely quiet lately, by the way), simply uttering ‘coronavirus’ has the same numbing effect as reciting the name ‘Osama bin Laden.’ It justifies every means to an end – up to and including the destruction of civil liberties – without the need for any public debate on the matter. This is reminiscent of the hysteria, complete with mysterious anthrax attacks, which accompanied passage of the PATRIOT Act, the freedom-killing legislation that was rammed through Congress in the weeks following the terrorist attacks of 9/11 without a formal reading by lawmakers. And just like post-9/11, when people question the draconian coronavirus measures they are vilified and accused of being ‘conspiracy theorists’ and even ‘terrorists.’

The result of millions of people struggling to survive without employment and amid ‘shelter-in-place’ orders is a huge spike in the number of deaths from alcohol, drugs and suicide.

“We see very troubling signs across the nation,” Dr. Elinore McCance-Katz, assistant secretary at Department of Health and Human Services and head of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, told USA Today. “There’s more substance abuse, more overdoses, more domestic violence and neglect and abuse of children.

In other words, the death and destruction from the draconian measures enacted to defeat the coronavirus, which never came remotely close to being as deadly as the experts predicted it would be, will prove deadlier than the disease itself.

Nearly 5,000 people took part in a rally against #coronavirus restrictions in #Stuttgart on Saturday, #Germany's largest such protest over the weekend.

On March 11, #Merkel said that the #lockdown measures were necessary in order "to win time in the fight against the virus." pic.twitter.com/dP5egTNKBV

— Ruptly (@Ruptly) May 17, 2020

And the asinine regulations are not just being implemented in glorious nation America. Across the pond, Germans, for example, have watched in horror as their beloved Oktoberfest, the annual beer-drinking festival that brings in an estimated 1 billion dollars to the local economy, has been cancelled for the first time since World War II. That is something that not even Al Qaeda in its heyday could accomplish. Now it is all kaput as some 1,600 breweries in Germany are forced to lay off workers and slashed production as dire economic conditions roll across the entire EU. Of course, all of this is the fault of the coronavirus.

#SocialDistancing for #pubs and #terras #horeca #recycling #pool #noodles #Corona #covid19 pic.twitter.com/bwY3ANOb2D

— Silke Conrad (@SilkeCo) May 15, 2020

And much like the post 9/11 days, coronavirus has its own share of ‘covidiots,’ with people going to bizarre, even fascist lengths to enforce social-distancing guidelines. Back in the ‘sane’ days when the world was trembling at the mere sound of ‘Osama,’ some people actually sealed their homes in plastic and duct tape to protect against an anthrax attack that never materialized. Today, masked drivers are literally passing out behind the wheel, inside of locked cars, due to a lack of oxygen, if not brains.

But unfortunately, those aren’t the sort of ‘lawbreakers’ that the ‘Karens’ of our days will be snitching on, exactly as they were doing as we were trying to ‘bend the curve’ on terrorism. These days, members of the citizen Gestapo are peering through closed blinds, counting whether or not the neighbors have more than 10 people in their homes, which is enough to justify the police entering your home in New Zealand without a warrant. The dawn of this ‘snitch state’ largely began in the aftermath of 9/11 psychosis.

Now that the world is staring down the double-barrel of yet another economic depression and all of its attendant symptoms, fear and hysteria continues to be in the driver’s seat. Yet instead of being afraid of bad decisions by bad government officials, the same individuals who led the world on a wild goose chase known as the ‘war on terror,’ we continue to heed their advice, while believing that the coronavirus is responsible for the mayhem. It is not, no more than Osama bin Laden was ‘responsible’ for the destruction of our civil liberties post-9/11. We did that all by ourselves through our passive consent.

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Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist.

Politically-dictated lockdowns and prohibitions have recently destroyed tens of millions of American jobs. Politicians have effectively claimed a right to inflict unlimited economic damage in pursuit of zero COVID-19 contagion. The perverse incentives driving the policy have multiplied the harm far beyond the original peril.

Almost 40% of households earning less than $40,000 per year have someone who lost their job in recent months, according to the Federal Reserve. The Disaster Distress Helpline, a federal crisis hotline, received almost 900% more phone calls in March compared to a year ago. A recent JAMA Psychiatry analysis warned that stay-at-home orders and rising unemployment are a “perfect storm” for higher suicide rates. A California health organization recently estimated that up to 75,000 Americans could die from “despair” as a result of the pandemic, unemployment, and government restrictions.

In the name of saving lives, politicians have entitled themselves to destroy an unlimited number of livelihoods. Politicians in many states responded to COVID-19 by dropping the equivalent of a Reverse Neutron Bomb – something which destroys the economy while supposedly leaving human beings unharmed. But the only way to assume people were uninjured is to believe their existence is totally detached from their jobs, bank accounts, and mortgage and rent payments.

Politicians have vaccinated themselves against any blame for the economic carnage by touting experts who said it was all necessary. Over the past 90 days, government bureaucrats have become a new priesthood that can sanctify unlimited sacrifices in the name of the public health.

COVID policymakers have written themselves the same letter that Cardinal Richelieu, the 17th century French statesman, purportedly gave to his agents: “The Bearer of This Letter Has Acted Under My Orders and for the Good of the State.” This carte blanche was sufficient to place murders and other crimes above the law and beyond reproach in France. In contemporary America, the same exoneration is achieved by invoking “science” and “data.”  Oregon Governor Kate Brown banned residents from leaving their homes except for essential work, buying food, and other narrow exemptions, and also banned all recreational travel. Six Oregon counties have only one confirmed COVID case, and most of the state has minimal infections. But schools, businesses, and other activities were slammed shut by government command.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer imposed some of the most severe restrictions, prohibiting anyone from leaving their home to visit family or friends. COVID infections were concentrated in the Detroit metropolitan area, but Whitmer shut down the entire state – including northern counties with near-zero infections and zero fatalities, boosting unemployment to 24% statewide. Her repression provoked fierce protests, and Whitmer responded by claiming that her dictates saved 3,500 lives. Whitmer exonerated herself with a statistical formula that was painfully ethereal compared to the stark physical devastation in Michigan.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear’s shutdown order resulted in the highest rate of unemployment in the nation – 33%. But according to Sen. Rand Paul, COVID’s impact in Kentucky “has not been worse than an average flu season.” But that did not stop Beshear from banning people from attending church services and sending Kentucky State Police to attach notices to car windshields ordering church attendees to self-quarantine for 14 days and reporting them to local health departments.

Shutting down entire states, including vast uninfected rural swaths, is the economic equivalent of burning witches or sacrificing virgins to appease angry viral gods. Because politicians have no liability for the economic damage they inflict, they have no incentive to minimize the disruptions they decree. Trillions of dollars of new deficit spending will be vexing American workers for many years.

The state of Missouri has sued the government of China, claiming it is liable for the losses inflicted by the virus that apparently originated in Wuhan, China. Most observers predict that lawsuit will go nowhere. But, thanks to sovereign immunity, it would be even more hopeless for American citizens to sue American politicians for the damage that their shutdown orders have inflicted on their businesses, paychecks, and lives.

Sovereign immunity creates a two-tiered society: those above the law and those below it; those whom the law fails to bind and those whom the law fails to protect. This legal doctrine almost guarantees that no politician will face any personal liability for their shutdown dictates.

Even New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who callously compelled nursing homes to accept COVID patients, will have no legal culpability for a policy that contributed to more than 5,000 nursing home deaths in his state. Pennsylvania Health Czar Rachel Levine issued a similar order, contributing to thousands of nursing home deaths, and then removed her own 95-year-old mother from a nursing home to keep her safe.

Politicians presume they are blameless for destroying jobs as long as the victims receive temporary unemployment compensation. Actually, it is worse than that: politicians claim a right to seize a slice of the paychecks of people still working to recompense people whose jobs they destroyed. Would a private corporation be able to escape punishment for breaking people’s legs by giving free crutches to its victims?

“Better safe than sorry” is damned risky when politicians have no liability for what they ravage. There is no way that politicians can compensate American citizens for all the damage they have inflicted in this pandemic. This COVID shutdown catastrophe should be a permanent black mark against the political class and the experts who sanctified each and every sacrifice.

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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.

Featured image is from City News Service

German Medical Doctor Katrin Korb discusses COVID-19, the lockdown and the vaccine during a protest held in Oldeburg.

Below is the transcript of her speech.

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Dear fellow citizens,

I’m thankful for being able to stand here today. My name is Katrin Korb, I have 3 children and I’m a doctor here in Oldenburg.

I’m standing here because I feel the responsibility for the health of my parents, my children and myself.

I stand here because I am furious about the attempts to get more control over people, by attacking them with fear. I am not sure what happens exactly, though I’m sure it has to do with money and power.

Firstly, I recognize this principle.  It’s the principle of our health-care system! A system which unfortunately is guilty of spreading fear in order to earn money. This fear is on both our sides, my side as a doctor, but also my patients.

There are guidelines I have to follow, guidelines for various health problems.  But who is writing these guidelines?

I will give you an example:  There is a European guideline for heart diseases.  There are 25 different authors who draft these guidelines, 19 of which are funded by the pharmaceutical industry.  They call it an ‘advisory fee’.

The guidelines state that I must prescribe medications that have a lot of side effects but that do not make people better.  This makes a lot of money.  If I don’t follow these guidelines and something happens to these people; for example, the situation is deteriorating for whatever reason, then I will be held responsible for that.  So, fear is cultivated so that I have to act against my professional beliefs.

The sick people are also frightened; “if you do not take these pills you will have a heart attack”. “Then you will become even sicker”.  “Listen to me; I can know, I studied for it.”  “You are not sensible enough to think for yourself”.  “There is therefore no room to discuss this.”

As a result, people fear taking this medication day after day, week to week, year to year, which makes a lot of money.  That’s the way.

Since the beginning of this corona virus, we have been kept in a kind of shock from the frightening messages. Our governments say there is a new virus so terribly dangerous that millions will die, if we don’t protect you! “We know best what is good for you because we have experts.” You cannot make a decision for yourself.  You are too stupid for that. ”We have to isolate you, take away your rights and silent you by putting on a muzzle. But we really do this for your protection”. “We frighten you so much every day through the most horrible reports that you won’t even dare to ask yourself if it’s all right”.

The mantra of the authorities is:  Only when we have a vaccination can we return to “a normal”.

In other words, only a vaccination can give us back our fundamental rights.

This week, Mrs. von den Leyen (EU) has collected E 7.4 billion worldwide for the development and distribution of such a vaccine. Also Germany has paid E525,000. Normally, the development of such a vaccination takes years.  That’s because security investigations need to be done.

This new virus from the corona family was discovered less than six months ago but experiments with “MRNA” are already being tried on humans.  This is unknown genetic material that will be injected into our cells. You don’t have to be a doctor to get an ominous feeling about this.  I will not be vaccinated, I will not get my children vaccinated, and I will also advise my patients not to do this!

Paragraph Two of the Constitution does NOT specify: RIGHT TO HEALTH but right to physical integrity.  That is a very big difference.  So there is no right to health!

Being sick is part of our human life, but no one should inflict physical harm on us even with a dubious vaccine.

We are the ones paying for this.  We already pay for the scientific and social impact of the lockdowns.  OUR TAX MONEY is spent for this.   And a vaccine must be financed with our tax money!  Already E 525 million German tax money and this is only the beginning. Are we being asked if we want to do this?  Are we asked if we want to pay for Lockdowns? NO!

All this money, the taxes we’ve paid, we want that to be spent on other things.  For good education for our children, for the development of new technologies for the environment, for decent wages for employees in our “vital” professionals. For immigration of people who fled from the war. For sports, culture, etc., etc… This list is endless. In short, for things that make and keep people healthy. But with this no money can be made.

We are in a crisis.  What is the way out of this crisis?

The victory over fear is the way out of this crisis.

People who can think for themselves, being creative, take responsibility for themselves working on their own health and the health of our world.

People who are positive, who have friends, who enjoy life, do not get sick easily.

And if they do get sick, they eventually unite with death.

Knowing that life in this world will ever end and are at peace with it.

You can’t scare these kinds of people.

You have no power over these people.

This body has only been borrowed and someday I will have to give it back.

But as long as I live in this body, as long as I feel, think and act, it will be MY body! I am responsible for that and no one else.  MY BODY, which I treat in the way I think is right.

I do not wish to return to the old normal.  I wish for a new better normal.   With free and self-determined people, who are responsible for themselves. I believe many of us are here together with the same wish.

This gives me hope and I thank you.

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Remember when you were a kid, locked within that monster called a grade school, at dismissal time? You must recall how the seas just opened and the throng descended on the schoolyard… like , well… ants at a picnic. Thus, the expression becomes almost timeless. So it is with so many of our Amerikan public whenever the opportunity reveals itself for ‘joyous mayhem’ . When the home team scores an upset or anticipated championship the ‘ants’ stream out onto the field of play in massive numbers. Ditto for the streets of the city in question, and how revelry can easily transform into criminal acts of vandalism to the Nth degree. Folks, low culture is low culture, indiscriminate of race, color or creed.

We are, sadly, in the midst of something more horrific than even the hurricane that tore my roof apart in 2016.

Why? Well, the power of such a storm, as terrifying as it can be (and was) will, after an hour or two in most cases, move past us. Not so with this pandemic. Alas, it may be here to stay more than we all can even fathom. Some may get this virus and experience it as no more than a bad chest cold. Others will die from it… Period!

As with the hurricane, this pandemic does not discriminate too much… excepting for those who cannot get the proper equipment to avoid its destructive element. The well off can buckle up their homes with hurricane protection to a degree (though the one that hit my home just snapped a pine tree and sent it into our roof). The well prepared, as to this virus, can wear the protective masks, have the cleaning essentials handy, and social distance as a rule, not a whim. These actions do help to keep many safer than not… until of course….

They open up society along with the economy. And what happens, the forces that see this as just another influenza want to go back to the way things were before it hit. Logic and real science say we may never be able to go back to what was… completely. Sadly, to this writer, if more of my neighbors behave like those kids at dismissal, the boomerang may hit us all! Our genius governor here in Florida, with marching orders from his mentor in Washington, did a really foolhardy thing and allowed Spring Break to go on, with the beaches open and filled with people, like one big sardine can. Then, many of those young people went home to the various states they came down here from. Who knows how many more people became infected with this highly contagious virus? That was a few months ago. Now, we see cities throughout Amerika with bars and restaurants open, and millions of us mingling face to face, beer to beer, with no masks. In late April the really defiant ones in Michigan stormed the statehouse to demand the governor ‘Open up the state’. Some of these characters carried weapons (guns and rifles) and reminded me of the SA minions in Germany circa 1930-33, before and after their Fuhrer took power.

There are many of my neighbors who refuse to wear a facemask when shopping. They do not follow the social distancing guidelines whenever they can get away with doing so. So, what they are doing is placing we who follow these procedures at risk. Even in situations where stores had guards at the door reminding shoppers of the necessity to enter only with a mask on, violent resistance occurred. In more than one instance, death! This is what psychologists call misplaced or displaced anger. Those resistors are not just angry at the rules, they are really angry at the entire pandemic. Connecting that last sentence should be ‘Angry at the government’s reaction to the pandemic… or lack of such’. Those who are pissed off at things being shut down or slowed down should study how this president and his administration reacted from late December to mid March. That answer is simple: Nothing in way of preparing for the worst! Matter of fact, DENIAL is the better word. They called it a HOAX remember? They said it was ‘Contained’ back in February.

People who still support this ‘Genius’ and people who downplay the pandemic, some are the same, some are not. One hopes that none of their family members or loved ones gets this virus, but if that happens, and tragedy occurs, remember this:

If the imbeciles and ‘free market ‘ jackasses in the Trump administration and Republican Congress would have had enough N-95 masks, ventilators, hand sanitizers available in great quantities by February-March….

If shutdowns and social distancing were implemented in January…

If the Congress would have adopted a Universal Basic Income plan with anywhere from $1000 to $2000 per citizen (half the amount for children) per month Tax Free…

We may have been closer by now to having our country ‘Opened’ again.

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

Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas announced that the Palestinian state and the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) will no longer adhere to the agreements they signed with Israel and the United States. It is a reaction to Israel’s intentions to annex Jewish settlements in the West Bank. If Abbas’s intentions are consistently implemented, it would be a paradox for Palestine to abolish itself.

“The Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian state are rejecting any commitments from all agreements with the US administration and Israel, including those related to security,” Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said in response to the Israeli government’s intention to start on July 1 the process of annexing territories controlled by illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank.

Abbas did not mention any specific agreements, but it is believed he is referring to a series of agreements signed by the Palestinians with Israel in the 1990’s – the 1993 Oslo Accords, the 1997 Hebron Protocol, and the 1998 Wye River Memorandum.

However, by cancelling the Oslo Accords, could the Palestinian Authority be abolishing itself?

If Abbas is referring to the entire Oslo Agreement, it would in a way mean the dissolution of the Palestinian Authority, since they emerged from that agreement. Abbas’s reaction was caused not only by the intention of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to annex large areas of the West Bank on July 1, but also by the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Israel, who undoubtedly supports the move.

Security coordination with Israel, which Palestine could be giving up, is one of the most important aspects of the Oslo Agreement, which has become a cornerstone of the so-called peace process. Security coordination is essential for the day-to-day functioning of both the Palestinian Authority and Israel. The Palestinian Authority is highly dependent, in daily terms, on this cooperation with the Israeli authorities. And not only on security, but also on economics, as well as on the inflow of financial resources, which come from the Israeli government to Palestinian institutions.

Even in earlier announcements, despite the interruptions, the essential parts of the implementation of coordination were never questioned. Abbas is now more serious than before when he announced and threatened to sever security ties which could be a blow to Israel, even if it means the Palestinian authorities lose the legal basis of its existence in international eyes.

Secretary of the Palestinian Fatah organization, Fayez Abu Aita, said that in these circumstances breaking all agreements, including the Oslo peace agreement, was absolutely necessary – this is the only way to protect their territories.

“It is not our fault that we are now on the edge of a new stage, a new great confrontation with Israel. Only by breaking all obligations with Washington and Tel Aviv, Palestine has the chance to defend its right to exist, the right to own land. After all, we said that we would not allow the implementation of the Deal of the Century. The Israeli government only heard itself and its greed. But this was only the first step: the further the Israeli side goes, the more serious the Palestinian response will be,” he said. “There is nothing else left for us, considering how quickly Israel extends its hands to our land. They were the first to bring the situation to a dangerous dead end.”

If Israel annexes the West Bank, hopes of creating an Arab state within the 1967 borders will be extinguished.

While the U.S. supports Israel’s annexation, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday in a telephone conversation with Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazim confirmed the readiness of Russia to further promote the resumption of the peace process between Palestinians and Israelis. Russia is trying to prevent the annexation and, through diplomatic means, gather an international quartet with the participation of the UN.

Effectively Russia could be using this as an opportunity to present itself as a peace broker in the Palestine-Israel conflict. Whether this will be successful or not remains to be seen, but is necessary when it appears there is a strong chance that the Palestine-Israel conflict can breakout extremely violent again in the coming weeks amidst the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

First some facts establishment media suppress.

International trade is the sovereign right of all nations — free from restraints imposed by one state against another.

Sanctions on nations is the exclusive prerogative of Security Council members. 

No country may legally impose them on others unilaterally. Taking this step breaches the UN Charter.

The US is an international outlaw state — proved time and again by its actions.

Nations going along with its hostile policies against other nation states are complicit in law-breaking.

The UN Commission on International Trade Law and the General Assembly affirmed the right of all nations to freely trade with others as a way of advancing and sustaining economic development.

International human rights law obligates all nations “to promote universal respect for, and the observance and protection of, all human rights and fundamental freedoms for all.”

Iran and Venezuela respect and observe international law principles.

Both countries are at peace with other nation states, threatening none.

They seek cooperative relations with other countries, respecting their sovereign rights.

The Islamic Republic of Iran was established to end a generation of US-installed fascist dictatorship.

The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was established by Hugo Chavez’s December 1998 election to end tyrannical rule that preceded it.

Longstanding US policy is all about pressuring, bribing, bullying, and/or bludgeoning other nations to bend to its will.

Operating by its own rules exclusively, the rule of law abandoned, both right wings of the US war party aim to control planet earth, its resources, and populations — by whatever it takes to achieve its objectives, the human cost considered irrelevant.

That’s what the scourge of imperialism is all about, humanity’s greatest threat, especially in the thermonuclear age with WMDs able to end life on earth by unprecedented mass destruction and nuclear winter — the latter creating conditions unable to sustain life.

The Trump regime imposed an illegal economic blockade on Venezuela, a flagrant international and US constitutional law breach.

The Pentagon militarized Caribbean Sea waters to block Venezuelan imports and exports — on the phony pretext of interdicting illicit drug traffic the US, its CIA, and money-laundering Wall Street banks support.

From Bush/Cheney to Obama/Biden to Trump/Pence, the US is waging illegal sanctions war on Venezuela and Iran.

The policy aims to suffocate their economies and immiserate their people.

Trump escalated what his predecessors began, aiming to cause mass casualties in both countries from deprivation.

A medieval siege of Venezuela is similar to Israel’s illegal blockade of Gaza.

It was imposed shortly after Hamas’ January 2006 democratic election as historic Palestine’s legitimate government, not the Israeli-installed PA to serve its interests at the expense of fundamental Palestinian rights.

The first of 5 Iranian tankers entered Venezuela’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) late Saturday, reportedly carrying 1.53 million barrels of gasoline and alkylate, 4 other Iranian tankers to arrive in days.

On Saturday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned the Trump regime that “(i)f our oil tankers in the Caribbean Sea or anywhere else in the world get into trouble caused by the Americans, they (US) will run into trouble reciprocally,” adding:

“Considering a series of measures, the US has created unacceptable conditions in various parts of the world.  However, we will never start tensions and clashes.”

“We always preserve the legitimate right of defense of sovereignty and territorial integrity and fulfillment of the national interests, and we hope the Americans would not make a mistake.”

Iran’s Defense Minister General Amir Hatami warned the Trump regime that the Islamic Republic “will definitely give a firm and decisive response if harassments continue or escalate.”

High seas interdiction of Iranian vessels by Pentagon warships would amount to international piracy, a bandit action by a belligerent state against a peaceful one.

Hatami stressed that Iran “will tolerate no act of harassment.”

By letter to UN secretary general Antonio Guterres, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif slammed what he called Trump regime “hegemonic gunboat diplomacy,” risking “a dangerous escalation,” adding:

Iran “reserves its right to take all appropriate and necessary measures and decisive action…to secure its legitimate rights and interests against such bullying policies and unlawful practices.”

US SOUTHCOM commander Admiral Craig Faller falsely accused nonbelligerent Iran of seeking “positional advantage in our neighborhood in a way that would counter US interests (sic),” adding:

“We’re tracking that closely and sharing intel with our partners.”

“I won’t comment any further…but I view the Iranian activity globally and in Venezuelan in specific as a concern (sic).”

Former Trump regime National Security Council official Juan Cruz downplayed an alleged Iranian threat, short of explaining it doesn’t exist, saying:

“I don’t like to overstate it because it’s very convenient to do so,” adding:

“People play around with it, and it’s like a boogeyman. When you want people to get nervous, you pull out Iran.”

The same goes for China, Russia, Venezuela, Syria, North Korea, Cuba, etc.

Their common thread is independence of US control and unwillingness to subordinate their sovereign rights to its interests.

Throughout the post-WW II period, no nations anywhere threatened US security — NONE!

So menaces were invented that didn’t and don’t exist to unjustifiably justify a permanent US state of war on humanity at home and abroad.

On Sunday, Iran’s embassy in Caracas said the first of its 5 tankers reached Venezuela’s coast without incident — expressing thanks “to the Bolivarian Armed Forces for escorting it.”

On Friday by letter to the Security Council and Guterres, Venezuelan UN envoy Samuel Moncada expressed concern about “the threat of imminent use of military force by the United States against Iranian vessels carrying Venezuelan-directed gasoline,” adding:

“(A) naval blockade is aggravated by the fact that it aims to deprive an entire population of its vital means of subsistence. It is a crime of (attempted) extermination.”

On Saturday, AP News reported that the first of 5 Iranian oil tankers “reache(d) Venezuelan waters with no sign of (a) US threat.”

Venezuela’s Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza tweeted the news, saying:

“Today, the first ship with gasoline arrives for our people.”

According to maritime tanker tracking information, the last of 5 Iranian tankers en route to Venezuela is about three days from entering its waters as of Sunday.

In its latest edition, the Washington Post cited unnamed analysts, saying that 5 Iranian tankers carry an estimated 60 million gallons of gasoline, adding:

The Trump regime “invoked the (long ago outdated) Monroe Doctrine” that rejects foreign interference in the Western hemisphere.

It’s a footnote in the dustbin of history where it belongs.

The US interferes regularly in parts of the world not its own by endless preemptive wars and other hostile actions — the highest of high crimes under international and constitutional law.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Details of the new law are coming in the weeks ahead, likely in June.

The measure aims to counter months of US orchestrated nonviolent and violent protests that rocked Hong Kong last year — led by 5th column elements.

Orchestrated by US dark forces, the move was and remains a scheme to destabilize and weaken China, along with other tactics aiming to accomplish the same thing.

Hong Kong is Chinese territory. It’s no longer an exploited British colony or a political football to be kicked around by the US at its discretion.

On Thursday, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) explained that Beijing tabled a resolution “to craft and pass a new national security law tailor-made for Hong Kong,” adding:

It’ll “proscribe secessionist and subversive activity as well as foreign interference and terrorism in the city – all developments that had been troubling Beijing for some time, but most pressingly over the past year of increasingly violent anti-government protests.”

Beijing is acting to halt them because of failure by Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) authorities to accomplish this objective legislatively.

Under Article 23 of the Basic Law that regulates relations between Beijing and the HKSAR, city authorities are empowered as follows:

It’s their responsibility to “enact laws on its own to prohibit any act of treason, secession, sedition, subversion against the Central People’s Government, or theft of state secrets, to prohibit foreign political organizations or bodies from conducting political activities in the Region, and to prohibit political organizations or bodies of the Region from establishing ties with foreign political organizations or bodies.”

None of the above was accomplished by the HKSAR so Beijing is acting on its own to legitimately protect national security from hostile foreign actions that aim to weaken and undermine China’s sovereignty and development — mainly by the US under both right wings of its war party.

China’s move comes at a time when hostile Trump regime actions risk rupturing Sino/US relations altogether.

Beijing’s national security law aims to “fix loopholes (in) the legislative system” that governs Hong Kong, China’s Global Times (GT) explained.

It aims to counter “external forces and local separatists (that) continue to erode the (city’s) foundation…”

The measure is being prepared and finalized during Beijing’s annual Central People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) that began Thursday.

Its National People’s Congress (NPC) began Friday, the national security resolution on its agenda — to be voted on next week, adopted and sent to a Standing Committee to prepare actual details of the measure.

According to an unnamed Beijing source, “(t)he NPC decision will delegate the Standing Committee to draft the new legislation for Hong Kong, which would be included in Annex III of Hong Kong’s Basic Law.”

“The new law will be introduced in Hong Kong through promulgation, without the need for local legislation.”

According to SCMP, “(i)nsiders  said Beijing had reached the end of its tether after the protests against Hong Kong’s now-withdrawn extradition bill morphed into an anti-government movement” — much of it featuring violence and vandalism.

COVID-19 outbreaks halted anti-government protests temporarily. Signs indicate they’ll likely erupt again in the coming days and weeks.

Hong Kong opposition candidates gained control over 17 of 18 district councils last November.

With this success in mind, opposition parties aim for further success in September Legislative Council elections — to gain control of the 70-member legislative body to be able to block measures supported by Beijing.

The notion of pro-US 5th column elements controlling the city is unacceptable to China as it would be to virtually all other countries.

Would authorities in Washington tolerate Chinese control of New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles? The answer is self-evident.

Would the US go all-out to prevent this from happening?

It would virtually declare war by other means on disruptive actions to eliminate them — likely charging individuals involved with treason or sedition, arresting, prosecuting, convicting, and imprisoning them longterm.

SCMP noted that Beijing clearly lost patience over failure to quell US orchestrated Hong Kong protests by city authorities legislatively, a Chinese source saying:

“The violence last year and the increasing foreign intervention have triggered the move” — another source saying:

“(N)ational security is under threat, as some in Hong Kong are pursuing independence, waving foreign flags and even resorting to terrorist attacks (and) deeds of secession.”

If legislation becomes law in June as expected, it’ll be the first time for Hong Kong since colonial British rule ended in July 1997.

Enactment needs no approval by Hong Kong’s Legislative Council. HKSAR chief executive Carrie Lam reportedly supports the legislation.

So does the pro-establishment Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong.

Chinese Association of Hong Kong and Macao Studies official Lau Siu-kai explained that the HKSAR was weakened and became ineffective because of increased external pressures — why it’s vital for Beijing to act to counter US orchestrated disruptive actions.

Until now, China held off introducing countermeasures — other than rhetorical criticism of US policies, tariffs in response to ones imposed by Trump, and reductions in US imports, short-term actions.

Trump regime measures to undermine China’s economic, industrial, and technological development, provocative Pentagon military incursions near its territory, anti-Beijing legislation and White House actions, illegal US sanctions with likely more coming, and months of disruptive Hong Kong protests required China to act to protect its sovereign rights and security.

Trump regime hardliners elevated US hostility toward China to an unprecedented level since Nixon visited the country and met with Mao Zedong in February 1972 — almost half a century ago.

Washington’s imperial agenda poses a clear and present danger to China and other sovereign  nations unwilling to sacrifice their sovereign rights to US interests.

National security legislation may be the first of further steps by Beijing to counter increasingly hostile US actions that aim to marginalize, weaken, contain, and isolate the country.

It won’t work. China is rising, the US declining — heading eventually for the dustbin of history like all earlier empires, despite spending countless trillions of dollars to remain the dominant global superpower, at the expense of vital homeland needs.

Like earlier empires, the US is its own worst enemy.

It’s declining by waging endless wars by hot and other means against invented enemies, pressuring and bullying other nations to bend to its will, along with unacceptable indifference toward the fundamental rights, health, and welfare of the vast majority of its people.

It’s the same dynamic that doomed earlier empires, over time making more enemies than friends, losing public support, along with no end to ruinous military spending, mounting unrepayable debt, and unwillingness to change.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

“How can I confound myself with those who today already find a hearing? — Only the day after tomorrow belongs to me. Some are born posthumously.” Friedrich Nietzsche – The Antichrist

Introduction

2019 was a very interesting year in cinema, in particular for the South Korean film Parasite which became the first film in a language other than English to win Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards. The success of Parasite shows the changing attitude of Americans towards foreign cinema. 2019 also showed three major new films (national and international) with varying depictions of America’s relations with the rest of the world: Knives Out (2019), Bacurau (2019) and The Wandering Earth (2019). All three films present a hardening attitude towards taken-for-granted positive roles and image of the United States. This is unusual for mainstream cinema. In Knives out, an American film, a wealthy American family is depicted as a greedy, grasping lot in contrast to the South American caregiver of their father. Like Parasite, we see class and inequality playing itself out horrendously for the wealthy family as the tables turn against them in this modern whodunit.

In the Brazilian film Bacurau, a group of American adventurists bent on hunting human prey also end up badly as the village unites and fights back. In the Chinese science fiction film, The Wandering Earth, America is more conspicuous by its absence in a story of a world government saving the planet by shifting it off to revolve around another star. It is a film that doesn’t exclude the United States completely, but like its country’s diplomatic attitude of trying not to provoke a head-on confrontation with America, The Wandering Earth shows the Chinese getting on with things on their own initiative.

In all three films there is no negotiation, no crossover, no resolution, no happy ending whereby typically the United States resolves problems resulting in a negotiated, face-saving outcome that makes everyone happy. This is all a far cry from the outcome of an older film, The Day After Tomorrow from 2004, that also depicts the United States’ relationship with a Latin American country, Mexico. The Northern Hemisphere is freezing over and the immigration situation is reversed as thousands of Americans flood across the border into Mexico. While the Mexicans are not particularly happy about this (considering the American attitude to Mexican immigrants and the US border fences) they turn the situation to their advantage and negotiate a debt forgiveness deal. Which begs the question: what would the Mexicans have done if they had not owed the United States a lot of money? Would the Mexicans have kept them out? or would they generously have helped them anyway despite the way they were treated historically? All this shows why it is important to stay on good terms with one’s neighbours. But that was 2004.

In 2019 we see changing attitudes. In Knives Out, Bacurau, and The Wandering Earth we are shown something symbolically different by three different directors: how America sees itself, how Brazil sees the United States and how China perceives America. I will look at each of these three films in turn briefly to examine this changing attitude.

Knives Out

In Knives Out, wealthy crime novelist Harlan Thrombey is a self-made who’s novels have made him rich. His family all depend on, feed off, or siphon off funds from him. However, Harlan has decided he has had enough of keeping his extended family financially afloat. Marta is his low paid caregiver who treats all the family with great respect. She is a south/central American but nobody really knows or cares:

“RANSOM to HARLAN:  To your Brazilian nurse are you goddamn insane.”
“RICHARD: No, Marta your family came from Uruguay but you did it right, she did it legally, I’m saying.”
“LINDA: Uh. There was Fran, the housekeeper.  Marta, Harlan’s caregiver, good girl, hard worker. Family’s from Ecuador.”
“RICHARD: Good kid, been a good friend to Harlan. Her family’s from Paraguay. Linda really likes her work ethic.”

After Harlan’s death, Marta inherits all his property and money. The family use coercion, persuasion, threats and blackmail to try and get the property back. Harlan’s grandson Ransom coerces Marta into confessing to him and offers to help her in exchange for a share of the inheritance. The other Thrombeys try to persuade Marta to renounce the inheritance; Walt threatens to expose her mother as an undocumented immigrant:

“WALT: Marta if your mom came here illegally, criminally, if you come into this inheritance with the scrutiny that entails I’d be afraid that could come to light. That’s what we’re all trying to avoid here. We can protect you from that happening, or if it happens.
MARTA: You’re saying even if it came to light, with the family’s resources you could help me fix it.
WALT: Yes. The right lawyers, none of those local guys but New York lawyers, DC lawyers, enough resources put towards it, yes.  But there’s no need it should ever even come up. But yes.
MARTA: Ok. Good.
WALT: Ok?
MARTA: Cause Harlan gave me all your resources. So that means with my resources I’ll be able to fix it. So I guess I’m going to go find the right lawyers.”

Already Marta sees the advantages of having lots of money in a materialistic world. The family hope to have Marta convicted of Harlan’s death so that slayer law will invalidate the will. However, this does not happen as the whodunit story structure plays itself out. In the last scene the family are all looking up at Marta on the balcony holding a mug bearing the legend: “My house, my rules”. This time there will be no negotiation.

The family have no one to blame but themselves as all their aggressive tactics fail one by one. They lose everything in the process but most of all they lose respect and sympathy. Marta is an immigrant, a symbolic representative of Latin America, of the Third World. The First World is in a serious economic crisis with mounting debts. Is Knives Out a morality tale about the First World and the wider world? After decades of geopolitical manipulation and military action around the world combined with massive national debts, how would the First World be perceived if it all suddenly fell apart? So much of our economy is based on cheap production in Third World countries. If real wealth is rooted in production (and not digitally created fiat currencies) then could we also see a wealth switch some day?

Bacurau

Bacurau is a fictional Brazilian town that becomes the focus for a group of American gamers who want to use real people in a trophy hunting game. The town is cut off, first it disappears from maps and then their WiFi signal disappears. The group uses a drone to spy on the village. Michael, their leader is older and of German origin. When two Brazilian helpers of the gamer group kill locals they are shot for interfering in the ‘white people’s’ game. Their identity cards show that they work for the Brazil state. At first the towns people are confused about the random shootings of their neighbours. However, as they learn what is going on the villagers fall back on their own natural (and historical) survival skills as they remove their old guns from their village museum.

The gamers head to the village but are then abandoned by the leader, Michael (an ageing German played by Udo Kier), who goes to high ground to a sniper position. Without leadership, the first two gamers are outsmarted and killed by a Brazilian old couple who have guns. Michael shoots everything that moves in the village including the gamers (like the Nazi Amon Göth shooting random Jews from his balcony overlooking a concentration camp).

The rest of the gamers are killed by the hiding villagers. All are beheaded and their heads are displayed in front of church, but with no triumphalism. This act reflects the Brazilian folk hero Lampião and his cangaceiros (Cangaço – “social banditry” against the government) who had their heads publicly exhibited in a square.

Michael is captured and buried alive in the street cellar. The gamers have the latest weaponry but are killed by villagers using guerilla tactics and their ancient guns. They operate in self defense and their violence is not glorified. No mercy is shown to their mayor who collaborated with the Americans and he is tied naked to a donkey and sent off to die in the desert.

The clashing contrasts of high tech urbanism and Brazilian semi-desert give the feel of a 1960s science fiction film yet there is always a down-to-earth reason. The flying saucer turns out to be a drone and the two strangely dressed murderous motor bikers turn out to be Brazilians and not so alien after all.

As a metaphor for external influence in Brazil the film shows the resilience of the local people against attack from outside forces, and their merciless revenge on the Brazilians who sold them out for their own profit. Is Michael a metaphor for the Nazis who were sheltered in South America after the Second World War? If so his permanent incarceration in the street cellar has the look of an evil influence being sent down to Hell and covered over to prevent its escape back into society ever again.

In The Wandering Earth the sun is dying and people all around the world build giant planet thrusters to move Earth out of its orbit and bring Earth to revolve around the star Alpha Centauri. However as they pass Jupiter, Earth has a tremor and many of the earth engines stop working. The Earth is pulled in by Jupiter’s gravity and looks to be doomed to fail. However, “a contingency plan exists called Project Helios that involves preserving the crew of the Space Station, 300,000 frozen embryos, 100,000 seeds of basic crops, and digital libraries of all civilizations, should a disaster befall the Wandering Earth.”

Memorial Day weekend should be a time to reflect on why a day was established to commemorate lost lives of US military men and women who were sent to wage preemptive wars against other nations threatening no one.

From before the republic was established to the present day, US authorities proved time and again that America is a belligerent nation — perpetually at war against invented enemies.

All wars are based on Big Lies and deception. The US is like other belligerent nations in world history except that it’s far more powerful, destructive, and operates globally.

Its privileged class lets others do its fighting and dying, notably its underclass and jihadist proxies.

Its airmen terror-bomb from miles in the sky, never seeing the carnage they cause, including mangled corpses dismembered by munition.

Countless trillions of dollars are poured down a black hole of  unprecedented waste, fraud, and abuse to enrich America’s merchants of death and others profiteering from mass slaughter and destruction — while vital homeland needs go begging.

Lessons from two world wars weren’t learned. Is a third one inevitable by accident or design?

Is US rage against China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela and other countries pushing the envelope toward confrontation that could explode into something much more serious?

If global war 3.0 occurs, will today’s super-weapons be used?

The father of America’s nuclear navy Admiral Hyman Rickover told Congress in 1982 that when nations go to war, they’ll use whatever weapons exist in their arsenal to win, including their most powerful ones if needed.

US confrontation with China and Russia could risk going nuclear, notably because of the bipartisan criminal class in Washington that’s indifferent toward human life and welfare.

Given US rage against China and Russia, the only nations standing in the way of its ability to achieve dominion over planet earth, its resources, and populations, Thucydides trap conditions exist.

Over 2,400 years ago, the Greek historian warned about the risk of war because of an established power’s fear about a rising one.

Because of its unmatched super-weapons and valuable oil, gas, and other resources, the US craves transforming Russia into a vassal state the way it was in the neoliberal 90s.

It’s mostly concerned about China’s  political, economic, industrial, technological and military rise on the world stage — why US dark forces are going all-out to undermine its development, a futile effort doomed to fail.

Do militarists in Washington consider nuclear war a viable option to pursue their imperial agenda?

I was once asked on live television to comment on whether nuclear weapons are dearer than peace.

Because of their immense destructive power, are they unlikely to be used?

Is the US spending one or two trillion dollars on nuclear weapons upgrades over the next 30 years with no intention of using them? Or is it the other way around?

A nation that once used them could do it again. The risk of mass annihilation today is far greater than 75 years ago.

Egged on by militarists surrounding him, Trump once threatened North Korea with “fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Does he feel the same way about China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Cuba, etc.?

Loose cannon Pompeo said the following:

“Any decision impinging on Hong Kong’s autonomy and freedoms as guaranteed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law would inevitably impact our assessment of One Country, Two Systems and the status of the territory.”

Separately, he threatened Beijing with other consequences in response to its work in progress national security law.

Does the Trump regime have more sanctions on Chinese enterprises and officials in mind, increased tariffs on Chinese imports, maybe visa restrictions and/or asset freezes, and/or perhaps tougher measures that could escalate to direct confrontation?

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) earlier warned that nuclear war may be just “a temper tantrum away.”

As long as these weapons exist, the threat of their use is terrifyingly real — notably by the US against China, Russia, and/or Iran.

If the US attacks the Islamic Republic with nuclear or conventional weapons, much of the Middle East could explode in conflict that would bring war on Israeli territory and the US regional presence.

Iran could also block oil transport through the Gulf of Hormuz with devastating consequences to the world economy if it continues long enough.

If the US attacks China or Russia with nukes, humanity’s survival would be threatened like never before.

Cold War “mutually assured destruction (MAD)” kept these weapons from being used.

In the aftermath of the 1962 Cuba missile crisis, Jack Kennedy said he never had any intention of using these weapons.

Geopolitical know-nothing Trump is no JFK. Nor were the Clintons, Bush/Cheney and Obama/Biden.

For the first time in world history, the threat of possible nuclear war is ominously real.

Reportedly the Trump regime may conduct a nuclear test, the first by the US in 28 years if occurs — as a “message” to China and Russia.

According to an unnamed senior White House official quoted by the Washington Post, a possible US nuke test is “very much an ongoing conversation.”

As the nation honors its fallen service members, reflect on why they were sent abroad to fight in the first place when no wars from the 19th to the 21st century needed to be fought.

Wars are waged for wealth and power, threats invented to unjustifiably justify them.

Merchants of mass slaughter and destruction profit hugely. The misnamed “good war” was worst of all.

If the US hadn’t goaded imperial Japan to attack America, Pearl Harbor wouldn’t have happened.

If the US, Britain and France challenged Nazi Germany early after Hitler came to power instead of letting things escalate toward war by doing nothing, peace on the continent could have been maintained instead of WW II.

Wars are all about belligerents wanting them waged. Throughout its history, the US has been and remains a warrior state, abhorring peace and stability.

It shows by forever wars on humanity in multiple theaters, no end of them in prospect — along with a militarized homeland.

Will humanity be consumed by mushroom-shaped denouement because militarists in Washington may go too far?

Memorial Day hypocrisy ignores a nation permanently at war for world peace it abhors and won’t tolerate.

Achieving it would defeat its imperial aims, why forever US wars won’t end in our lifetime — maybe never until they end us.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tells us that despite the record of destroying in whole or part eight countries in recent years, the US is a “force for good.”  This is the Trump regime’s version of the neoconservative doctrine espoused by President Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright:

“If we have to use force, it is because we are America; we are the indispensable nation. We stand tall and we see further than other countries into the future, and we see the danger here to all of us.” 

The notion that Iraq was a danger to the US shows imbecility.  The inhumanity of Washington’s response to the “danger” was sanctions that resulted in the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked on national television if a half million dead children achieved a justified purpose, the heartless Albright said that it was “a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.”

The neoconservatives, with their preference for war uber alles are running the Trump regime.  It appears that the reelection of Donald Trump will be a continuation of the Bill Clinton presidency, the George W. Bush presidency, and the Obama presidency.  Whoever is elected War is the policy.

Philip Giraldi tells us about it. 

What Giraldi forgets to mention is that the “terrorist” groups are Washington’s creations and serve as Washington’s tools to advance the war agenda.  

Giraldi gives away too much when he characterizes the Hussein and Gaddafi governments as dictatorships.  Authority was centralized, as it is in Washington, but the governments had to balance contending forces in the societies and were dependent on a large element of consent. It is not certain that both countries were ruled any worse than the US, a country’s whose FBI and Department of Justice (sic) does not hesitate to frame-up the President of the United States and his National Security Advisor. The extraordinary conflict that Democrats brought to US political life since 2016 exceeds the internal conflict that had to be managed by Iraq’s Hussein and Libya’s Gaddafi.

Washington is certainly exceptional, but not in a good way.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

This week, the Syrian Army, Liwa al-Quds and the National Defense Forces have conducted a series of anti-ISIS raids in the Homs-Deir Ezzor desert.

The intensification of the anti-ISIS efforts followed an ISIS attack near Ghabagheb, on the Damascus-Deir Ezzor highway. On May 17, ISIS terrorists set up a fake checkpoint and killed several civilians and soldiers there. On May 18, the NDF and Liwa al-Quds sent reinforcements to the area of al-Sukhna from their positions near al-Rusafah in the province of Raqqah. Coordinated anti-ISIS raids started on May 19. In the following days, the army and its allies destroyed several ISIS hideouts in the area between Haribshi and Faydat Umm Muyni’a, and near Sukhna. The most intense clashes erupted between al-Quds and ISIS in the desert area near Palmyra on May 21.

According to photos and videos released by government sources, several ISIS members were eliminated and at least 3 vehicles were captured in these raids. Despite this, the desert is still infested with terrorists. Early on May 22, terrorists ambushed an army vehicle near al-Rusafah.

Additionally, ISIS cells conducted at least 5 attacks on government forces in the provinces of Daraa and al-Quneitra. On May 18, a soldier was shot and killed on a road between al-Sahoah and al-Musayfrah. On the same day, ISIS killed a local accusing him of being a “spy” for the Military Intelligence Directorate in al-Jeezah. On May 19, two soldiers were shot and killed near the town of Kafr Shams. On May 19, a security officer was shot and killed near the town of al-Harah. On May 19, a soldier was killed near Khan Arnabeh.

These developments demonstrate that terrorists successfully used the timeout that they got thanks to the Turkish-Syrian conflict in Idlib and now government forces will need contribute extensive efforts to neutralize the resurfaced ISIS network in southern and eastern Syria.

On May 20, Ankara and Moscow made another small but important step in implementing the southern Idlib de-escalation agreement. A joint patrol held by the Russian Military Police and the Turkish Army for the first time bypassed the town of Arihah on the M4 highway and reached the village of Kafer Shalaya west of it. It became the longest patrol held by the sides since the reaching of the de-escalation agreement in March.

Earlier in May, Turkish forces managed to remove a protest camp blocking the M4 highway. According to local sources, the removal of the protest was Ankara’s tactical agreement with al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham. In any case, this helped to de-escalate the situation along at least a part of the M4 security zone. At the same time, the town of Jisr al-Shughur controlled by another al-Qaeda-linked group, the Turkistan Islamic Party, still remains an important source of instability in the area.

In northeastern Syria, the Syrian Army continues its campaign to limit the freedom of operations of the US-led coalition. On May 20, Syrian troops intercepted a US military convoy near Umm al-Khair and forced it to retreat to its positions near al-Hasakah. US forces in fact found themselves surrounded at their positions near oil fields that the Trump administration wanted so much.

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It has been a withering time for the airlines, whose unused planes moulder in a gruelling waiting game of survival.  The receivers are smacking their lips; administration has become a reality for many.  Governments across the globe dispute what measures to ease in response to the coronavirus pandemic; travel has been largely suspended; and the hope is that some viable form will resume at some point soon. 

For the low-cost airline EasyJet, a further problem has presented itself.  Earlier in the week, the company revealed that it had “been the target of an attack from a highly sophisticated source”, resulting in a data breach affecting nine million customers.  Of those, 2,208 customers (“a very small subset”, as the company wished to emphasise) had had their credit and debit card details “accessed”.    

The UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office had been informed about the incident but the company only revealed this catastrophic lapse in data security to individuals, as it told the BBC, “once the investigation had progressed enough that we were able to identify whether any individuals had been affected, then who had been impacted and what information had been accessed.”

EasyJet were also quick to douse the fires of this grim chapter in data insecurity. 

“There is no evidence that any personal information of any nature has been misused, however, on the recommendation of the ICO, we are communicating with the approximately nine million customers whose travel details were accessed to advise them of protective steps to minimise any risk of potential phishing.”

This phishing risk entails that opening any suspicious email purporting to be from EasyJet is simply a risk not worth taking.  Naturally, the company will have to inform, and have informed customers of that very risk, resulting in a peculiar circularity: Who to believe and what enables the recipient to detect the suspicious?  As digital privacy expert Ray Walsh opines, “Anybody who has ever purchased an EasyJet flight is advised to be extremely wary when opening emails from now on.”

For the company’s part, customers whose credit card details were compromised have received an email with a unique code, ostensibly to access services provided by a third party. A call centre to deal with concerns arising from the hack has also been established, though service on that has been typically sloppy.

Airline companies have a rather patchy record in the field of data security.  In the cybersecurity department, they seem to be rather thin, a failing that matches a global tendency.  (A 2018 report suggested a shortage of some 2.93 million.)   The implications to both airline companies and aviation infrastructure have been of such magnitude as to prompt warnings that it is merely a matter of time before aircraft are themselves the subject of cyber-attack.

The honour board on compromised customer data is a long one.  Cathay Pacific Airways experienced an attack on the scale of that of EasyJet, with a hacker accessing the personal information of 9.4 million customers over a four-year period.  This was also a case that interested the ICO, resulting in a pre-General Data Protection Regulation fine of £500,000.  The ICO investigation revealed that the airline lacked adequate security controls to ensure the integrity of passenger data within internal IT systems.  This “resulted in the unauthorised access” to “passengers’ personal details including: names, passport and identity details, dates of birth, postal and email addresses, phone numbers and historical travel information.” 

Cathay Pacific’s systems were penetrated via an internet server enabling the installation of data harvesting malware.  It did not help that the data storage regime in place was weak and complacent.  Back-up files were not password protected; internet-facing serves were unpatched; the presence of inadequate and outdated anti-virus protection software was noted.

British Airways was less fortunate in being fined £183 million in 2019 by the ICO, armed with the more punitive powers of the GDPR, for failing to take adequate steps in protecting the personal information of some 380,000 customers.  The 2018 compromise of data took place through bookings made on its website (ba.com) and the British Airways mobile app over the course of a 15 day period.  As with EasyJet, the company adopted a strategy of understating the effect of it all.  Yes, personal details had been stolen, including the names, addresses and financial information of customers, but those cheeky hackers did not make away with passport or travel details.  And, before anybody should get too excited, the cyber incident was, according to a spokesperson for British Airways, “data theft, rather than a breach”. 

None of this impressed the Information Commissioner Elizabeth Denham.  “People’s personal data is just that – personal.  When an organisation fails to protect it from loss, damage or theft, it is more than an inconvenience. That’s why the law is clear – when you are entrusted with personal data you must look after it.” 

Not to be left out, Air Canada also confirmed a data breach on its mobile app in August 2018, though the scale was a more modest 20,000 individuals.  One defective feature of the airline’s operating systems stood out: a mediocre password policy accepting only letters and numbers.

Such patterns of compromise are all too common in the commercial aviation industry, but EasyJet’s Chief Executive Officer Johan Lungren claims to be wiser after the fact.  “Since we became aware of the incident, it has become clear that owing to COVID-19 there is heightened concern about personal data being used for online scams.”  Pressed by the ICO, “we are contacting those customers whose travel information was accessed and we are advising them to be extra vigilant particularly if they receive unsolicited communications.” A fine of some magnitude is expected. 

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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]

I never met the great basketball player, Bob Cousy, the man known as “the Houdini of the Hardwood,” yet he somehow influenced my life in ways I never knew, or to be more accurate, in ways I didn’t reflect upon except in superficial ways.  He was the guy who brought professional basketball into the modern era with his bag of fancy tricks that included no-look and behind-the-back passes, uncanny dribbling, and a magical court sense that made the fast break into an exquisite art form. The captain and point-guard of the Boston Celtics from 1950-1963, Cousy led the Celtics to six NBA titles, made thirteen all-star teams, and changed professional basketball from a stodgy, boring, and slow game into a fast-paced spectacle, entertainment as much as sport. He was a wizard with a basketball and set the stage for Guy Rodgers, “Pistol Pete” Maravich, Bob Dylan, Magic Johnson, and Steve Nash, among other tricksters, modern Hermes.

Over the years I have written a great deal on a very wide-range of topics, but it wasn’t until a friend from high school recently sent me Gary Pomeranz’s fascinating book, The Last Pass: Cousy, Russell, the Celtics, and What Matters in the End, that something clicked for me.  A few weeks previously, as the weather had turned spring-like, I had started to shoot hoops at our basket in the driveway. The warm air, the feel of a loose flowing freedom as I dribbled and shot, brought me back to the days when I spent so many hours playing in the Bronx schoolyards of my youth, perfecting my skills in what I can only call a fanatical way. Rushing to the schoolyard after school and on Saturday mornings to be the first there, to command the court, to compete with the older guys and beat their asses. Traveling around the city’s best basketball neighborhoods to play and make my mark. The endless hours in gyms. The search for perfection.  The adrenaline rush, the thrill, the joy of the perfect pass, the sweet swish of the net from a shot you had practiced a thousand times. From the age of eleven until twenty-three, basketball was central to my life and identity. It was my passion.

It was during these recent days shooting around that I started to have almost nightly dreams of my younger years, playing basketball in high school and then in college on a Division I scholarship.  They were very vivid dreams, and at the time, I didn’t understand why I was having them.  And they were starting to annoy me, as persistent and weird dreams can do. Begone, dread spirits!  Yet I knew they were telling me to heed their tales told when no one was looking, only this dreamer in the night.

While this was happening, I wrote an article about Bob Dylan and his recent release of “Murder Most Foul,” his powerful song about the assassination of President Kennedy, wherein he brilliantly accuses elements within the U.S. government and intelligence forces of killing the president in cold blood, while framing Lee Harvey Oswald for the deed. I had written about Dylan before, loved his music, and found him an intriguing if enigmatic character, a Houdini of song. “Murder Most Foul” seemed to burst out of Dylan after decades of avoiding straight-forward political themes. It struck me that with this song he had ripped off the masks he had been wearing for decades, as if he were Odysseus at the end of The Odyssey, shrugging off his beggar’s rags and announcing to the suitors of his wife Penelope that the gig was up and they were going down. It seemed to me that Dylan was coming full-circle, as if he were coming home to take revenge on the killers who had scarred his youth, as they did mine and so many others’.  “Like a musician, like a harper, when/ with quiet hand upon his instrument,” Odysseus lets the arrow sing, Dylan reaches back to sing:

The day they blew out the brains of the king
Thousands were watching, no one saw a thing
It happened so quickly, so quick, by surprise
Right there in front of everyone’s eyes
Greatest magic trick ever under the sun
Perfectly executed, skillfully done

Slowly it dawned on me that everyone’s life has a shape, as if it were a drawing or story or song. And that if we pay close attention and see through all the snares and temptations meant to divert us from our true paths, we will find our beginnings in our ends and without directions we will find our way home.

It is very hard to explain to someone who didn’t know you once upon a time long before you met, how important certain activities were to you, what they meant and still mean in the deepest recesses of your psyche.  How they shaped you, or better still, how you used them to bend your life when you strung your bow so effortlessly to hit the target that you aimed for. Or thought you were aiming for.  My life in basketball shaped the man that I became, but my wife only knows the aftermath since she met me when I had taken a long twenty-five-year vacation from basketball.  Like Cousy, sitting and talking with Pomeranz, or Dylan sharpening his arrows and letting them fly in his new song False Prophet, I could say:

You don’t know me darlin’ – you never would guess
I’m nothing like my ghostly appearance would suggest
I ain’t no False Prophet – I just said what I said
I’m here to bring vengeance on somebody’s head

While I am half-way through reading the Cousy book, I get its drift, where it’s heading. In conversations with Pomeranz, he is hoping to be inspired to understand the journey that has left him, an old man, frightened, alone, and approaching death in a large house in Worcester, Massachusetts, trying to understand, not only his fraught relationship with his black Celtic teammate, Bill Russell, but what his life has been all about, the court wizardry and cheers, the years on the road, the applause and awards, the championships and the price they exacted. He went to the basketball wars and won, came home, but now wonders what home really means. Unlike Odysseus, he only has ghosts to slay.  His wife is dead, and no suitors occupy the great house of shades.  There is no one to kill except his regrets.

My friend, Wayne, who sent me the book, spent three years in high school with me studying Greek, and over the course of those years, we translated Homer’s The Odyssey line by line. We were also basketball teammates. Odysseus, of course, was the ultimate trickster, the man of many wiles and disguises, what the nymph Calypso, who held Odysseus captive for seven years on her island Ogygia, called “a rascal.”  Like Houdini, Odysseus was able to escape this phantom island with the help of the messenger and trickster Hermes. Like Cousy, Odysseus was the Houdini of the ancient world, the hero who could escape any trap and thread an arrow through the smallest space to defeat the enemy.  Cousy’s fierceness on the court is legendary; his poker face hid the killer instinct, like Odysseus with his wily habit of standing with downcast eyes to disguise his intent.  Cousy could thread a pass between an opponent’s eyes without them blinking.  They often never knew what hit them.

I was reminded of this as I was rereading bits of Bob Dylan’s fascinating and poetic memoir, Chronicles: Volume I, and came upon his memory of hearing the news of the death of “Pistol” Pete Maravich, the greatest scorer in college basketball history and a magician without par on the court. Maravich was Cousy’s heir, and the blood line connects to Dylan also, a Houdini with words.  It was January 5, 1988:

My aunt was in the kitchen and I sat down with her to talk and drink coffee.  The radio was playing and morning news was on.  I was startled to hear that Pete Maravich, the basketball player, had collapsed on a basketball court in Pasadena, just fell over and never got up.  I’d seen Maravich play in New Orleans once, when the Utah Jazz were the New Orleans Jazz.  He was something to see – mop of brown hair, floppy socks – the holy terror of the basketball world – high flyin’ – magician of the court.  The night I saw him he dribbled the ball with his head, scored a behind the back, no look basket – dribbled the length of the court, threw the ball up off the glass and caught his own pass.  He was fantastic.  Scored something like thirty-eight points.  He could have played blind.  Pistol Pete hadn’t played professionally for a while, and he was thought of as forgotten.  I hadn’t forgotten about him, though.  Some people seem to fade away but then when they are truly gone, it’s like they didn’t fade away at all.

He goes on to write that after hearing the news of Pistol Pete’s sad death playing pickup basketball, he started and completed the song “Dignity” the same day, and in the days that followed song after song flowed from his pen.  The news of one creative spirit’s death gave birth to another creative spirit’s gift to life.  (I am reminded of Shakespeare writing Hamlet after his father’s death.) “It’s like I saw the song up in front of me and overtook it, like I saw all the characters in this song and elected to cast my fortunes with them …. The wind could never blow it out of my head.  This song was a good thing to have.  On a song like this, there’s no end to things.”

No one wants to end, to fade away. To not be recognized. To die and be forgotten. To fail to make their mark. Not Dylan, Cousy, Maravich, me, nor you.  We all wish to become who we feel we were meant to be. To fulfill the creative dreams we had when young and not to waste our lives in trivial pursuits. Years pass and people often ask with Dylan in “Shooting Star”:

Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of me
If I was still the same
If I ever became what you wanted me to be
Did I miss the mark or overstep the line
That only you could see?
Seen a shooting star tonight
And I thought of me

I keep thinking: who is you for you?  For me?

When I was a young boy, I wanted to stand out, to be exceptional, to be one-of-a-kind, an individual. Basketball became my obsession and Bob Cousy my idol.  I wanted to be a shooting star, a dribbling star, a passing star. I watched him on television, studying him. His every move inspired me to imitate it.  I would spend hours every day practicing behind the back passes, first right-handed, then left, against the wall where I had marked an x in chalk.  I worked on my peripheral vision, so I could see the whole court and control the show. In the hidden recesses of my basement, I used tape to mark spots on the floor where I spent hour after hour dribbling behind my back, first this way and then that, past imaginary opponents. I made dribbling glasses with black tape out of my mother’s old sun glasses.  Worked on circling the ball behind my back either way. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, I devoted myself to perfecting my basketball skills as a point guard. Being like Bob Cousy. Being the one whose magic feats were the talk of the town the following day.

One day, I met and talked with Paul Newman on the street after high school basketball practice. When I was leaving, he called me Fast Eddie, which to my mind added to the mystique I felt as a trickster on the hardwood.  I felt fast and loose like Paul’s character Eddie Felson in The Hustler when he was on a roll with his cue stick, “You don’t have to look, you just Know.  You make shots that nobody has ever made before. I can play that game the way…. Nobody’s ever played it before.” That was my goal and the impetus behind my fanatical devotion to practice. I loved it, there was joy in it, but there was also a driven quality to my quest.

For whom?  Only you?

I was easily bored by conventional life and conventional basketball.  But the conventional world surrounded me. It was in school, church, the way people talked and walked; it seemed like people were straight-jacketed, which they were.  Blake’s mind-forged manacles. I sensed people were dissemblers, and that lies were the essence of social life.

Nowhere was this truer than on the basketball court in high school and college where the coaches had their systems and their rules and discouraged innovation, as if it would reveal them to be artists in disguise, weird, less-than-manly men who couldn’t run a tight ship.  They always rewarded those who obeyed them and kept within the strict rules of the system. Creativity frightened them.  The old ways sufficed.  It was just like society, and though Cousy had broken through and been idolized for doing so, he had retired from the Celtics in the spring of 1963, while the high school and college programs were stuck in the past.

I felt imprisoned. I wanted to bust out and play free.  Be free. It was like the classics that I studied in school: the lesson was always that the exploits you read about were things of the past, and now we were civilized gentlemen who must learn the rules of the game and play by them.  Tradition. But the rules were suffocating me.

The rules of the game had almost brought the world to an end during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962. The rules of the game had created a system of war and racism that was badly broken, resulting in the savage killing not only a President who had undergone a radical spiritual conversion toward peace-making, but four little black girls in the 16^thStreet Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama on Sunday September 15, 1963, the week I started college with my trivial young man’s dreams of being the Cousy of college hoops.  The rules of the game would soon be violated by Dylan at the 1964 Newport Folk Festival, when he would shock Pete Seeger and others with his song, “Mr. Tambourine Man,” a radical break with strictly political songs in favor of pure dazzling poetry in song.  That was a Cousy moment, poetry in motion, Houdini out of the locked box, dancing “beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free.”

Bob Dylan, whose life and career follows Odysseus’ trajectory, ended his 2017 Nobel Award Lecture with the first line of the Odyssey: “Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.” My friend Wayne and I, together with all our high school classmates, had memorized those lines in Greek.  They were ingrained in us for life, as they have been for Dylan.

But tell what story?  For whom?  Only you?

Dylan has told so many. Here’s one I have for you, one you never heard. Here are the opening lines; let’s call it Book I, not that a Goddess intervened, but it was, in Odysseus’ words, the beginning of the end of my “clean-cut game.”

Shortly after President Kennedy was murdered in Dallas on November 22, 1963, I played my first college basketball game.  In those days, all freshman were required by the rules of the game to play one year of freshman basketball before playing varsity.  This was the day I had been waiting for since the sixth grade when my dedication to basketball began.  My blood was flowing fast, I had no fear, and was ready to use all the skills I had spent years honing.  The stands were packed.  My proud family sat a few rows up behind our bench, my parents and four of my sisters, one of whom was eight and the other eleven.

The game was close, back and forth it went.  With about a minute and a half left, we were leading by two points.  The other coach called a time out with the ball in their possession. In the huddle, our coach assigned me to guard the opponent’s best player, a six-foot-four inch jumping jack who was highly acclaimed and a very good player by the name of Albie Grant.  I was five-foot-eleven, and beside my offensive skills, was a tough and tenacious very well-conditioned defender who took pride in sticking to an opponent like glue.  They threw the ball in and screened for Grant. He got the ball and I got in his face.  He went up for a jump shot from about 20 feet out, and since I was not going to block his shot, I did what all good defenders do, I got my hand in front of his eyes.  But he made the shot anyway, and the referee called a shooting foul on me.  But I never touched him.  It was a terrible call, but I could do nothing about it.

Behind my back, I could hear my coach cursing me out with every name in the book – you fucking bastard, you shit, etc.  He could be heard throughout the arena.  The crowd went silent.  He kept cursing me out and my already sweaty, red face must have turned purple.  I felt on fire.  He took me out of the game, a game I had played throughout.  He kept cursing at me.  I sat away from him on the bench and he came down and stood over me, calling me every name in his limited vocabulary, you fucking this, you fucking that.  I looked at him in rage.  The game continued.  Grant made the free throw and we lost by one point.  As we walked off the court to the locker room door at the end, he kept screaming invective at me.  I could feel my rage swelling. My family was descending from the stands and could hear it all.  I noticed others staring in disbelief. To say it was humiliating barely captures what it felt like, but just as I played the game fiercely, I was not one to take such abuse.  But I kept telling myself to control myself.  It was the coach who was making a fool of himself.  Then, when we entered the locker room, he let loose at me again, you fucking idiot, you fucking bastard….when I snapped and grabbed him by his shirt and tie, my hands around his neck, I threw him up against the wall and let him have it, screaming that I’d had enough of his shit and I would kill him if he ever did it again.  All hell broke loose as people were pulling me off him, and my father, who was outside the locker room, came rushing in to intervene.

Years of passionate dedication to becoming the best basketball player I could, came to this.  I had reacted in fury to being humiliated “in my own house” in front of my family.  I think now of Odysseus when he stood on the broad door sill and killed AntÍnoös, the worst of the suitors of his wife, Penelope.  “Odysseus’ arrow hit him under the chin/ and punched up to the feathers through his throat.”  How dare he take revenge and defend his honor, came the shouts from the easily offended but secretly guilty. The other suitors screamed at him: “Foul!  To shoot at a man!  That was your last shot.”

It wasn’t mine, but that is the rest of the story.  My craft changed in the following years.  I no longer tried to imitate other tricksters like Bob Cousy or Bob Dylan.  They have their own tales to tell and dwell upon. Their words are not mine.

Now I play with words in my own way.

But like Bob Dylan, “I return once again to Homer who says, ‘Sing in me, oh Muse, and through me tell the story.’

Our stories often happen behind our backs where we can’t see them. Telling them is the trick.  You need to turn around and see what’s behind you to pass them around.

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Distinguished author and sociologist Edward Curtin is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Visit the author’s website here.

The consolidation of the Venezuelan civilian-military union has been key to defeating U.S. led coup attempts. The revolution is holding its ground, not only in Venezuela but throughout the region.

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In October 2019, when a wave of protest swept over Chile, President Sebastián Piñera called out the army, invoking the “state of emergency” clause of the Constitution. The image of soldiers in the streets and the enforcement of curfew immediately evoked a dark history. Since then, the majority of the bloody repression has been carried out by the national police, which has been reporting to the military commanders in Santiago, Valparaíso and other cities under the state of emergency.

These situations are oppressive not only for Latin America but also for countries like Canada, where Pinochet remains part of the collective memory handed down by a progressive generation that opposed his horror to its descendants. The experience also remains vivid in the minds of the many Canadians and Quebecers of Chilean origin who had to flee the Pinochet dictatorship.

Simultaneously, in Colombia as in Chile, uprisings and strikes have had to confront the armed forces, either directly or indirectly.

In Brazil, the peoples’ resistance to the right-wing Bolsonaro government has been ubiquitous since he won the 2018 elections, following the imprisonment of his main opponent, Lula da Silva.

In Bolivia, the scenario was different: the United States and its allies, backed by the army, fomented a coup d’état based on the lie that Evo Morales’s election had been fraudulent. It is known that the chief army officials involved in the coup were trained at the School of the Americas in the United States.

The experiences of Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Argentina and Bolivia all stand in stark contrast to that of Venezuela. Indeed, they are poles apart: reaction on the one hand, revolution on the other. It is not that the United States has not attempted to subvert the Venezuelan Armed Forces; indeed, much effort has been expended to try and turn them into a replica of their counterparts in those countries where reaction has dominated. The effort has not succeeded.

What is the explanation? Let us compare these different cases. In an online interview, Claude Morin, a professor retired from the Department of History at the Université de Montréal and possibly the most important Latin Americanist in Quebec, stated that the Colombian army is composed of soldiers trained to fight an insurgency, to kill guerrillas and commit massacres against any communities that may be inclined to support them. The recruits have been conditioned to perform these tasks; that is, to see people and civilians as a threat. The officers have been trained with manuals from the US School of the Americas.

In its fight against the guerrillas, the army has built ties with paramilitary groups and has contracted out assassinations. Under the term of former President Álvaro Uribe, the army received bonuses for killing peasants and then dressing them up as guerrillas (the scandal of the “false positives”). This was “an industry of death carried out in bad faith,” concludes Morin.

Until 1973, the Chilean army was considered faithful to the Constitution. But, with the arrival of the Popular Unity government, US opposition to the democratic socialism of Salvador Allende and the polarization of Chilean society caused the army to side against the government. Pinochet succeeded with his coup d’état and established a radically different military government. The coup plotters purged the army of officers and soldiers who had opposed the coup, and subsequent acts of state terrorism left more than 3,000 dead or disappeared.

The Chilean officer corps has always recruited from the elites, while soldiers have generally come from the working class. “I don’t know the extent to which the army could have been someone’s stepping stone to higher social status,” says Morin, “but I believe that the armed forces have inculcated in working-class recruits an ideology favourable to the elites, the oligarchy and the status quo.”

Moving to Argentina, Morin compares the ideology of national security prevalent during the “dirty war” in that country (1976–1984) with that of Colombia. High-ranking officers were recruited from the oligarchy; anti-Communism was the common factor holding all the factions together. “The unrest in Argentina during the 1960s, the anti-Peronist authorities, a succession of military governments between 1954 (Perón’s overthrow) and 1984 (return of civilian government with Alfonsín), and the ‘dirty war’ created a context of repression of all effective or apprehended protest against the established order, which considered the protesters as subversives.”

As a reader of the Argentine press, Morin concludes that under Macri’s presidency, the officers have been able to show their faces once more, taking their places as a bulwark against a mass uprising.

When the coup took place in Brazil, US Ambassador Gordon egged on the Brazilian officers, and the coup perpetrators were reassured by the presence of US warships off the coast. “The United States and the officials involved were concerned by Goulart’s ties to Cuba and the fact that Che Guevara had been inducted into the Order of the Southern Cross. Here again, anti-Communism came on the scene.”

In a 2003 article, Marta Harnecker states that the Venezuelan military had seven defining features that made it not only different from the ones described above, but almost the polar opposite. It served as a natural growth medium for Chavism.

First, Venezuelan officers and soldiers were profoundly influenced by the ideas and thinking of Simón Bolívar on national and people’s sovereignty. Second, soldiers in Chávez’s day were trained at the Venezuelan Military Academy, not the School of the Americas. Third, the historical conditions were different. Guerrilla insurgency was not a big problem, so indoctrination in the Cold War anti-communist ideology was much less necessary. In fact, when Chávez’s generation entered the academy in 1970, guerrilla activity had already been rooted out. Fourth, the Venezuelan military was not controlled by an elite military caste. Fifth, in 1989, the popular uprising known as the “Caracazo” politicized many lower-ranking officers, making them sympathetic to left-leaning ideas and more hostile to the political elite. Sixth, the decade preceding the Caracazo,characterized by an abrupt rise in socioeconomic inequality, had already begun to radicalize lower-ranking officers. Finally, Chávez’s proposal to restructure the armed forces after his election in 1998 gave them a new purpose and a way to channel the frustrations built up in previous decades.

These characteristics have laid a solid foundation for the consolidation of the Venezuelan civilian-military union and efforts to fend off the continual US-led attempts to overthrow the government, from January 2019 until the present, thus confirming that revolution is winning out over reaction, not only in Venezuela but throughout the region.

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This article was originally published on Granma.

Featured image is from Sputnik

Read Part I here.

Omnipotence and Omniscience in the 21st century

The contact-tracing platforms – both digital and human-based – being rolled out around the world have their philosophical roots in religious rites of confession, cross-bred with the police-state logic of the National Security Agency (“if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear”) and coupled with the religious notion of an all-seeing, all-knowing deity.

All deviation from lockdown dogma is logged and reported, including consorting with known heretics, and this Panopticon – attacked when it debuted in China allegedly as totalitarian police-state control – is now being embraced in western media as the work of benevolent governments concerned with citizen welfare. While this transformation was laid out chillingly in ‘Lock Step,’ a hypothetical future outlined in 2010 in the Rockefeller Foundation and Global Business Network’s “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” any discussion of predictive programming is off-limits.

Indeed, Corona Cultists are encouraged to cut off their “conspiracy theorist” relatives, because, in the words of Canadian broadcaster CBC, “conspiracies can be just as infectious, just as dangerous as a virus – so you have to guard against them.”

Parents in Wales are being warned that conspiracy theorists are a greater threat than pedophiles on the internet. Compounding the seriousness of wrongthink, the WHO has popularized the term “infodemic” – implying ideas are as dangerous to one’s health as pathogens – and recommended a “vaccine for misinformation.”

Soon, the Corona Cultist will no longer have to self-report their symptoms on a Facebook survey or confess their sins to a contact-tracer. Massachusetts Institute of Technology has developed clothing with embedded sensors to monitor the wearer’s vital signs. Enabled by the 5G networks being fast-tracked while any potential opposition is locked down, these sensors will communicate in real time with surveillance smart grids, pinpointing the offender and alerting others to give them a wide berth, refuse to serve them, and eventually have them “neutralized.”

Their bank account may be frozen until they return home, or even debited a certain fine based on the degree of disobedience (“that’ll be 20 Hail Bills…or $20 per minute outside the home, your choice”).

Eventually, these sensors will be implanted inside the body – in what sounds like the plot of a science fiction dystopia, Microsoft secured a patent in March for a system that mines cryptocurrency based on physiological signals, theoretically permitting the corporation to ‘reward’ users based on desirable responses to certain stimuli. While the example they gave was banal – a reward for watching an advertisement – it’s no great leap to imagine equivalent punishments for those who respond with disgust to the ruling class’ propaganda.

The all-knowing, all-seeing God micromanaging His followers, a religious trope that has been used to keep large populations in line for millennia, has finally been realized in the form of the Covid-19 police state. Big Brother wields technology as both carrot – gently shepherding His flock toward transhumanist perfection by offering a facsimile of freedom in return for downloading an app, accepting a “quantum dot tattoo,” or showing a “certificate of immunity” on demand – and stick, digitally and literally imprisoning those who deviate from His shining future.

A breathtakingly wealthy coalition of billionaires and their pet statesmen have seized their own slice of the divine by appointing themselves Big Brother’s agents on earth. From the messianic glow of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen as she solicits money from cash-strapped European nations, to the aforementioned sweater-vested Gates channelling Nostradamus with predictions of “Pandemic Two,” to second-generation New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (whose PR people have laid it on thick with hashtags like #Cuomosexual and #CuomoForPresident even as his state leads the world in infections and deaths and his policies of mandating nursing homes accept Covid-19-positive patients literally “kill Grandma”) epitomizing “New York Tough” by acting out #resistance to Trump even as his brother was supposedly laid low by the virus, there’s no end of ruling-class Heroes™ basking in the admiration of the Corona Cultists, who offer up their (and everyone else’s) rights on a silver platter, never to be seen again.

Can constant surveillance stop the virus?

There’s nothing wrong with clinging to ritual in a time of uncertainty – certainly hand-washing doesn’t have a downside, presuming one stops short of wearing the skin off one’s hands. But when that ritual harms others, it must be questioned. Covid-19 zealots would argue that they have science on their side, but the science is far from settled on the effectiveness of social distancing and sweeping economic shutdowns.

Pseudoscience on a rampage

As social media censors tighten the screws on what information is permitted to enter the public sphere, it becomes increasingly difficult to pretend the Cult of Corona is based on science.

Actual science relies upon constant inquiry, testing, and hypothesizing, and even those claims generally attested to by its practitioners are considered “theories” as opposed to unchangeable truths. Science-as-religion, on the other hand, denounces those who put forth dissenting theories as heretics, using slurs like “quack,” “charlatan,” and “anti-vaxxer” to marginalize, for example, medical practitioners who heal people without the use of pharmaceutical drugs.

The social media platforms’ decision to unilaterally deplatform content that contradicts the WHO’s narrative is anti-scientific in the extreme, sacrificing the spirit of inquiry for the strictures of groupthink. It’s rendered even more Kafkaesque due to continuing shifts in the WHO’s own narrative, which has changed as more is learned about the virus (as scientific understanding tends to do).

The idea that YouTube’s content moderators know better than a medical doctor how to treat Covid-19 would have been considered laughable just six months ago, yet Google’s video platform has repeatedly removed videos of licensed, practicing clinicians discussing their experiences.

A pair of “rogue” doctors in Bakersfield, California who held a lengthy press conference laying out their findings and questioning the wisdom of prolonged lockdowns – broadcast on a local network TV station – went viral, only for YouTube to remove nearly every copy while pundits denounced the pair as “coronavirus truthers.” Their video did not attempt to project their own experiences onto the world – indeed, where they did cite statistics outside of Bakersfield, they used “official” statistics from health authorities, in Sweden and elsewhere, to support their claim that the fatality rate was being significantly overestimated because most cases were asymptomatic. Their video was literally broadcast on “mainstream media,” an “authoritative source” in the eyes of YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki. But its incompatibility with prevailing coronavirus dogma meant it had to be destroyed.

The orthodox narrative also jettisons long-accepted science about immunity. Vitamin D – obtained from sunlight absorbed through the skin – has been proven in study after study to be integral to a healthy immune system, and several recent studies have demonstrated its importance in surviving Covid-19 infection. Likewise, loneliness has been linked to diminished immune function and poor health in general, especially in elderly people (i.e. those most susceptible to Covid-19), and even those who are quite content with being alone are experiencing diminished immune stimulation due to not interacting with other people.

The link between isolation and ill health is so strong that even the media establishment has quietly acknowledged it, and solitary confinement is considered cruel and unusual punishment in many countries. No less than the World Economic Forum, co-organizer of the notorious Event 201 simulation that served as a dress rehearsal for Covid-19 itself, has called the stay-at-home orders that have confined more than half the world’s population to their homes “the world’s biggest psychological experiment.” The ruling-class conclave warned “we will pay the price” in a secondary mental-illness epidemic, one which its members – heavily invested in the pharmaceutical companies that are among the biggest winners of the pandemic – are no doubt poised to cash in on with antidepressants, benzodiazepines and antipsychotics aplenty. Nevertheless, questioning the wisdom of prolonged isolation in the form of extended lockdowns is still seen as anathema.

Deprogramming

To begin to free humanity from the influence of the Corona Cult, it’s important to understand how its programming took hold. Guilt – environmental guilt, racial guilt, class-based guilt – is the primary route of attack. The media establishment initially attempted to link the coronavirus outbreak to climate change, with even the Pope climbing on board the narrative, though no scientific basis exists to support it and it has since been somewhat de-emphasized. Heretics are repeatedly accused of prioritizing their own convenience over the health of society, especially its most vulnerable members – the elderly, the sick, even poor and non-white populations. Depending on the target audience, anti-lockdown heretics are said to be scientifically-illiterate “covidiots” or heartless monsters consigning the disadvantaged to die for capitalism. Guilt and shame are powerful conversion tools, and even those who remain unconverted are likely to hold their tongues in a sociological phenomenon known as the spiral of silence.

At the same time, humanity’s innate religious tendencies (present in even atheists – millennia of programming don’t vanish just because a person comes to the realization they live in a godless universe) – have been hijacked. It’s no coincidence that governments imposing lockdowns have singled out places of worship for particular animus – anyone attending religious services is presumably content enough with their god(s) that they’re unlikely to ditch their faith for a virus-venerating cult-come-lately. Constantly bombarded with messages of uncertainty and kept from communing with their usual faith, even people normally secure in their religion will reach for the stability the Corona Police State provides – authoritarianism’s flip side is paternalism, and comfort is found in the arms of Big Brother. Among the non-religious, liberal and libertarian populations alike are targeted with the weaponization of medical jargon – a simple “what’s the matter, you don’t believe in science?” sends weak-willed groupthinkers into shameful silence while their freedoms are methodically amputated.

It is supremely ironic that in this Inquisition, the “real” church has been sidelined. Aside from the Pope, who has wholeheartedly embraced the New Normal, a group of Catholic leaders recently issued a statement calling out governments, the media, and public health experts, denouncing the Covid-19 narrative as cover for “infringing on the rights of millions of people around the world.”

Cynical scholars of religious history might suggest they’re motivated by jealousy – “stop using dogma to control people, that’s our job!” – but their concerns are no less valid, and the feeling of envy cuts both ways. The single-minded determination of police to break up even those church services scrupulously observing social distancing with worshipers sitting isolated in their cars can only be explained by eschatological jealousy. To truly force the Cult of Corona down the throats of the people, the competition must be eliminated, whether it’s “traditional” religion or logic, reason and the (real) scientific method.

Deprogramming the world from the Cult of Corona cannot be done by force – its backers have too much power, including total control of both establishment and social media. It must be approached strategically. Just as traditional “deprogrammers” will isolate a cult member from the group, reasoning there’s a much better chance of re-awakening the original personality when the person is not experiencing the pressures of groupthink, deprogramming Corona Cultists is best done one-on-one, keeping in mind that cultists will ferociously defend their dogma with thought-stopping techniques which can be extremely irritating to outsiders trying to convey dissenting information. Former “Moonie” Steven Hassan’s BITE model (above) describes how cults exert undue influence and is useful in approaching deprogramming.

The notion of deprogramming entire societies may seem daunting, but it is the only chance humanity has to retain some semblance of freedom and turn back from the dark path down which our species is heading. The ruling class is imposing a comprehensive, multilayered control grid that has been in the works for decades, and when it is complete, revolution will not be an option. Such a future must be avoided at all costs.

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Helen Buyniski is a journalist and photographer based in New York City. Her work has appeared on RT, Global Research, Activist Post, Ghion Journal, and Progressive Radio Network. Helen has a BA in Journalism from New School University and also studied at Columbia University and New York University. Find more of her work at http://helenofdestroy.com or follow her on Twitter at @velocirapture23. She is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from the author unless otherwise stated

“Preinfection chloroquine treatment renders Vero E6 cells refractory to SARS-CoV infection”

“Postinfection chloroquine treatment is effective in preventing the spread of SARS-CoV infection”

The drug was rapidly pushed to clinical testing as an experimental treatment in China; on Feb 15, 2020, it was included in the sixth version of the COVID-19 treatment guidelines by the National Health Commission of the People’s Republic of China. This guideline established the use of chloroquine nationwide for patients with COVID-19, at a recommended adult dose of 500 mg twice per day for no more than 10 days. 1

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ANNEX

For further details on the current SARS-2 coronavirus (alias COVID-19) as well as its relationship to SARS-1 coronavirus, see the peer reviewed  article by Anthony Fauci and co-authors Clifford Lane and CDC Director Robert Redfield  published in March issue  of The New England Journal of Medicine

Excerpt from the VJ article entitled  

Chloroquine is A potent inhibitor of SARS Coronavirus Infection and Spread

Read more here (complete article) 

Primeiro artigo :

COVID-19 – Sobre a “origem” e as “responsabilidades” da pandemia (I), 28 de Abril de 2020

[Continuação]

Prosseguindo-se a reflexão começada na primeira parte deste artigo, consideremos a melhor hipótese para a origem da atual pandemia: a de que o novo coronavírus não foi forjado artificialmente (como arma para a concorrência geopolítica capitalista), mas que foi um “acaso provocado”, um fenômeno zoonótico causado pela destruição intensiva do meio ambiente. 

Esta última possibilidade (parcialmente “natural”), já foi afirmada por vários cientistas de diversas nações, e recentemente reiterada pelo próprio diretor do Programa de Emergências da OMS, Mike Ryan (“El coronavirus no fue hecho en laboratorio”, Notícias ONU, maio/2020). 

É certo, porém, que os Estados Unidos – cujo governo de extrema-direita tenta faturar geopoliticamente com a catástrofe, ao jogar seu ônus para a China – têm um histórico de uso de armas biológicas, em conflitos nos quais seus objetivos militares estratégicos se viram dificultados (casos de Cuba e Coreia, como apresentado no início deste artigo). Por outro lado, vivemos um momento histórico peculiar, em que a economia e poderio militar chineses florescem, e os EUA veem sua vantagem econômica e geopolítica diminuir vertiginosamente. De modo que motivos não faltariam à superpotência dirigida por um presidente dos mais insensatos que já passaram pelo cargo. 

Contudo, diante das pesquisas até agora publicadas, e da própria dinâmica altamente contagiosa (e portanto incontrolável) deste vírus em particular, não parece crível a hipótese de que o novo coronavírus tenha sido fabricado em laboratório.

Neste caso, a doença covid-19 consiste em uma zoonose; o que, entretanto, não modifica a conclusão (a mesma que valeria para a hipótese “proposital”) de que a “responsabilidade” por essa calamidade sanitária é do regime produtivo concorrencial capitalista, um modelo gerido e imposto ao planeta pelas nações “centrais” do capitalismo. E portanto, são as grandes potências econômicas as principais “responsáveis” pela pandemia: especialmente os próprios EUA e as nações, suas subalternas diretas, que compõe o clube dos países dominantes do regime (dito G7). Pois que são estes membros do G7 os “dirigentes” do brutal desequilíbrio do metabolismo homem-natureza, notadamente após a disseminação neoliberal (variação agressiva da prática capitalista, que no fim dos anos 1970 se impõe como resposta conservadora à crise estrutural-lógica do sistema). 

Esta “responsabilidade” é nítida se se tem em conta que são estes países dominantes os que (ainda) dirigem o “sentido da história” – no conceito do filósofo-historiador Caio Prado Júnior. São eles que dão a linha da produção global, condenando o sistema-mundo a um regime desregulamentado (“liberal”), sem planejamento racional e repleto de desperdícios significativos, segundo seu insustentável paradigma de progresso como “eterno crescimento econômico”. 

Como ilustração da falta de racionalidade “liberal”, dentre tantos casos, veja-se a denúncia feita há alguns anos pelo ganhador do prêmio Nobel de Química, Thomas Steitz (da Universidade de Yale, EUA): “os laboratórios farmacêuticos não pesquisam antibióticos efetivos… preferem centrar o negócio em remédios que deverão ser tomados durante toda a vida” – e completa – “muitas das grandes farmacêuticas fecharam suas pesquisas sobre antibióticos porque estes curam as pessoas” (“Indústria farmacêutica não quer curar pessoas”, Terra, 2011). 

Como já o mostraram tantos pensadores (caso de Adorno e Horkheimer, em sua Dialética do Esclarecimento), a ideia de “progresso capitalista” é uma ideologia de controle social e da natureza: longe de consistir em um efetivo “desenvolvimento humano”, o tipo de “progresso” empreendido pelo regime capitalista se reduz a um mero “progresso instrumental”. Seus “avanços” – tão somente “técnicos” –, a despeito de qualquer ética ou senso democrático, visam a sujeição dos seres humanos (“peças” de sua máquina produtiva) e o domínio dos recursos naturais (a Mãe-Terra vista como matéria-prima), em proveito dos lucros de parcas megacorporações. 

É este nosso cenário global hoje: crescentemente conflitivo e insalubre; ademais de sujeito a interesses de cada vez menos monopólios – estes “novos reis do mundo” (donos até mesmo das guilhotinas). 

Pandemia: expressão da crise civilizatória 

Há décadas se adverte que este tipo de “desenvolvimento” não planejado e irresponsável, pautado por uma ideia irracional de (ilimitado) “crescimento econômico”, ameaça a vida no nosso (limitado) planeta.

Conforme João Pedro Stédile, do Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra (“Esta pandemia é a expressão mais trágica da fase atual do capitalismo”, Brasil de Fato, abril/2020): a atual calamidade é um trágico emblema do capitalismo contemporâneo, “da crise civilizatória que vivemos”; a eclosão de inúmeras novas zoonoses é “parte da consequência de termos desequilibrado as forças da natureza, com o modelo de produção agrícola industrial em alta escala”; “a maioria dos novos vírus tem se propagado através da criação em grandes escalas de animais, aves, suínos, bovinos”. 

Essa advertência de Stédile é corroborada por François Moutou (da Sociedade Francesa para o Estudo e Proteção dos Mamíferos): “Um ecossistema pouco alterado é rico em uma grande diversidade de espécies, ao contrário de uma criação de gado em que se cria uma única espécie e cujos indivíduos são o mais homogêneos possível”. Neste caso, afirma este epidemiologista: “a chegada de um vírus, de uma bactéria, para um indivíduo da criação, se traduzirá provavelmente na invasão de todos os demais, dando lugar a uma epidemia” (“Las zoonosis, entre la especie humana y los animales”, Viento Sur, maio/2020). 

Para se evitar novas catástrofes humanitárias – pondera ainda o líder do MST – é preciso com urgência se pôr em debate o tema da “soberania alimentar”, da “agroecologia”, da necessidade de se investir na “agricultura camponesa-familiar”: a “reforma agrária não é mais um tema [somente] camponês… o que está na pauta agora é a produção de alimentos saudáveis para toda a sociedade”. 

Precisamos portanto, de acordo com o que coloca Stédile, não somente mudar a “estrutura da propriedade” da terra, mas os atuais “paradigmas” produtivos: essa concepção, sujeita ao capital, que nos é imposta desde cima por organizações de manutenção do sistema (como o FMI, o Banco Mundial e o seu braço armado, a OTAN – a que se apela quando a violência econômica encontra alguma resistência física).

***

Em meio a este palco desastroso, Trump e a direita estadunidense atacam a China. 

Já com vistas à campanha pela reeleição, o governo “republicano” tenta assim ocultar sua desastrada resposta à pandemia, bem como o fracasso histórico do sistema de saúde de sua riquíssima e “avançadíssima” nação – aproveitando-se para tanto da agravada xenofobia, do sentimento anti-chinês que, com o apoio da grande mídia conservadora, cresceu com a calamidade sanitária mundial. Por outro lado, Washington busca alastrar argumentos inconsistentes junto à opinião pública e à dita comunidade internacional, para obter respaldo a sua petição por privilégios, na guerra comercial que vem travando contra Pequim. 

Aliás, assessores de Trump já afirmaram que sua campanha será centrada em culpar a China pelo caos, prometendo ressuscitar a economia abalada pela “pandemia chinesa” (“Culpem a China e reativem a economia”, UOL, maio/2020).

Para os EUA, a ascensão econômica da China é uma real ameaça, senão a sua “segurança nacional”, como alardeiam certos extremistas, mas decerto a sua hegemonia planetária – sem competidores desde a derrota da União Soviética. 

Planejamento estatal e solidariedade global

Mas vejamos o exemplo da China: uma nação com estado forte que, longe ainda de ser “comunista” (apesar do nome do partido no poder), tem ao menos capacidade de planejamento social; e que longe de ser “rica” (se analisamos a situação per capita), vem dando seguidas mostras ao mundo de ser menos autocentrada que os EUA. 

Em fevereiro, equipe da OMS constatou que: “deparados com um vírus até então desconhecido, a China efetuou o mais ambicioso, ágil e agressivo plano de controle de transmissão na história”. 

A estratégia do gigante asiático, para enfrentar a doença com a rapidez que o surto exige, foi: 

i) isolar não apenas a província infectada, mas ainda restringir movimentos dentro das cidades, com o uso da tecnologia e da força pública;

ii) direcionar para a saúde recursos materiais e humanos (testes, aparatos de proteção, maquinário hospitalar, equipes médicas e de enfermagem), sem restrições de “tetos orçamentários” (como no economicismo-liberal, de visão curta), conforme fosse exigido pela calamidade, incluindo verba para a construção relâmpago de hospitais completos;

iii) garantia de alimentação e serviços básicos a todos os cidadãos sujeitos à quarentena, e mecanismos para se barrar a propagação de boatos e notícias falsas, evitando o pânico.

(Práticas tão diferentes de nosso apequenado Brasil, este resto do golpe liberal de 2016, que abriu alas para a aventura neofascista de Bolsonaro.) 

A cidade de Wuhan e a província de Hubei, permaneceram em isolamento por 76 dias; a China estancou a pandemia em seu território. E hoje são os Estados Unidos – além do Brasil – que caminham para uma catástrofe. Fenômeno que logo mais há de cobrar sua fatura política interna e geopolítica.

Além disso, na reunião anual da OMS, realizada neste mês de maio, o presidente Xi Jinping declarou que a potência oriental, durante dois anos, destinará dois bilhões de dólares ao combate do coronavirus, verba que será sobretudo dirigida ao desenvolvimento social e econômico dos países pobres afetados. Assegurou ainda que laboratórios chineses já começaram a testar em humanos cinco vacinas, e que assim que se encontre uma que funcione, ela será disponibilizada a todas as nações do globo, como “bem público mundial” (AFP, maio/2020). 

Ideia tão contrastante com a de um Trump que tentou corromper laboratório alemão por patente que desse aos EUA a “exclusividade” da nova vacina a ser criada (RTP, março/2020), e que pirateou respiradores artificiais a caminho do Brasil de seu “amigo” Bolsonaro (The Intercept, abril/2020).

Palavras de um pensador de dentro do redemoinho

Como diz o pensador crítico Noam Chomsky (Diálogos do Sul, abril/2020): a crise do coronavírus é “uma falha colossal do mercado”, “da intensificação neoliberal”. Ou seja, uma falha das práticas produtivas e sociais que vêm ocorrendo especialmente desde que a crise estrutural capitalista deixa de ser teoria – no fim dos anos 1960 (e cujos mais claros efeitos foram as rebeliões populares mundiais de 1968). “Isso era sabido há muito tempo, que a pandemia era altamente provável” – pondera o estadunidense –, uma “modificação” da epidemia da Síndrome Respiratória Aguda Grave, de 2003; este vírus tinha de ter sido “identificado, sequenciado” – “vacinas estavam disponíveis, laboratórios ao redor do mundo poderiam trabalhar diretamente em desenvolver uma proteção para uma potencial pandemia”. Mas não: “entregamos nosso destino a tiranias privadas”, pois pesquisar “novos cremes corporais é mais lucrativo que vacinas”. 

E o nonagenário socialista acrescenta ainda uma observação instigante – espécie de símbolo do patológico individualismo contemporâneo, que se reflete na fragilização da resistência e da organização social: “As universidades nos Estados Unidos têm placas dizendo ‘olhe para frente’”; “as redes sociais” isolam cada vez mais as pessoas; “laços sociais”, “organizações” têm que ser criadas. 

Pois é: produzir mais intensivamente não é preciso, pelo contrário; olhar para a frente é preciso. 

Pandemia: fruto podre da libertinagem do capital

Esta pandemia é, em suma, mais um dos frutos podres da libertinagem produtiva do capitalismo: mais um recorrente “efeito colateral” desse modelo concorrencial destrutivo que não consegue minimamente “olhar à frente”, e que violenta assim os últimos rincões naturais da Terra. 

A calamidade e sua consecutiva crise é o resultado de décadas de pressões globais – dos estados dominantes sobre os periféricos – por “ajustes” neoliberais. Sempre em prol da “cidadania mínima”: com sua ideologia contrária aos investimentos em direitos sociais, com sua falta de planejamento estatal, com sua falácia de “estado mínimo” (que lega cada vez mais os rumos do planeta aos interesses privados, centrados em algumas centenas de famílias-máfias).

A responsabilidade por essa pandemia – e das próximas que provavelmente surgirão – é portanto dos dirigentes de uma “civilização” que faz mau uso dos saberes e tecnologias, pondo-os não a serviço do homem, mas do lucro. É de uma cultura torta, que investe em cosméticos, não em vacinas; que promove o agronegócio desmatador e avança sobre florestas e culturas originárias (destruindo milenares saberes da terra); que exige “estados mínimos” para a saúde, educação, seguridade social, saneamento básico… mas apela ao estado forte para suas guerras de dominação e seus resgates bilionários do mercado financeiro. 

Como é bem-sabido, detrás de todo “estado mínimo”, há “estados fortes” – sempre à espreita.

Yuri Martins-Fontes

O Presidente Trump anunciou a retirada dos Estados Unidos do Tratado Céus Abertos/Open Skies. Assinado em 1992, imediatamente após o final da Guerra Fria e iniciado em 2002, permite que cada um dos 34 Estados Partes sobrevoe os territórios dos demais com aviões de reconhecimento (desarmados), equipados com sensores para recolher dados sobre forças e actividades militares. Cada Estado Parte deve aceitar um certo número de sobrevôos sobre o seu território, a cada ano e tem o direito de realizar o mesmo número nos territórios daqueles que realizaram esses vôos. Nos termos do Tratado, mais de 1.500 vôos foram realizados desde 2002, incluindo vôos recíprocos entre os Estados Unidos e a Rússia. Embora, actualmente, os satélites possam fornecer informações mais detalhadas do que as recolhidas pelos aviões, o Tratado mantém a sua utilidade técnica, pois nem todos os Estados Partes têm as capacidades dadas pela utilização de satélites. O significado político do Tratado permanece importante como um acto de confiança.

Aponta precisamente para um abrandamento, daí a decisão da Administação Trump de se retirar do Tratado, com o objectivo claro de aumentar a tensão com a Rússia. Para esse fim, o mesmo argumento foi adoptado em 1 de Fevereiro de 2019, quando o Secretário de Estado,Mike Pompeo, anunciou que, após seis meses de suspensão, os Estados Unidos se retirariam do Tratado das Forças Nucleares Intermédias, como de facto aconteceu em Julho do mesmo ano. Ao anunciar que os Estados Unidos se retirarão dentro de seis meses do Tratado Céus Abertos, Mike Pompeo usa praticamente as mesmas palavras: declara que “só a Rússia é responsável por estes procedimentos”, acusa-a de “erosão contínua da arquitectura do controlo dos armamentos”, define-a como “violadora obstinada de muitos compromissos assumidos”. Também desta vez, não é apresentada nenhuma prova real destas argumentações.

Declarando que “esta não é uma história que se refira exclusivamente ao Tratado Open Skies”, o Secretário de Estado anuncia outras decisões da Administração Trump na mesma direcção. Durante mais de um ano, o Presidente Trump repetiu que não renovará o novo Tratado Start, concluído em 2010 pelos Estados Unidos e pela Rússia. Este Tratado, como salientamos em 2010, no ‘il manifesto’, tem limites notáveis: estabelece apenas um limite para “ogivas nucleares instaladas”, ou seja, aquelas prontas para serem lançadas por meios de transporte estratégicos com alcance superior a 5.500 km, fixados em 1.550 por cada parte; também não prevê nenhum controlo efectivo sobre o aprimoramento qualitativo das forças nucleares. No entanto, a retirada dos Estados Unidos do novo Tratado Start tornaria o confronto nuclear ainda mais perigoso. O Presidente Trump disse que só poderia renovar o novo Tratado Start se a China também participasse no mesmo, uma possibilidade até agora rejeitada por Pequim. No entanto, se participar, nos termos actuais, a China poderia aumentar o número das suas ogivas nucleares de cerca de 300 para mais de 1.500 (excluindo a hipótese de que Washington e Moscovo estariam dispostos a diminuir as deles para 300 unidades).

Outro tratado do qual os Estados Unidos podem retirar-se é o da Proibição Total de Ensaios Nucleares, que Washington assinou em 1996, mas nunca ratificou, enquanto Moscovo o ratificou em 2000.

Neste contexto, a anunciada retirada dos Estados Unidos do Tratado Open Skies constitui um novo passo em direcção a uma verdadeira e deliberada estratégia de tensão. Visto que aderiram ao Tratado 23 países europeus da NATO, incluindo a Itália, a retirada dos Estados Unidos, aumentando as tensões com a Rússia, envolve automaticamente a NATO. É exactamente o que pretendem em Washington.Num comunicado de imprensa conjunto publicado ontem, 8 países da NATO (Bélgica, França, Alemanha, Itália, Luxemburgo, Holanda, República Checa, Espanha), além da Finlândia e da Suécia, manifestaram o seu “descontentamento” pela intenção da retirada do Tratado Open Skies, anunciada pelo governo dos EUA, “embora partilhemos as suas preocupações sobre a actuação da parte da  Federação Russa sobre as cláusulas do Tratado”. No entanto, declaram: “Continuaremos a dar cumprimento ao Tratado Céu Aberto”. Um sinal de abertura cauteloso, mas apreciável, enquanto a sombra ameaçadora da guerra nuclear cobre cada vez mais os céus.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo original em italiano :

Trump, Stracciatore Seriale di Trattati

il manifesto, 23 maggio 2020

Tradutora: Maria Luísa de Vasconcellos 

Il presidente Trump ha annunciato il ritiro degli Stati uniti dal Trattato Open Skies (Cieli Aperti). Firmato nel 1992 subito dopo la fine della Guerra fredda ed entrato in vigore nel 2002, esso permette a ciascuno dei 34 Stati-parte di sorvolare i territori degli altri con aerei da ricognizione (non armati), dotati di sensori per la raccolta di dati su forze e attività militari. Ciascuno Stato-parte deve accettare ogni anno un certo numero di sorvoli del proprio territorio ed ha diritto di effettuarne altrettanti sui territori di quelli che hanno compiuto tali sorvoli. In base al Trattato, dal 2002 sono stati effettuati complessivamente oltre 1.500 sorvoli, compresi quelli reciproci fra Stati uniti e Russia. Anche se i satelliti possono oggi fornire informazioni più dettagliate di quelle raccolte dagli aerei, il Trattato mantiene una sua utilità tecnica poiché non tutti gli Stati-parte dispongono di capacità satellitari. Importante resta il significato politico del Trattato, quale atto di distensione.

Proprio a questo mira la decisione dell’amministrazione Trump di ritirarsi dal Trattato, con il chiaro scopo di accrescere la tensione con la Russia. A tal fine è stata adottata la stessa sceneggiatura  del l° febbraio 2019, quando il segretario di stato Mike Pompeo annunciò che, dopo sei mesi di sospensione, gli Stati uniti si sarebbero ritirati dal Trattato sulle Forze nucleari intermedie, come in effetti è avvenuto nel luglio dello stesso anno. Annunciando che gli Stati uniti si ritireranno tra sei mesi dal Trattato Open Skies, Mike Pompeo usa praticamente le stesse parole: dichiara che «solo la Russia ha la responsabilità per tali sviluppi», la accusa di «continua erosione dell’architettura di controllo degli armamenti», la definisce «violatore seriale di molti degli impegni assunti». Anche questa volta non viene portata alcuna reale prova per tali accuse.

Dichiarando che «questa non è una storia che si riferisce esclusivamente al Trattato Open Skies», il segretario di stato preannuncia altre decisioni dell’amministrazione Trump nella stessa direzione. Da oltre un anno il presidente Trump ripete che non rinnoverà il nuovo Trattato Start, concluso nel 2010 da Stati uniti e Russia.  Questo trattato, come evidenziammo nel 2010 sul manifesto, ha notevoli limiti: stabilisce solo un tetto per le «testate nucleari dispiegate», ossia quelle pronte al lancio su vettori strategici con gittata superiore ai 5.500 km, stabilito in 1.550 per parte; non prevede inoltre alcun controllo effettivo sul potenziamento qualitativo delle forze nucleari. Nonostante ciò, il ritiro degli Stati uniti anche dal nuovo Trattato Start renderebbe  il confronto nucleare ancora più pericoloso. Il presidente Trump ha detto che potrebbe rinnovare il nuovo Trattato Start solo se vi partecipasse anche la Cina, possibilità finora rifiutata da Pechino. Qualora però vi partecipasse, in base agli attuali termini la Cina potrebbe accrescere il numero delle sue testate nucleari da circa 300 a oltre 1.500 (escludendo l’ipotesi che Washington e Mosca fossero disposte a diminuire le loro a 300).

Un altro trattato da cui gli Stati uniti potrebbero ritirarsi è quello per la completa messa al bando dei test nucleari, che Washington ha firmato nel 1996 ma mai ratificato, mentre Mosca l’ha ratificato nel 2000.

Su questo sfondo, l’annunciato ritiro degli Stati uniti dal Trattato Open Skies costituisce una ulteriore mossa di una vera e propria strategia della tensione. Poiché aderiscono al Trattato 23 paesi europei della Nato, tra cui l’Italia, il ritiro degli Stati uniti, accrescendo la tensione con la Russia, coinvolge automaticamente la Nato. È esattamente ciò che vogliono a Washington. In un comunicato congiunto pubblicato ieri, 8 paesi Nato (Belgio, Francia, Germania, Italia, Lussemburgo, Paesi Bassi, Repubblica Ceca, Spagna), più Finlandia e Svezia, esprimono il loro «rincrescimento» per l’intenzione di ritirarsi dal Trattato Cieli Aperti annunciata dal Governo Usa, «anche se condividiamo le sue preoccupazioni circa l’attuazione da parte della Federazione Russa delle clausole del Trattato». Dichiarano comunque che «continueremo a dare attuazione al Trattato Cieli Aperti». Un cauto ma apprezzabile segnale di apertura, mentre l’ombra minacciosa della guerra nucleare copre sempre più i cieli.

Manlio Dinucci

More and more frequently, government officials, political pundits and self-appointed “global health experts” like billionaire Bill Gates have been instructing the public that mass gatherings and any semblance of “normalcy” will not return until a vaccine for the novel coronavirus Covid-19 is created and subsequently distributed to the masses. In recent weeks, it has quickly become apparent that the leading Covid-19 vaccine candidate is the messenger RNA (mRNA) vaccine being developed by Boston-based Moderna Inc.

Today, Moderna announced that its vaccine candidate, named mRNA-1273, “appeared to produce an immune response in eight people who received it.” Moderna’s response is odd given that the “study” in question is focused on safety and “is actually not designed to measure effectiveness of the vaccine,” according to a report in TIME. Notably, none of the study’s findings on vaccine safety were reported aside from claims it was “generally safe.” It is also worth noting that this “safety-focused” study only began in March and thus, to date, represents only an examination of the vaccine’s effects in the very short term.

Major media outlets in multiple countries ran with the headlines trumpeting that Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine “shows promising early results” and has presented “encouraging early signs” because of its purported ability to produce Covid-19 antibodies in humans. In addition, these media reports failed to raise other simple yet necessary questions such as how a sample size of only eight people can translate into scientific findings of any real significance without further testing involving larger sample sizes. They also failed to note that the study in question is not even finished as a U.S. government press release noted that the findings in question are merely “interim results.” In addition, the study is being led by the U.S.’ National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), itself headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who is a key figure in the U.S. government’s coronavirus response.

Though it is unclear if these “encouraging early signs” will be replicated in future tests of larger samples that are actually designed to test the vaccine’s effectiveness, the news is surely welcome to Moderna, given that their past mRNA vaccines failed to produce hardly any immune response at all, explaining why the company has never brought an mRNA vaccine to market in its entire history as a company.

However, since at least last fall, Moderna has sought to resolve this issue by adding “nanoparticles” to its mRNA vaccine, a modification financed by the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Moderna is a “strategic ally” of DARPA and has received millions from DARPA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation several years prior to the current coronavirus crisis. DARPA’s plans for nanoparticles and nanotechnology and their potentially Orwellian applications were the subject of a recent The Last American Vagabond report.

Thanks to the “interim results” of this new study, Moderna is set to take the lead in the race to gain government approval for a Covid-19 vaccine. Moderna had already pulled ahead of other Covid-19 vaccine candidates in recent weeks, being the first vaccine in the U.S. to go the human trials (after it was allowed to skip animal trials) and also enjoying strong support from the U.S. government. For instance, Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine recently received fast-track approval from the Food and Drug administration (FDA) after receiving the “green light” to proceed to Phase 2 testing prior to the results of Phase 1 being published. Moderna’s president, Dr. Stephen Hoge, recently said the company now expects to begin the final third phase of testing sometime this summer.

In addition to support from the FDA, Moderna has also received considerable U.S. government funding ($438 million) from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a division of HHS overseen by HHS’ Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response (ASPR) Robert Kadlec. Moderna has also stated that it is directly collaborating with the U.S. government to bring its vaccine candidate to market.

Moderna’s considerable lead has also been the result of backing that it received in January from the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI), which was founded in 2017 by the governments of Norway and India along with the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine has also received additional millions from long-time Moderna backer Bill Gates. Gates recently authored an article where he described Moderna’s mRNA vaccine for Covid-19 as the “most exciting” and discussed it at length.

Gates’ affinity for Moderna may owe to the fact that Moderna’s co-founder, MIT’s Robert Langer, is a Gates associate whose lab developed the Gates-funded “quantum dot ‘tattoo’” vaccine identification marker that is “visible using a special smartphone camera app and filter” and was described by Science Alert as “a low-risk tracking system.” Another Langer-Gates partnership is a “birth control microchip” inserted to the body that releases contraceptives and can be turned on and off wirelessly.

Gene Editing

With Moderna taking a firm lead relative to the other Covid-19 vaccine hopefuls, it is worth taking a closer look at the man who has overseen its development, Moderna’s current Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Tal Zaks. Zaks who began his career at GlaxoSmithKline, oversees “preclinical development, clinical development and regulatory affairs” for Moderna and all of its subsidiaries.

In a 2017 TED Talk, two years after joining Moderna, Dr. Zaks spoke at length about how he views mRNA vaccines and their modality, including those he produces at Moderna. In a speech entitled “The disease-eradicating potential of gene editing,” Dr. Zaks’ description of Moderna’s mRNA products as, making permanent edits to human genes, clashes with  claims that the genetic material in mRNA vaccines “degrade” over time and do not permanently alter human genetics like DNA vaccines.

Beginning his talk, Zaks states that Moderna and similar companies “are actually hacking the software of life and that it’s changing the way we think of and treat disease.” He describes mRNA as “critical information that determines what a cell will actually do” and then states that, if one could “introduce a line of code or change a line of code” in a person’s genome, that has “profound implications for everything.”

The summary of Zaks’ talk encapsulates his view as the following simple question:

“If our cells are the hardware and our genetic material the operating system, what if we could change a few lines of code?”

It also says that Zaks considers the future of “personalized medicine” to be “gene-editing vaccines tailored to each patient’s immune system.”

The Ted Talk recommended after viewing Zaks’ speech on the Ted Talk website notably broaches a key point that Zaks overlooks, namely that gene-editing can “change an entire species – forever.”

Zaks’ statements are noteworthy and concerning for several reasons, including the fact that DARPA — Moderna’s “strategic ally” — is also openly funding research aimed at “reprogramming genes” and “manipulat[ing] genes or control[ling] gene expression to combat viruses and help human bodies withstand infection” caused by Covid-19.

The DARPA-backed project would use a method that is known to cause severe genetic damage that has actually been shown to aggravate the conditions it was meant to cure.

With such permanent gene-altering technology on the fast-track to become the first Covid-19 vaccine widely available for use, it is deeply concerning that this experimental vaccine with potentially far-reaching consequences is being rammed through thanks to fervent support from both the U.S. government and controversial philanthropists that apparently have little interest in studies examining the mRNA vaccine’s long-term effects.

Given that the stage has already been set for mandatory vaccinations that will be “distributed” throughout the U.S. by the military, now is the time to vigorously raise awareness about the Moderna vaccine’s gravely under-reported ability to “hack the software of life” in ways that could harm public health.

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All images in this article are from The Last American Vagabond

Washington is picking yet another fight with China. On top of the trade war we now have the coronavirus war.  China is accused of being responsible for the virus by withholding information about it.  Some in Washington want to make China pay for the cost of the virus by reneging on US debt held by China in the form of US Treasuries.

What information about coronavirus is China supposed to have withheld? 

That China was doing coronavirus research?  How could this information have been withheld when the US State Department knew about it, the N.I.H. was funding it, and US scientists were complaining about the danger?

That coronavirus was ravaging Wuhan?  How was this information withheld when it was in the media every day?

The United States and its vassals knew about the virus outbreak in China two months prior to its outbreak in the West and did nothing. Through either inaction or intent, the US, Canada, and Europe imported the virus. 

The governments refused to stop flights in and out of China and to prevent cruise ships from welcoming passengers from infected areas. Governments did not want to interfere with profits, which came before public health.  Absolutely nothing was done.  No efforts were made to stockpile protective masks and gear, or to protect nursing homes, or to segregate hospital facilities, or to think outside the box about treatments.  The Swedish government was so unprepared that it did not even try to do anything and just let the virus run its course with devastating effects on the elderly.  [Note: There is much disinformation about Sweden from those who believe the virus is a plot to impose police state controls, such as claims that Sweden has kept the economy open without paying for it in a higher death rate and is gaining “herd immunity” against Covid-19.  These claims are contradicted by news reports.  For example: see this and this.]

In an attempt, more or less successful, to reduce the infection rate so that health facilities were not over-burdened, every other country imposed social distancing rules, bans against crowd events, and workplace closures.  As little was known about the disease and the Chinese mortality rate was believed to be vastly understated, there was no responsible alternative to the so-called “lockdowns.”  It remains to be seen whether the concern for profits has produced a premature reopening that will result in a second wave of rapid infection rates. Many suspect that Big Pharma and Bill Gates want to keep the infection spreading in order to panic us into being vaccinated with an inadequately tested vaccine.

The blame China game is really an effort to cover-up the failure of Western governments to deal with a crisis.

The failure of governments to deal with crisis is ubiquitous.  Just think Katrina, the hurricane that devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.  If you don’t remember or are too young to have experienced the 2005 hurricane via TV, read Douglas Brinkley’s The Great Deluge (see this).

Everyone knew that the levies protecting New Orleans and surrounding areas were unable to withstand a storm of Katrina’s intensity.  The city was a bowl waiting to fill up with the water that wiped out 80% of New Orleans and 150 miles of Gulf Coast communities.   Evacuation orders came too late.  There were no steps taken to evacuate those without cars and resources. The sick and elderly were left in place.  The few steps that were taken to assemble buses, boats, and first responders located the scanty resources in areas that flooded.  The New Orleans Police Department went AWOL. Some joined in the looting. FEMA was a total failure.  President George W. Bush and Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff were not focused on the unfolding tragedy but on their creation of a terrortist hoax that was used to justify 20 years of US bombing and invasions of Middle Eastern and North African countries. As Bush had deployed Louisiana’s National Guard to Iraq, the Louisiana governor had to borrow guardsmen from other states.

The US Coast Guard, Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries personnel, and private individuals formed the force of first responders. People from Louisiana and from other states showed up on their own time, their own money, and with their own boats and began organizing rescues.  There were many heroic and generous people involved in the rescue. As most of the rescuers were white southerners and most of the rescued were black, it put the lie to the propagandistic picture of the white southern racist. For example, Sara Roberts and her husband Buisson, a descendant of Confederate General P.G.T.Beauregard, organized the Cajun Navy.  Sara enlisted clients of her accounting firm who came up with 35 boats and crews to man them.  One of her clients, Ronny Lovett, paid his construction crews triple wages for their rescue time and spent $200,000 of his money equipping the boats with food, water, medical supplies, chain saws, life jackets, spotlights, ropes and whatever else could contribute to successful rescues. It was individual citizens, not the governments in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Washington that rescued many thousands of people who otherwise would have perished. 

From its founding day, New Orleans was a man-made disaster waiting to happen.  Dredging, canals, watercourse alterations, pipelines and a variety of other environmental damaging mistakes had over the years destroyed the wetlands that protected the city and Gulf Coast. In order to serve private profit, failure was built into the system. The Great Deluge is an external cost of a political and economic system that puts private profits first.

We are undergoing it again at this moment as areas of Michigan are inundated from floods caused by dam failures. One of the dams, the Edenville Dam was a long known public safety hazard . Boyce Hydro, the owner of the dam, repeatedly failed despite the intervention of regulators to address the known risk.  Not only was Boyce Hydro negligent, but also were the government authorities that permitted the known risk to persist unaddressed.  The lost of life and property from the flooding is an external cost imposed on third parties by Boyce Hydro whose agenda was limited to its profits.

It is as difficult to understand the liberal and progressive belief in government as it is to understand the libertarian belief in the efficacy of the invisible hand that allegedly causes private greed to serve the public’s interest.  Humans are a built-in failure machine.  Their time perspective is short term.  They are always surprised by the unintended consequences of their own thoughtless actions and inactions.

Throughout America, state, local, and federal government  epitomize  failure. Trillions of dollars have been poured into weapons systems that cannot be used without destroying the United States along with the rest of the world, while dams fail, bridges collapse, communities deteriorate, and homelessness grows. The government in Washington spends time, effort, and money manufacturing enemies to justify the budget of the military/security complex, while  jobs and the US economy are offshored, the environment is degraded, and health care needs go unaddressed.   The US rivals third world countries in terms of the percentage of its population that has no savings, no access to health care, and no prospects for advancement in life.   

But we can blow up the world several times over and make mindless interventions in the natural environment that multiply the destructive power of storms, heavy rains, and other natural phenomena.

Another election approaches and yet again there is no acknowledgement of the real problems our country faces or any interest in discussing what to do about them. America and the Western World in general are simply going to drown in their unaddressed problems just as New Orleans drowned in Hurricane Katrina.

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Dr. Paul Craig Roberts writes on his blog site, PCR Institute for Political Economy, where this article was originally published. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Deadzone (2003, Screenplay Stephen King, Jeffrey Boam): When Johnny Smith (Christopher Walken) awakens from a coma caused by a car accident, he finds that years have passed, and he now has psychic abilities. Heartbroken that his girlfriend (Brooke Adams) has moved on with her life, Johnny also must contend with his unsettling powers, which allow him to see a person’s future with a mere touch.

Storyline

While at a school science fair, Johnny gets a disturbing vision of a group of children getting extremely ill. Johnny persuades Walt to quarantine the building and eventually the children begin to get sick. Johnny realizes that without his help the children will die, including JJ. With the assistance of Rev. Purdy, Johnny must help Walt and the local health inspector, Jim Pratt, try to identify as well as find the source of the mysterious virus before it kills off the entire town.

This is a clip summarizing a 2003 episode of a TV show called Dead Zone, the episode name is plague. During the episode, someone takes a flight in from China into the US and they come down with an unknown virus. After identifying the virus as a SARS related Coronavirus, one doctor figures out that they can stop the Coronavirus dead in its tracks using a malaria drug called Chloroquine. The writers have claimed that the information and research used to make this episode came directly from the CDC in 2003. Did the CDC know something in 2003 that they are not telling us now?

Watch below a video clip from the TV series Dead Zone:

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US President Donald Trump issued new threats against Venezuela on Wednesday.

“We’ve got it [Venezuela] surrounded, it’s surrounded at a level that nobody even knows but they know. We are watching to see what happens,” he warned during a conference call with Hispanic leaders.

The president’s remarks come amid escalating tensions over Iranian fuel shipments to Venezuela.

Five Iranian tankers are en route to the South American country carrying at least US $45.5 million in gasoline and other products. According to maritime tracking data, the closest vessel, Fortune, is currently three days from port.

Washington is mulling unilateral sanctions aimed at halting the shipments, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Last month, Trump ordered the mobilization of US naval assets to the Caribbean in an “anti-drug” operation targeting Venezuela described as one of the largest military deployments in the region since the 1989 invasion of Panama. The US leader had previously threatened Venezuela with a naval blockade.

Caracas and Tehran have rejected US threats against the tankers, which are estimated to contain enough fuel to supply Venezuela for around 50 days.

On Wednesday, Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez revealed that naval and air assets would escort the Iranian vessels upon entering Venezuela’s territorial waters.

Venezuela is currently suffering widespread gasoline shortages, with domestic production hamstrung by US sanctions prohibiting the import of vital diluents and spare parts needed to reactivate the country’s refining capacity.

Since 2017, the Trump administration has targeted Venezuela with crushing economic sanctions, including an oil embargo blocking fuel exports to the Caribbean country as well as a blanket ban on dealings with Venezuelan state entities.

In recent months, the US Treasury Department has imposed secondary sanctions on two affiliates of Russian energy giant Rosneft, which had been carrying up to 60 percent of Venezuela’s crude output in addition to supplying diesel and gasoline.

Following the departure of Rosneft, Tehran has stepped in to provide fuel as well as technical assistance in repairing Venezuela’s largest refinery, which has been offline since last year’s nationwide blackouts. The Trump administration has likewise threatened Iran over its technical air corridor to Venezuela, calling on other countries to suspend Iranian overflight rights.

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Featured image: Venezuelan ships and airplanes will escort the Iranian tankers once they enter Venezuelan waters. (Military Watch Magazine)

It’s unimportant whether US nukes will eventually be deployed to Poland or not since the very fact that this scenario is seriously being discussed by both American and Russian diplomats proves that Warsaw trumps Berlin for Washington and that Poland is in the process of replacing Germany as the US’ preferred European partner.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), happily amplified by the Public Broadcasting System (PBS) in the United States which carries its World News, continues to pump out its regular dreck about the alleged economic chaos in Russia and the imagined miserable state of the Russian people.

As long as the tone remains restrained and dignified, literally any slander will be swallowed by the credulous and every foul scandal and shame can be confidently covered up.

None of this would have surprised the late, great George Orwell. It is fashionable these days to endlessly trot him out as a zombie (dead but alleged to be living – so that he cannot set the record straight himself) critic of Russia and all the other global news outlets outside the control of the New York and London plutocracies. And it is certainly true, that Orwell, whose hatred and fear of communism was very real, served before his death as an informer to MI-5, British domestic security.

But it was not the Soviet Union, Stalin’s show trials or his experiences with the Trotskyite POUM group in Barcelona and Catalonia during the Spanish Civil War that “made Orwell Orwell” as the Anglo-America Conventional Wisdom Narrative has it. It was his visceral loathing of the British Empire – compounded during World War II by his work for the BBC which he eventually gave up in disgust.

And it was his BBC experiences that gave Orwell the model for his unforgettable Ministry of Truth in his great classic “1984.”

George Orwell had worked in one of the greatest of all world centers of Fake News. And he knew it.

More profoundly, the great secret of George Orwell’s life has been hiding in plain sight for 70 years since he died. Orwell was in the service of the British Empire during his years in Burma, modern Myanmar. And as a fundamentally decent man, he was so disgusted by what he had done that he spent the rest of his life not just atoning but slowly and willfully committing suicide before his heartbreakingly premature death while still in his 40s.

The first important breakthrough in this fundamental reassessment of Orwell comes from one of the best books on him. “Finding George Orwell in Burma” was published in 2005 and written by “Emma Larkin”, a pseudonym for an outstanding American journalist in Asia whose identity I have long suspected to be an old friend and deeply respected colleague, and whose continued anonymity I respect.But amid all their countless fiascoes and failures in every other field (including the highest recorded per capita death rate from COVID-19 in Europe, and one of the highest in the world) the British remain world leaders at managing global Fake News.

“Larkin” took the trouble to travel widely in Burma during its repressive military dictatorship and her superb research reveals crucial truths about Orwell. According to his own writings and his deeply autobiographical novel “Burmese Days” Orwell loathed all his time as a British colonial policeman in Burma, modern Myanmar. The impression he systematically gives in that novel and in his classic essay “Shooting an Elephant” is of a bitterly lonely, alienated, deeply unhappy man, despised and even loathed by his fellow British colonialists throughout society and a ludicrous failure at his job.

This was not, however, the reality that “Larkin” uncovered. All surviving witnesses agreed that Orwell – Eric Blair as he then still was – remained held in high regard during his years in the colonial police service. He was a senior and efficient officer. Indeed it was precisely his knowledge of crime, vice, murder and the general underside of human society during his police colonial service while still in his 20s that gave him the street smarts, experience, and moral authority to see through all the countless lies of right and left, of American capitalists and British imperialists as well as European totalitarians for the rest of his life.

The second revelation to throw light on what Orwell had to do in those years comes from one of the most famous and horrifying scenes in “1984.” Indeed, almost nothing even in the memoirs of Nazi death camp survivors has anything like it: That is the scene where “O’Brien”, the secret police officer tortures the “hero” (if he can be called that) Winston Smith by locking his face to a cage in which a starving rat is ready to pounce and devour him if it is opened.

I remember thinking, when I was first exposed to the power of “1984” at my outstanding Northern Irish school, “What kind of mind could invent something as horrific as that?”) The answer was so obvious that I like everyone else missed it entirely.

Orwell did not “invent” or “come up” with the idea as a fictional plot device: It was just a routine interrogation technique used by the British colonial police in Burma, modern Myanmar. Orwell never “brilliantly” invented such a diabolical technique of torture as a literary device. He did not have to imagine it. It was routinely employed by himself and his colleagues. That was how and why the British Empire worked so well for so long. They knew what they were doing. And what they did was not nice at all.

A final step in my enlightenment about Orwell, whose writings I have revered all my life – and still do – was provided by our alarmingly brilliant elder daughter about a decade ago when she too was given “1984” to read as part of her school curriculum. Discussing it with her one day, I made some casual obvious remark that Orwell was in the novel as Winston Smith.

My American-raised teenager then naturally corrected me. “No, Dad, ” she said. “Orwell isn’t Winston, or he’s not just Winston. He’s O’Brien too. O’Brien actually likes Winston. He doesn’t want to torture him. He even admires him. But he does it because it’s his duty.”

She was right, of course.

But how could Orwell the great enemy of tyranny, lies and torture so identify with and understand so well the torturer? It was because he himself had been one.

“Emma Larkin’s” great book brings out that Orwell as a senior colonial police officer in the 1920s was a leading figure in a ruthless war waged by the British imperial authorities against drug and human trafficking crime cartels every bit as vicious and ruthless as those in modern Ukraine, Columbia and Mexico today. It was a “war on terror” where anything and everything was permitted to “get the job done.”

The young Eric Blair was so disgusted by the experience that when he returned home he abandoned the respectable middle class life style he had always enjoyed and became, not just an idealistic socialist as many in those days did, but a penniless, starving tramp. He even abandoned his name and very identity. He suffered a radical personality collapse: He killed Eric Blair. He became George Orwell.

Orwell’s early famous book “Down and Out in London and Paris” is a testament to how much he literally tortured and humiliated himself in those first years back from Burma. And for the rest of his life.

He ate miserably badly, was skinny and ravaged by tuberculosis and other health problems, smoked heavily and denied himself any decent medical care. His appearance was always abominable. His friend, the writer Malcolm Muggeridge speculated that Orwell wanted to remake himself as a caricature of a tramp.

The truth clearly was that Orwell never forgave himself for what he did as a young agent of empire in Burma. Even his literally suicidal decision to go to the most primitive, cold, wet and poverty-stricken corner of creation in a remote island off Scotland to finish “1984” in isolation before he died was consistent with the merciless punishments he had inflicted on himself all his life since leaving Burma.

The conclusion is clear: For all the intensity of George Orwell’s experiences in Spain, his passion for truth and integrity, his hatred of the abuse of power did not originate from his experiences in the Spanish Civil War. They all flowed directly from his own actions as an agent of the British Empire in Burma in the 1920s: Just as his creation of the Ministry of Truth flowed directly from his experience of working in the Belly of the Beast of the BBC in the early 1940s.

George Orwell spent more than 20 years slowly committing suicide because of the crimes he committed for the British Empire in Burma. We can therefore have no doubt what his horror and disgust would be at what the CIA did under President George W. Bush in its “Global War on Terror.” Also, Orwell would identify at once and without hesitation the real fake news flowing out of New York, Atlanta, Washington and London today, just as he did in the 1930s and 1940s.

Let us therefore reclaim and embrace The Real George Orwell: The cause of fighting to prevent a Third World War depends on it.

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During his 24 years as a senior foreign correspondent for The Washington Times and United Press International, Martin Sieff reported from more than 70 nations and covered 12 wars. He has specialized in US and global economic issues.

The United States Department of Labor reported on Thursday that more than 2.4 million Americans applied for unemployment insurance last week, bringing the total number of new claims to 38.6 million since mid-March, when social distancing measures and statewide stay-at-home orders were first implemented in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Even with the push by the Trump administration since then to reopen the economy and the easing of lockdown orders in all 50 states—despite a continued rise in COVID-19 infections and deaths—the US marked its ninth straight week in which more than 2 million workers filed for unemployment. While this is down from the peak at the end of March when 6.8 million applied for unemployment insurance, it still dwarfs the worst weeks of the Great Recession in 2008.

It is expected that the official unemployment rate for May, which is to be reported by the federal government in the first week of June, will approach 20 percent, up from 14.7 percent last month. This is a significant undercount, with millions of unemployed immigrants unable to apply for benefits, and many other workers who are not currently looking for work and therefore are not counted as unemployed.

Fortune magazine estimates that real unemployment has already hit 22.5 percent, which is nearing the peak of unemployment reached during the Great Depression in 1933, when the rate rose above 25 percent. Millions more are expected to apply in the coming weeks, pushing the numbers beyond those seen during the country’s worst economic crisis.

But even these figures do not capture the extent of the crisis now unfolding across the country. Millions have been blocked for weeks from applying for unemployment compensation because of antiquated computer systems, and a significant share of those who have applied have been denied any payments. On top of this there are significant delays in processing applications in multiple states, including Indiana, Missouri, Wyoming and Hawaii. Meanwhile, Florida, which has some of the most stringent restrictions, has refused to extend its paltry three-month limit on payments for the few who manage to qualify.

Sparked by the pandemic, the greatest economic crisis since the 1930s is already having a devastating impact on the millions who have seen their jobs suddenly disappear, while millions more will see wages, benefits and hours dramatically curtailed whenever they are able to return to work. Optimistic projections that the US economy would quickly bounce back once stay-at-home orders were lifted are now becoming much gloomier.

A University of Chicago analysis from earlier this month projects that 42 percent of lost jobs will be permanently eliminated. At the current record number, this will mean a destruction of 16.2 million jobs, nearly double the number of jobs which were lost during the Great Recession just over a decade ago.

“I hate to say it, but this is going to take longer and look grimmer than we thought,” Nicholas Bloom, a Stanford University economist and one of the co-authors of the study, told the New York Times.

A survey by the Census Bureau carried out at the end of April and beginning of this month found that 47 percent of adults had lost employment since March 13 or had someone in their household do so, and 39 percent expected that they or someone else in the home would lose their job in the next month. Nearly 11 percent reported that they had not paid their rent or mortgage on time and more than 21 percent had slight or no confidence that they would do so next month.

With millions missing their rent or mortgage payments, tens of thousands of families will be thrown out on the street in the coming weeks and months, leading to a dramatic rise in homelessness even as the coronavirus continues to spread. While many states took steps in March to place a moratorium on evictions, and eviction notices were unable to be filed due to court closures, those measures are now expiring and courts are reopening.

The Oklahoma County Sheriff announced Tuesday via their Twitter page that the department would resume enforcing evictions on May 26. Nearly 300 eviction cases were filed in Oklahoma City between Monday and Tuesday. This process is being repeated in cities and counties across the country. Evictions are also set to resume in Texas next week, where many families were ineligible for aid due to the undocumented status of one or another parent. The CARES Act provision, which blocks evictions from properties with federally subsidized mortgages, expires on July 25; in Texas this only accounts for one-third of homes.

Meanwhile, another wave of layoffs and furloughs is expected by the Congressional Budget Office at the end of June, when the multi-billion-dollar Payment Protection Program (PPP) expires. Sold as a bailout which would help small businesses keep workers on their payroll in the course of necessary shutdowns, the PPP was in fact a boondoggle for large corporations, their subsidiaries and those with connections to the Trump administration. Many small business owners have not seen any aid, and many do not qualify for loan forgiveness.

Amid historic levels of social misery in the working class, times have never been better for those at the heights of society, with America’s billionaires adding $434 billion to their total net worth since state lockdowns began. Financial markets have soared, underwritten by $80 billion per day from the Federal Reserve.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, who is rescinding a $2-an-hour hazard pay increase for his warehouse workers at the end of the month, led the pack, increasing his personal wealth by $34.6 billion since the onset of the pandemic. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was close behind, adding $25 billion to his fortune. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, who reopened his California auto plant in defiance of state regulators and with the support of President Trump, saw a 48 percent increase in his wealth to $36 billion in just eight weeks as the stock market rebounded from its collapse. All told, the nation’s 620 billionaires now control $3.382 trillion, a 15 percent increase in two months.

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Though requirements vary from state to state, many of them are hiring thousands of contact tracers in an effort to curb coronavirus spread. Here’s a brief quiz to check your knowledge.

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States across the country are scrambling to hire tens of thousands of contact tracers, who allegedly will play a key role in keeping the coronavirus contained.

Many experts I interviewed said that a high school diploma should be sufficient for a basic contact tracing job, though teams should be led by an experienced public health worker. Indeed, this could be an opportunity for the U.S. to provide employment for thousands of people who have recently lost their jobs.

But every state has different requirements. Georgia’s basic contact tracing role requires at minimum a high school diploma, while New York City requires at minimum either a bachelor’s degree with 12 semester credits in health education or the sciences, or a high school diploma along with four years of job experience in health promotion or disease intervention.

Dr. Emily Gurley, an associate scientist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the instructor of an online course on contact tracing, which is required for all New York contact tracers, described the job as “part disease detective, part social work, part therapist.” The hardest parts of the job, she said, aren’t necessarily tracking down people’s contacts, but rather the heavy conversations when delivering difficult news, such as when a tracer has to tell a patient to isolate at home, but that person is the sole breadwinner for the family.

Gurley’s six-hour course, which is free to the public, covers technical information, such as how the virus transmits, as well as guidance on how to build rapport and communicate effectively. Inspired by her course, here’s a mini quiz to see how well you know the fundamentals of contact tracing. If you’d like to read up first, here’s my deep dive on the subject.

1. The definition of close contact is, within 48 hours before the patient’s symptoms began:

A. Anyone who lives in the patient’s household or is a co-worker.

B. Anyone who has been within 6 feet for more than 15 minutes.

C. Anyone with whom the patient remembers spending more than five minutes.

2. What is the difference between isolation and quarantine?

A. They’re the same thing. The words are interchangeable.

B. Isolation means you have to stay away from everyone, and quarantine means you can still go out, but you have to monitor your symptoms.

C. Isolation is the term used for confirmed COVID-19 patients, while quarantine is the term used for exposed contacts. In both cases, you need to stay away from other people.

3. You’re on the phone with Amelia, who tested positive for COVID-19. She tells you her symptoms began on June 4. When you follow up on June 12, she says she hasn’t had a fever in four days and most of her symptoms are gone, but she still feels tired. Can her isolation end?

A. Yes, she’s free to leave home.

B. No, her isolation’s not over yet. (Bonus points if you can explain why.)

4. Andy went to a birthday party on May 7 where he was in close contact with someone who tested positive for COVID-19 on May 10. A contact tracer calls Andy on May 11. When is it safe for Andy to end quarantine, assuming he does not develop any symptoms?

A. May 21

B. May 24

C. May 25

5. What is the incubation period of the coronavirus?

A. Usually two days, but it could be as long as seven days.

B. Usually five days, but it could be as short as two days or as long as 14 days.

C. Usually 14 days.

(Answers: 1. B, 2. C, 3. B, It hasn’t been 10 days since symptoms began, 4. A. Quarantine is defined at 14 days since the last day of exposure, 5. B.)

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Caroline Chen covers health care for ProPublica.

Featured image is from Shutterstock

Throughout his time in office, Trump proved he’s more a deal breaker than observer of international law, treaties and agreements.

He abandoned the landmark 1987 INF Treaty with Russia, the 2016 Security Council adopted JCPOA, the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, and the 2016 Trans-Pacific Partnership, a latter positive move unlike his other unilateral pullouts.

He also withdrew from UNESCO and the UN Human Rights Council, threatened to leave the World Trade Organization, and suspended US funding to the WHO.

New START with Russia is next on his list to abandon, the nuclear arms control treaty expiring in February 2021.

Effective January 1, 2002, 34 European states, the US, and Russia adopted the Open Skies Treaty (OST), other nations welcomed to join.

After threatening to withdraw from the OST earlier, Trump on Thursday confirmed that he’s abandoning the treaty, falsely saying:

“Russia didn’t adhere to the treaty (sic), so until they adhere we will pull out…”

On the same day, Trump regime assistant war secretary Jonathan Hoffman falsely accused Moscow of “flagrantly and continuously violat(ing) its obligations under Open Skies (sic),” adding:

Russia “contribute(s) to military threats against the US and our allies and partners (sic).”

Fact: Russia threatens no other nations. It pursues cooperative relations with world community member states, at war against none.

Fact: The same reality is true about all nations on the US target list for regime change.

Fact: Since Truman preemptively attacked North Korea in June 1950, the US has been at war against one nation after another, along with waging war against many more countries by other means.

On Thursday, Pompeo said the Trump regime “will submit (formal) notice of its decision to withdraw from the” OST to other treaty signatories, the move effective six months from May 22.

The OST permits unarmed aerial surveillance over the entire territory of signatory countries.

It’s a confidence-building measure to promote openness, letting treaty members get information on military forces and activities for national security reasons.

The US FY 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) suspended funding related to OST cooperation with Russia, the measure stating:

“None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act…may be obligated or expended to carry out any activities to modify any United States aircraft for purposes of implementing the Open Skies Treaty” with Russia – until the president certifies to Congress that penalties have been imposed on the Kremlin for alleged treaty violations that don’t exist.

At the time, Moscow strongly denied the false accusation, again after Thursday’s Trump regime announcement. See below.

The NDAA  prohibits US military cooperation with Russia indefinitely.

It falsely accused the Kremlin of annexing Crimea and failing to the implement Minsk I and II — ceasefire agreements to end US-supported Ukraine aggression against its own Donbass citizens in the country’s southwest.

Annual NDAA measures have nothing to do with protecting the US from threats to its security. None exist.

They have everything to do with waging endless wars by hot and other means against sovereign nations the US wants transformed into vassal states.

Abandoning OST based on Big Lies moves the US a step closer toward rupturing relations with Russia.

In response to the Trump regime’s action, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said the following:

“Let me draw your attention. It is the Russian side that has clear and long-formulated claims against the Americans as to (non)compliance with this agreement.”

“And today, right now, we will reiterate these claims, these thorny issues.”

“We described (them) in detail. In particular in February, we put together on our resources all the claims that we had, making them publicly available.”

“These are far from all claims, but (are) the most evident.”

“For example, we said that since 2017 the US has tightened its approaches to fulfilling this treaty in regard to Russia, and since January 2018, several restrictions have been imposed against our country.”

“This (includes) the refusal to grant permission to depart from US rules of air traffic and norms of aviation security and changing special procedures for performing observation flights over the Hawaiian Islands by limiting maximum range of flights from Hickam airbase, and the refusal to allow overnight stops on mainland US and many other things.”

The OPT “has a format of implementation. (It) has commitments of parties, which were confirmed on paper.”

“In view of this, this public debate or public commentaries, mildly speaking, are not enough to draw conclusions on US plans.”

“There are mechanisms of their implementation. Namely, there is a respective commission, where one can come and announce claims.”

“There are also diplomatic channels, upon which we expect certain clarification of the US side in order to shape our attitude to their position.”

“This is routinely and normally done by diplomats. I believe that after this we will formulate our approach.”

Separately, director of Russia’s Foreign Ministry Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Vladimir Yermakov stressed that Trump regime accusations of OST breaches by Moscow are baseless.

The treaty aims to build and maintain transparency relating to arms control agreements — in the interest of world peace and stability.

In response to the Trump regime’s Thursday announcement, Russia’s envoy to the UN in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov said the following:

“It is easier to break than to build. The treaty worked for two decades and ensured transparency, a higher level of trust on military issues in the transatlantic region.”

“But the decision to leave, apparently, explains the US idea of a ‘new era’ of arms control. The ‘new era’ seems to mean no control.”

The Trump regime “decided to cut down one more multi-party treaty on arms control…”

It wants to operate unrestrained in developing and deploying weapons of mass destruction, the US perhaps intending to use them one day.

Today’s infinitely more powerful thermo-nukes make Fat Man and Little Boy atom bombs look like toys by comparison.

In December 2016, Popular Mechanics said thermo-nukes “are more than 3,000 times (more) powerful (than) the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

Current nukes may exceed this destructive force.

The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) is dedicated to the elimination of these WMDs before they eliminate us and all other life forms.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

The CoV-19 pandemic is now exposing the hidden agendas and motives of the powers that be in government, in the pharmaceutical industry and Wall Street, and in the media. Despairingly opponents of vaccine mandates are largely divided. Many Trump supporters in the so-called anti-vaccination community believed he would be their savior to protect vaccine exemptions and avert compulsory mandates. Nevertheless, during his watch draconian mandate laws to ban religious exemption for children to attend public schools have been signed by the governors of California and New York.

Throughout the CoV-19 pandemic, Trump has waffled wildly, jumping on and off the vaccine band wagon depending upon his daily whims. Early he stated there was no need for a vaccine since the virus would magically disappear and no longer be a threat. It was his gut feeling and not surprisingly he was wrong. Yet during a press conference on March 14th, Trump announced the unveiling of his Operation Warp Speed agenda to accelerate development of a CoV-19 vaccine and have it ready this year. Trump is now fully on board with the pro-vaccination agenda. Moreover, he ordered that the military will be “mobilized so at the end of the year, we’re going to be able to give it to a lot people very, very rapidly.”  His newly appointed Warp Speed advisor is a venture capitalist and a former chairman of GlaxoSmithKline’s vaccine division, Moncel Slaoui.

Often in order to understand Trump’s strategies, follow the money trail, especially if the money trails leads to sealing loyalty to the president. However, his probable immediate motivation is for reelection and to increase the profits of pharmaceutical and investor profiles as repayment for those loyalties.  We can therefore reasonably expect, despite what has already been stated, that Trump may nationally mandate a CoV-19 vaccine. There are voices in Trump’s camp who favor mandates.

One of Trump’s leading attorneys is Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz who recently went on record saying,

“Let me put it very clearly, you have no constitutional right to endanger the public and spread disease…. You have no right not to be vaccinated, you have no right not to wear a mask, you have no right to open up your business…. if you refuse to be vaccinated, the state has the power to literally take you to a doctor’s office and plunge a needle into your arm.”

What might be the downside if a vaccine pushed on the public en masse is discovered to not work or is found unsafe in the long-term? Worse, what might be the consequences of a flawed vaccine that becomes mandated and required as policy to attend schools, work or even to leave the home to shop? We might be faced with an epidemic of vaccine-related illnesses and death on a scale that could dwarf the current CoV-19 pandemic.

There would be a greater rationale to push forward a fast-tracked vaccine if the private vaccine manufacturers were held legally liable for vaccine-related injuries and deaths. However, this was laid to rest by the Reagan administration after the passage of the Vaccine Injury Compensation Act in 1986, which freed the pharmaceutical industry from personal injury lawsuits. Consequently, there is no incentive whatsoever for the vaccine industry to perform thorough due diligence analyses and reviews and to adopt gold standard scientific measures to create a safe and effective vaccine. In effect, they have free rein to develop vaccines according to their own rules.

According to German oncologist Claus Kohnlein, we may well be in the era of “virus mania.” The prevailing medical establishment has become dominated by a rapidly expanding private industry obsessed with viruses and the invention of pandemics for enormous profit. This obsession has hijacked not only medical practice and legislators who are determined to mandate vaccination, but has also infiltrated the entire mainstream media.

This is despite consensual confirmatory evidence that some of these viruses may not be dangerous enough to warrant a vaccine nor demand mass screening to monitor potential infection.  For example, University of Toronto professor emeritus of pathology, Dr. Etienne de Harven would have us ask: do molecular markers for retroviruses truly confirm the presence of a virus, or is this a human invention that substitutes the absence of identifiable viral proteins and particles? Embedded in all of the confusion over CoV-19 and the heated debates and uncertainty over life returning to normal, the mainstream chorus chants that stability will only resume after a vaccine is launched on the public. At this moment, Kohnlein’s 2007 book Virus Mania: Avian Flu, Cervical Cancer, SARS, BSE, Hepatitis C, AIDS, Polio is essential reading to expose the life-threatening failures in modern medical science’s efforts to tackle viral threats. And what Kohnlein outlines is being repeated again with CoV-19.

The need for a vaccine in order for society and the economy to return to normal was clearly stated by Trump’s Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell. “.. for the economy to fully recover,” he stated, “that may have to await the arrival of a vaccine.”

Unfortunately, besides the White House and nation being impatient and placing high hopes in a vaccine, we are also witnessing a careless zeal to cut regulatory corners. And this atmosphere could potentially end in a serious medical disaster on the not-too-distant horizon.  Virus mania is morphing into vaccine mania. That vaccine mania has become a reality is evidenced in the 133 vaccines currently in development worldwide targeted against CoV-19 according to the Milken Institute.

Many challenges must be recognized and surmounted before an effective CoV-19 vaccine can be deemed safe..  The virus has already been shown to mutate rapidly despite beliefs that its RNA is stable. Mutations of course naturally occur when a virus changes hosts, especially after jumping species. However, RNA viruses mutate more readily than larger DNA viruses such as herpes, HPV and smallpox.  University of Cambridge has identified three separate mutations since the Wuhan outbreak. Last month Los Alamos National Laboratory reported a recent mutation that is more contagious and transmittable than the original Wuhan strain.  Another strain was identified in India; the South China Morning Post reported that this Indian strain is being viewed as more virulent for the development of severe acute respiratory syndrome. The researchers from National Changhua University in Taiwan and Murdoch University in Australia warned that it “means current vaccine development against Sars-CoV-2 is at risk of becoming futile.” The problem with mutations, similar to the challenges to create a universal flu vaccine, is whether or not any CoV-19 vaccine would generate sufficient immunity to combat future mutant strains and whether this is a cross-over of multi-strain immunity.

Furthermore, some reports indicate that natural CoV-19 immunity may wane quickly.  This is an additional caution about any promises that a fast-tracked and poorly evaluated vaccine, which will bypass a rigorous regulatory review, will provide much if any long-term immunity. In a preliminary study, Columbia University researchers identified people who were reinfected with the same coronavirus strain within a single year. Twelve individuals tested positive two or three times for the same strain within 18 months.  Similar findings were noted in South Korea. The Columbia scientists’ conclusion is that coronavirus “immunity seems to wane quickly.”  Dr. Matthew Frieman at the University of Maryland is an expert in coronaviruses.  He states that “we get coronaviruses every winter even though we’re seroconverted….. We really don’t understand whether it is a change in the virus over time [ie., mutations] or antibodies that don’t protect from infection.” The consequences are that proposals for issuing immunity certificates or passports would be utterly futile, an extraordinary waste of funding and that would accomplish little.

Since 2003 efforts have been made to develop coronavirus vaccines following the first SARS outbreak in China. All of these efforts failed either because of a lack in funding or because of observable serious adverse effects that necessitated the project to cease. To our knowledge, none of these efforts reached human trials because of serious adverse effects in animal trials.

However, now we are witnessing one company Moderna bypassing animal studies with its new CoV vaccine and commencing with human trials. The company has already reported that its experimental vaccine showed signs of being “safe and provoked a strong immune response” in a first phase clinical trial; the vaccine was administered to a very small number of human participants (N=45) to determine safety and to measure the levels of volunteers’ immune response. Just over half of the participants had recognizable antibodies, but these were “binding antibodies.” What is critical for protection is neutralizing antibodies; and on this account only 4 of the 45 participants were actually “analyzed” to show promising neutralizing antibody results. Nor did Moderna report any T-cell activity, essential for fighting the virus. In other words, Moderna’s premature reports are negligible for guaranteeing an effective and safe CoV-19 vaccine.

We should remember this is only a first phase trial. The vaccine has a ways to go before it can be ruled effective.

“If you look at vaccine development,” stated Dr. Daniel Salmon, Director of Johns Hopkins’ Institute for Vaccine Safety, “[there are] lots of vaccines that look good out of phase one that don’t turn out to be good products.”

University of Ottawa Prof. Michel Chossudovsky has documented NIAID’s Dr. Anthony Fauci‘s support of Moderna’s vaccine, and. According to Bobby Kennedy Jr, Faico waived the needs for the company to test the vaccine in ferrets and primates and instead proceed directly into larger human trials. Both Moderna’s and its German competitor CureVac’s CoV-19 vaccine rely on mRNA technology, which carry strands of mRNA that encode CoV-19-specific proteins intended to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. Bill Gates says he is “particularly excited by two new approaches that some of the candidates are taking: RNA and DNA vaccines.” But modern medicine has no practical experience with such vaccines being given to entire populations; therefore, there is absolutely no past history to monitor potential long-term risks, such as whether an engineered genetic code of a viral antigen will recombine adversely with the body’s own DNA and trigger other life-threatening injuries we have to be aware of.

Despite the hype over Moderna’s apparent success and a huge 39 percent rise in its stock price, a recent article in Nature warns us not to pop the Champaign corks yet. Moderna’s data remains unpublished and many scientists worry the results may be “murky.” It is worrisome that the company would make such an announcement before any data is made available for independent review. Seemingly this was solely for financial reasons; Moderna’s premature claims were rewarded with a $1.3 million stock offering to bankroll its vaccine. Trump is also throwing his weight behind Moderna’s vaccine: it is manufactured in the US, funded by the government, and Warp Speed advisor Slaoui sits on the board of the Lonza Group that is collaborating with Moderna. One caveat is that Moderna has never brought a vaccine nor a therapeutic product to the market and is therefore largely inexperienced. There is also no public release of consent forms that the trial participants are required to sign. And no indication of how much volunteers were paid. Are they being compensated with inordinate amounts beyond the industry’s standards to accept high risk? None of this information has been provided.

The Nature article also quotes Baylor University vaccine scientist and coronavirus expert Dr. Peter Hotez’s response to Moderna’s announcement, “I’m not convinced that this is really a positive result.” The article notes that

“… mostpeople who have recovered from COVID-19 without hospitalization did not produce high levels of ‘neutralizing antibodies’, which block the virus from infecting cells. Moderna measured these potent antibodies in eight participants and found their levels to be similar to those of recovered patients.”

The most promising vaccine, Hotez believes, is being developed by Sinovac Biotech in China, but it requires three separate inoculations. Sinovac’s vaccine after being administered to rhesus monkeys showed no presence of the virus found in the throats, lungs or rectums of the primates.

Another vaccine being developed at Oxford University protected monkeys (only six in the trial) from pneumonia but the primates;’ nasal passages contained as much of the virus as those unvaccinated. In other words, all vaccinated monkeys became infected. In addition, the antibody titers were extremely low, which suggests the animals may not be fully protected. Nevertheless, Oxford is interpreting these weak results as a success and will also push forward with recruiting participants for a large human trial.

This sets a very disturbing precedent that will likely be imitated by other vaccine companies either now or during a future infectious pandemic.  Still other vaccines in development are entirely experimental and have no predecessor on the market. Novavax has created a recombinant nanoparticle vaccine — an artificially engineered fake replica of the actual virus. Since there is no vaccine on the current CDC schedule utilizing this technology, we have no idea of its long-term safety.

So what do earlier efforts at developing a coronovirus vaccine tell us?

In 2012, a vaccine being developed by the University of Texas at Galveston and Baylor University observed pulmonary immunopathology in an animal study with mice. The researchers proposed the vaccine’s pathology may be attributed to an adverse cytokine response, an observation a large number of physicians and researchers have made with persons severely affected with CoV-19.  A later vaccine effort in 2016 by the same institutions targeted the MERS coronavirus strain and observed lung immunopathology similar to infection with the wild virus.

A year earlier, another vaccine effort led by the University of North Carolina’s Vaccine Institute noted an increase in eosinophilic proinflammatory pulmonary responses in a mouse model. Eosinophils are a type of white blood cell that are associated with infections, allergies and cancers. However, an abnormal increase in eos, a condition called eosinophilia, can result in nasal allergies and even cancer. This raises a question whether the North Carolina vaccine could have potentially contributed to lung cancer? The vaccine was also shown to provide poor protection from infection both in the adjuvant and non-adjuvant vaccines.

A later 2018 SARS vaccine trial with rhesus macaques conducted at Wuhan University led to antibody-dependent vaccine induced infections. The project was supposedly discontinued.

Another SARS vaccine trial with ferrets led by researchers at the University of Manitoba observed a promising neutralizing antibody response; however their severe inflammatory responses were observed in the animals’ livers. The scientists concluded that the vaccine was “associated with enhanced hepatitis.” That vaccine project too seems to have been shelved.

Japanese scientists in 2008 developed a SARS vaccine that utilized a recombinant vaccinia virus that expressed the SARS spike protein. Immunized mice exhibited increased infiltration of esoinophils in the lungs, a thickening of the alveolar epithelium, an uptake in cytokines contributing to abnormal inflammatory storms, and aggravated severe pneumonia.

Clearly, the past history to develop a coronavirus vaccine is not encouraging. Jennifer Sun, a molecular biologist at Princeton, warns that due to past coronavirus vaccine failures, the CoV-19 signatures need to be fully evaluated before any human trials commence in order “to prevent organ damage upon viral challenge.” Baylor University, which has attempted to develop a vaccine, knows the problems all too well. According to Dr. Robert Atmar at Baylor’s Department of Molecular Virology,  coronaviruses “are notoriously difficult when it comes to vaccine development…. the concern is that if these vaccines were used in people, they could end up causing harm.”

Other scientists have issued warnings against hastily approving a vaccine without proper large, long-term clinical trials and scrupulous evaluation. For example, Dr. Paul Offit at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and one of the nation’s most vocal advocates for compulsory vaccination, has criticized the shortened vaccine timelines being stated. In a Philadelphia Inquirer interview, Offit cautioned for the need of “extensive animal model testing” to be certain the vaccine “is safe in animals.” This process, Offit says, “takes a lot of time, typically years.”  “If you’re going to be testing this in otherwise healthy people who are very, very unlikely to die from this infection,” he continues, “you better make sure it’s safe. So you want those regulations in place…. The point being: We’re not very good at assessing risk.”

Trump is pushing to have a vaccine ready by the end of this year. Offit and others argue two years is more realistic, and the global analytics firm Clarivate estimated that a vaccine “will require at least five years… to complete the development process through full regulatory approval.” The good news is that the firm predicts that Moderna’s mRNA vaccine has a 5% probability of success. The bad news is that the government and federal health agencies will very likely ram the first promising vaccine through the regulatory channels without having been properly evaluated for its efficacy and safety.

Without serious critical thought, the demand for a vaccine now outweighs the risks. And there is the potential for many risks that remain completely unknown, which is the same for any vaccine. Trump said it will be available “in a fairly quick manner.”  In an interview with philosophy professor Nicholas Evans at the University of Massachusetts, he raised concerns over the lack of proper animal model vaccine trials before administering it to humans. Unfortunately there are no US laws that require animal trials. Consequently the pharmaceutical companies are taking advantage of this derelict oversight in their race to be the first to get a vaccine approved and distributed. Evans also worries about “the shredding of regulations and regulatory norms as part of their [the federal health agencies] response to this outbreak and this is a very dangerous proposition.”

Rarely do politicians, and increasingly more and more scientists, make efforts to learn the lessons history offers.  Past efforts to develop a coronavirus vaccine have failed and the adverse effects observed in these efforts are clear indicators for why fast-tracking a CoV-19 vaccine would be frightfully irresponsible. But now this is all being ignored within the Trump White House, the CDC, and across most of the medical establishment, particularly the private vaccine makers. In addition, the media continues to fuel our vaccine mania, priming the public to willingly surrender their bodies to the syringe under a pretext of being protected from future CoV outbreaks.

Perhaps the most disturbing problem our national public health faces is the failure of our leading health agencies — the CDC, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, and the World Health Organization — to acknowledge the overwhelming evidence that no vaccine developed during the past half century is truly safe and effective for all.  Are there any scientific gold standard studies — double blind, controlled trials using an actual inert placebo — conducted for any vaccine currently on the market?  No? Have meticulous independent studies been performed to compare the quality of health between vaccinated and non-vaccinated participants? Unfortunately there aren’t any, and the CDC was forced to acknowledge this during a Congressional subcommittee hearing on autism.

All of the media’s vaccine propaganda is stacked with pro-industry scientists who have something to gain. They are always presented as the experts. On the other hand, independent scientists, as well as board certified physicians and pediatricians, who question the official vaccine dogma, are attacked by federal officials and the mainstream media as alarmists, anti-vaxxers and even threats to society if they speak out.  Several years ago the World Health Organization listed vaccine opponents among the 10 leading threats to global health.

But no one considers that the many millions of people who either themselves or their children received a vaccine and experienced serious adverse effects were at one time pro-vaccination. It was for that very reason they submitted themselves to be vaccinated in the first place.  Now with the dramatic rise in vaccine injuries and deaths as more shots are added to the nation’s vaccination schedule, we still await Congressional hearings at the federal and state levels that invite independent scientists, toxicologists and immunologists to explain the actual peer-review literature that would have us conclude there is no such thing as either a safe vaccine or vaccine that creates neutralizing antibodies for any given person. In other words, every vaccine may or not be effective and there is no proof they protect everyone.

There is also the utterly absurd notion that whenever someone receives a vaccine and does not come down with the disease, 100 percent of the credit is given to the vaccine’s efficacy.

And where are the real advocates who are speaking on behalf of the victims from vaccine injuries? Certainly not the pharmaceutical industry that profits immensely without any liability for damages. Nor are advocates to be found in federal and state health agencies, in most of the medical community nor across the spectrum of the media. Rather, those who refuse to take unsafe vaccines are blamed for spreading fear, uncertainty, conspiracies and even infectious disease.

But now those who have been injured or their loved ones are speaking out in greater unison. This is becoming increasingly uncomfortable for those who have profited for years from their pain.

*

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Richard Gale and Dr. Gary Null co-direct Progressive Radio Network. They are frequent contributor to Global Research.

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The Warp Speed Timeline – is what Dr. Fauci, NIAID / NIH and Bill Gates called the Covid-19 vaccination program that should have started in a few weeks (‘should have’ – hopefully now it won’t).

The world should know about the type of fraud that is planned to being administered to Mother Earth’s 7 billion people.

If the trials’ side disastrous effects are any indication – the vaccination would cause considerable harm or injury – and possibly death – to people of Planet Earth 

This is what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. – JFK’s nephew – who is intimately involved in Children’s Protection from vaccines – had to say about it.

Peter Koenig, May 22, 2020

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Moderna’s “Clinical Trial Results for Its Groundbreaking COVID Vaccine Could Not Be Much Worse”

by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

“Despite Moderna’s (pharmaceutical company created by the Bill Gates Foundation) cheery press release this morning (20 May 2020), the clinical trial results for its groundbreaking COVID vaccine could not be much worse.

The vaccine, developed and championed by Anthony Fauci and financed by Bill Gates, used an experimental mRNA technology that the two men hoped would allow rapid deployment to meet President Trump’s ambitions “warp speed” timeline.

Dr. Fauci was so confident of his shot’s safety that he waved ferret and primate studies (Moderna suspiciously reported no health data from its mouse studies).

That appears to have been a mistake. Three of the 15 human guinea pigs in the high dose cohort (250 mcg) suffered a “serious adverse event” within 43 days of receiving Moderna’s jab.

Moderna did not release its clinical trial study or raw data, but its press release, which was freighted with inconsistencies, acknowledged that three volunteers developed Grade 3 systemic events defined by the FDA as “Preventing daily activity and requiring medical intervention“.

Moderna allowed only exceptionally healthy volunteers to participate in the study.

A vaccine with those reaction rates could cause grave injuries in 1.5 billion humans if administered to “every person on earth”.

That is the threshold that Gates has established for ending the global lockdown.

Moderna did not explain why it reported positive antibody tests for only eight participants.

These outcomes are particularly disappointing because the most hazardous hurdle for the inoculation is still ahead; challenging participants with wild COVID infection.

Past attempts at developing COVID vaccines have always faltered at this stage as both humans and animals achieved robust antibody response then sickened and died when exposed to the wild virus.

Moderna’s press announcement heralded “Positive Interim Phase 1 findings”.

I have forwarded that claim to my colleagues in securities law; FTC rules restrict the amount of lipstick public companies may slather on bad donkeys.”

***

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

Recently, the number of American ships and planes in the Caribbean Sea has increased exponentially. The most likely hypothesis so far is that there will be an attempt to block Venezuela, as the military flow in the region began to grow only after Iran announced the sending of oil ships to the Bolivarian country. On May 14, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Jorge Arreaza said that the boats that take gasoline to Venezuelan ports are being persecuted by the American Navy, which is worsening with the arrival of Iranian ships.

The White House has already reported that it has taken retaliation against this cooperation between Venezuelans and Iranians, but no further information has been provided on the military operations being carried out. The United States has announced sanctions against any company that participates in the supply of gasoline to Venezuela, which is causing a structural crisis of fuel scarcity in the South American country.

In addition to the blockade, there is a humanitarian issue, as American measures are inducing a major economic recession in the Bolivarian Republic. It has also been reported by the Venezuelan government that the tax imposed by the United States is affecting the country’s food supply, which is already having an effect on society. With a crisis and the siege being imposed on Caracas, how do Venezuelans use to deal with the advancing pandemic of new coronaviruses? How can the Bolivarian government manage a major economic and social crisis with imminent health danger? It is just the American strategy: to raise a siege and provoke the Venezuelan national collapse, inducing, through coercion, Nicolás Maduro’s government to accept changes in the regime for the benefit of Washington.

The naval blockade is just one of the measures the United States is taking to overthrow Nicolás Maduro‘s legitimate government. A few days ago, an attempted invasion against the country, carried out by Colombian mercenaries on American speedboats, was neutralized, with several terrorists arrested. Apparently, the sea will be the path by which Washington will try to overthrow Maduro, insisting on the military operation as solution of international controversies. The case also indicates the presence of the so-called “extermination war”, an ancient warlike practice in which a country is surrounded and kept under block by the navy of another nation, preventing the arrival of goods and food in port areas, affecting the population as a whole, indirectly leading thousands of people to hunger, misery and death. Basically, this is exactly the American goal in Venezuela with the current blockade. Without formally declaring war, Washington adopts an even more insidious strategy than traditional military confrontation.

However, there is yet another important factor – and above Venezuela – behind the American interest in militarizing the Caribbean Sea. Since at least the First World War, the USA has occupied a position of undisputed supremacy on the seas, which allowed Washington, in time, to exercise a role of “global naval police”. However, this reality is changing day after day, since the world is already beginning to contemplate a response from nations to American naval power, especially in Asia.

In the Asian continent, China and Iran are challenging the American Navy. In China, the progress of the Navy is absolute, with the Chinese having already succeeded, for the first time in its history, to overcome the International Date Line and concluding military tests in spaces traditionally occupied by American maritime forces. In Iran, the maneuvering of small vessels against large American ships is daring.

The United States has spoken out several times condemning its opponents in China and Iran, but nothing has been done other than a mere war of words. In practice, it is difficult to deny that the United States has a naval power today that is much less powerful than it was decades ago.

Washington did not attack its rivals in Asia simply because it could not handle a counteroffensive from Beijing or Tehran – at least not without a big material loss as a result.

All of these factors are contributing to a redirection of the American Navy’s strategic policies. No longer able to keep its global power intact, Washington manages its forces for the southern portions of the American continent itself, guaranteeing a regional space of power. However, in the Americas the opposition to US possible aggression will be fierce and will have international support from other continents.

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

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According to  The Daily Telegraph (May 21, 2020):  “samples taken from the same patient are being recorded as two separate tests in the Government’s official figures”. 

“Tens of thousands of Covid-19 tests have been double-counted in the Government’s official tally, public health officials have admitted.”

“Diagnostic tests which involve taking saliva and nasal samples from the same patient are being counted as two tests, not one.

The Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England each confirmed the double-counting. This inflates the daily reported diagnostic test numbers by over 20 per cent, with that proportion being much higher earlier on in the crisis before home test kits were added to the daily totals.”

This is not a “mistake” or “incompetence”.

It is a deliberate intent to falsify the data and inflate the number of positive cases with a view to sustaining the corona fear campaign.

It was much more than “tens of thousands” as reported by the British media. These are the figures: “Almost 350,000 more tests have been reported in Government data than people tested since the start of the pandemic.”

“Discrepancy” or Outright Fraud? 

“The discrepancy is in large part explained by the practice of counting saliva and nasal samples for the same individual twice.”(Telegraph)

When did this start? And why did public health staff not speak out? Or were they instructed to shut up?

And who was in charge of instructing health staff  “to double count”. Will there be an inquiry?

Boris Johnson Government Caught Massaging the Data

Bear in mind that the “double counting” numbers are being used by the Boris Johnson government to maintain the lockdown and delay the reopening of the British economy. Not surprisingly, the UK has the largest number of so-called “confirmed cases” in Europe.

And now, England health officials are promoting “home test kits” which are said to be “reliable” and “accurate”. (And these are also included in the “confirmed cases”.

It is not the first time the Government has been caught massaging the testing data. It was accused last month of including thousands of home tests which had been posted but not completed in a bid to reach its target of 100,000 tests.”

Déjà Vu: The H1N1 Swine Flu Epidemic 

During the H1N1 swine flu epidemic in 2009. the same health authorities in England processed data for so-called  “suspected cases” without conducting a lab test whereas in Scotland, the data was based on “confirmed cases” (lab testing),  For the same time period, the were 43  confirmed cases in Scotland versus 3906 in England a ratio of more than 1 to 9. I should mention that these fake (England) data provided the green light for mass vaccination in the UK by Glaxo Smith Kline which resulted in brain damages to children.

Lets not let it happen again. Say NO to the vaccine.

England is not alone in falsifying COVID data.

The United States

CDC routinely reports “presumed cases” as “confirmed cases”.

And health clinics receive a substantial amount of money from Medicare for each COVID-19 admission.

Double-counting is also practiced in the U.S. A recent report confirms that the State of Virginia is

“to begin double-counting multiple positive coronavirus cases. [the same person tested several times]”

“The new policy may serve to sharply drive up case numbers, which may in turn significantly delay the re-opening of the state.”  (emphasis added)

A single individual can be counted “positive” more than once, which also means  that the re-opening of the Virginia economy will be delayed as a result of the introduction of a timely “fake” data methodology which was initiated in early May.

Cui bono.

More people unemployed. More companies on the verge of bankruptcy. 

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It is essential that physicians, epidemiologists and health workers Worldwide speak out and refute the statements of their governments which are acting on behalf of Big Pharma.

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“Control the oil, and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people.”* -Henry Kissenger

“Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation” by F. William Engdahl is a skillfully researched book that focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread.

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO.  Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms. The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Engdahl’s carefully argued critique goes far beyond the familiar controversies surrounding the practice of genetic modification as a scientific technique. The book is an eye-opener, a must-read for all those committed to the causes of social justice and world peace.

What follows is the Preface to “Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation” by F. William Engdahl (available through Global Research):

Introduction

“We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so,we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives.We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”
-George Kennan, US State Department senior planning official, 1948

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This book is about a project undertaken by a small socio-political elite, centered, after the Second World War, not in London, but in Washington. It is the untold story of how this self-anointed elite set out, in Kennan’s words, to “maintain this position of disparity.” It is the story of how a tiny few dominated the resources and levers of power in the postwar world.

It’s above all a history of the evolution of power in the control of a select few, in which even science was put in the service of that minority. As Kennan recommended in his 1948 internal memorandum, they pursued their policy relentlessly, and without the “luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.”

Yet, unlike their predecessors within leading circles of the British Empire, this emerging American elite, who proclaimed proudly at war’s end the dawn of their American Century, were masterful in their use of the rhetoric of altruism and world-benefaction to advance their goals. Their American Century paraded as a softer empire, a “kinder, gentler” one in which, under the banner of colonial liberation, freedom, democracy and economic development, those elite circles built a network of power the likes of which the world had not seen since the time of Alexander the Great some three centuries before Christ—a global empire unified under the military control of a sole superpower, able to decide on a whim, the fate of entire nations.

Order this critically-acclaimed book from Global Research!

Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
by F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

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This book is the sequel to a first volume, A Century ofWar: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order. It traces a second thin red line of power. This one is about the control over the very basis of human survival, our daily provision of bread. The man who served the interests of the postwar American-based elite during the 1970’s, and came to symbolize its raw realpolitik, was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Sometime in the mid-1970’s, Kissinger, a life-long practitioner of “Balance of Power” geopolitics and a man with more than a fair share of conspiracies under his belt, allegedly declared his blueprint for world domination: “Control the oil and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people.”

The strategic goal to control global food security had its roots decades earlier, well before the outbreak of war in the late 1930’s. It was funded, often with little notice, by select private foundations, which had been created to preserve the wealth and power of a handful of American families.

Originally the families centered their wealth and power in New York and along the East Coast of the United States, from Boston to New York to Philadelphia and Washington D.C. For that reason, popular media accounts often referred to them, sometimes with derision but more often with praise, as the East Coast Establishment.

The center of gravity of American power shifted in the decades following the War. The East Coast Establishment was overshadowed by new centers of power which evolved from Seattle to Southern California on the Pacific Coast, as well as in Houston, Las Vegas, Atlanta and Miami, just as the tentacles of American power spread to Asia and Japan, and south, to the nations of Latin America.

In the several decades before and immediately following World War II, one family came to symbolize the hubris and arrogance of this emerging American Century more than any other. And the vast fortune of that family had been built on the blood of many wars, and on their control of a new “black gold,” oil.

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What was unusual about this family was that early on in the building of their fortune, the patriarchs and advisors they cultivated to safeguard their wealth decided to expand their influence over many very different fields. They sought control not merely over oil, the emerging new energy source for world economic advance. They also expanded their influence over the education of youth, medicine and psychology, foreign policy of the United States, and, significant for our story, over the very science of life itself, biology, and its applications in the world of plants and agriculture.

For the most part, their work passed unnoticed by the larger population, especially in the United States. Few Americans were aware how their lives were being subtly, and sometimes not so subtly, influenced by one or another project financed by the immense wealth of this family.

In the course of researching for this book, a work nominally on the subject of genetically modified organisms or GMO, it soon became clear that the history of GMO was inseparable from the political history of this one very powerful family, the Rockefeller family, and the four brothers—David,Nelson, Laurance and John D. III—who, in the three decades following American victory in World War II, the dawn of the much-heralded American Century, shaped the evolution of power George Kennan referred to in 1948.

In actual fact, the story of GMO is that of the evolution of power in the hands of an elite, determined at all costs to bring the entire world under their sway.

Three decades ago, that power was based around the Rockefeller family. Today, three of the four brothers are long-since deceased, several under peculiar circumstances.However, as was their will, their project of global domination—“full spectrum dominance” as the Pentagon later called it—had spread, often through a rhetoric of “democracy,” and was aided from time to time by the raw military power of that empire when deemed necessary. Their project evolved to the point where one small power group, nominally headquartered in Washington in the early years of the new century, stood determined to control future and present life on this planet to a degree never before dreamed of.

The story of the genetic engineering and patenting of plants and other living organisms cannot be understood without looking at the history of the global spread of American power in the decades following World War II. George Kennan, Henry Luce, Averell Harriman and, above all, the four Rockefeller brothers, created the very concept of multinational “agribusiness”. They financed the “Green Revolution” in the agriculture sector of developing countries in order, among other things, to create new markets for petro-chemical fertilizers and petroleum products, as well as to expand dependency on energy products. Their actions are an inseparable part of the story of genetically modified crops today.

By the early years of the new century, it was clear that no more than four giant chemical multinational companies had emerged as global players in the game to control patents on the very basic food products that most people in the world depend on for their daily nutrition—corn, soybeans, rice, wheat, even vegetables and fruits and cotton—as well as new strains of disease-resistant poultry, genetically-modified to allegedly resist the deadly H5N1 Bird Flu virus, or even gene altered pigs and cattle. Three of the four private companies had decades-long ties to Pentagon chemical warfare research. The fourth, nominally Swiss, was in reality Anglodominated. As with oil, so was GMO agribusiness very much an Anglo-American global project.

In May 2003, before the dust from the relentless US bombing and destruction of Baghdad had cleared, the President of the United States chose to make GMO a strategic issue, a priority in his postwar US foreign policy. The stubborn resistance of the world’s second largest agricultural producer, the European Union, stood as a formidable barrier to the global success of the GMO Project. As long as Germany, France, Austria, Greece and other countries of the European Union steadfastly refused to permit GMO planting for health and scientific reasons, the rest of the world’s nations would remain skeptical and hesitant. By early 2006, the World Trade Organization (WTO) had forced open the door of the European Union to the mass proliferation of GMO. It appeared that global success was near at hand for the GMO Project.

In the wake of the US and British military occupation of Iraq, Washington proceeded to bring the agriculture of Iraq under the domain of patented genetically-engineered seeds, initially supplied through the generosity of the US State Department and Department of Agriculture.

The first mass experiment with GMO crops, however, took place back in the early 1990’s in a country whose elite had long since been corrupted by the Rockefeller family and associated New York banks: Argentina.

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The following pages trace the spread and proliferation of GMO, often through political coercion, governmental pressure, fraud, lies, and even murder. If it reads often like a crime story, that should not be surprising. The crime being perpetrated in the name of agricultural efficiency, environmental friendliness and solving the world hunger problem, carries stakes which are vastly more important to this small elite. Their actions are not solely for money or for profit. After all, these powerful private families decide who controls the Federal Reserve, the Bank of England, the Bank of Japan and even the European Central Bank. Money is in their hands to destroy or create.

Their aim is rather, the ultimate control over future life on this planet, a supremacy earlier dictators and despots only ever dreamt of. Left unchecked, the present group behind the GMO Project is between one and two decades away from total dominance of the planet’s food capacities. This aspect of the GMO story needs telling. I therefore invite the reader to a careful reading and independent verification or reasoned refutation of what follows.

F. William Engdahl is a leading analyst of the New World Order, author of the best-selling book on oil and geopolitics, A Century of War: Anglo-American Politics and the New World Order,’ His writings have been translated into more than a dozen languages. 

Order this critically-acclaimed book from Global Research!

Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
by F. William Engdahl

ISBN Number: 978-0-937147-2-2
Year: 2007
Pages: 341 pages with complete index

Global Research Price: US* $18.00
(List price: US $24.95)
CLICK TO BUY

*To purchase your copy in Canadian dollars, please use the “Buy This Book” button on the product page.

Two months have passed since the lockdown began, and statistics indicate that the coronavirus death toll hasn’t risen as high as we might have supposed. Yet already we hear rhetoric of a “post-COVID world,” hauntingly reminiscent of the “post-9/11 world.” However, unlike the tangible event of 9/11, COVID is a threat of an entirely different nature, an “invisible enemy.”

The enemy isn’t “out there” to defeat in the old-fashioned way, with bombs and machine guns. But all the same, its pervasiveness renders us into a constant state of paranoia. Even our loved ones become potential threats; we all pose a risk to those around us, therefore perpetrating the omnipresent danger.

To use the post-9/11 term, we are all terrorists. That’s why we must stay under house arrest until a treatment is produced to save us from ourselves. The alphabet agencies even gave us a script: we’re supposed to play the part of Sleeping Beauty as we await Prince Charming’s cure for our mysterious ailment.

But the problem with fairytales is they fall apart under scrutiny; we struggle to believe in the knight in shining armor because experience has taught us again and again that he doesn’t exist.

So it is with tales spun by government officials. The real Sleeping Beauty still needs to pay the bills, and a check of $1200 simply won’t do. She doesn’t have time to wait around for Bill Gates to unveil the miracle vaccine.

And by the time he does, who will still believe the fairytale? As fatalities continue not to skyrocket and hospitals are underwhelmed, life goes on….Everyday events begin to overshadow media induced hysteria. The spell breaks; the masquerade ends.

Yet the question remains: will the sociopolitical climate restabilize after the invisible enemy’s defeat? We’ve entered a Brave New Normal, we are repeatedly told. Life so eerily resembles the flick Contagion that we might be tempted to fast-forward and spoil the ending.

Is the final solution portrayed there a realistic possibility? Imagine — a cashless economy (since cash is germ-ridden), centralized global government, and militarized police force guiding the frightened masses like shepherds watching over their flock! The CDC’s contribution to that particular film production suggests they think it could solve the problem. The cure therefore must not only be physical, but socioeconomic.

So, suddenly the government cares more intensely about citizen health than most citizens care about their own health. The TRACE Act permits contact tracers to keep an eye on whether we’ve crossed paths with the invisible enemy; with Operation Warp Speed, troops will administer vaccines door to door.

But all of this reveals the patronizing mindset of our benevolent shepherds. We are no longer to trust our own research and direct experience — after all, unlike other flus, this one has the curious tendency of manifesting no symptoms. Instead we are to place our wellbeing into the hands of contact tracers, the WHO, the military, anyone other than ourselves.

In other words, we’re allowing authority to dictate reality, and furthermore our every movement.

But if we ignore all of this and go about our business, aren’t we at risk of spreading The Virus? Doubtfully — but if we allow the Naziesque strategies of “flattening the curve” to escalate, we certainly put our liberties at risk. Our Constitutional rights — freedom of speech, religion, and assembly to name a few — have come under fire behind the veneer of “health and safety” measures against the seemingly almighty Virus.

Meanwhile, many of us suspect that if we defend our God-given rights, the invisible enemy will fade like smoke — or like any other virus.

***

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Lynn Wolfe is an adjunct professor of English at California Baptist University.

The World Bank warns that there is a global poverty increase as tens of millions of people have fallen back into poverty because of the pandemic. Up to 60 million people worldwide may fall into extreme poverty due to the coronavirus, said David Malpass, head of the World Bank.

“Our estimate is that up to 60 million people will be pushed into extreme poverty, erasing all the progress made in poverty alleviation in the past three years, and our forecasts indicate a deep recession,” Malpass said on Tuesday.

According to him, the bank is trying to help people by providing loans in 100 countries and pledged to provide $160 billion in loans up to mid-2021. Malpass did add that these efforts were not enough. He called on creditor countries to join the G20 initiative – a ban on debt repayment for some developing countries.

The most severe challenges are developing countries. It has been predicted that in Africa tens of millions of people will earn less than the minimum income, that is, below the poverty line. But in many ways, the function of these forecasts is that they show what will happen if we do nothing. It will be difficult to prevent the development of this scenario, but with the joint efforts and cooperation of the whole world, there are legitimate grounds to prevent the most negative consequences.

However, we imagine that poverty only increases in the developing world. Morgan Stanley investment bank found that the global economy will only return to pre-crisis state in the third quarter of 2021. Deutsche Bank even launched more pessimistic forecasts – by the end of next year, developed countries’ GDP will be $1 trillion lower than 2019.

The World Trade Organization has warned that international trade will experience the deepest recession since World War II. The International Monetary Fund on April 14 said the total damage will be greater than the bank’s assessment. As stated by IMF chief economist Gita Gopinat, we are talking about $9 trillion dollars. According to the IMF, by the end of 2020, the global economy will lose 3%. This is a significant amount considering that during the Global Financial Crisis in 2009, the downturn was 0.08%.

This has exposed that the liberal global economic order is extremely vulnerable. The U.S. economy will fall by 5.9%, firstly by a quarterly sharp decline. Based on JPMorgan’s forecast, this index will reach 40%. Analysts surveyed by Bloomberg believe Europe will lose 8.3% of its GDP in the next few months. In total, from January to July, this figure will reach 10% and by the end of the year will be 5.2%. Italy and Spain will suffer the most, with GDP declines of 7.3% and 5.7%, respectively.

Pre-coronavirus data found that in the U.S. 16.2% of children lived in poverty, that is almost 1 in 6 children, with 2.5 million children experiencing homelessness in 2015. 29.9% of Americans live close to poverty while 5.3% of the population live in deep poverty. In addition, in 2018, 11.1% of American households, were food insecure, meaning they had difficulty providing enough food for all people within the house. Earlier this month the unemployment rate in the U.S. reached 14.7% with the Federal Reserve estimating it could reach a high of 25%. With the coronavirus devastating the U.S. and global economy, it can only be expected that these shocking poverty figures in the world’s richest and most powerful country will only increase significantly – this is not a problem only for the developing world.

Despite the increasing poverty and unemployment, there has been no discussion on significant scaling back the U.S.’ global militarism. In 2015, the U.S. had around 800 military bases in 50 foreign countries with 250,000 soldiers spread between them. There is little suggestion that these statistics have changed since then.

The U.S. is continuing its aggression around the world by orchestrating coup attempts in Venezuela, continual backing of jihadist groups in Syria, and sanction regimes against several countries. It appears as the U.S. economy continues to decline and large segments of the American people go deeper into poverty or enter destitution, Washington has no plans to carry out cost saving measures by reducing its monopoly of foreign bases around the globe or drawback its aggression against non-compliant independent states.

In January 1961, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower used his farewell address to warn that “an immense military establishment and a large arms industry” had emerged as a hidden force in U.S. politics and that Americans “must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.” Despite Eisenhower’s warning, it appears the American people have failed to understand its implications as profits for arms industries has taken precedence over poverty reduction that was caused by the failures of the Western liberal economy in handling the corovirus pandemic. The U.S. hegemony of foreign military bases and perpetual war is one to serve the profits of private arms companies at the expense of the American people.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Almost 53 years after it occupied the West Bank, Israel is closer than ever to annexing parts of the Palestinian territory.

Article 39 of the coalition deal signed between Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu‘s Likud party and Benny Gantz‘s Blue and White allows the premier – in coordination with the White House – to bring a proposal to apply Israeli sovereignty for debate in the government and approval by parliament from 1 July.

As there is a clear majority in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, for “application of sovereignty”, the new speak for annexation, Israel is in theory just two and half months away from annexing parts of the West Bank – undoubtedly, the most significant move it has made since it occupied it in 1967.

The government installed on Sunday will have annexation on its immediate agenda.

“In theory”, because as time passes since the signing of this coalition agreement, the pressure on Israel is mounting.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrrell said only Friday that the EU would use “all our diplomatic capacities” to stop annexation; King Abdullah of Jordan warned of “major conflict”, if Israel goes on with annexation.

Even Donald Trump’s administration sounded less enthusiastic about unilateral annexation than it seemed only weeks ago. Annexation should be a “part of discussions between the Israelis and the Palestinians”, Morgan Ortagus, chief spokesperson for Mike Pompeo, said following the secretary of state visit to Israel last week.

Although the Israeli left was badly beaten in the last elections, there is still opposition from within to annexation. Michael Sfard, an Israeli lawyer, expert on human rights law, legal adviser to human rights organisations in Israel and the author of The Wall and the Gate: Israel, Palestine, and the Legal Battle for Human Rights, is prominent within this opposition.

In an interview held last week, Sfard warned that annexation will have disastrous implications for the Palestinians residents in the annexed territories and their property. Yet at the same time, he claimed that if annexation is stopped this time, it will be off the table “for a hundred years”.

***

Middle East Eye: It is often claimed, even by Palestinians, that annexation has already essentially happened, so formal annexation will not make much of a change.

Michael Sfard: This is a very popular mistake and a failure of understanding what it means for the individual Palestinian and for the Palestinian communities, and how deeply the annexation will affect their lives and their rights. Annexation of territories will mean almost surely the “nationalisation” of most of the land in it. Large chunks of the land there that is owned by Palestinians who live outside these territories will be considered absentee property.

MEE: Can you elaborate?

MS: The 1950 Absentee Property Act was meant to take hold of the property of Palestinian refugees who left, fled or were deported from what became Israel in 1948. The definition in that law designates an individual who resides in an “enemy territory” or in “any part of Mandatory Palestine that is not the State of Israel” as an absentee.

In 1967, when Israel applied its law to East Jerusalem, many West Bankers who had property there became absentees in legal terms although they did nothing to become absentees, they didn’t leave. It’s a fictitious state but a legal state.

MEE: What leads you to believe that they will use this law now?

MS: For years, they [the Israeli government] did not implement the law in East Jerusalem, but in the last 20 years they have. The settler lobby persuaded the attorney general to make an exception, and these exceptions were koshered by the Israeli High Court. From experience, we know that every exception becomes a rule, so there is a huge danger that a lot of the lands will be considered absentee property.

Another mechanism by which Israel will expropriate lands is confiscation for public good. In every country there are expropriation laws which allow the government to expropriate land in order to build roads etc.

MEE: Today it’s not possible in the West Bank?

MS: Today it’s not possible because of the laws of occupation and according to the principles that the Israeli High Court and Ministry of Justice have kept throughout the years. That is why Israel has used all kinds of legal manoeuvres such as the declaration of state lands. But once a territory is annexed, then the “public” is the Israeli public and you can expropriate in their interest. It is clear that this is what will be done. This is the reason why Israel is annexing these territories.

MEE: This is the reason? It’s not a symbolic and political gesture?

MS: Of course there is a symbolic and a national pride side here, but without taking hold of the lands, the annexation will not fulfil the annexationist fantasies. The settlers already feel in their settlements as if they are in Israel. The one thing that is indeed a restriction on them is development, the fact that there are many farmlands around them which is difficult for them to take hold off.

MEE: So the main motive is land grab?

MS: A main feature of annexation, in the eyes of the annexationists, is land grab, absolutely. Eventually the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is over lands, not a religious conflict, not a cultural one, it is a conflict on lands. Annexation without land grab is not a victory.

That is one thing. Secondly, Palestinian communities who will be caught in these annexed territories, some of them, probably many of them, will face the threat of being forcibly deported. For 53 years Israel has been in control of the Palestinian population registry and its policy prevented Palestinians from changing their address to certain areas like South Mount Hebron, the Jordan Valley and Jerusalem Envelope.

So there are many communities, mostly small and weak, that if you check their Israeli civil administration IDs, you will find that they are registered elsewhere in the West Bank. After annexation, they will become illegal aliens in sovereign Israel and under threat of being deported. Of course it will not happen the next day, but in the long run, this is their fate.

MEE: You are among those who have claimed for a long time that what Israel is doing in the West Bank is apartheid-like. Will annexation not help you in convincing the international community that this is the case?

MS: The charge of apartheid is one that has been levelled against Israel for many years and voiced by more radical and peripheral political and human rights activists. Annexation will bring that charge closer to the mainstream. While Israel was claiming in the past that we don’t want to rule the Palestinians and that the current situation is temporary, annexation means a perpetuation of the domination over the Palestinians and their oppression, and is purported to be eternal.

MEE: So will it not help people like you?

MS: It will definitely make the argument stronger, but I don’t want to barter the strength of my argument for land grab and deportation of Palestinians. People who think that this is a good development because it will generate a stronger opposition to the Israeli policies do not fully weigh or understand the enormous consequences of annexation and probably over-value the international opposition. Israel is a very powerful state and, time after time, there were things committed by Israel which people thought the international community would not allow it to get away with – and it did.

MEE: What could stop Israel from annexation?

MS: There are three camps in Israel that are going to vote for annexation. One is the ideological camp, nothing will change their opinion. The second camp is those who are doing it for political internal reasons. For them, if the costs outweigh the benefits, they might resist. The costs could be security, economic costs and, most importantly, the damage to the Israeli position in the international community.

The third camp is Netanyahu himself. He is one man, one camp. His interests are completely different. I don’t think that at the moment they are ideological. The main question is his survival and how annexation fits into it.

There is one more thing. This is probably the most important step of sovereignty Israel is taking since its declaration of independence, and yet to a large extent it will not be decided in Jerusalem but in Washington.

MEE: Many in the Israeli security establishment, in the centre and even on the right, want to stop annexation because they want to continue the status quo of occupation. Don’t you feel uncomfortable to be in the same camp with them?

MS: Do tell them, but I think they don’t understand that in the Middle East there is no status quo. If annexation is stopped, we will not go back to the pre-annexation reality. Actually I think that stopping annexation will be the most important step to advance a just resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Many pieces of the puzzle are fitting in, the thing that the Israeli right never dreamt that will happen: a president in the White House that not only supports annexation but also pushes us to do it, a very weak Europe, a majority in the Israeli parliament, an Israeli public going constantly to the right in the last two decades. We have the Palestinians as weak as they ever have been.

All the stars are aligned for this. If in this supposedly perfect situation annexation is prevented, that will mean that the boundaries of a possible solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will be redrawn. If today we were not able to annex, then it probably will not happen in the next hundred years.

This will create a huge break in the annexationist camp. They waited 2,000 years, the messiah came, he stopped next to our door but he didn’t open it and moved on.

MEE: So you are an optimist?

MS: I’m not sure that I will gamble that it will not happen. But I do believe that there is a reasonable path that it will not happen and the international community has a major role in preventing it. Our role is to mobilise those forces that will make it not happen.

*

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Over the past days, forces of the Government of National Accord (GNA) and Syrian militants supported by the Turkish military continued developing momentum against the Libyan National Army (LNA) in northern Libya.

After capturing the Watiya Air Base from the LNA, the Turkish-led forces established control over all the areas surrounding it and deployed to within striking distance of Awlad Badr, an important LNA strong point south of Zawiya. At the same time, they attacked the town of At Talaiyah aiming to cut off any LNA forces still deployed southwest of Tripoli. The LNA repelled the Turkish-led attack there early on May 21st. Clashes north of the town are still ongoing. Another hot point is Tarhuna. The GNA declared it a zone of military operations and deployed there additional reinforcements, mostly consisting of militants arrived from Syria. Nonetheless, up til now, the new round of the battle for Tarhuna has been limited to artillery duels and airstrikes.

According to pro-Turkish sources, 9 Pantsir-S1 air defense systems, which the LNA had received from the UAE, have been captured by GNA forces or destroyed by drone strikes. 2 systems, one of them almost fully destroyed, were captured at the Watiya Air Base. Turkish Bayraktar TB2 combat drones also struck LNA-operated systems near Sirte, Tarhuna and al-Wishka. Turkish media claim that a total of 15 systems have been lost by the LNA since April 2019.

The successes of the Tripoli-based government are mostly based on Turkish military efforts. Ankara strengthened the Tripoli defenses with additional air defense systems, electronic warfare systems and Bayraktar TB2 drones at the airbase there. All of these are in fact operated by Turkish military personnel. Turkish warships off the coast of Tripoli also provide additional cover to specialists operating in the area. Meanwhile, Turkish special forces and thousands of Turkish-funded militants in Syria support GNA forces on key chunks of the frontline with the Libyan National Army.

In their turn, the main supporters of the GNA, Egypt and the UAE are not directly involved in the current military standoff. However, if the situation develops further in the current direction , this may soon change.

On May 21, LNA air force chief Saqr al-Jaroushi announced the beginning of the “largest aerial campaign in Libyan history.”

“You are about to see the largest aerial campaign in Libyan history in the coming hours,” al-Jaroushi said. “All Turkish positions and interests in all cities are legitimate targets for our air force jets and we call on civilians to stay away from them.”

The announcement followed the statement by President of Egypt Abdel Fattah el-Sisi that his country will not tolerate terrorists or those who support them (as in Syria, a large part of Turkish-led forces in Libya are linked to al-Qaeda or sympathize with the group’s ideology). Cairo and Abu Dhabi see the current Turkish expansion in Libya as a direct threat to their national interests. Therefore, they are preparing a response to the actions of Ankara.

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) urges the Canadian government to take a strong stand against Israel’s planned annexation of huge swaths of Palestinian territory in the West Bank. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz, struck a deal in April to annex parts of the West Bank as part of their bid to form a unity government. Many of Canada’s European allies have spoken strong against Israel’s plans, but to date Canada has not substantively addressed the issue. France, Belgium, Germany and Estonia have stated, for example, they will not recognize such Israeli annexations, and called Israel to “refrain from any unilateral decision that would lead to the annexation of any occupied Palestinian territory and would be, as such, contrary to international law.”

“Canada claims to support the rules-based international order,” said Thomas Woodley, President of CJPME, “But its behaviour on the Israel-Palestine file repeatedly belies this claim.”

CJPME points out that the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by force is upheld in the UN Charter, as well as in numerous resolutions at the UN Security Council and UN General Assembly. Canada’s delay in speaking out against Israel’s proposed annexations is disappointing and perplexing, especially given Canada’s recent vocal criticism of Russia’s annexation of The Crimea.

CJPME also points out that, given Canada’s obligations under international law, if Israel proceeds with its annexations, Canada will be compelled to reconsider many of its bilateral agreements with Israel. In terms of steps that Canada could take beyond simply condemning Israel’s plans, CJPME recommends opening up the Canada-Israel Free Trade Agreement (CIFTA) to ensure that commerce from annexed territories does not receive preferential trade treatment from Canada (in line with Canada’s obligations UNSC Resolution 2334 (2016.) CJPME recommends an exhaustive review of all of Canada’s bilateral agreements with Israel.

Beyond Canada’s obligations under international law, CJPME also points out that the Palestinians have borne the debilitating burden of living under Israeli military occupation for over 50 years. This has had devastating consequences for the Palestinian people in terms of their personal security, their economic development, their standard of living, and their health, among others. CJPME points out that as of last year, 138 of the 193 member states at the UN have recognized the state of Palestine. CJPME challenges the government to take steps to try to bring an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, and to recognize the Palestinian people as a nation on the international stage, with full voting rights at the UN.

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COVID-19: 324,990 deaths recorded worldwide …

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, has launched a Global Telethon to speed up the delivery of a corona vaccine for all.

Deaths attributable to lack of access to water on planet earth: 1,922,148 deaths since 1 January worldwide (more than 5,000,000 deaths per year, many of them children)!

Water for All? No World Telethon for Water and Food… 

Introduction

A graduate in anaesthesia and resuscitation for 17 years in Belgium, I am used to wearing a mask and seeing others wearing one.

Why impose this far from insignificant gesture on a whole healthy population despite the strong opposition of a large number of specialists?

See this article: “Wearing masks is not necessarily effective, and can even promote contamination, experts warn.”

On the other hand, I do not hear any media campaign supported by all political voices, including that of Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission (image right) or Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (WHO Director General since 2017), for the strengthening of the immune system of populations, to correct their deficiencies in vitamin D, vitamin C and zinc, essential elements of our anti-infectious defenses: see the references of this article “COVID 19 – An ocean of fears and lies“.

Fear and death oriented media are omnipresent and create a stressful morbid climate.

As far as I know, there is not a word about these shortcomings.

Although I am used to offering chemical, technological and modern solutions to my patients, I see above all the iatrogenesis of this mechanical and arrogant medicine:

“More and more frequently, drugs cause side effects, the pathologies caused by the treatments, including surgery, are worse than those that have led to the admission of patients who are increasingly poly-medicated (often more than ten drugs to be taken every day).”

For years, the state of health of Belgians admitted to intensive care following surgery or chronic diseases has been increasingly deplorable.

A plausible explanation comes from their bad eating habits, their addictions (alcohol, tobacco, sugar), increasingly morbid obesity (a real modern scourge – Today, 39% of adults (18 years and over) in the world are concerned by obesity (BMI>30)!) and sedentary lifestyles.

Where are the impassioned debates on these subjects, the real underlying problems highlighted by this current crisis in addition to the deterioration of environmental conditions (pollution) and the deterioration of the quality of public services for reasons of profitability.

Vaccines, masks and lock down (confinement)!

Our health authorities and journalists have only these words in their mouths.

See the article: Coronavirus: only a vaccine could allow “normality”, according to the UN chief.

What about water, food?

Vaccines OR water for everyone?

On our planet, in terms of good health for all and distributive justice, where are the priorities?

Faced with an emerging infectious disease, the usual response of “rich” countries to the mirage of safe and effective immunization is to rely on the mirage of safe and effective immunization, a source of recurrent controversy among their populations [1].

1. This was the case in 2009, during the H1N1 influenza epidemic, which the WHO quickly qualified as a pandemic. [It was a fraud] Following WHO guidelines, most countries purchased excessive quantities of vaccine in an emergency. Some spent excessive amounts of money.

2. In France, nearly 100 million doses were ordered while the vaccine had not yet obtained a marketing authorization! [2]. 6 million French people were to be vaccinated. 60 million worldwide.

3. In the United States, Dr. Anthony Fauci [3], already director of the NIAID (National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases), has also supported a multi-billion dollar influenza A H1N1 vaccine project in 2009. In Belgium, this H1N1 vaccine hysteria cost the Belgian State 85 million euros and 20 million euros to the Social Security while transferring 80.2 million euros to the pharmaceutical companies [4].

4. Money from the public purse wasted on an epidemic with alleged and exaggerated consequences according to the WHO and the alarmist predictions of its epidemiologists [already – 5], to which must be added a much more serious fact, neurological after-effects in a large number of vaccinated people.

The Pandemrix vaccine manufactured by GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) caused narcolepsy and cataplexy [6] in about one in 16,000 people. Across Europe, more than 800 children are known to have been made ill by this vaccine [7].

We must be vigilant to ensure that this does not happen again

Let’s not make the same mistakes again.

Thus, on the occasion of this new viral crisis 2020, the European Union and its president Ursula von der Leyen have already made a worldwide Telethon to finance research on vaccines against the new coronavirus [8].

The WHO (World Health Organization) has mobilized politicians and economic actors to provide a vaccine for everyone on the planet [9].

With the support of political authorities, research and scientific actors are all in a real race against time to bring to market a new vaccine against SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus responsible for the disease called COVID-19 [10].

Emergency, rush!

At the cost of once again taking risks with the health of populations, which raises ethical questions because this “covert” research involves deliberately subjecting healthy people to a dangerous virus [11], without going through all the necessary steps to develop the vaccine.

With each epidemic, each pandemic, the vaccine solution is offered to people as a universal panacea by official bodies such as the WHO and national health institutes and, in turn, by our governments.

Beyond the real risks of rushing to vaccinate everyone too early with expensive, unsuitable and dangerous products, as we saw in 2009, this race for vaccines always underlines the unequal priority of objectives between “rich” and “poor” countries.

It means forgetting that the best remedy for diseases, especially infectious diseases, is to improve living conditions, access to safe food and drinking water, the possibility of living in healthy environments and the adoption of basic hygiene measures.

It was by improving access to water and wastewater treatment that humans made a significant contribution to global health, long before the invention of vaccines.

It was “simple” hygienic practices such as hand washing that drastically reduced the rate of infections in hospitals.

For example, the pioneering Hungarian obstetrician Ignace Semmelweis (1818-1865) drastically reduced mortality in maternity wards at the Vienna General Hospital [12].

These “simple” solutions are still sorely lacking in too many countries of the world.

Water

According to regularly updated global statistics [13], as of 15 May 2020, 1 million 923 thousand people have died since the beginning of this year due to lack of access to water in the world [14].

Lack of access to water causes more than 5 million deaths worldwide each year, many of them children.

Lack of access to water kills as much as tobacco.

As far as drinking water is concerned, there are still 786 million people (11% of the world’s population) who do not have access to it.

According to the UN, about 5 million more people die from infectious or parasitic diseases caused by wastewater that contaminates them every year.

Malnutrition

Malnutrition is a serious condition caused mainly by the lack of essential nutrients.

Between 2 and 5 million malnourished children die each year.

According to Planetoscope, malnutrition is responsible for half of all deaths of children under 5 years old.

As Jean Ziegler [15], a Swiss politician, sociologist, writer and special rapporteur for the right to food (of populations) of the UN Rights Council from 2000 to 2008, puts it:

“Given the current state of agriculture in the world, we could feed 12 billion people without difficulty. To put it another way, every child who currently dies of hunger is, in reality, murdered. »

Health needs are very uneven across the world.

For example, a child born today in Sweden can expect to live for more than 80 years; but he or she will live for less than 70 years if born in Brazil, less than 63 years if born in India and less than 50 years if born in Lesotho [16].

These inequalities are unjust but avoidable.

Where is Ursula von der Leyen’s European Union Telethon to eradicate lack of access to water and malnutrition?

Is there no vaccine against malnutrition?

Why not devote these billions of euros or dollars, since they exist for vaccines, to ensure first and foremost access to basic health care for everyone in the world?

Why has the WHO not mobilised all its huge political and economic resources to provide everyone on this planet with drinking water and food (essential nutrients) once and for all?

Reading me, I think you know the answers to all these questions.

Dr. Pascal Sacré

First published by mondialisation.ca.

Translation from French. Maya Chossudovsky-Ladouceur

Featured image: Liquid gold, by Marielle van Uitert, The Netherlands. Children in the Central African Republic pumping potable groundwater. Source: flickr.com

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Notes :

[1] Respecter, promouvoir et protéger la liberté vaccinale dans toute l’Europe

[2] Grippe H1N1, exemple de manipulation internationale

[3] Anthony Fauci

[4] La grippe A/H1N1 de 2009 a coûté 85 millions d’euros à l’Etat et quelque 20 millions à la Sécu, selon la Cour des comptes. Le prix des vaccins se taille la part du lion (80,2 millions), Trends-Tendances, 23 décembre 2011

[5] La grippe H1N1 finit en coûteuse fumée, Paris Match, 25 septembre 2011, Virginie Le Guay

[6] La narcolepsie se caractérise par une somnolence diurne excessive chronique, fréquemment associée à une perte soudaine du tonus musculaire (cataplexie)

[7] Le vaccin contre la grippe H1N1 2009 a causé des lésions cérébrales chez les enfants. Ne laissez pas cela se reproduire

[8] Coronavirus: la Commission européenne organise un téléthon mondial pour financer la recherche d’un vaccin

[9] Coronavirus: l’OMS tente de mobiliser politiques et acteurs économiques en vue d’ »un vaccin pour tous » sur la planète

[10] Coronavirus: véritable course contre la montre pour mettre sur le marché un vaccin contre le covid-19

[11] Journal du Médecin 23 avril 2020, n° 2627, page 15, « La Course au Vaccin », par Corina Schmidt

[12] Ignace Semmelweis (1818 – 1865)

[13] Planétoscope

[14] Décès dus à un accès insuffisant à l’eau dans le monde

[15] Jean Ziegler

[16] Conseil de l’Europe HEALTH

The world is slowly beginning to return to a normal way of life. Shops, cafes, restaurants, and government offices are opening. Church life is also returning to its usual course. It would seem that the pause and problems caused by the COVID-19 pandemic could unite Local Churches in the fight against the virus, make faith a bigger support for people around the world in these dark times.

But apparently, some Church leaders have only increased their activities aimed at separating the Churches. So, in April, the Ecumenical Patriarchate literally voiced its support for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party by publishing a document titled “For The Life of The World”, in which Donald Trump’s policy is criticized. This is not the first time that the Phanar has indulged the interests of the Democrats in an attempt to divide the Orthodox faith – the same thing happened in Ukraine and is happening now in the Balkans. As for the Middle East, the conflict between the Patriarchates of Antioch and Jerusalem, from which Constantinople disassociates itself, comes to mind.

On February 26, 2020, a meeting of Primates and representatives of Local Orthodox Churches, convened by Patriarch Theophilus of Jerusalem, ended in Amman, the capital of Jordan. The event was primarily aimed at paving the way for dialogue between the Churches in view of the discord that has arisen in recent years, including the creation of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) by Constantinople.

The meeting was attended by Primates and representatives of seven Local Churches of Jerusalem, Russia, Serbia, Czech Lands and Slovakia, Romania, Poland and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. To be mentioned is that shortly before the meeting, the Antiochian Patriarchate refused to participate. As noted in the Church’s statement, it decided not to attend this meeting “to avoid whatever increases divergence and deepens the rift between brothers”.

The main reason for the refusal was the long-standing conflict between Antioch and Jerusalem over the issue of Qatar. On the eve of the meeting in Amman, a compromise between Jerusalem and Antioch was almost reached. Patriarch John X was ready to go to Jordan, but at the last moment he changed his mind. This was allegedly induced by a number of phone calls from the Phanar. Patriarch John’s decision was preceded by a number of publications on pro-Constantinople media (fanarion.blogspot.com and others), which stated that Antioch had no right to go to Amman until the Qatari issue was resolved.

The essence of the dispute is the jurisdiction of Qatar. Both Jerusalem and Antioch lay prerogative claims to the only local parish. It was founded in 1997 with the assistance of the then US Ambassador Patrick Theros and with the consent of the Qatari government, since up to that point the country had a ban on holding any ceremonies related to non-Muslim cults. The first Parish Rector was Archimandrite Theophilus Giannopoulos of the Church of Jerusalem, now its Primate. Subsequently, Theophilus was replaced by Archimandrite Macarios, also a clergyman of the Church of Jerusalem.

The reason why representatives of Jerusalem were sent to Qatar, which is considered the canonical territory of the Antiochian Patriarchate, lies in the tense relations between Damascus and Doha. As a result of the political conflict, the Qatari authorities refuse to issue visas to the Antioch clergy.

During services in the Qatari parish, Jerusalem clergy commemorated the Patriarch of Antioch, thus recognizing the jurisdiction of the Antioch. However, in 2013, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem suddenly created the Archdiocese of Qatar, appointed Archimandrite Macarios as its Primate and titled him the Archbishop of Qatar. In the Orthodox tradition, the appointment of an Archbishop to a particular area means claiming rights to it.

Obviously, Jerusalem’s actions provoked a protest from the Patriarchate of Antioch. However, the Patriarchate of Jerusalem not only did not change its decision, but also claimed the Syrian diocese of Bosra and Hauran, which originally was under the jurisdiction of the Antioch.

During 2013, the Patriarchate of Antioch attempted to resolve the conflict. Thus, in June 2013, a meeting between representatives of both Patriarchates with the participation of the Phanar delegation was held in Athens under the mediation of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Greece. At the same time, the Patriarchate of Constantinople could not or did not want to help find a compromise during the negotiations. Instead, it informally – directly and via the Greek Foreign Ministry – put pressure on Patriarch John and the Antiochian delegation so that they accepted the presence of the Bishop of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in Qatar. Even those weak and tentative agreements that were reached then were not ratified by the Synods of both Churches.

As a result, the Jerusalem Patriarchate did not give up its claim to Qatar, and in 2014 the Antioch broke off Eucharistic communion with it.

After that, the Antiochian Orthodox Church repeatedly asked the Phanar to act as a judge in this dispute. There were already precedents for the influence of Constantinople on Jerusalem: in 2005, Patriarch Bartholomew organized a Pan-Orthodox Council that confirmed the removal of Patriarch Irenaeus of Jerusalem, and in 2008, the Phanar attached the Vicariate of the Palestinian-Jordanian communities, which united the churches and monasteries of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in the United States, to the Greek American Archdiocese of the Church of Constantinople.

However, Constantinople decided not to interfere in the conflict, which obviously would have been resolved in favor of the Patriarchate of Antioch. Hoping to ensure the presence of both Churches at the Council of Crete in 2016, Constantinople was unable to fulfill the role of the supreme arbiter and peacemaker, which it claims. Instead of real negotiations, the representatives of Constantinople took the lazy way out. They put aside the most difficult diplomatic task of reconciling the two Churches, and gave empty promises to Patriarch John that the issue would be settled later, after the Council.

At a Synaxis in March 2014, Patriarch Bartholomew refused to include the Qatari issue on the agenda, despite repeated requests from Patriarch John. His All-Holiness Bartholomew again tried to put pressure on the Antiochian delegation and, in particular, handed them a letter from Patriarch Theophilus claiming jurisdiction over Jerusalem in Qatar, making it clear that there was no other solution to the dispute. The pressure was so scandalous that Metropolitan Silouan (Mousa) refused to sign the final document, and a month later the Synod of the Church of Antioch decided to break off Eucharistic communion with Jerusalem.

This behavior of the Ecumenical Patriarchate, “the first among equals”, only led to an increase in the Church of Antioch’s distrust of the Pan-Orthodox process, which was meant to take place at its expense. In 2014, Antioch first refused to participate in a meeting of Primates and representatives of Local Orthodox Churches during preparations for Patriarch Bartholomew’s Pan-Orthodox Council of 2016 in Crete, and subsequently skipped the Council itself.

So, what is impeding the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s assistance in resolving the conflict between the two ancient Churches, one of which is suffering from the war in Syria? To answer this question, we must first understand what prevents Patriarch Bartholomew from taking care of preserving the unity of Orthodoxy – his Holy duty as the first in honor. In the light of recent events, it seems that His All-Holiness seeks to act only when his exceptional role is recognized, and makes loyalty to Constantinople as the “bearer of the idea of Hellenism”, a condition for any assistance from it.

Thus, the example of the meeting in Jordan shows that Constantinople opposes any attempts by Local Churches to build a dialogue without its chairmanship. This is evidenced by angry letters addressed to the Primates of the Jerusalem Patriarchate (without any mention of the Qatari issue!) and the Orthodox Church of the Czech Lands and Slovakia, and the fact that Patriarch Bartholomew thanked the Primate of the Cypriot Orthodox Church, Archbishop Chrysostom, for criticizing the meeting in Amman and refusing to participate in it – and even gifted him an expensive pen.

All this is presented as “revenge” against Moscow and Antioch for the failure of the Council of Crete and holding the meeting in Jordan: after all, in Amman there gathered those Churches that are actually wary of recognizing the decision of Constantinople to create the Orthodox Church of Ukraine. In fact, this is due to the systemic inability of the Ecumenical Patriarchate to solve Orthodox issues if it’s done not in the format of Greek solidarity. And Moscow is only a virtual threat to rally the Greek Churches around the Phanar.

The Phanar can be reluctant to intercede for the Antiochian Patriarchate because it is “jealous” of it on account of Moscow. And to restore justice, Patriarch Bartholomew would have to spoil relations with Patriarch Theophilus, a native of Gargalianoi (Greece) – for the sake of Patriarch John, a native of Latakia (Syria). This view may seem absurd and biased, but this is how it will be perceived by the majority of the hierarchy of Greek-speaking Churches – Constantinople, Alexandria, Jerusalem, Greece, Cyprus… It is no accident that since the break with Moscow, Patriarch Bartholomew has increasingly spoken about the key role of Hellenism in Orthodoxy. Moreover, it is quite possible that the crisis is of a purely political nature, and without external intervention from Constantinople would not have lasted this long: the faithful in Doha did not want to divide into jurisdictions and continued to pray together, as the Bishop of the Patriarchate of Jerusalem in Qatar said. Constantinople benefits from maintaining contradictions between Jerusalem and Antioch, especially now, when the situation in Ukraine and attempts to interfere in the affairs of other Local Churches (in Macedonia, Montenegro, the Czech Republic) cause increasing irritation in Orthodoxy. The goal of Patriarch Bartholomew is to set the ancient Churches at loggerheads as much as possible in order to prevent the possibility of their union against him.

In fact, Patriarch Bartholomew was caught in a vicious circle. In a truly Ecumenical format, without the monolithic support of the Greek Churches, he is not able to secure the primacy it claims. And while relying on the Greeks, he loses his authority in the world Orthodoxy and splits it along national lines: into Greeks and Arabs, into Greeks and Slavs, into Greeks and Georgians, and so on. The Phanar seems to refuse to consider a possibility to return to the original, Gospel model of building relationships in the Church in which there is “no Greek, … nor barbarian” (Colossians 3:11).

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Nadia Bazuk is an Orthodox journalist from Ukraine.

Trump stands vindicated for accusing Biden of trying to cover up his son’s corruption in Ukraine after one of that country’s lawmakers released audio recordings of the former Vice President’s numerous conversations with former President Poroshenko to that effect, proving that the real Ukrainegate scandal has been about the Democrat front-runner all along.

By and large, the coronavirus pandemic has taken a huge toll on Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) since it was declared late January by the World Health Organization (WHO). It allegedly originated (yet to be proved) from Wuhan city in China. However, the World Health Assembly has agreed to launch an investigation into the origin of the disease, whose unyielding march across the globe since last year and has already left more than 320,000 dead. It has shattered nearly all economies.

In the world including BRICS countries, the outlook remains bleak. Statistics made available as at May 20, showed that Brazil (113,000) in South America, Russia (317,554) in Eastern Europe or compared to, say all the former Soviet republics, India (106,000) and China (82,965) both in Asian region, and South Africa (17,200) in Africa.  It means South Africa, with a population 57 million, has one-fifth of the total confirmed COVID-19 cases in Africa.

Further, assessing BRICS countries population in relation to the number of infections, Russia seems to the worse spot, the second highest in the world and that was followed in the third position by Brazil. Under a “pessimistic scenario”, the number of active cases could peak again when the expected “second wave of coronavirus” sets in if strict precautions are ignored.

Russia’s Health Ministry held, on May 7, a meeting of BRICS countries via videoconference focusing, particularly, on the issue of the novel coronavirus pandemic discussed joint efforts needed by BRICS countries. It was held within the framework of Russia’s BRICS chair-ship.

Participants from Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa discussed at the meeting all aspects, including measures on liquidation of the novel coronavirus infection, and submitted report to BRICS Health Ministries.

“It is planned that the online platform will provide partners with an opportunity to share BRICS countries’ experience and develop joint steps towards reaching a better understanding of the ways to liquidate the COVID-19 outbreak,” according to the report.

Under an “optimistic scenario”, the BRICS meeting held May by Health Ministers of BRICS countries would adopt collaborative steps contributing toward the eradication of the global pandemic.

BRICS has to accelerate the implementation of some of its earlier initiatives. Over the years, the BRICS has wanted to expand cooperation in the fight against infections and the joint production and use of vaccines. Cooperation on countering infectious diseases has long been a priority for BRICS. For instance, the final declaration of the 2015 BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia, contains instructions by the leaders to work on managing the risk of disease outbreaks.

That declaration stated: “we commend the efforts made by the BRICS countries to contribute to enhanced international cooperation to support the efforts of countries to achieve their health goals, including the implementation of universal and equitable access to health services, and ensure affordable, good-quality service delivery while taking into account different national circumstances, policies, priorities and capabilities.”

Last month for instance, BRICS Ministers of Foreign Affairs /International Relations held a video conference chaired by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Brazilian Foreign Affairs Minister Ernesto Araújo, Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and South African Minister of International Relations Grace Naledi Pandor took part in the meeting.

China and Russia have strong working relationship and both are members of BRICS. Russia objects to attempts by the United States to turn the World Health Organization (WHO) into a forum for settling political scores, Minister Lavrov said with colleagues during the video conference of BRICS Foreign Ministers held late April. Russia has been working closely together with China, and Russia has no reason to oppose China, according to Minister Lavrov.

Key Highlights from that meeting included:

• The BRICS nations agreed to allocate $15 billion to the New Development Bank (NDB) so that it could set up a special loan instrument to support the revival of economies and help meet the emergency expenses incurred for responding to the coronavirus pandemic.

The BRICS nations further held discussions on ways to step up cooperation within the bloc to contain coronavirus pandemic, as well as to revive the economies that have received a major blow due to the travel restrictions and lockdown imposed in most countries to curb the spread of coronavirus.

• The meeting underlined the need for reforms in the multilateral systems and stated that this was the way forward. The bloc reiterated its support towards the World Health Organization, stating that it is a very important and unique platform, which employs the best professionals from around the world, including from the United States.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi called on all the BRICS members to firmly stand by multilateralism, by the international system centered around the United Nations and by the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter.

Throughout 2020, – under the theme “BRICS Partnership for Global Stability, Shared Security and Innovative Growth” – Russia holds the BRICS pro tempore presidency. The emphasis of the Russian presidency is on promoting science, technology and innovation and digital economy and health, and strengthening cooperation in the fight against transnational crimes. In addition to those, dozens of academic, sporting, cultural and artistic events planned for the year.

BRICS is the group composed by the five major emerging countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, – which together represent about 42% of the population, 23% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), 30% of the territory and 18% of the global trade.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah is an independent researcher on Russia, Africa and BRICS. He is the author of the Geopolitical Handbook titled “Putin’s African Dream and The New Dawn: Challenges and Emerging Opportunities” devoted to the first Russia-Africa Summit 2019.

Featured image is from the author

Money-controlled US elections are farcical when held — world’s apart from what democracy in action is supposed to.

It’s a notion long abhorred by both right wings of the one-party state — the war party, the money party, the anti-peace, equity, social justice, and rule of law party.

Whenever US elections are held for president, key congressional posts, and major ones at state and local levels, dirty business as usual always wins.

Rare exceptions prove the rule. When occur like in November 1960, CIA assassins correct them the way Jack Kennedy was removed from office.

Wanting peace over war, rapprochement with Soviet Russia, nuclear disarmament, respect for Palestinian rights, and the CIA disbanded, along with opposition to Pax Americana, made him a marked man.

No one of his caliber today holds high office in the imperial state.

No rule of the people exists in the US. What democracy is supposed to be all about was absent throughout US history — an increasingly totalitarian autocracy and plutocracy, never a democracy, notably the dismal state of the nation today.

Trump and Biden are two sides of the same coin, differing only by party labels — both figures unfit for any public office, clearly not the nation’s highest.

Throughout a near half century as US senator, vice president, and now presumptive undemocratic Dem presidential nominee, Biden’s domestic and geopolitical record of shame exposed him.

As part of the Obama regime alone, he’s guilty of high crimes of war and against humanity against Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Occupied Palestine in cahoots with Israel, and Ukraine.

He was involved in late 2013/early 2014 coup that replaced democracy in Ukraine with fascist tyranny by installing billionaire Petro Poroshenko as puppet president serving US interests.

In March 2015, Biden got Poroshenko to breach February 2015 Minsk conflict resolution terms that granted Donbass in the country’s southwest special status autonomous rule.

A US orchestrated state of war has existed in Ukraine between its freedom fighters for democracy and Kiev fascists from 2014 to now, no end of it in prospect.

Biden and Poroshenko colluded to maintain tyrannical rule, a permanent state of civil war, hostility toward Russia, and incorporation of Nazi-infested National Guard forces into Ukraine’s military.

He pressured Poroshenko to fire Kiev’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin from office for investigating his son Hunter’s dubious dealings as a Ukrainian Burisma Holdings board member.

He was paid around $50,000 monthly to give Burisma access to the Obama/Biden White House.

Biden threatened to withhold an Obama regime billion dollar loan guarantee to Kiev if Shokin wasn’t sacked.

The former prosecutor general accused Biden of “directly manipulat(ing) the political leadership of Ukraine on false pretexts…”

At the Council on Foreign Relations, Biden bragged about getting Shokin fired, saying:

“If the prosecutor general is not fired, you’re not getting the money” — referring to a US billion dollar loan guarantee by the IMF for Kiev, Biden adding:

“Well, son of a bitch. He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time (sic).”

His blackmail threat got the probe of son Hunter’s dubious involvement with Bursima dropped.

On Tuesday, Ukrainian MP Andriy Derkach released alleged taped phone conversations by Biden and Obama regime secretary of state John Kerry with Poroshenko.

Issues discussed revealed how the Obama/Biden regime transformed Ukraine into a US vassal state.

Topics included imposition of high tariffs on Russian gas and other imports, as well as replacing Shokin as Ukraine prosecutor general with subservient to US interests Yuri Lutsenko in return for a $1 billion loan, explained above.

According to a May 2016 audio recording, Poroshenko told Biden that he made much “progress” in transforming Ukraine according to US demands.

In a December 2015 recording, John Kerry told Poroshekno that he “just wanted to try to urge you to see if there’s a way to get by this problem of replacing the prosecutor general, you know, Shokin because per my perception, he’s blocked the cleanup of the Prosecutor General’s Office, and I know the vice president is very concerned about it.”

A week before Shokin’s March 29, 2016 sacking, Biden told Poroshenko that a $1 billion loan guaranteed by the US depended on removing him, according to a recorded conversation between them, Biden heard saying:

If “there is a new government and a new attorney general, I am prepared to do a public signing of the commitment for the billion dollars.”

After Shokin was replaced by Lutsenko, Biden was heard telling Poroshenko that “I’m a man of my word. And now that the new prosecutor general is in place, we’re ready to move forward to signing that billion dollar loan guarantee,” according to a May 2016 recording.

In January, Shokin asked Ukraine’s State Investigative Bureau to open criminal proceedings again Biden to get him fired for doing his job responsibly.

Will the above revelations and other damning ones hurt Biden’s chances in November?

According to an average of mid-May opinion polls, 52.3% of respondents disapprove of Trump, 43.6% expressing approval.

Real Clear Politics has Biden ahead of Trump by 4 – 5 points as of mid-May.

November 3 elections are over five months away. Much can change between now and then.

The election most likely will be a referendum on Trump’s mishandling of public health that’s greatly affected by COVID-19 outbreaks and dismal state of the economy.

If things are as dire then as now, he’ll likely be a one-term president.

If Biden succeeds him in 2021, it’ll again prove that when US elections change things, they stay the same.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

To say that the public has become disillusioned and wary of constant doomsday media reports and news coverage is a gross understatement — people see their world changing and they want to understand what is happening, and why. They want to be informed and therefore be prepared. They want the freedom to make educated choices instead of being told what to do by the very individuals and institutions that have led them into chaos.

In an effort to provide this resource to our readers, Global Research has remained independent and continues to deliver vital and timely information, for free, on a daily basis. If reading our pages helps in some way make sense of this crazy world we live in where it is deemed too risky to give your dear mother a hug on mother’s day, we kindly ask you to consider becoming a member or making a donation so that we may continue our project and keep the information circulating:

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The ‘Clean Break’ Doctrine: A Modern-Day Sykes-Picot Waging War and Havoc in the Middle East

By Cynthia Chung, May 21, 2020

The “Clean Break” policy document outlined these goals: 1) Ending Yasser Arafat’s and the Palestinian Authority’s political influence, by blaming them for acts of Palestinian terrorism 2) Inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. 3) Launching war against Syria after Saddam’s regime is disposed of 4) Followed by military action against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

Ukraine’s Port Odessa Welcomes First U.S. Crude Oil Cargo. Undermines Russia’s Oil and Gas

By Tsvetana Paraskova, May 21, 2020

A first cargo of WTI Crude to Odessa is set for arrival at the port on Wednesday, industry sources told Reuters. According to the sources, the tanker UMLMA carries 80,000 tons of WTI Crude to Odessa. Marine Traffic data shows that the UMLMA crude oil tanker traveled from Port Neches in the U.S. and was very close to Odessa, Ukraine, early on Wednesday.

The US Is Trying to Dismember China by Promoting Separatism in Its Regions

By Dr. Dennis Etler and Eurasia Diary, May 21, 2020

The US Senate, on 14 May passed bill on the mistreatment of Uyghur minority in China. The bill demands President Donald Trump to sanction Chinese officials who partake in the violating rights and freedoms of Uyghur community in the northwestern region of China.  Some American experts accused the US of conducting ethnic and nationalist separatism in other countries.

Leading Neocon Directs Pentagon Middle East Planning

By Philip Giraldi, May 21, 2020

With a national election lurking on the horizon we will no doubt be hearing more about Exceptionalism from various candidates seeking to support the premise that the United States can interfere in every country on the planet because it is, as the expression goes, exceptional. That is generally how Donald Trump and hardline Republicans see the world, that sovereignty exercised by foreign governments is and should be limited by the reach of the U.S. military. Surrounding a competitor with military bases and warships is a concept that many in Washington are currently trying to sell regarding a suitable response to the Chinese economic and political challenge.

How Does the US Rally Support for Wars that Kill Millions of Innocent People Worldwide?

By Robert Fantina, May 21, 2020

These wars have killed millions of innocent men, women and children around the world. Yet more often than not they have been based on weak evidence, questionable motives, and outright lies. Why, then, do large portions of the public staunchly support the US troops?  Why are so many Americans satisfied with the U.S. bombings of Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other Middle Eastern countries, knowing that this is creating starvation and refugee crises of catastrophic proportions?

The US Is Using Wheat as a Weapon of War in Syria

By Steven Sahiounie, May 20, 2020

Apache helicopters of the US occupation forces flew low Sunday morning, according to residents of the Adla village, in the Shaddadi countryside, south of Hasaka, as they dropped ‘thermal balloons’, an incendiary weapon, causing the wheat fields to explode into flames while the hot dry winds fanned the raging fire.

Washington’s Tell Tale of Iranian-Al Qaeda Alliance Based on Questionably Sourced Book ‘The Exile’

By Gareth Porter, May 20, 2020

The U.S. assassination of Qassem Soleimani in January touched off a new wave of disinformation about the top Iranian major general, with Trump administration allies branding him a global terrorist while painting Iran as the world’s worst state sponsor of terrorism. Much of the propaganda about Soleimani related to his alleged responsibility for the killing of American troops in Iraq, along with Iran’s role in Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen.

Trump is the latest in a long line of belligerent US presidents, throughout his tenure waging war on multiple fronts at home and abroad.

His priorities are self-enrichment, serving Wall Street, Big Oil, Big Pharma, Big Military, and other corporate favorites, along with getting reelected.

War by the Trump regime and Congress rages domestically —SARS-Cov-2 (the virus producing COVID-19 illness) used as a weapon by power elites to consolidate to greater market dominance by eliminating competition.

An already begun unprecedented surge of bankruptcies approaches, mostly affecting hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses.

Weak larger ones are also vulnerable to be bought by strong competitors at fire sale prices.

The toll is an unacceptable new (ab)normal, the US more greatly resembling Guatemala, Somalia, or Bangladesh, millions of lost jobs not coming back.

Most employed Americans will work for poverty or sub-poverty  wages with few or no benefits — a permanent state of war to exist abroad against multiple invented enemies, new ones perhaps to be attacked belligerently.

In early January, who could have imagined that most Americans would willingly accept house arrest, that major sports competition would cease for the interim, that real unemployment would approach 40%, that a protracted main street Greater Depression may have begun!

Worse still, dare I suggest that US dark forces planned what’s happening for their own self-interest and cronies —by unleashing SARS-Cov-2 on humanity with a diabolical follow-up plot in mind.

A relentless campaign is underway for Americans and others abroad to accept mass vaxxing ahead with toxic vaccines able to do far greater harm than good — including substances able to cause the disease they’re supposed to protect against.

Along with all of the above domestically, are DJT and Pompeo-led Trump regime hardliners spoiling for confrontation with China, Iran, Venezuela, and even Cuba.

A US war of words rages against these countries, Big Lies drowning out hard truths and reason.

On Thursday, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that “China-US diplomatic backchannels (are) dry(ing) up, making it harder to communicate…”

Sino-US relations are the most dismal in decades. Bilateral communications “ground to a halt as a result of the rising hostility and travel restrictions caused by the pandemic…”

Anti-China Trump regime and congressional actions threaten to rupture bilateral relations.

Trump’s reelection strategy includes falsely blaming China for his mishandled public health and economic policies.

Nothing positive can come for both countries from the hardline US approach.

Separately, the Trump regime may be heading toward confrontation with Iran and Venezuela.

On Wednesday, Pompeo slammed both countries, tweeting:

“The United States condemns (Iran’s) Supreme Leader Khamenei’s disgusting and hateful anti-Semitic remarks (sic)” — how US hardliners describe truth-telling rhetoric that touches the right nerves.

Pompeo targeted democratically elected and reelected Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, turning truth on its head, tweeting:

“Two years ago today, Maduro showed the Venezuelan people and the world that there can be no free and fair election while he occupies Miraflores Palace (sic).”

“The Democratic Transition Framework provides a roadmap for peaceful democratic transition for Venezuela (sic).”

Venezuela under Hugo Chavez and Maduro is the hemisphere’s model democracy, a notion increasingly totalitarian USA tolerates nowhere, especially not at home.

Cuba was also on Pompeo’s target list, falsely accusing its ruling authorities of “trampl(ing) (on) the rights of the Cuban people” — a longstanding US specialty at home and abroad.

Ahead of November elections, will the Trump regime instigate confrontation against one or all of the above countries on the US target list for regime change?

On Wednesday, Iranian Defense Minister General Amir Hatami warned the Trump regime that “(w)e will definitely give a firm and decisive response if harassments continue or escalate.”

His comments referred to possible Pentagon interdiction of Iranian tankers with gasoline en route to Venezuela — an act of high seas piracy if occurs.

“Our policies are crystal clear, and we announced explicitly that we will tolerate no act of harassment,” Hatami stressed.

By letter to UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres, Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif slammed “the illegal, dangerous and provocative US threats” against Iranian tankers en route legally to Venezuela, warning of consequences if the Trump regime goes this far.

Scheduled to arrive in Venezuelan waters in late May or early June, Bolivarian Republic military vessels will meet them when entering the country’s economic zone to escort them to port to unload their cargo.

Venezuela’s Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino Lopez said the country’s navy and air force will welcome the Iranian tankers when reach the nation’s maritime territory.

During a Security Council session, Bolivarian Republic UN envoy Samuel Moncada slammed Trump regime hostility, saying actions it may undertake to block Iranian tankers “from reaching their destination would thus constitute a crime against humanity.”

Separately, Iran’s ambassador to Venezuela Hojjatollah Soltani defended the legal right of both nations to engage in international trade and other normal relations, adding:

“This relationship between Iran and Venezuela doesn’t threaten anybody. It’s not a danger to anyone.” It’s the legal right of all nations to deal with others politically, economically, and through trade.

Trump regime hardliners consider internationally recognized legal relations between countries on the US target list for regime change a threat to its national security.

It’s one of countless Big Lies and distortions used by both right wings of the US one-party state to advance its imperial agenda.

Wars by hot and other means, state terrorism, and other hostile actions are its favorite strategies — why the US remains humanity’s greatest threat.

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Note to readers: please click the share buttons below. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.

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

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

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

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

In 1965, scientists identified the first human coronavirus; it was associated with the common cold. The Coronavirus family, named for their crown-like appearance, currently includes 36 viruses. Within that group, there are 4 common viruses that have been causing infection in humans for more than sixty years. In addition, three pandemic coronaviruses that can infect humans: SARS, MERS, and now, SARS-CoV-2.

As the news of deaths in China, South Korea, Italy, and Iran began to saturate every form of media 24/7, we became familiar with a new term: COVID-19. To be clear, the name of the newly identified coronavirus is SARS-CoV-2, short for Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2. This virus is associated with fever, cough, chest pain, and shortness of breath, the complex of symptoms that form the diagnosis of COVID-19.

The Trump administration declared a public health emergency on January 31, 2020, then on February 2 placed a ban on the entry of most travelers who had recently been in China. On February 4, Alex Azar, the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a declaration of public health emergency and activated the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, otherwise known as the PREP Act. This nefarious legislation provides complete protection of manufacturers from liability for all products, technologies, biologics, or any vaccine developed as a medical countermeasure against COVID-19. For those nervously waiting for the vaccine to become available, be sure to understand the PREP Act before rushing to the get in line.

Calls for testing – to see if a person is or isn’t infected – began soon after the emergency was declared, but performing those tests was initially slow due to an inadequate number of test kits. As the kits became available, those developed by the CDC had a defect: The reagents reacted to the negative control sample, making the test inaccurate and the kits unusable.

In various countries, thousands of test kits purchased from China were found to be contaminated with the SARS-CoV-2 viruses. No one really knows how that happened, but theories spread like wildfire. Could the test kit infect the person being tested? Or, did it mean the test would return a false-positive result, driving up the numbers of those said to be infected so those in power could implement stronger lockdowns and accelerate the hockey-stick unemployment rates? Neither of those questions has been adequately answered.

Mandatory Testing…of what? 

Authorities claim that testing is important for public health officials to assess if their mitigation efforts – “shelter in place” and “social distancing” and “wearing a mask” – are making a difference to “flatten the curve.” Officials also claim that testing is necessary to know how many persons are infected within a community and to understand the nature of how coronaviruses spread.

Are these reasons sufficient to give up our health freedom and our personal rights, being tested and shamed in public?

Despite the challenges with test kits, testing began. By the end of March 2020, more than 1 million people had been tested across the US. By May 9, the number tested had grown to over 8.7M. Testing methods include a swab of the nasal passages or by inserting a long, uncomfortable swab through the nose to scrape the back of the throat. Specimens have also been obtained bronchoalveolar lavage, from sputum, and from stool specimens.

The call for mandatory testing has been gathering steam and becoming ever more onerous. In Washington state, Governor Inslee has declared:

Individuals that refuse to cooperate with contact tracers and/or refuse testing, those individuals will not be allowed to leave their homes to purchase basic necessities such as groceries and/or prescriptions. Those persons will need to make arrangements through friends, family, or state provided ‘family support’ personnel.

But what do the results really mean?

Who Should Be Tested

On May 8, 2020, the CDC has listed specific priorities for when testing should be done. As of May 16, more than 11-million samples have been collected and more than 3700 specimens have not yet been evaluated.

High Priority

• Hospitalized patients with symptoms
• Healthcare facility workers, workers in living settings, and first responders with symptoms
• Residents in long-term care facilities or other congregate living settings, including prisons and shelters, with symptoms

Priority

• Persons with symptoms of potential COVID-19 infection, including fever, cough, shortness of breath, chills, muscle pain, new loss of taste or smell, vomiting or diarrhea, and/or sore throat
• Persons without symptoms who are prioritized by health departments or clinicians, for any reason, including but not limited to public health monitoring, sentinel surveillance, or screening of asymptomatic individuals according to state and local plans.

Read that last priority again: That means virtually everyone can be required to get a test.

Is that a violation of your personal rights? And, if you submit to testing, what does a “positive test” actually mean?

Types of Testing: RT-PCR

PCR, short for polymerase chain reaction, is a highly specific laboratory technique. The key to understanding PCR testing is that PCR can identify an individual specific virus within a viral family.

However, a PCR test can only be used to identify DNA viruses; the SARS-CoV2 virus is an RNA virus. Therefore, multiple steps must be taken to “magnify” the amount of genetic material in the specimen. Researchers used a method called RT-PCR, reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction, to specifically identify the SARS-CoV-2 virus. It’s a complicated process. To read more about it, go here and here.

If a nasal or a blood sample contains a tiny snip of RNA from the SARS-CoV-2 virus, RT-PCR can identify it, leading to a high probability that the person has been exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

However – and this is important – a positive RT-PCR test result does not necessarily indicate a full virus is present. The virus must be fully intact to be transmitted and cause illness.

RT-PCR Testing: The Importance of Timing

Even if a person has had all the symptoms associated with a coronavirus infection or has been closely exposed to persons who have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the probability of a RT-PCR test being positive decreases with the number of days past the onset of symptoms.

According to a study done by Paul Wikramaratna and others:

• For a nasal swab, the percentage chance of a positive test declines from about 94% on day 0 to about 67% by day 10. By day 31, there is only a 2% chance of a positive result.
• For a throat swab, the percentage chance of a positive test declines from about 88% on day 0 to about 47% by day 10. By day 31, there is only a 1% chance of a positive result.

In other words, the longer the time frame between the onset of symptoms and the time a person is tested, the more likely the test will be negative.

Repeat testing of persons who have a negative test may (eventually) confirm the presence of viral RNA, but this is impractical. Additionally, repeated testing of the same person can lead to even more confusing results: The test may go from negative, to positive, then back to negative again as the immune system clears out the coronavirus infection and moves to recovery.

And what makes this testing even more confusing is that the FDA admits that “The detection of viral RNA by RT-PCR does not necessarily equate with an infectious virus.”

Let’s break that down:

You’ve had all the symptoms of COVID19, but your RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2 is negative.

• Does that mean you’re “good to go” – you can go to work, go to school or you can travel?  OR…
• Does that mean your influenza-like illness was caused by some other pathogen, possibly one of the four coronaviruses that have been in circulation for 60 years? OR…
• Does that mean the result is a false-negative and you still have the infection, but it isn’t detectable by current tests? OR…
• Does that mean it was a sample was inadequately taken due to the faulty technique by the technician? OR…
• Does that mean you have not been exposed, and you are susceptible to contracting the infection, and you need to stay in quarantine?

So, what does a “positive” test actually mean? And that’s the problem:

No one knows for sure.

Another Type of Testing: Antibodies

According to the nonprofit Foundation for Innovative New Diagnostics (FIND), more than 200 serologic blood tests, to test for antibodies, are either now available or in development.

There are two primary types of antibodies that are assessed for nearly any type of infection: IgM and IgG. While several new testing devices are being touted as a home test, they are not the same as a home pregnancy test or a glucometer to you’re your blood sugar. The blood spot or saliva specimen can be collected at home, must it must then be sent to a laboratory for analysis. It can take a few days – or longer – to get the results. With so many tests in the pipeline, the ability to test at home will be changing over time.

The first antibody to rise is IgM. It rises quickly after the onset of the infection and is usually a sign of an acute, or current, infection. The IgM levels diminish quickly as the infection resolves. The FDA admits they do not know how long the IgM remains present for SARS-CoV-2 as the infection is being cleared.

The interpretation of an IgG antibody is more difficult. This antibody is an indicator of a past infection. The test is often not specific enough to determine if the past infection was caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus or one of the four common coronaviruses that cause influenza-like illness.

The FDA says: 

Because serology testing can yield a negative test result even if the patient is actively infected (e.g., the body has not yet developed in response to the virus) or maybe falsely positive (e.g., if the antibody indicates a past infection by a different coronavirus), this type of testing should not be used to diagnose an acute or active COVID-19 infection.

Similarly, the CDC says the following regarding antibody testing:

• If you test positive:
  • A positive test result shows you have antibodies as a result of an infection with SARS-CoV-2, or possibly a related coronavirus.
  • It’s unclear if those antibodies can provide protection (immunity) against getting infected again. This means that we do not know at this time if antibodies make you immune to the virus.
  • If you have no symptoms, you likely do not have an active infection and no additional follow-up is needed.
  • It’s possible you might test positive for antibodies and you might not have or have ever had symptoms of COVID-19. This is known as having an asymptomatic infection [ie you have a healthy immune system!]
  • An antibody test cannot tell if you are currently sick with COVID-19.
• If you test negative
  • If you test negative for antibodies, you probably did not have a previous infection.However, you could have a current infection because antibodies don’t show up for 1 to 3 weeks after infection.
  • Some people may take even longer to develop antibodies, and some people may not develop antibodies.
  • An antibody test cannot tell if you are currently sick with COVID-19.

What? Wait!

• Doesn’t the vaccine industry call the IgG a “protective antibody”?
• Isn’t this the marker of immunity they assess after you’ve had an infection with measles or chickenpox or mumps to determine if you are immune to future infections?
• Isn’t this the marker of induced immunity they are trying to achieve by administering a vaccine?

If the FDA does not know if an IgG antibody to SARS-CoV-2 after recovering from the infection is protective against a future infection, then they certainly don’t know if an antibody caused by a vaccine will prevent infection either.

Doesn’t this completely eliminate the theory that antibodies afford protection and antibodies from vaccines are necessary to keep you from getting sick? 

Mandatory Testing – New Job Creation

Illinois U.S. Rep. Bobby L. Rush introduced the H.R. 6666 TRACE Act on May 1. On his website, Rush said,

Until we have a vaccine to defeat this dreaded disease, contact tracing in order to understand the full breadth and depth of the spread of this virus is the only way we will be able to get out from under this.

H.R.6666 would authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), acting through the Director of the CDC to award grants to eligible entities to conduct diagnostic testing and then to trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals. The contact tracers would be authorized to test people in their homes and as necessary, quarantine people in place. 

Where do they intend to do this testing? Besides mobile units to test people in their homes, the bill identifies eight specific locations where the testing and contract tracing could occur: schools, health clinics, universities, churches, and “any other type of entity” the secretary of HHS wants to use.

The bill would allocate $100 billion in 2020 “and such sums as may be necessary for fiscal year 2021 and any subsequent fiscal year during which the emergency period continues.”

But what are they looking for?

• Is your test supposed to be positive – saying you’ve been exposed and you’ve possibly recovered?
• Or is your test supposed to be negative, meaning, you are healthy?
• Or does a completely negative test – negative RT-PCR test and no IgG antibody mean you’re susceptible to infection and you need to stay in quarantine?

The virus is rapidly mutating, which is rather typical of RNA viruses. In a study published in April 2020, researchers have discovered that the novel coronavirus has mutated into at least 30 different genetic variations. If your RT-PCR test is positive, does this identify exposure to the pandemic virus or exposure to one of the genetic variations? The same can be said about the vaccines under development: With each mutation, is the vaccine more likely to be all risk and no benefit when it reaches the market?

What You Can Do

Across the nation, police are being told to not apprehend criminals but instead, to arrest parents at playgrounds, to arrest lone surfers on public beaches, to fine ministers and congregation members sitting in their cars listening to a service on the radio, and to restrict movement by creating one-way sidewalks.

People have had enough. They are beginning to see the huge scam that has been perpetrated on the entire world over a viral infection with a global death rate of 1.4% (meaning, 1.4% of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 have a fatal outcome, while 98.6% recover). This is far fewer deaths than a severe flu season.

We’re already starting to see the thrust to take our power back:

• In Virginia, people went to the beaches en mass, ignoring social distancing and the orders of the Governor to stay home.
• The central California city of Atwater has declared itself a “sanctuary city,” allowing business owners and churches to open, openly defying Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s coronavirus-related stay-at-home order.
• The truth about wearing masks is starting to come out and people are voting with their feet. Retired neurosurgeon, Dr. Russell Blaylock, warns that not only do face masks fail to protect healthy people from contracting an illness, but they create serious health risks to the wearer.

While they shut us down and held us hostage in our homes, they changed our society, our lives, our world.

• I am not willing to accept this is the “new normal.”
• I won’t submit to testing.
• I will refuse mandatory vaccination.
• I will stop wearing a mask.
• I will not be afraid of standing next to a friend or family member and will not obey the concept of “social distancing.”
• I will understand that an asymptomatic carrier is a normal, healthy person and I will not buy into the fear that I might “catch something” from a normal, healthy person.

It’s time for Americans to resist with non-violent civil disobedience. Be brave. Be bold. Put on the full armor of God, as found in Ephesians 6:10-20 in the Bible, to stand against the world rulers of this present darkness. With God on our side, all things are possible.

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Dr. Sherri Tenpenny is an osteopathic medical doctor, board-certified in three specialties. She is the founder of Tenpenny Integrative Medical Center, a medical clinic located near Cleveland, Ohio. Her company, Courses4Mastery.com provides online education and training regarding all aspects of vaccines and vaccination. 

Featured image is from Vaxxter

When it comes to the issue of women’s rights in the Gulf , Saudi Arabia is most frequently cited as the most repressive country in the region, and Qatar is widely regarded as the most modern in terms of human development. Qatar has become somewhat of a darling among Western liberal intelligentsia, likely in part because of the peninsular country’s pumping tens of millions of dollars into Washington D.C.’s most influential Think Tanks, such as Brookings Institution. The United Nations has even lauded Qatar for their efforts to achieve gender equality.

It is certainly true that Qatar, as well as even Saudi Arabia, has instituted a number of legal provisions that promote the empowerment of women. They can own businesses, own property, vote, even hold political positions and judgeships (all of which, when cited as progressive steps, expose just how far away the Gulf is from modern concepts of equality); so Qatar is applauded for taking such bold action on behalf of women. What no one explains, however, is that all of these provisions only grant rights for women in Qatar that their male guardians allow them to exercise.

Everyone knows that women cannot drive in Saudi Arabia, but how many people know that Qatar is actually the only Gulf country that still does not allow women to travel without the permission of a male relative? The ban on women driving was repealed some time ago in KSA, and every Gulf nation has lifted the restrictions on women’s travel, except Qatar.

Business ownership, voting, owning property, working, going to school, and yes, even driving, are all available to women in Qatar only if their husband, father or brother allows.

Understandably, many Qatari women do not share the West’s admiring view of their country’s treatment of women. Aisha Al Qahtani famously fled to the UK to avoid being forced to return to Doha; just as so many others have fled Qatar’s neighbours.

“It is really quite appalling,” says Radha Stirling, CEO of Detained in Dubai and founder of Due Process International, “Qatar can seemingly legislate rights for women, all the while winking to the country’s male population because nothing has actually changed. Every woman is ruled by her husband, father or brother regardless of what the law ostensibly provides. They talk about empowering women, but continue to treat them like children.”

Stirling has been involved assisting women escaping oppression in the Gulf as part of her 12 years human rights work in the gulf, including high profile cases such as Princess Latifa, Hind Al Balooki, Dua and Dalal Al-Shweiki and others.

“Every adult person, male or female, must have the right to self-determination, and no one should be allowed to overrule an individual’s choices about their own lives; obviously this cannot apply only to men, and I fail to see how Qatar exceeds any other country in the region when all of the rights that the government has granted them, their male relatives have the right to deny them.

Qatar will be hosting the World Cup, the Qatari royal family owns significant holdings in the United Kingdom, and there is considerable mutual investment and trade. All of this sends a signal of acceptance to Qatar, and is undoubtedly interpreted by Doha as Western approval.

“Our countries have been in lockdown due to the Coronavirus, and the emergency restrictions we have had to accept have reportedly caused drastic increases in mental and emotional health problems, depression, and even suicide; and that is while we know that the situation is temporary. But a person in the West under lockdown has more autonomy and freedom than a woman in Qatar, and her situation is permanent. Of course more women will flee, and many more may try and fail. We cannot continue to look the other way when an ally, a trading partner, a country that is being given the honour of hosting perhaps the biggest sporting event in the world, treats half of its adult population like minors with freedom completely conditional on male approval.” 

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Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon has been voted the UK’s ‘most impressive’ politician according to a recent poll. The survey, carried out by Press Gazette, asked 2700 people who they thought was doing best at handling the current crisis. Sturgeon came out top, with 29% of the vote, ahead of Chancellor Rishi Sunak and Labour opposition leader Keir Starmer. The poll follows on from a recent Scottish Government survey which gave Nicola Sturgeon a rating of 84% for her slow and measured approach to lockdown. For in defiance of Westminster’s lifting of lockdown restrictions earlier this month, Scotland has until now kept them in place, only hinting recently that some may be lifted on 28th May.

The statistics regarding Sturgeon’s performance will not come as a surprise to many, given the contrast with her Westminster counterpart. Boris Johnson has faced a barrage of criticism in recent weeks over his handling of the coronavirus pandemic in Britain. And with the highest death rate in Europe, and second highest death toll in the world, it’s no surprise that questions are being raised. Yet the PM has of late, not provided the consistent, strong leadership required at this time. In contrast to his Scottish counterpart, who gives a daily briefing on the Covid-19 situation in Scotland, without fail; Boris Johnson has not given a press conference for days, and has not been seen in public for days, prompting #WhereisBoris to trend on Twitter.  The difference between the two leaders could not be greater; every time Boris puts a foot wrong, it boosts Sturgeon, and the case for Scottish independence.

Unlike the Scottish government, which has yet to make any change to the current social distancing guidelines, other than being able to leave home now twice a day for exercise – instead of once as previously stated – Boris Johnson announced last week that people from different households could now meet; that if required, workers could return to work, and that from 1st June some shops would reopen and some pupils would return to school. The messaging also changed – rather confusingly, from ‘Stay Home’ to ‘Stay Alert’ – with no-one quite clear as to what the latter actually means. The motivation for beginning to lift lockdown measures is no doubt, mainly, economic, with experts warning that the UK is headed for a recession like no other. But there are concerns that Johnson has acted too soon, as with the death toll rising to the virus every day, we could be faced with another ‘peak’ if we return to normality too soon.

For the reality is the virus is still with us, and is likely to remain with us for years to come. Boris Johnson himself gave the example of SARS, for which, he highlighted, a vaccine has not been found in the last 18 years. Although scientists across the globe are working tirelessly in a bid to discover a vaccine as soon as possible, there are no guarantees that they will succeed in the short term. The key in the meantime, will be testing – both for those infected with coronavirus and for immunity, with antibody testing. But the UK government has only recently started to take testing seriously. Early on in the pandemic it downplayed the importance of it, favouring ‘herd immunity ’instead.  This was in contrast to countries like China and South Korea that saw testing as a vital way of managing the crisis. Back then, Britain’s Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir Patrick Vallance, said

‘We think this virus is likely to be one that comes year on year, becomes like a seasonal virus. Communities will become immune to it and that’s going to be an important part of controlling this longer term. About 60% is the sort of figure you need to get herd immunity’.

Britain has paid dearly for this ‘laissez-faire approach.

The case against the UK government is building by the day. Aside from the overall death toll of 35, 341, it has been established that an additional 23,000 deaths took place this year in care homes. Far from putting a ‘protective ring’ around care homes as Health Minister Matt Hancock has said, the government has been accused of putting a ‘noose’ around them, with elderly patients effectively like sitting ducks in the wake of the pandemic. It has been observed that no real attempts were made to prevent the spread of coronavirus throughout Britain’s nursing homes, with patients regularly admitted into homes from hospital, without being tested for the virus. Recently it was even reported that Personal Protective Equipment originally intended for care homes was diverted to NHS hospitals. Justice Secretary Robert Buckland admitted on Wednesday that:

“We needed to make a choice about testing, we did decide to focus upon the NHS.’

Choices indeed have been made. And increasingly, questions are being raised as to whether the right decisions have been taken – both before and during the pandemic. For at a time when the country is ‘clapping for carers’ every week, in a display of public support for NHS staff, the government is passing its immigration bill, targeting the very migrants who play such an important role in Britain’s health service. As MP Valerie Vaz put it: ‘With this immigration bill the government is effectively clapping them out of the country’. Indeed the harsh reality of Tory policy cannot be escaped during this pandemic. The under-funding of public services over the years, particularly the NHS, primarily by the Conservative government is manifesting itself during this crisis like at no other time.  We have entered an era where capitalism is under more strain than ever, where the only solution to this crisis comes from state interference – with the transport industry to care homes to universities all set to require substantial financial aid to survive. A different Britain will emerge from the pandemic.

As for Scotland, it must decide whether it wants to continue being at the receiving end of Tory policies which favour business over people, or whether it will finally carve out for itself a fairer society with welfare at the fore. With a resurgence of coronavirus potentially looming on the horizon, I know which society I’d prefer to live in…

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Johanna Ross is a journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

The leaders of the two of Israel’s largest political parties — Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gantz — have formed a coalition government.

In an initial six-month period, the coalition will address only two issues: fighting COVID-19 and annexing significant parts of the West Bank.

The annexation agreement was met with swift condemnation by an array of countries and institutions, as well as Israeli human rights activists. In contrast, Canada has developed a debilitating case of diplomatic laryngitis on this issue.

Josep Borrell, the High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs, stated on April 23 that:

“… any annexation would constitute a serious violation of international law. The European Union will continue to monitor the situation and its broader implications, and will act accordingly.”

At the UN Security Council, the French ambassador offered a strong denunciation on the same day:

“It would constitute a blatant violation of international law, which strictly prohibits the acquisition by force of occupied territories. Such steps if implemented would not pass unchallenged and shall not be overlooked in our relationship with Israel.”

The other four European members of the Security Council — the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany and Estonia — also criticized the looming threat of annexation.

Ireland, Norway speak up

Ireland and Norway, the two countries Canada is competing against for two open United Nations Security Council seats in 2021-22, have both publicly opposed Israel’s annexation plans.

Leading Israeli human rights organizations, including B’Tselem and Yesh Din — have spoken out against the proposed annexation. A joint letter by prominent liberal Israelis — including former ambassadors, the former speaker of the Israeli Knesset and prominent writers — said:

“For too long the world has sufficed with issuing condemnations in response to the government of Israel’s ongoing breach of international law and its human rights violations against Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

But where’s Canada? As a Special Rapporteur for the United Nations Human Rights Council on the situation in the Palestinian territory, I argue that Canada is missing in action.

No public statements against Israel’s annexation proposal have been issued. No planned accountability measures have been floated. No criticism, however mild, has been offered.

In mid-March, Foreign Minister François-Philippe Champagne did, however, issue a statement related to illegal annexation. He marked the sixth anniversary of the Russian annexation of Crimea by saying that:

“Canada unequivocally condemns this violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and of international law.”

Violation of international law

The unilateral annexation of territory is strictly prohibited in international law. This is a centrepiece of the 1945 Charter of the United Nations, and has been consolidated by treaties and resolutions, judicial rulings and scholarly writings ever since.

Indeed, this prohibition has acquired the status of a jus cogens norm in international law, meaning that it is accepted as a fundamental principle of law by the international community and no exceptions are permitted.

Territorial conquest and annexation are now regarded as intolerable scourges from darker times because they invariably incite devastating wars, political instability, economic ruin, systematic discrimination and widespread human suffering.

Speaking specifically to the five-decade-long Israeli occupation, the UN Security Council has affirmed, on eight occasions since 1967, the principle of “the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory” by war or force. This principle was cited by the council to condemn as unlawful Israel’s two prior annexations of East Jerusalem, in 1980, and the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981.

When Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in 2014, Canada, along with most of its western allies, swiftly followed their unreserved condemnations with substantive economic and political counter-measures.

Russia was expelled from the G8, import and export bans were imposed for goods manufactured in Crimea, an array of economic sanctions and restrictions were enforced and targeted individuals faced travel bans and asset freezes.

Part of Trump’s ‘peace’ plan

The Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank is a central feature of U.S. President Donald Trump’s so-called Peace to Prosperity Plan on the Middle East, announced in late January 2020.

In response, the European Union stated that the plan broke with “internationally agreed parameters,” while Pope Francis warned about the “danger of inequitable solutions.”

According to an open letter from 50 former European prime ministers and foreign ministers:

“The plan envisages a formalization of the current reality in the occupied Palestinian territory, in which two peoples are living side by side without equal rights. Such an outcome has characteristics similar to apartheid — a term we don’t use lightly.”

Canada’s official response was a vanilla statement by Champagne that would have left no one in the White House unhappy. He said:

“Canada recognizes the urgent need to renew efforts toward a negotiated solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and will carefully examine the details of the U.S. initiative for the Middle East peace process.”

In 2010, Canada lost its prior bid for a Security Council seat partly because of the Stephen Harper government’s supine embrace of Israel.

In 2015, newly elected Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that “Canada is back” on the world stage and promised to support a rules-based international order.

Same as it ever was under Trudeau

Yet under Trudeau, Canada has maintained Harper’s consistent pro-Israel voting record at the UN General Assembly, and avoided even polite criticism of Israeli behaviour in the occupied Palestinian territory that most other middle powers routinely censure.

In 2018, Canada’s Parliament renewed its free-trade agreement with Israel, which continues to allow goods from the illegal Israeli settlements to enter the Canadian market tariff-free, notwithstanding domestic legislation that designates civilian settlements in occupied territory to be war crimes.

In its current Security Council bid, Canada faces two serious challengers in Norway and Ireland that have solid international reputations, the built-in support of their European neighbours and a principled position on the protracted Israeli occupation of Palestine.

If Canada’s campaign for a council seat is once again unsuccessful, its taciturn approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will surely have been a contributing factor.

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Michael Lynk is Associate Professor of Law at Western University. He was appointed by the United Nations Human Rights Council in March 2016 as the Special Rapporteur for human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

In 1996 a task force, led by Richard Perle, produced a policy document titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” for Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then in his first term as Prime Minister of Israel, as a how-to manual on approaching regime change in the Middle East and for the destruction of the Oslo Accords.

The “Clean Break” policy document outlined these goals: 1) Ending Yasser Arafat’s and the Palestinian Authority’s political influence, by blaming them for acts of Palestinian terrorism 2) Inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. 3) Launching war against Syria after Saddam’s regime is disposed of 4) Followed by military action against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

“Clean Break” was also in direct opposition to the Oslo Accords, to which Netanyahu was very much itching to obliterate. The Oslo II Accord was signed just the year before, on September 28th 1995, in Taba, Egypt.

During the Oslo Accord peace process, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu accused Rabin’s government of being “removed from Jewish tradition…and Jewish values.” Rallies organised by the Likud and other right-wing fundamentalist groups featured depictions of Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform or in the crosshairs of a gun. In July 1995, Netanyahu went so far as to lead a mock funeral procession for Rabin, featuring a coffin and hangman’s noose.

The Oslo Accords was the initiation of a process which was to lead to a peace treaty based on the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and at fulfilling the “right of the Palestinian people to self-determination.” If such a peace treaty were to occur, with the United States backing, it would have prevented much of the mayhem that has occurred since. However, the central person to ensuring this process, Yitzak Rabin, was assassinated just a month and a half after the signing of the Oslo II Accord, on November 4th, 1995. Netanyahu became prime minister of Israel seven months later. “Clean Break” was produced the following year.

On November 6th, 2000 in the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, who was the chief negotiator of the Oslo peace accords, warned those Israelis who argued that it were impossible to make peace with the Palestinians:

“Zionism was founded in order to save Jews from persecution and anti-Semitism, and not in order to offer them a Jewish Sparta or – God forbid  – a new Massada.”

On Oct. 5, 2003, for the first time in 30 years, Israel launched bombing raids against Syria, targeting a purported “Palestinian terrorist camp” inside Syrian territory. Washington stood by and did nothing to prevent further escalation.

“Clean Break” was officially launched in March 2003 with the war against Iraq, under the pretence of “The War on Terror”. The real agenda was a western backed list of regime changes in the Middle East to fit the plans of the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Israel. However, the affair is much more complicated than that with each player holding their own “idea” of what the “plan” is. Before we can fully appreciate such a scope, we must first understand what was Sykes-Picot and how did it shape today’s world mayhem.

Arabian Nights

WWI was to officially start July 28th 1914, almost immediately following the Balkan wars (1912-1913) which had greatly weakened the Ottoman Empire. Never one to miss an opportunity when smelling fresh blood, the British were very keen on acquiring what they saw as strategic territories for the taking under the justification of being in war-time, which in the language of geopolitics translates to “the right to plunder anything one can get their hands on”.

The brilliance of Britain’s plan to garner these new territories was not to fight the Ottoman Empire directly but rather, to invoke an internal rebellion from within. These Arab territories would be encouraged by Britain to rebel for their independence from the Ottoman Empire and that Britain would support them in this cause. These Arab territories were thus led to believe that they were fighting for their own freedom when, in fact, they were fighting for British and secondarily French colonial interests.

In order for all Arab leaders to sign on to the idea of rebelling against the Ottoman Sultan, there needed to be a viable leader that was Arab, for they certainly would not agree to rebel at the behest of Britain. Lord Kitchener, the butcher of Sudan, was to be at the helm of this operation as Britain’s Minister of War. Kitchener’s choice for Arab leadership was the scion of the Hashemite dynasty, Hussein ibn Ali, known as the Sherif of Mecca who ruled the region of Hejaz under the Ottoman Sultan. Hardinge of the British India Office disagreed with this choice and wanted Wahhabite Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud instead, however, Lord Kitchener overruled this stating that their intelligence revealed that more Arabs would follow Hussein.

Since the Young Turk Revolution which seized power of the Ottoman government in 1908, Hussein was very aware that his dynasty was in no way guaranteed and thus he was open to Britain’s invitation to crown him King of the Arab kingdom.

Kitchener wrote to one of Hussein’s sons, Abdallah, as reassurance of Britain’s support: “If the Arab nation assist England in this war that has been forced upon us by Turkey, England will guarantee that no internal intervention take place in Arabia, and will give Arabs every assistance against foreign aggression.”

Sir Henry McMahon who was the British High Commissioner to Egypt, would have several correspondences with Sherif Hussein between July 1915 to March 1916 to convince Hussein to lead the rebellion for the “independence” of the Arab states.

However, in a private letter to India’s Viceroy Charles Hardinge sent on December 4th, 1915, McMahon expressed a rather different view of what the future of Arabia would be, contrary to what he had led Sherif Hussein to believe:

“[I do not take] the idea of a future strong united independent Arab State … too seriously … the conditions of Arabia do not and will not for a very long time to come, lend themselves to such a thing.”

Such a view meant that Arabia would be subject to Britain’s heavy handed “advising” in all its affairs, whether it sought it or not.

In the meantime, Sherif Hussein was receiving dispatches issued by the British Cairo office to the effect that the Arabs of Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia (Iraq) would be given independence guaranteed by Britain, if they rose up against the Ottoman Empire.

The French were understandably suspicious of Britain’s plans for these Arab territories. The French viewed Palestine, Lebanon and Syria as intrinsically belonging to France, based on French conquests during the Crusades and their “protection” of the Catholic populations in the region. Hussein was adamant that Beirut and Aleppo were to be given independence and completely rejected French presence in Arabia. Britain was also not content to give the French all the concessions they demanded as their “intrinsic” colonial rights.

Enter Sykes and Picot.

Sykes-Picot: the Gentlemen’s Etiquette on Backstabbing

Francois Georges Picot was sent to negotiate with the British on November 23rd, 1915. He was chosen for this role due to his policy outlook of the “Syrian party” in France, which asserted that Syria and Palestine (which they considered a single country) were French property, for historical, economic, and cultural reasons. Approximately six months later, the top secret terms of the agreement were signed on May 16th, 1916. The map showcases the agreed upon ‘carving up’ of these Arab territories, to be the new jewels of Britain and France.

Notice Palestine is marked as an international zone in yellow. Palestine was recognised as something neither country was willing to forfeit to the other. And thus, according to the gentlemen’s etiquette, meant that one would simply have to take it while the other wasn’t looking, which is exactly what happened.

In 1916, Sir Mark Sykes created the Arab Bureau whose headquarters would be in Cairo, Egypt (which was under British rule), as a branch of British Intelligence and under the direction of Lord Kitchener. Among the notable members of the Arab Bureau was T.E. Lawrence, better known as “Lawrence of Arabia”. The raison d’être of the Arab Bureau was to exact British control over Arabia via British Egypt.

The Arab revolt, led under the façade of King Hussein, was launched in Hejaz in early June 1916, however, the hundreds of thousands of Arabs the British were expecting to defect from the Ottoman army and join the revolt…did not show up. Instead, British aircraft and ships were deployed, along with Muslim troops from British Egypt and elsewhere in the Empire. As the revolt continued to show its weaknesses and lack of support by the Arabs themselves, to such a point that Britain was starting to despair of its success, T.E. Lawrence (who was known as “the man with the gold”), organised a confederation of Bedouin tribal chiefs to fight alongside the British forces in the Palestine and Syria campaigns.

In 1917, War Minister Lloyd George ordered troops from British Egypt to invade Palestine, expressing his wish to General Allenby that Jerusalem be taken by Christmas. Obligingly, on December 11th 1917, Allenby walked into Jerusalem through the Jaffa Gate and declared martial law over the city (see picture). Allenby explained to Picot, that Jerusalem would remain under British military administration, for some time.

The British India Office invaded Mesopotamia and took Baghdad on March 11th, 1917. The southern province of Basra, largely Shi’ite, was to be British, while the ancient capital of Baghdad was to be under some form of British protectorate.

After the British conquests of Palestine and Mesopotamia, Syria would be taken by September 1918 by British led forces and Damascus would ultimately, after a bit of squabbling, be left under French control or “advisory”.

The final settlement for allocation of territories was established in 1920 with the Treaty of Sevres which stipulated that Syria and Lebanon were to go to France, and that Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Palestine would be under British control with Arabia (Hejaz) being officially “independent” but ruled by British puppet monarchs. Britain was also granted continued influence over Egypt, Cyprus and the Persian Gulf coast.

Faisal, the son of Hussein ibn Ali and who had been under the “tutelage” of T.E. Lawrence this whole time, was proclaimed King of Iraq, after his failed attempt as King over Greater Syria before the French chased him out with their military, recognising that he represented British interests.

As for Persia (Iran), the British established their control through the infamous Anglo-Persian Agreement of 1919, with Ahmed Shah.

In 1926 the Mosul Treaty was signed where Iraq got nominal control over the oil region and the interests were divvied up among British (52.5%), French (21.25%) and American (21.25%) oil companies.

As far as central Arabia was concerned, Hussein laid claim to the title Caliph in 1924, which his rival Wahhabite Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud rejected and declared war, defeating the Hashemites. Hussein abdicated and ibn Saud, the favourite of the British India Office, was proclaimed King of Hejaz and Najd in 1926, which led to the founding of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The Fate of Palestine

While the British were promising Arab rule and independence to the Hashemite Hussein and his sons, the British were simultaneously promising a homeland in Palestine to the Jews. In the Balfour Declaration of November 2nd, 1917 the following was declared:

“His majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object…”

Britain received the mandate over Palestine from the League of Nations in July 1922.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s violent confrontations between Jews and Arabs took place in Palestine costing hundreds of lives. In 1936 a major Arab revolt occurred over 7 months, until diplomatic efforts involving other Arab countries led to a ceasefire. In 1937, a British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by William Peel concluded that Palestine had two distinct societies with irreconcilable political demands, thus making it necessary to partition the land.

The Arab Higher Committee refused Peel’s “prescription” and the revolt broke out again. This time, Britain responded with a devastatingly heavy hand. Roughly 5,000 Arabs were killed by the British armed forces and police. Following the riots, the British mandate government dissolved the Arab Higher Committee and declared it an illegal body.

In response to the revolt, the British government issued the White Paper of 1939, which stated that Palestine should be a bi-national state, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews. Due to the international unpopularity of the mandate including within Britain itself, it was organised such that the United Nations would take responsibility for the British initiative and adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29th, 1947. Britain would announce its termination of its Mandate for Palestine on May 15th, 1948 after the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14th, 1948.

A New Strategy for Securing Whose Realm?

Despite what its title would have you believe, “Clean Break” is neither a “new strategy” nor meant for “securing” anything. It is also not the brainchild of fanatical neo-conservatives: Dick Cheney and Richard Perle, nor even that of crazed end-of-days fundamentalist Benjamin Netanyahu, but rather has the very distinct and lingering odour of the British Empire.

“Clean Break” is a continuation of Britain’s geopolitical game, and just as it used France during the Sykes-Picot days it is using the United States and Israel. The role Israel has found itself playing in the Middle East could not exist if it were not for over 30 years of direct British occupation in Palestine and its direct responsibility for the construction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which set a course for destruction and endless war in this region long before Israel ever existed.

It was also Britain who officially launched operation “Clean Break” by directly and fraudulently instigating an illegal war against Iraq to which the Chilcot Inquiry, aka Iraq Inquiry, released 7 years later, attests to. This was done by the dubious reporting by British Intelligence setting the pretext for the U.S.’ ultimate invasion into Iraq based off of fraudulent and forged evidence provided by GCHQ, unleashing the “War on Terror”, aka “Clean Break” outline for regime change in the Middle East.

In addition, the Libyan invasion in 2011 was also found to be unlawfully instigated by Britain. In a report published by the British Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2016, it was concluded that it was “the UK and France in March 2011 which led the international community to support an intervention in Libya to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi”. The report concluded that the Libyan intervention was based on false pretence provided by British Intelligence and recklessly promoted by the British government.

If this were not enough, British Intelligence has also been caught behind the orchestrations of Russia-Gate and the Skripal affair.

Therefore, though the U.S. and Israeli military have done a good job at stealing the show, and though they certainly believe themselves to be the head of the show, the reality is that this age of empire is distinctly British and anyone who plays into this game will ultimately be playing for said interests, whether they are aware of it or not.

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Cynthia Chung is a lecturer, writer and co-founder and editor of the Rising Tide Foundation (Montreal, Canada).

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Trump’s Interior Department is demanding payment from the past two years from solar and wind projects on federal lands, Reuters is reporting. The move, described as a “multi-million-dollar hit” to the wind and solar industries, is a stark contrast to the gifts and bailouts the administration has been showering the oil and gas industry with since the coronavirus pandemic started.

“Making renewable industries pay millions of dollars while pandering to extractive industries exposes this President’s priorities,” said Chris Saeger, a spokesman for Western Values Project. “The Trump administration’s hypocrisy is astounding: they are using a public health crisis as an excuse to bail out the President’s corporate cronies while leaving everyone else to fend for themselves.” 

According to the Reuters story, the Interior Department expects to collect $50 million in retroactive fees from renewable projects in 2020. Interior had stopped charging renewable industries rent in 2018 to review company complaints but had consistently refused to comment on the results of that review. In contrast, Interior– run by former oil and gas lobbyist David Bernhardt– has helped oil and gas drillers on federal lands get relief from paying royalties amid an oil market slump. 

The Trump administration has been blatantly bailing out the oil and gas industry during the coronavirus pandemic. In just the first two weeks of the Small Business Administration’s Payroll Protection Program (PPP), oil, gas and mining companies got a whopping $3.9 billion in PPP funding, even though the program was designed to help small businesses, not publicly traded corporations. In its bailing out of extractive resource corporations, the administration has given PPP funding to a foreign-owned uranium mining corporation with ties to the Trump administration, a Indiana-based coal corporation with a former Trump official as its lobbyist, and oil corporations that spent millions on stock buybacks. 

And last month, the administration granted the oil lobby another one of its wishes and made it easier for the oil and gas industry to access funding. Following requests from the Independent Petroleum Association of America, the Main Street Lending Program eased restrictions on borrowing for heavily indebted oil companies and allowed them to use the loans to refinance existing debts. 

The Trump administration has also been letting corporate polluters off the hook. Since the coronavirus began, Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Department of Justice (DOJ), and Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) all recently announced enforcement holidays for government fines, penalties and settlement payments, including for companies that had committed major environmental violations. 

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Hydrofluoroolefins (HFOs) are being promoted as sustainable alternatives to climate-wrecking hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which are widely used in refrigeration and air-conditioning and are currently being phased down under the Montreal Protocol.

HFOs are the next generation of synthetic chemicals being promoted by industry for future use in cooling equipment.

But while HFOs may be less harmful to the climate, they break down in the atmosphere to create high levels of trifluoroacetic acid (TFA) – which could be very damaging to human health and the environment.

Scientists studying at Arctic ice cores have found growing accumulations of TFA and two other short-chain perfluoroalykcarboxylic acids (scPFCAs, which are fatty acids with fewer than six carbon atoms).

Levels of these chemicals have grown tenfold since 1990 (shortly after the Montreal Protocol was signed). In a follow-up article, the scientists point to refrigerants HFC-134a and HFO-1234yf as the main sources of this growing abundance of TFA.

The study concludes that levels of TFA will continue to grow as more HFOs are used globally. It warns that not enough is known about the toxicity of TFA but its persistence and increasing abundance is worrying.

A 2017 study by the Norwegian Environment Agency also highlighted the lack of understanding around TFA and its future effects on human health and the environment.

Furthermore, experts from the Montreal Protocol have warned that the high rate of TFA from a number of HFOs, especially HFO-1234yf, is a critical issue and “may be of considerable environmental relevance in view of the expected future HFO production expansion.”

EIA Climate Campaigner Sophie Geoghegan said: “More modelling and research is needed to evaluate the effect of rising TFA levels on human and planetary health.

“TFA ends up in lakes and rivers and contaminates these bodies of water, damaging aquatic flora and fauna. Previous studies have also linked TFA to acid rain and there is growing concern that TFA could also contaminate drinking water, thus impacting human health.”

A study found TFA in the blood of people in China, indicating widespread exposure to the toxin. TFA is toxic and is not filtered out by current technology.

Concerns over TFA will likely only increase as HFOs are more widely adopted around the world. HFO-1234yf creates far more TFA than the HFC refrigerant it replaces, HFC-134a.

Since 2017, almost all new cars in the USA and the EU have replaced HFC-134a with HFO-1234yf in air conditioning. HFO-1234yf is also mixed with HFCs and other HFOs to create a range of refrigerant blends with lower global warming potential which are being promoted for use in commercial, industrial and transport refrigeration.

Geoghegan  added:

“To avoid this potentially dangerous build-up of TFA, the roll out of HFOs needs to be slowed down or the Montreal Protocol might once more have to step up to phase out the latest synthetic refrigerant.”

Fortunately, HFOs are not the only alternative to HFCs – natural refrigerants, including ammonia, carbon dioxide and hydrocarbons, are feasible and climate-neutral solutions being increasingly adopted in cooling equipment worldwide.

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Israel’s latest “national unity” government has, for the time being, ended 500 days of internal political crisis, the longest in Israel’s 72-year history.  At the same time, Israel embarked on an external political crisis over the potential annexation of occupied West Bank Palestinian territory. The coalition agreement says that from July 1, the government can apply for Knesset approval for annexations proposed in Donald Trump‘s “Deal of the Century.”  His deal, concocted with Israeli past and present Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has been rejected by Palestine, the Arab League, Arab governments separately, the European Union (EU) and many members of the international community. Their rejection makes no difference to Netanyahu or Trump.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s determination to annex illegal Israeli colonies and the Jordan Valley, comprising 30 per cent of the West Bank, was the sole issue debated during the formation of this government. The Trump administration, which endorses annexation, has given Israel the freedom to decide when and how to proceed. The EU, Israel’s main trading partner, opposes such action and is set to launch a belated diplomatic campaign against annexation. The EU could retaliate by recognising the Palestinian state which Palestinians define as being East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Although some EU members are not willing to challenge Israel, others could impose sanctions on Israel if the land grab goes ahead. Jordan has warned of dire consequences and the Arab League, Saudi Arabia and Turkey have condemned annexation. The US Democratic party and its likely presidential nominee Joe Biden oppose annexation as does the majority of the US Jewish community which supports the two-state solution.

If Netanyahu goes ahead, this peace time land grab will mirror the 1948-1949 war time Israeli underground army’s seizure of Palestinian land allocated to the “Arab State” in the UN plan to partition Palestine. The “Jewish State” had been granted 55 per cent of Palestine but during its war of establishment Israel conquered 78 per cent of the country. Its leaders have yearned for the completion of the “Jewish state,” delineated by the Zionist movement at the end of the nineteenth century.

As the first prime minister to formally pledge to annex the West Bank, Netanyahu is dedicated to the Zionist vision of an Israel in the whole of Palestine and seems determined to achieve this goal during the 18 months he will be in office under the current coalition agreement.

By agreeing to form a government with Netanyahu, Benny Gantz has lost the support of key parties in his own Blue and White bloc and sacrificed whatever political credibility he had. While he insists that annexation can only proceed with the agreement of external powers, he is in no position to enforce this stance. Indeed, few Israelis believe that once Netanyahu completes his 18 months as prime minister in the power-sharing deal he will not hand over to Gantz, who is deputy premier and defence minister and is meant to succeed him in a second 18 month term.

Some commentators argue that Netanyahu might postpone annexation under pressure from anti-annexation US quarters, Europe, the Arab world and elsewhere. But as long as he enjoys the full backing of the Trump administration, he will seriously consider making this move, knowing full well that Israel will not be compelled to reverse annexation once it is a reality on the ground.

Demanded by Israel’s radical right-wing and the settler movement, annexation has become Netanyahu’s crutch. He has been politically wounded by indictments for corruption, fraud and violating public trust and his trial is set for May 24. He will be Israel’s first prime minister to stand trial while in office and he hopes that his position will enable him to avoid jail, at least for as long as he serves. He hopes for the next 36 months when he will be premier and deputy premier.

Netanyahu is in a strong position to do what he wants about annexation. After weeks of dickering, a 36-member cabinet with seven deputy minsters was formed. Netanyahu’s Likud secured 14 ministries while Gantz’s Blue and White holds a dozen ministries. Religious, right-wing parties and Labour also received a scattering of seats. The Likud and its allies have the majority, giving Netanyahu the advantage over the more cautious Gantz when it comes to annexation.

This wall-to-wall cabinet, which commanded the backing of 73 members of the 120 seat Knesset, has been constructed by Netanyahu to exploit Israel’s dysfunctional political system with the aim of ensuring his survival by giving him time and space to stand trial and escape prison by means of appeals.

The sprawl, however, does not represent “unity” among Israeli citizens. It includes no Palestinian or Druze citizens of Israel, although the Palestinian electoral list came in third in the March election. All cabinet members belong to Zionist” parties. Critics of the size of the government point out that David Ben Gurion, Israel’s founding premier, had a cabinet of 12. But then Israel’s political scene was far less complicated in his day.

Now that Netanyahu has his “unity” cabinet, it will have to tackle the ravages of the coronavirus, mass unemployment and other issues as well as annexation which he will want to carry out before the US presidential election in November which Trump might, just might, lose.

Incoming Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi, of Blue and White, expressed enthusiasm for the Trump administration’s plan but did not endorse unilateral annexation. It is unlikely that his bloc, diminished by defections, could serve as a brake on Netanhyahu. His primary interest is staying in power to stay out of jail. If he thinks he can use annexation to accomplish this feat, he will go ahead. If not, he might not.

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The Ukrainian port Odessa on the Black Sea will receive its first-ever crude oil cargo of WTI Crude from the United States, after the U.S. shipped its first oil to Ukraine just last year as it looks to wean off Russian oil and gas supplies after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.

A first cargo of WTI Crude to Odessa is set for arrival at the port on Wednesday, industry sources told Reuters. According to the sources, the tanker UMLMA carries 80,000 tons of WTI Crude to Odessa. Marine Traffic data shows that the UMLMA crude oil tanker traveled from Port Neches in the U.S. and was very close to Odessa, Ukraine, early on Wednesday.

This is not the first oil cargo of American crude oil to Ukraine, but it is the first WTI Crude cargo to Odessa, a month after the front-month WTI Crude futures dipped into negative territory a day before the contract expired.

Ukraine’s first-ever U.S. crude oil cargo was received in July last year, when a tanker carried 80,000 tons of Bakken crude to the port of Odessa.

Before today, the last U.S. oil shipment to Odessa was again another Bakken crude cargo in March this year.

Ukraine and some other countries in eastern Europe such as Poland have turned to buying American oil as they want to diminish the energy influence of their large neighbor Russia.

The entrance of U.S. oil into Odessa follows another first for US oil. The United States has also just sent the first cargo of U.S. crude oil to Belarus as part of a pledge made earlier this year, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last Friday, while Belarus seeks to diversify its oil imports after a bitter spat with Russia over oil supply and prices this winter.

Despite the settling of the dispute, Belarus is still looking to diversify its oil import sources to cut dependence entirely on Russian oil supply. Earlier this month, Belarus welcomed the first cargo of crude oil from Saudi Arabia.

Belarus will continue to work with countries from which it had already bought oil, Azerbaijan and Norway, as well as its new partners Saudi Arabia and the U.S., First Deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Krutoi, told the state news agency of Belarus, BelTA.

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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

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The outbreak of Covid-19 which first occurred in China in the autumn of 2019 did not, at that time, seem to herald a crisis of such magnitude in the West. In Quebec, the new coronavirus (Sars-Cov-2) was referred to as a virus that was certainly contagious, but which did not threaten the health of Quebecers more than necessary. Various experts reported in the newspapers indicated that seasonal influenza caused more deaths than this new virus, that Sars Cov-2 was less to fear than the influenza with which we have to deal cyclically and which leads annually to approximately 3500 deaths in Canada, 295 000 to 600 000 worldwide.

In early March, the narrative changed in a frightening way. Following the World Health Organization’s (WHO) announcement of a pandemic status, most Western countries responded by restricting air traffic and closing borders. This was followed by declarations of health emergencies that led to the seizure of power by the Public Health Directorates (PHDs). This last aspect is of prime importance, as the seizure of power brought most economic sectors and social life to a standstill.

During this period, it is important to realize that the reins of the state were given to the DSPs (Dr. Horacio Arruda in Quebec). In other words, the emergency health law, like martial law, deprived citizens of their rights and freedoms in order to protect them from a major crisis situation. It goes without saying that the implementation of these laws, which are opposed to democracy and civil law, should only be done in extreme emergency situations.

We were therefore told, on the basis of figures given by the WHO (3.4% mortality rate), that the situation was one of extreme urgency. The statistical curves based on these data predicted, for example, the deaths of approximately 60,000 Quebeckers and 2 million Americans if we did not proceed with containment measures. These figures are chilling and would have justified the health emergency measures taken by governments. The problem is that these predictions proved to be exaggerated. Indeed, several experts have questioned the credibility of WHO data on mortality rates based on two major issues:

– how many cases of coronavirus are there actually?
– and how many people die directly from it?

First, the number of cases with the virus is underestimated. Data from China (1), Germany (2) and the United States (3) suggest that the number of cases infected with Covid-19 was, from the beginning of the pandemic, much higher than that reported by public health authorities. Based on these data, therefore, it is likely that the number of people infected with Sars-Cov-2 was already high in the “healthy population” when the first mortality rates and alarmist predictions were revealed to the population.

Since the various national CSPs, with WHO as a chaperone, calculated mortality rates based on the number of confirmed cases or on a lower number of cases than the actual number of cases (i.e. excluding many asymptomatic cases or people who develop mild forms of Covid-19 without ever being tested), it is clear that the mortality rate was inflated as a result. This is what Dr. Antony Fauci and colleagues said in an editorial note in the New England Journal of Medicine published on February 28, 2020:

Assuming that the number of asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic cases is several times higher than the number of reported cases, the case-fatality rate can be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of COVID-19 may ultimately be closer to those of severe seasonal influenza (which has a case-fatality rate of about 0.1%) or pandemic influenza (similar to 1957 and 1968).

According to Dr. John Ioannidis, a professor of medicine and researcher at Stanford University in California, the mortality rate of Covid-19 was from the outset greatly overestimated by the lack of effective screening. In an editorial video by journalist Fareed Zakaria posted on CNN’s website, he reports that Dr. Ioannidis believes that based on an effective screening method such as the one used on the Diamond Princess in the Italian town of Vo’ Euganeo, Iceland or Denmark, the estimated mortality rate of Covid-19 would be about the same as that of seasonal influenza.

For Dr. Ioannidis, any statistical model based on exponential case growth is highly vulnerable to estimation errors. If the denominator on which to count mortality rates is incorrectly established, the statistical model may come up with a rate that is erroneous by a multiplier of 10, 30, or even 50. In other words, the number of deaths would be 10 to 50 times lower than the statistical models predict. According to Dr. Ioannidis’ estimates, the case-fatality rate of Covid-19 would be 0.05% to 1%, much lower than the 3.4% initially proposed by WHO (4). According to the same estimates, the actual number of deaths related to Covid-19 in the United States could be in the range of 10,000 to 40,000. These figures are exactly within the range of influenza-related deaths in the United States in 2019 (5).

(5) In Quebec, for example, we were told that there could have been as many as 60,000 deaths if there had been no containment. If we take a median multiplier compared to Dr. Ioannidis’ proposals, that is, a negative multiplier of 30, we would have a mortality rate of 2,000 people. That’s about the same number of deaths that occur during seasonal influenza episodes. For example, the number of deaths associated with influenza and pneumonia in Quebec in 2016, when there was no high peak mortality, was 1733 (6).

(6) As of May 5, 2020, the date of publication of this article, the official number of deaths was close to 2,400 in Quebec, around 70,000 in the United States and around 250,000 worldwide. However, the method of calculating the number of deaths raises major questions. In an open letter written to German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi mentions (7):

The mistake is made worldwide to report virus-related deaths as soon as it is established that the virus was present at the time of death – irrespective of other factors. This violates a basic principle of infectiology: a diagnosis can only be made when it is certain that an agent played a significant role in the illness or death.

As Dr. Bhakdi points out, it is thus impossible to distinguish between deaths genuinely related to Covid-19 and deaths that occurred for other medical reasons in the accidental presence of the virus. In other words, no distinction is made between those who died because of the virus and those who died with the virus. We will see that this practice, probably under the orders of the WHO, has been widespread throughout the world.

In Quebec, we have heard Dr. Arruda mention the issue of epidemiological links several times. That is exactly the mistake Dr. Bhakdi is talking about. According to this way of calculating, even in cases of “Covid-19 deaths”, people are included who have symptoms similar to those of the disease, without testing to make sure. On April 16, 2020, Dr. Arruda stated in the daily press briefing of the Quebec government:

“There has been a change in the method of data entry and epidemiological analysis by public health of patients who have died within the last week. The choice we made was to report all patients, even patients who were not tested, but who have all the definitions to be patients who died from Covid-19. »

Another aberration in the way deaths are counted is that public health chooses to consider as “Covid-19 deaths” people who simply rubbed shoulders with other Covid-19 sufferers or deaths. In other words, if a woman in a long-term care facility died and occupied a room adjacent to a confirmed case of Covid-19, she was declared to have died of Covid-19. This is what Dr. Arruda said at the press briefing on April 14, 2020, following a question about non-routine screening:

“We’re not waiting for the coroner’s inquest, we’re counting these cases. We haven’t tested every case. It’s a case definition called epidemiologically linked cases. If there are cases in a long-term care facility, on the same floor, 1 or 2 cases confirmed in the laboratory, if in the next room you have a case, no other reasons for death as such, we are almost certain, to a large extent, that it is Covid-19”.

In the press briefing of 22 April 2020, Dr Arruda returned to this epidemiological analysis, describing it as “scrupulous” and “transparent”. Here is the hallucinating statement that followed a few seconds later:

    “I’d like to remind you that every year, under normal circumstances, about 1000 people a month die in long-term care facilities. And basically, it must be understood that the current deaths that we are counting associated with Covid-19, (they) would have occurred despite the situation”.

We are literally telling ourselves that the deaths that have been associated with Covid-19 for more than a month and which are sowing panic in the population would have occurred anyway. One journalist even made this schizophrenic comment:  “Don’t you think that underestimates the number of deaths?” It is clear, using common sense (something that some journalists employed by the major media outlets no longer seem to have), that this method of calculation considerably overestimates the number of deaths linked to Covid-19.

Here is another example of this mystifying calculation. On his daily show, posted on the Journal de Montréal website on April 23, 2020, Mario Dumont received Dr. Vinh-Kim Nguyen, an emergency physician at the Jewish General Hospital in Montreal. Mr. Dumont was asking questions about how to account for deaths related to Covid-19, as it was questioned whether some of the deaths observed in long-term care facilities were related more to a lack of care than to Covid-19. The following is part of the exchange between Mr. Dumont and Dr. Nguyen (8):

Dr. Nguyen: “What we can do and what the French and other countries are already doing is that in a pandemic state, all deaths are above average. In other words, if today in Quebec we have an average of 58 deaths, and this year we have 82, we’re going to add 24, 24 more, we’re going to attribute (them) to the Covid. We’re not going to look any further, we’re not going to look in the (death) certificates.”

Mr. Dumont: “We are going to assume that the surplus of deaths is related to the pandemic that is in place”.

Dr. Nguyen: “Linked directly or indirectly to the pandemic”.

It is difficult to understand why journalists blissfully accepted this inflationary calculation method without questioning it. The method whereby people are reported to have died from Covid-19 because of epidemiological links or simply because the annual average of deaths would have increased this year defies logic. I believe that the words of Dr. Bhakdi, previously quoted, deserve to be rewritten:

“This violates a basic principle of infectiology”.

There seems to have been an ad hoc way of counting deaths for the purpose of cause, because the mortality rate for seasonal influenza is calculated in a much more conservative way.

In the “Bilan démographique du Québec 2019” prepared by the Institut de la statistique (see note 6), a distinction is made between influenza-related mortality and mortality due to co-morbid conditions. It states

“It is difficult to measure the exact proportion of deaths directly or indirectly attributable to the influenza virus, due in particular to the frequent presence of comorbidity (other concomitant causes of death). Influenza and pneumopathies are frequently cited as a secondary cause of death, and may therefore be involved in more deaths than if they are listed as the primary (main) cause of death”.

This is diametrically opposed to the method of calculation used to establish the mortality of the new coronavirus. Indeed, unlike influenza, the coronavirus is systematically considered as the main cause of death without even carrying out a test and by simple epidemiological links. I reiterate that, as Dr. Arruda stated in a press conference previously cited, all deceased persons with Covid-19-like symptoms were considered to have died of Covid-19.

It should be noted that, according to Dr. Bhakdi’s comments in his open letter to Chancellor Merkel, this method of calculation, which he calls “suspicion of Covid“, is widespread and has probably been used in France, Spain and Italy. These countries have revealed a very high mortality rate from the very beginning of the crisis and have contributed to the atmosphere of fear experienced in the West.

Can it be concluded that the official excess mortality associated with Covid-19 compared to influenza is not real, but depends primarily on the method of calculation?

If we take into account the number of deaths recorded in 2018 associated with problems of the respiratory and circulatory systems, diabetes and malignant tumours, diseases often present in individuals who die with a viral infection, we have a figure of 46,010 deaths in Quebec alone. It is very easy to inflate a statistic if we calculate it in bad faith.

Let us take the analysis a little further. In the same document from the Institut de la statistique du Québec, for example, it says that mortality in Quebec is increasing year after year in a general trend, largely due to the aging of the population. It states that “the provisional estimate of the number of deaths in Quebec in 2018 is 68,600, compared to 66,300 in 2017, an increase of 2,300 or 3.5%.

According to the Covid-19 mortality calculation method described by Dr. Nguyen, this percentage increase would be de facto related to Covid-19 in the pandemic year? Just below, in the same document, it is mentioned that “the increase recorded in 2018 is also related to the severe influenza season of winter 2017-2018“. It is interesting to note that this increase had not, at that time, led to such a generalized upheaval.

As another example that influenza epidemics can have a high case-fatality rate without leading to a generalized shutdown of the system, an article in the Journal de Montréal (9) suggests that about 22 people a day would die from influenza in January 2015. The article states that

“For the month of January 2015 alone, 6900 people died, which represents the highest number of deaths recorded in a single month in recent Quebec history. We can’t say that influenza is entirely to blame, but we can say that it is largely responsible for this excess of deaths”.

In the document from the Institut de la statistique (see nbp 6), emphasis is also placed on the seasonality of deaths, particularly with regard to deaths of the elderly in the winter period:

“There is a fairly strong seasonality in the monthly distribution of the number of deaths. This seasonality varies according to age groups and the various causes of death. Mortality among the young is higher in the summer months due, inter alia, to road accidents and drowning. Among the elderly, the number of deaths increases during the winter months, and as their weight in the number of deaths is overwhelmingly higher, the overall distribution corresponds more to their seasonality”.

The excess mortality of seniors during the winter period is therefore common. Higher mortality peaks in some years than the average are also common.

The multifactorial aspect of deaths attributed to Covid-19 is illustrated by Dr. Bhakdi in his open letter to the German Chancellor (see nbp 7). He mentions, among other things, that the very high air pollution in northern Italy, the part of the country most affected by the epidemic, makes the population vulnerable to lung diseases. The situation would already lead to a significant number of deaths in these areas and it would be difficult to know what the real role of coronavirus in the high mortality observed in Italy is.

The true role of the virus in Italy is totally uncertain for many reasons … because there are exceptional external factors that make these regions particularly vulnerable. One such factor is the increase in air pollution in northern Italy. According to WHO estimates, this situation, even without the virus, led to more than 8,000 additional deaths per year in 2006 in Italy’s 13 largest cities alone. The situation has not changed much since then. Finally, it has also been shown that air pollution significantly increases the risk of viral lung diseases in the very young and elderly.

Instead of establishing a large-scale screening strategy (as South Korea did, for example, when it stopped transmission of the virus without massive containment measures) to target infected people and assess the coronavirus lethality rate as accurately as possible, the West took drastic health emergency measures based on alarmist models and inflationary calculation methods. Contrary to WHO statements, the Covid-19 situation resembles more a common epidemiological situation than a global health crisis. The statements of Dr Didier Raoult, infectiologist and professor at the Institut Hospitalo-Universitaire (IHU) in infectious diseases in Marseille, also support this view. According to the evolution of annual mortality curves, he does not see a significantly higher than normal peak in deaths in the winter of 2019-2020 in France. In a video posted online on 14 April 2020, he mentions (10) :

“For us, the epidemic is gradually disappearing… If we try to see if the current health crisis is having an impact on mortality in France, the answer is no… We are very far away at the moment, if you add up the months from December to March, from the health crisis of 2017 when there were a lot of H3N2 flu. It so happens that this year there are far fewer flues and far fewer RSV (Respiratory Syncytial Virus), which means that the increase in mortality linked to this new virus is not significantly visible in the population as a whole”.

What could be described as statistical fraud has been observed worldwide. In the United States, a few doctors had the courage to speak out and said they felt pressured to indicate on death certificates that Covid-19 was the leading cause of patient mortality. In a video posted on youtube, a video quickly removed by the same channel (11), Dr. Daniel Erickson, an emergency physician in Bakersfield, California, said:

“We’re talking about co-morbidities… Covid was part of the clinical picture, that’s not why they died, folks! That was one of the reasons, so to be so simplistic and say it’s a Covid death because they had Covid, do you know how many people die with pneumonia, or how many people die with the flu, or should I say with the flu? … Their lungs are weakened by chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, they had a heart attack two years ago, they’re in poor health. There’s no incentive to test for the flu… But I was talking to a friend who said, you know it’s interesting, when I write my death report, I get pressure to write “Covid”. Why is it like that? Why are we being pressured to write “Covid”? To maybe inflate the numbers and make them look worse than they are? I think so.

Note that in this video, Dr. Erickson exposes with independent statistics (with no media filter) that the new coronavirus is no more lethal than seasonal flu.

Dr. Annie Bukacek, a physician in Kalispell, Montana, says essentially the same thing. She says that on the website of the Center of disease control and prevention (CDC; the lead federal public health agency in the United States), mortality data include both confirmed and suspected cases of Covid-19. According to the CDC’s instructions, physicians would be encouraged to make diagnoses of Covid-19 on the basis of simple assumptions. She states (12) :

“The CDC counts real Covid-19 cases and hypothetical Covid-19 cases, as if they were the same thing, they call them Covid-19 deaths… They automatically overestimate the true number of deaths by their own admission… You can be sure that the actual number (of deaths) is substantially lower than what you are told”.

Minnesota physician and Senator Dr. Scott Jensen describes a similar situation in an interview with journalist Chris Berg (13):

“Last Friday I received a 7-page document that somehow told me that if I had an 86-year-old patient who had pneumonia but had never been tested for Covid-19, but who later died of pneumonia and was found to have been in contact with her son who had no symptoms but later tested positive for Covid-19, it would be appropriate to put on the Covid-19 death certificate…. If someone has pneumonia in the middle of a flu outbreak, and I don’t have a test for influenza, I will not put a diagnosis of influenza on the death certificate. I will write that person died of pneumonia”.

Dr. Jensen went on to mention that medical practice normally requires diagnoses to be made on the basis of facts and not supposition, contrary to what they are currently required to do with Covid-19. The reporter Berg asked him why then, in his opinion, he was receiving this kind of instruction and what would be the purpose of distorting the statistics in this way.

“Well, fear is an excellent way to control the world. I worry that sometimes you’re just interested in making fear go up”.

If all flu epidemics in the past had been treated the same way by health authorities and the media, we would be in a constant state of panic. Need I remind you, it is the false mortality statistics, this false idea of dangerousness to our lives, hammered home night and morning by the mass media, that have contributed to the climate of collective fear and justified all the containment measures and infringements of rights and freedoms that we have suffered in the spring of 2020.

I would like to mention here that this is not to minimize the deaths of those who were truly affected by Covid-19. The pain of the families of the victims is real and cannot be denied, just like the pain of the families of victims of other causes of death. It is a question of analyzing the ins and outs of the crisis we have been plunged into, because although people have died from Covid-19, especially among the elderly, it does not appear that the situation is statistically very different from mortality from other seasonal viral infections.

Are we collectively Molière’s imaginary patient? Sick for fear of being sick; who begs for his therapy to be saved to the great joy of a greedy and overcautious medicine. If this is the case, the decisions taken by public health must be denounced, especially given the social and economic impacts they have had. Among these impacts are deaths and lives that should also have been saved.

Medical and media authorities say that containment has saved lives. They also claim that limiting the transmission of the virus in order to flatten the curve has avoided overflowing the emergency room and thus facilitated the allocation of care to sick patients. This last point is relevant because this unknown virus may have required erring on the side of caution rather than the other way around. The complications – often non-lethal – associated with Covid-19 can cause major stress to health care teams and this aspect deserves to be highlighted. But again, does the strategy of designating certain receiving hospitals to receive Covid-19 patients not increase the problem of overcrowding? By distributing patients across the emergency departments of all hospitals, as is usually done, we might also have distributed the workload. In Quebec, on the other hand, there does not seem to have been a congestion problem. When the media talk about an outbreak problem in a hospital, it does not mean that there is an overflow in that hospital. It means that the virus has spread across the floors, not that there is a shortage of beds.

Based on the information we have just reviewed, there is every indication that there is something fishy going on. This massive containment, based on predictions and inflated numbers, looks like a bazooka crushing everything in its path as it tries to kill a fly. Several specialists question the containment strategy, claiming that it does not correspond to good epidemiological practice. Good practice would rather require diagnosing, treating and isolating the sick, but allowing the healthy population to circulate and collectively immunize themselves. Jean-Dominique Michel, a Swiss anthropologist and public health expert, is one of those who think this way (14).

(14) “We then adopted measures that were absolutely contrary to good practice: we gave up screening people who might be ill and confined the population as a whole to stop the spread of the virus. These measures were in fact medieval and problematic since they only slowed down the epidemic at the risk of potentially even worse rebound phenomena. And that they lock up everyone while only a small minority is concerned”.

Dr Didier Raoult, in a video posted online on 17 March 2020, comes to the same conclusion. He proposes that confinement is not necessary, even deleterious (15).

   “There are real logistical, pragmatic, rational measures to put in place and treat it like a normal disease. But if at the same time we set the fire and say you’re all going to die… It’s not possible to panic the population with something that won’t change the mortality statistics, I mean there won’t be more deaths than there were in previous years, that’s not true… Listen for what I saw quickly, the three countries whose situation is not currently controlled are Italy, France and Spain, so they’re probably not models. So the confinement in Italy doesn’t prevent it from continuing to evolve exponentially. It continues to evolve exponentially in France and Spain, and these three countries have decided to put containment at the forefront. We can ask ourselves whether we should not think about it, now accept to change our opinion, which is a form of intelligence under the pressure of events, and start again on what Korea has done, that is to say multiply the tests, treat people and isolate only the positive people… And when they are no longer contagious, we must leave them in peace. It’s not worth keeping them for 14 days if they’re negative after 5 days, it’s no longer science, it’s science fiction or I don’t know what, witchcraft”.

There is no consensus in the scientific community on the strategy of containment and closure of businesses and industries. Sweden, which has not opted for this massive containment strategy, has been strongly criticized and portrayed as the bad pupil in the majority of the media. However, a Swedish epidemiologist, Professor Johan Giesecke, believes that containment has no scientific basis and that Sweden will have more or less the same record as the other Scandinavian countries at the end of the crisis (16). Dr. Daniel Erickson is also of the opinion that the containment strategy is questionable. As he mentions (see nbp 11):

“If you’re playing with people’s constitutional rights, you better have a good reason, not just a theory. The data show us that it is time to lift the containment orders. So if we don’t lift them, what’s the reason?”.

According to Dr. Erickson, confinement is even deleterious to the immune system of healthy people. Our immune system is strengthened by contact with viruses and bacteria and weakened in a sanitized environment.

Banning gatherings of more than two people and restricting travel, closing schools, shutting down several economic sectors and putting a halt to several health care services (physical and mental) have caused so many problems at various levels that the remedy imposed by health authorities has made society sicker than the coronavirus. There is no justification for the social and economic crisis into which we have been plunged.

It is safe to say that the tragedy that has occurred in seniors’ homes in Quebec and elsewhere is a direct result of the climate of panic caused by the WHO and the PSD through their distorted data. Already limited human resources in CHLSD and hospital centres have been undermined by the desertion of several employees who were frightened by a virus that was presented to them as a killer, but which, on balance, looks like a scarecrow. The seniors who died in CHSLDs during the health emergency surely died more from negligence and the consequent deterioration of their state of health than from the Covid.19 The virus was presented to them as a killer, but in the end it looks like a scarecrow. We even heard grieving families, who were forbidden to visit their sick relatives, say that their sick relatives had let themselves go because of a lack of human contact and care. In addition, there have been and will continue to be collateral deaths resulting from the suspension of several medical services (e.g., cardiology, oncology) that have led to the postponement of surgeries and diagnostic evaluations that are so important to people’s health. In addition, there were psychological problems and suicides related to the disastrous consequences of the system shutdown, particularly among people with fragile mental health or those who had put all their savings into their small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). And what can we say about the frightening deconfinement that is being proposed to us and will direct our children to a school or daycare centre that they no longer recognize, framed by austere rules and masked educators.

At a time when the data on mortality rates are being drastically revised downwards, it is my opinion that the governments and the DSPs that constantly support the need for containment and social distancing to protect themselves against a pseudo-health danger are directly responsible for the crisis and its impacts (the Trudeau administration and the Canadian DSP are particularly buoyant in this discourse).

The mainstream media, particularly the television news, which slavishly and almost without nuance relay the authorities’ fallacious discourse, are also responsible. They have abandoned their role as public watchdogs. Their mandate to inform the public by giving them access to facts and a diversity of opinions in order to encourage informed reflection has been vilely relegated to oblivion. Rather, it is the citizens themselves and the alternative media that give voice to dissent and the scientific facts necessary for the development of critical thinking. The situation is certainly not new, but it has been unequivocally exposed in recent months.

The crisis we are experiencing is not a global health crisis, but a political crisis, a clear illustration of the failure of our governmental and media institutions. The members of these institutions have blood on their hands, for their incompetence and even bad faith have caused the collapse of existing human systems and the resulting social and health distress. Again, let us applaud the tremendous work done by the people at the grassroots level: the health workers, the transport workers, the emergency services, the county MPs, the teachers who have offered online courses and so on. The solidarity of the common people has been extraordinary and I hope it will maintain the social fabric that the political and media elites are trying to tear apart. We will have to be strong, because we will only be able to gauge the full impact of this crisis in several months, if not years.

It is towards this horizon that our gaze must now turn, because the convinced reader is well aware that this crisis is surely not caused for nothing.

–  What can lead governments to take such a course of action?
–  What interest can medical authorities and their media outlets have in panicking people?
–  Have the authorities been caught up in the intensity and suddenness of the crisis?
– As some have imagined, were they caught repairing a plane that broke in midair?

The current state of the world leads me to believe that the reality is not so light. A few whistleblowers have already lent their voices to denounce this emergency situation, which has insidiously led us to a society where civil liberties are being eroded (17). (17) The ban on gathering under penalty of a fine, incitement to denunciation, police control of movements, espionage by geolocation and the use of tracking drones, and soon mandatory vaccination and the health passport are all measures that are incompatible with a free and democratic society. In the space of a few weeks, they have become acceptable in the eyes of public opinion.

We can believe these temporary measures, but history suggests otherwise. The Patriot Act that followed the World Trade Center attacks in 2001 and the emergency measures introduced in France following the attacks of 13 November 2015 have “become a permanent part of the law and common customs of these two countries” (18). If we must judge the tree by its fruits, we must judge the source of the crisis by its effects. And if the effects of the crisis are the collapse (19) of the economy and the advent of an increasingly controlled society, it is perhaps because the road to crisis was already paved. Social, fiscal and monetary reforms await us in the wake of recent events. I do not believe that this pandemic is a plane that we are trying to repair in mid-flight.

It is a planned, structured and strategic crisis. Developing this hypothesis would require far too much analysis to be done with sufficient clarity in such a short article. I reserve this task for another book in the hopefully near future. The analysis of the Covid-19 data seems to me too pressing a necessity to defer its publication and this article has been written in this awareness of time. Resistance to the lies of political-media elites requires dialogue and rapid information sharing, especially in the age of the Internet where this information is freely available and can serve as a shield against mass media propaganda.

Nevertheless, let us take the time to conclude with a reflection on the current state of the political world. We are “at war,” says French President Emmanuel Macron. A worrying term, carefully chosen rhetoric, it puts the people on the alert and makes them docile. We are at war with a virus that has a mortality rate roughly similar to influenza? We are at war with a virus that kills mostly the elderly and sick, who are vulnerable year after year to seasonal viral infections? I personally believe that the war we are fighting is an information war. In the times to come, we will be bombarded with alarming speeches, including the one on the rebound of the epidemic and the second wave.

We have heard the WHO’s speeches about the uncertainty of herd immunity and the probable resurgence of contamination. According to several experts, this possibility is, on the contrary, unlikely because the new coronavirus seems to follow a typical spread curve marked by a sharp increase and a continuous decrease in infected cases (20). Dr Didier Raoult even describes the idea of a second wave as “fanciful” because it is based on the memory of the Spanish flu which would have been, in history, an exception to the rule (21). As far as immunity is concerned, to catch a respiratory virus and not die from it means having developed antibodies against it. It is true that in some individuals, several infections are necessary before they are immune. Nevertheless, herd immunity is a reality that is demonstrated by a simple historical study of epidemics (22).

That won’t stop the terror merchants from selling us the danger. He who controls people’s fear becomes the master of their souls, Machiavelli said (23). To succeed in shaking our economic and social systems, the crisis must be long, very long. The WHO has already proposed abusive means to stem the pandemic. Dr Michael Ryan, Executive Director of the WHO’s Health Emergency Programme, proposed on 30 March this measure, which is beyond comprehension (24):

“In most parts of the world, because of containment, most of the transmission currently occurring in many countries is occurring in the home, at the family level. In a sense, transmission has been taken out of the streets and pushed back into the family unit. Now we have to go into families to find those people who might be sick and remove them, and isolate them, in a safe and dignified way.

A highly influential global organization tells us that, pro bono, people should be sought out in their homes to be removed and isolated away from their families. This does not seem to have been put into action, but illustrates the state of panic in which people are being put. In order to get people to accept such vexatious measures, fear must be rampant. A large number of people are already caught up in this fabricated fear. And any means can be good to maintain it, or even amplify it. That is why political resistance to the liberticidal tendencies of governments is actively needed. It is essential that the people welcome the suggestions and decisions of the authorities with a great deal of scepticism. Asking questions, doubting, checking, talking and disobeying are citizen weapons within our reach. Free thought is still not in confinement. It is up to the people still in love with their freedom to use it.

And that’s what freedom is all about. From the book of Exodus to La Boétie’s Discourse of Voluntary Servitude, from the Orwellian Big Brother to the roots of totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt, the question of freedom has not taken a wrinkle. Perhaps this is where contemporary men and women are going astray: believing that the fight for freedom is a thing of the past, no longer distrusting their government and relying on its good offices. As the Lieutenant-Governor of Quebec stated in a previously quoted article (see no. 17):

“The dictator is not born of himself. He is born from the fact that the citizen wishes to be protected”.

Today, the masks are coming off. Dictatorship is being revealed more than ever in its international form. We have witnessed how a crisis in Asia can, in the space of a few weeks, very similarly affect the lives and rights and freedoms of different populations overseas. The fate of national peoples is more closely linked than ever before: the global coordination of public health operations under the auspices of the WHO, the talk of a world government, the proposal for a world currency. These are not just dystopian anguish fantasies, but more or less imminent realities that some people have been thinking about for a long time.

For Arendt, totalitarianism is a dynamic of destruction of reality and social structures, more than a political regime. She describes it as international in its organisation, universal in its ideological aim, planetary in its political aspirations (25). (25) The current situation cannot be better described. The nations of the world are faced with a globalist cabal that relies on fear to govern them. This governance is today unofficial and rests on its tentacles such as the WHO, the United Nations (UN), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the Bank for International Settlements (BIS). Tomorrow, at the turn of a major crisis, it could become official.

It is to this end that chaos and anguish will set in among the population. The war on communism, the war on Islamic terrorism, the war on climate change and now the war on viruses; the object is variable, the fear constant (26). (26) The political authorities pose as protectors of the vulnerable and frightened citizen. The solution proposed, or even imposed, is to barter freedom for security. Give up your freedom in exchange for more security and you will end up losing both, as the saying goes. This is a delicate balance that sometimes leans towards a point of no return.

“It is the people who enslave themselves, who cut their throats, who, having the choice of being serf or free, renounce their independence and take the yoke … all men, as long as they have something human, allow themselves to be subjugated for only two reasons, by constraint or by deception” (27).

Once deception has been unmasked, there is no longer any reason to give up one’s freedom. Unless we have nothing human left.

        Vincent Mathieu, Ph.D.

This article was originally published by the Vigile Québec (Libre opinion) website and mondialisation.ca

Translated to English by Maya Chossudovsky-Ladouceur

Featured Photo: Quebec Vigil

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Notes

(1) https://www.bmj.com/content/369/bmj.m1375

(2) Charisius, H. Covid-19: Wie gut testet Deutschland? Süddeutsche Zeitung. (abgerufen am 27.3.2020), cited in https://swprs.org/covid-19-lettre-ouverte-du-professeur-sucharit-bhakdi-a-la-chanceliere-allemande-dre-angela-merkel/.

(3) https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20062463v1

(4) https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/17/a-fiasco-in-the-making-as-the-coronavirus-pandemic-takes-hold-we-are-making-decisions-without-reliable-data/?fbclid=IwAR2skgvbV188g9VQXf4ztq9imwXxkyjUVpuLTEruxPLlBDmHrwZmyN9qsDE

(5) https://www.lapresse.ca/actualites/sciences/202003/05/01-5263504-le-danger-relatif-de-la-grippe-et-du-covid-19.php

(6) https://www.stat.gouv.qc.ca/statistiques/population-demographie/bilan2019.pdf

(7) https://swprs.org/covid-19-lettre-ouverte-du-professeur-sucharit-bhakdi-a-la-chanceliere-allemande-dre-angela-merkel/

(8) https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2020/04/23/aines-affames-et-deshydrates

(9) https://www.journaldemontreal.com/2015/12/08/22-deces-par-jour-causes-par-la-grippe-en-janvier-dernier

(10) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5gMj6r9t-F4

(11) The video is now available at: https://www.bitchute.com/video/oV9KpUH3tRYW/.

(12) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBw1ynpDANQ

(13) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NMC6erskDQs

(14) http://jdmichel.blog.tdg.ch/archive/2020/03/18/covid-19-fin-de-partie-305096.html

(15) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7g4WKoS_6U&feature=youtu.be
(16) https://www.rcinet.ca/eye-on-the-arctic/2020/04/24/nordic-covid-19-lockdowns-will-have-same-end-results-as-sweden-says-former-state-epidemiologist/

(17) https://www.lapresse.ca/covid-19/202004/21/01-5270281-un-avocat-veut-forcer-quebec-a-deconfiner.php; https://www.lapresse.ca/covid-19/202004/22/01-5270373-la-covid-19-dangereuse-pour-la-democratie-dit-le-lieutenant-gouverneur.php; http://histoireengagee.ca/une-epidemie-du-controle/

(18) https://www.ledevoir.com/opinion/idees/578143/surveilles-et-dociles

(19) With the amount of liquidity injected into the system (5 trillion invested by the G20 countries – central banks buying back hundreds of billions of dollars in stock and bond securities) added to the astronomical amount of new money already created by quantitative easing policies since the 2008 crisis, the money supply has become immeasurable. With interest rates ridiculously low, even negative in some countries, classical economics and history make a simple prognosis. A currency that is so cheap becomes unstable and weakens, inflation gallops and gnaws away at purchasing power, the value of money and certain assets inevitably erodes (pensions, life insurance policies etc.). False wealth based on credit, money-debt, comes to the end of its cycle. The abrupt shutdown of the economy will cause bankruptcies, credit managers will take over the management of production. As in any economic crisis, wealth is not lost, it is transferred. The political and economic elites, these pyromaniac firefighters, are proposing solutions that a people on its knees cannot refuse.

(20) https://www.lepoint.fr/sante/coronavirus-et-s-il-n-y-avait-pas-de-deuxieme-vague-28-04-2020-2373206_40.php

(21) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bh5exajcXlk; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj4bGVszZP8&feature=emb_err_watch_on_yt

(22) Ray M. Merrill, Introduction to Epidemiology, Jones & Bartlett Publishers, 2013.

(23) Nicolas Machiavelli, Le Prince, Editions Ivrea, 2001.

(24) https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press-conference-full-30mar2020.pdf?sfvrsn=6b68bc4a_2

(25) Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Gallimard, 2002.

(26) In what they call the “fabrication of consent,” Herman and Chomsky describe the media filter through which government agencies and big business promote their interests. Opinion control mechanisms require a target to focus on in order to distract the population from the real aims of these state and private bodies. Chomsky suggests that at the turn of the 21st century, the war on terrorism has replaced anti-communism as the main control mechanism. Sources: Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media. New York: Pantheon Books, 1988; Noam Chomsky, Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda, Open Media Pamphlet, April 1997.

Thus, it is reasonable to believe that the media are always involved, voluntarily or indirectly, in creating a climate of fear to “manufacture opinion”. Arguably, the current alarmist rhetoric about health disasters is part of these control mechanisms to influence public and economic policies to the detriment of the people (LoA).

(27) Étienne de la Boétie, Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, Librio, 2018.

Vincent Mathieu: Ph.D., doctor of psychology and group therapist. He specializes in issues of empathy and narcissistic and antisocial pathologies.

The US Senate, on 14 May passed bill on the mistreatment of Uyghur minority in China. The bill demands President Donald Trump to sanction Chinese officials who partake in the violating rights and freedoms of Uyghur community in the northwestern region of China.  Some American experts accused the US of conducting ethnic and nationalist separatism in other countries.

“The Congress’s bill is part of the overall US strategy to isolate China and portray it as a pariah state, American expert, Dennis Etler said.

Dennis Etler condemned imperialistic policy of the United States in his interview to EDNews.net portal.

***

Eurasia Diary: What can you say about the US Congress’s bill connecting the treatment of the Uyghur people?

Dennis Etler: The bill passed by the US Senate is yet another attempt to demonize China and inflame public opinion against the PRC. It is based on unsubstantiated allegations that the Uyghurs of China are being subjected to wholesale repression and subjugation as an ethnic minority. The evidence for these allegations has been provided by separatists in Xinjiang aided, abetted and funded by the US government. Thus, the US government funds numerous groups which are then used to provide evidence used by that same government to sanction China. This is nothing but a self-fulfilling prophecy and should lack any degree of credibility by an objective observer. As Secretary of State Pompeo himself revealed, the US is proud to lie, cheat and steal and has “entire training courses” in how to do it. You can rest assured that the anti-China separatists in Xinjiang who happen to be of Uyghur ethnicity are following the precepts of their US sponsors and are taught how to do so. The allegations directed against China in the US Senate bill are concocted in that manner from half-truths and distortions of the actual situation in order to provide the US ammunition in its propaganda war against China.

ED: What is the main reason behind this bill?

DE: The bill is meant to further poison the relationship between the US and China. This is part of the overall US strategy to isolate China and portray it as a pariah state that violates human rights. This is one component of the hybrid war waged by the US against the PRC. Other components are the US-initiated trade war against China based on false allegations that China engages in unfair trade practices, US military support for the breakaway Chinese province of Taiwan, US support for pro-American anti-China rioters in Hong Kong and US military provocations in the South China Sea. All are part of a multi-pronged assault against China which the US sees as the major threat to its continued global economic and military hegemony.

ED: In your opinion, does the United States have a strategic plan to instigate ethnic nations in China to make insurrection against the central government along with the adoption of such bills by its Congress?

DE: The US has long sought to dismember China by supporting separatist movements in her outlying regions. Since the 1950s it has supported Tibetan separatists who seek to form an independent Tibetan state aligned with Anglo-American imperialism. More recently it has done the same in Xinjiang which is home to a number of Chinese ethnic minorities. The US promotes both ethnic and religious rivalry between minority populations and the majority of Han people, counter to the Chinese policy of ethnic unity and solidarity. Chinese national minority policy supports Chinese diverse ethnic minorities in many ways. They are exempt from many regulations that apply to the Han majority, they get favorable treatment in college admissions, the preservation of their languages and customs are supported with government subsidies, and the Chinese government has invested billions of yuan in improving infrastructure and services to minority communities throughout the nation. Ethnic minorities in China are represented in all levels of government and in the media. The US, however, uses its agents among certain ethnic minorities to foment trouble in order to divide the Chinese nation in furtherance of its objective to destabilize China and derail its rise.

ED: According to media, over a million Turkic Muslims have been kept in incarceration camps in China, they are allegedly being tortured, harassed, and subjected to cultural and ethnic discrimination. We would like to learn your opinion about truths and realities regarding the treatment of Uyghurs in China. As an expert on Chinese studies, how can you depict the current situation in connection with Uyghurs’ rights?

DE: Allegations of torture, harassment and cultural and ethnic discrimination against Uyghurs in China are unfounded slanders. The truth of the matter is that a small percentage of Uyghurs have been influenced by a foreign ideology that identifies itself as the only true practice of Islam. All other Muslims are condemned as apostates. Any Muslim who participates in the secular world is treated as an enemy of the faith. The vast majority of Uyghurs in China either practice forms of Islam that are antithetical to the teachings of the insurrectionists or are primarily secular in belief. The small percentage of Uyghurs who have succumbed to foreign ideological influences are given vocational training, civic education, and language training so they can better participate in the normal life of the nation. Traditional Uyghur culture and language are protected and promoted. What is prescribed are the teachings and precepts of Islam introduced by foreign proselytizers who actually attack and condemn the traditional Islamic teachings and cultural life-ways of the Uyghur people in China.

*

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Dennis Etler is an expert on Chinese Studies. Mr Etler holds a doctorate in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. He conducted archaeological and anthropological research in China throughout the 1980s and 1990s and taught at the college and university level for over 35 years.

Rethinking Retirement After COVID-19

The unemployment crisis brought on by the coronavirus outbreak has suddenly destroyed the earnings of hundreds of thousands of working people in Canada. For many jobless workers, the immediate scramble to make ends meet will be followed by a struggle to avoid downward mobility and poverty in the months ahead. But the crisis is also clouding the already uncertain retirement prospects for working people. Having experienced the second market meltdown in a dozen years, accompanied by a further collapse in interest rates, many workers confront growing financial insecurity and thwarted hopes of retiring.

Thus far, unions have responded to this crisis with appeals to government regulators for relief for pension plans. They are right to do so. An immediate objective must be to stabilize these plans and prevent benefit cuts for workers and pensioners.

But on its own, this purely defensive posture is doomed to failure. The outcome of the previous crisis, which also devastated retirement savings, explains why. Following the 2007-08 collapse, pension plans remained under unrelenting pressure from employers and governments determined to offload pension risk and to cut benefits. Uneven investment returns, weak economic growth, and low interest rates, occasioned by the same massive monetary stimulus we are seeing now, fueled these attacks. Unions spent a decade desperately trying to resist concessions and hold on to what they had.

Retirement Income for All

This struggle was mostly unsuccessful. Over the ensuing ten years, the number of private-sector workers with access to a defined benefit (DB) plan fell consistently, to the point where fewer than one in ten today belong to such plans. Furthermore, just over one in five private sector workers has access to any kind of pension plan. Even in the heavily unionized public sector, where 85 per cent of workers have a pension, employers have ceaselessly demanded that workers pay more for diminished pensions, and assume more and more risk.

To make matters worse, as pensions vanish from the private sector, the political right is able to mobilize widespread insecurity and resentment to attack remaining public-sector pensions. Without a definitive break from their purely defensive approach, the future awaiting unions and workers with pensions is clear: another round of demands for benefit cuts, contribution hikes, and more risk and cost heaped on plan members.

While unions must continue to resist these attacks, labour cannot escape the struggle for retirement income for everyone if it wants to preserve any hope of a secure and adequate retirement income for union members. Without a broader program demanding retirement security for all, calls for emergency measures to shore up pensions remain at best irrelevant to a majority of workers, and at worst, a sectionalist appeal that urges lifeboats for a few, while the many sink to their fate.

Building a Class-Wide Fight

The financial crisis already triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has hit asset-dependent pension funds and individual retirement savings schemes very hard. The largest North American stock market indexes fell by more than 20 per cent in the first quarter of 2020, and the multiple shocks of a major recession, mass unemployment, and losses of income can be expected to have even more serious and potentially long-term impacts well beyond the immediate turmoil. The financialized model of pension provision means that far from solely affecting the wealthy, the health of the financial sector is a crucial concern for many workers as well. Those of us dependent on retirement incomes deriving from the riskiest and least collective types of retirement programs (RRSPs, TFSAs, and “defined contribution” type pension plans) will be immediately and severely affected.

Fortunately, the foundations for an ambitious structural shift toward a secure and universal pension system that is no longer dependent on financial markets already exists. Class struggles at the workplace level and within parliamentary politics in the first half of the twentieth century produced the partial breakthroughs that established Canada’s mandatory public pension system. That system was built primarily through the combination of Old Age Security (OAS) in 1952, and the pay-as-you-go Canada and Québec Pension Plans (CPP/QPP) in 1966.

One of the under-appreciated merits of these two original plans is the fact that their security derives not from capitalist financial markets but from the vast collective of society as a whole. Pensions from OAS are paid out of general federal tax revenues, and are, therefore, financed through a still somewhat-progressive tax system. A portion of current tax revenues flow directly and immediately to residency-eligible retirees aged 65 and over, with a basically flat and near-universal benefit level. This means that there is no shaky pension fund and no financial assets to worry about.

The CPP was originally established as a primarily “pay as you go” contributory system, with most current contributions from workers and employers flowing directly to current retirees. A relatively small portion of that flow was deferred, and flowed into a reserve fund able to finance two years of benefits. This reserve was very securely invested in non-marketable bonds structured as loan capital to provincial governments – which they used to build public infrastructure more cheaply than would have been possible otherwise. The benefits from both OAS and CPP were secure and defined by formulas, and neither could be negatively affected by financial market turmoil.

However, Canada’s “system” of two public pension plans is far from perfect. In fact, it was designed to produce only a modest retirement income of not more than 40% of the pre-retirement earnings of average wage earners. Achieving the widely declared goal of a 70% “wage replacement” rate (not nearly enough for low-wage workers) would require that this minimal public system be supplemented with either workplace pensions or individual savings. However, while achieving widespread pension coverage at the workplace level may have once appeared possible (in the higher-growth period of the 1950s and 1960s), that dream now appears wildly optimistic. The decline of union density is a factor, but so is the more recent rise of precarious ‘gig’ style employment, part-time work, and often-bogus “self-employment” status.

In retrospect, the labour movement’s acceptance of a compromise multi-tiered and uneven public pension system that remains heavily dependent upon employer-centred and financial asset-based pensions was a strategic mistake. While the recent modest expansion of CPP and QPP benefits should be celebrated, the simultaneous transformation of CPP into a more fully ‘financialized’ plan – far more dependent on an expanded base in ever-riskier financial markets – was a major step backward.

With a new financial crisis now in full flight, the time is right for a return to the original class-wide goals of Canada’s socialist left: a progressive, redistributive public pension system that leaves no one behind, secured by formal social commitments rather than financial market returns. One recently published set of proposals would accomplish exactly this through a doubling of the benefit structure of both OAS and the CPP. Winning such a transformation will require a great deal of work and the construction of a serious “pro-public pension” movement, with elements both inside and outside the labour movement.

Fortunately, there are hopeful signs that this kind of organizing has been taken up in recent years. With the new crisis now upon us, we have every reason to seize the opportunities it offers to intensify such efforts.

An Inexorable Crisis

Although they face immediate challenges from the economic effects of COVID-19, the crisis of our pension and benefits systems has been developing for some time. It is a long, slow, and inexorable crisis, punctuated and exacerbated by periodic crises in capital or labour markets. The result is that, in time, employers will no longer be the delivery mechanism for pensions or other non-wage benefits. The labour movement’s campaign for a universal public Pharmacare program recognizes the failure of employer-provided prescription drug coverage in Canada. It must be accompanied by a call for a robust universal public retirement program that rectifies the similar deficiencies in Canada’s private pension system.

This slow crisis has three dimensions: under-funding, lack of coverage for the workforce, and inadequacy of pensions in retirement.

The main short-term response to funding challenges has been to ease funding requirements – that is, to not require continuous full funding of pension promises. In light of current trends, this makes adequate pensions less likely to be delivered.

Over the medium term, the response to the continuing lack of coverage has been to slowly permit mergers in large public sector plans, and allow them to offer pension products to a wider range of employers. In some ways, such consolidation has been positive, and has stabilized the existing public sector pension schemes to some extent. Yet this has also meant trimming benefits or shifting liability from employers to workers. Coverage has not extended appreciably, and the trend toward increased precaritization of pension incomes has not been reversed – indeed, it leaves 70 per cent of the labour force without a workplace pension arrangement.

There have been two responses to inadequate pensions: asking people to work longer and delay retirement, on the one hand, and on the other, a very modest expansion of the CPP – alongside its deepening financialization.

None of these policy responses will address the fundamental underlying problem of providing a secure pension income in retirement. At most, they will “buy time” as the Canadian retirement income system continues along its long-term trajectory of slowly shrinking coverage and erosion of benefits and security.

The fundamental questions about the kind of pension system we need must be directly confronted. Is retirement income something that should be tied to an employer-employee relationship? Should it be expanded to encompass wider types of work? Is pre-funding pensions through massive investment programs necessary? Finally, and perhaps most fundamentally, should “retirement” for all at age 65 be the objective of the system?

Even employing the smartest people in the room at great expense, tying pension income to the health of the financial sector is proving inadequate to the task. The result has been a reinforcement of the power of the financial sector over the lives of workers – pushing forward neoliberal restructuring and privatization in addition to making pension security directly dependent on the performance of financial markets.

In fact, this problem raises even deeper questions about the anti-social ways that the largest pension funds are actually investing. To take just one example with immediate relevance to the COVID-19 crisis – several of Canada’s largest pension funds have been placing more of their new investment capital into key areas of public health care infrastructure, including the deregulated long-term care sector. The PSPIB, a crown corporation investing the funds of federal public service workers and certain military and police employees is the sole owner-operator of Revera Inc. – the second largest operator of for-profit long-term care homes and retirement residences in North America. Notorious for their aggressive approach to labour relations, news reports also indicate that Revera has faced at least 85 lawsuits alleging deaths from negligence over the years. They now face significant litigation over what is alleged to be an inadequate response to the pandemic, following deaths in Revera operated homes.

This is just one example of what the ‘financialization’ of our pensions actually means. Rather than a useful source of credit or other investment capital to meet social needs, pension funds are operating in much the same manner as the most predatory investment banks or hedge funds. Desperate to generate the rates of return needed to deliver promised pension benefits, they are taking full advantage of the expanded opportunities opened up by neoliberal restructuring – privatization, capital mobility, and weakened labour rights. As private capital, PSPIB and other large pension funds are taking advantage of these urgent social needs in a harmful, profit-maximizing way – rather than helping to meet those needs in the most effective and socially equitable way possible. We want to argue that this problem can not and will not be addressed by simply bringing “responsible investment” principles into their strategies. Rather, a deeper re-organization of pension structures will be needed such that privately generated financial profits are no longer playing a central role.

Apart from basic adequacy and security, a thorough rethinking of conventional (and still quite gendered) notions of work-time might also be considered. Rather than pensions as mechanisms to finance retirement benefits only, we might reconceptualize lifetime working hours and productivity gains as social contributions to be redistributed across an entire working life. That is, we could increase annual leaves, career breaks, and even weekly hours worked, all as ways to distribute productivity gains (if they are realized) and permit longer working lives. Such a system could be publicly funded and administered, and not directly dependent on an employment relationship or financial markets.

For many, the prospect of a secure retirement seems more remote than ever. Addressing this requires reconceptualizing retirement income as a basic social good – a universal program akin to publicly funded and delivered health care.

These ideas are not new and not untested. The same debate was held in North America immediately after WWII, when Walter Reuther battled General Motors over who should deliver pensions, the state or the employer. We know how that story ended.

Of course, moving from an entrenched private system that has failed in its purpose to provide an adequate, secure, and universal public system is not without significant challenges. As with the private healthcare industry in the US, the current system is an important source of profits for insurance companies, banks, and consulting firms determined to defend the status quo they fought hard to establish and protect.

Furthermore, many workers themselves – who have experienced decades of steadily growing precarity and fear losing what they have left – will have to be convinced that universal public pensions are necessary. This means having difficult conversations. Yet this does not make them any less necessary. Fully extending the right to a secure and dignified retirement is, after all, in the interests of all workers. The sooner the labour movement and grassroots retirement-security activists start building a movement capable of taking on finance and transforming how we provide for retirement the better.

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All images in this article are from The Bullet

Speaking at the National War Heroes Commemoration Ceremony on 19 May 2020, President Gotabaya Rajapaksa declared that he will not hesitate to withdraw Sri Lanka from any international body or organisation that continuously targets the country and war heroes.

The President was probably referring to the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Human Rights Council, given that they are the only international entities that Sri Lanka belongs to, which have systematically targeted the country and its armed forces.

The statement has received wide publicity in the international media and can boomerang back on Sri Lanka at a time it desperately needs international support, precisely to protect its war heroes.

The United Nations is an obstacle to US hegemony, but Sri Lanka cannot survive without it.

The intention of this author is not to echo the detractors of Sri Lanka, whose object it is to undermine the country’s sovereignty. On the contrary, it seeks to highlight the dangers of a policy of withdrawal from an international organisation that, under the existing international order, is the ultimate guarantor of that sovereignty.

Withdrawal from what?

What does the President mean by withdrawal? Sri Lanka is not a Member of the UN Human Rights Council (HRC) it is only an Observer State, so the question of withdrawal as Council Member doesn’t arise. The only way to completely withdraw from the Council would be to withdraw from the United Nations, altogether, the Council being a subsidiary organ of the UN General Assembly. The same is true for withdrawal from OHCHR, which is a body of the United Nations..

If that is the intention, it is preposterous that Sri Lanka should even be contemplating it. The United Nations is the only multilateral organisation that exists today capable of defending the interests of less powerful states such as ours. Whatever its weaknesses – and there are many, the world order established under the UN Charter is based on respect for the principle of sovereign quality in relations between states – big or small, and stands firmly opposed to foreign domination and hegemony,  external intervention and interference in the internal affairs of states, foreign aggression, and wars.

A shift from non alignment to ‘neutrality’, from international cooperation to isolation?

Does this statement foreshadow a shift from Sri Lanka’s traditional position of non alignment in international relations?

The President of Sri Lanka and his close associates, among them Rohan Gunaratna, whom the Indian online paper AsianAge refers to as his key advisor, have referred on several occasions to a shift in foreign policy, from Non Alignment to Neutrality. On 26 June 2019 AsianAge reported Gunaratna, who had been tasked to open a back channel with India’s President Modi, as having said that the newly elected President was committed to “pursuing the concept of neutrality”. More ominously, he is quoted as saying Sri Lanka “will declare itself a neutral state by enshrining the principle of neutrality in the constitution.”

‘Neutrality’ is a negative stance adopted only in time of war. In peacetime, like ‘withdrawal’, it is synonymous with isolation. It does not require the definition of principles that are necessary to guide international relations between states, resulting in opportunism and chaos, with the strong always winning.

The Non-Alignment Movement does not define itself negatively in terms of an alliance against Great Powers, but in favour of international cooperation and solidarity to protect and defend the hard won freedom and independence of developing nations by measures to consolidate their political independence through economic independence, and to prevent a return to foreign domination. It is not isolationist,  non alignment applying only to Great Powers actually engaged in war.

Unlike neutrality, non alignment has clearly defined principles on which international cooperation must be based, as reflected in the 1955 Bandung Principles, which include, inter alia,  sovereignty, justice and equality, independence, territorial integrity, non interference, non intervention, non aggression, and multilateralism. These principles were subsequently incorporated into the UN General Assembly’s 1970 Friendly Relations Declaration, which is the only authoritative document further developing the principles embodied in the UN Charter so that it reflected the concerns of newly independent states.

Withdrawal from international organisations is a policy that is consistent with the concept of neutrality, rather than non alignment.

The power US wields over lesser States, is the power it is allowed to wield

If the systematic attacks against Sri Lanka and its war heroes are to be countered, then the first step is to recognise that at their source is the United States and certain Western allies, and not the United Nations. Such an admission, however, will require the kind of political courage and political will that successive governments in Sri Lanka have tragically lacked.

The United Nations does not belong to the US, but to all 193 Member States, as sovereign equals. The power that the US wields over lesser States, is the power it is allowed to wield by those same lesser States. That is how the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights came to be hijacked to serve America’s hegemonic ambitions and its vision of a world order based on unilateralism. And, all the time, countries like Sri Lanka looked the other way or even collaborated in digging their own graves.

Sri Lanka, a tale of resistance and a tale of betrayal

Washington’s success in pushing through anti-Sri Lanka resolutions have less to do with the brute force of the United States than the failure of Sri Lankan governments to mobilise sufficient support from developing countries, from within the Non Aligned Movement, its natural allies. Past experience, positive and negative, bears this out.

In September 2011, the United States and Canada were forced to withdraw a draft resolution that would have placed Sri Lanka on the Council’s agenda when a majority of developing countries publicly declared they would vote against it. On that occasion, Sri Lanka had taken the initiative, together with a group of like-minded countries, to move a draft resolution on the independence of OHCHR.

In October 2015, the tale was different – and Sri Lanka lost. This time it was the Yahapalana Government that came to the aid of the US by co-sponsoring the infamous resolution 30/1, forcing a consensus on all those developing countries that would otherwise have voted against a precedent-setting resolution that they knew could be utilised against them. Sri Lanka’s political leadership thus contributed in no small measure to not only undermining its own sovereignty, but the sovereignty of other developing countries, andweakening the multilateral system, ultimate guarantor of its existence.

War against LTTE terror and separatism, a war for multilateralism

It is, indeed, incongruous and ironical that the President’s statement on withdrawal was made at an event organised to pay tribute to war heroes who sacrificed their lives in the war against LTTE terror and separatism, a war fought precisely to defend the principles that unilateralism opposes.

It should be evident by now to decision-makers that it is in the country’s best interest  to strengthen, not weaken the multilateral system based on the UN Charter, especially with the increasing resort by the US and its Western allies to utilise unilateral coercive measures as a means of exerting pressure on sovereign states to compel policy changes through sanctions or threats of sanctions, embargoes, blockades, conditionalities, trade wars, and intimidation. COVID-19 has revealed the vilest of methods used by the US to obtain masks, protective equipment, and the right to own vaccines developed by other states, including against its own European allies, Germany and France.

Withdrawal and isolation will strengthen US unilateralism and global hegemony

Withdrawal from the United Nations will only strengthen the US unilateralist vision and advance its hegemonic ambitions, undermining multilateralism, which the Non Aligned Movement has  largely contributed to developing.

The ultimate result of withdrawal will be further isolation of Sri Lanka, weakening its ability to negotiate from a position of strength, depriving it of the means to resolve problems with global dimensions, such as COVID 19, climate change, trade, and finance, and eroding its  independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity, ideals for which Sri Lanka’s war heroes sacrificed their lives.

Sri Lanka’s message to the world – The Trump way or Sri Lanka’s way

And how will such a statement be interpreted by our potential allies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America, whose very existence as independent nations depends on respect for the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, and at a time that US President Donald Trump has made a similar threat to quit the World Health Organisation in the midst of a global health pandemic?

How can withdrawal from international organisations be reconciled with the urgent task at hand to win back allies and bridge the gulf that resolution 30/1 has created between Sri Lanka and other developing countries with which it has a shared history, common concerns, and mutual interests?

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Tamara Kunanayakam is former Ambassador/ Permanent Representative to the UN at Geneva, and Ex Chairperson of the UN Working Group on the Right to Development.

Featured image is from Zscout370 / Wikimedia Commons